My Trip North

Friday I headed further north than I’ve ever been in Moldova before, to its second largest city, Balti (pronounced Belts). I went there to conduct another of my Poosk small business seminars. Of course, it started to snow – the first real snow we’ve had all season – on Thursday night, so I was a little concerned about the 4:30am bus leaving from my village on Friday morning. As luck would have it, my bus was running, and other than traveling a bit slower than usual I made my way to the midpoint of Chisinau without incident. [Ironically Amy, another PCV who lives in a nearby city, was unable to get a bus from her site until later that morning.]

My bus picked up Bryan, the third part of our Poosk triumvirate, on the way to Chisinau and after a brief stop at the PC office we were on our way into uncharted territory. We went to Balti in a van, which was definitely the worst car I’ve been in in Moldova – and that’s saying something. My feet were ice blocks by the time we arrived, the driver lost some sort of documents so we had to sit outside the city limits while some police officer questioned him and presumably received some kind of payment, and when we finally did arrive, the driver had to tear off the door handle from the outside in order to actually open the rear door so passengers could get out.

Although this trip’s beginning left much to be desired, as soon as we arrived in Balti and actually began the seminar, I knew it was going to be a good time. In large part, credit for this belongs to several people who live in Balti and made this weekend possible. First was an amazing young Moldovan woman, Larisa, an alumna of American Council’s FLEX Program. FLEX provides foreign high school students the opportunity to live with a American host-family and attend high school in America for one year. The goal is to help mold these students, the best and brightest (who already know English quite well before they go) that Moldova has to offer, into future leaders for Moldova. If Larisa is any kind of example of the results of this program, then FLEX seems to be working well.

Credit also belongs to Nic and Bridgett, two PCVs in Balti who (a) put us “Pooskers” in touch with Larisa, (b) helped us find locations for our three days of lessons, (c) showed us around their city, and (d) put us up for the weekend and prepared some excellent meals. I had the best pizza in Moldova, cooked lasagna, and had a real American diner breakfast (not in a diner, of course, but in Nic’s kitchen).

As for the actual seminar, I was really impressed by our 16 participants. Several of them were, themselves, FLEX alumni, and most of them had impressive English skills. Their intelligence, inquisitiveness, and language abilities made explaining some concepts easier. On the other hand, it also created some difficulties for us (in a good way) when they were not satisfied with our simplified explanations of complex topics, and we were forced to go more in-depth than before.

I also taught, for the first time, a new chapter I wrote about budgeting. Although still a work in progress, I think it was definitely the right decision to include this topic. At the conclusion of our seminar, student work groups must present their own business plans. Forcing them to include a projected budget of costs and receivables made their plans much more realistic than previous seminars’ groups’ ideas, and provided an excellent opportunity to teach some computer skills on Excel. The work groups’ ideas this time around were: a flower and tree business; a summer job placement agency for youth; a coffee lounge where students can study; and the “Space Café,” a student run concession stand that would sell higher quality food within the school cafeteria.

Our experience in Balti this weekend will hopefully lead to another Poosk seminar in April in Chisinau for FLEX alumni and their friends. This session would be completely in English and would be more in-depth than our typical sessions. In the mean time, there’s still plenty of room for a session here, in Copceac, and in a nearby village where another PCV lives.