Christmas old and new

CHRISTMAS and all that brings here in Moldova.  There has to be a festival in school and we have it the last day of school but practice for 2 weeks. These are pictures of the Health Club doing a Christmas pagent rather then a dance or poetry which everyone else does. They did a great job and try as I might I could not get Joseph to pay closer attention to Mary. 

The Russian tradition is that the winter comes and is looking for a princess so the little girls that can afford to rent dresses get dressed to the 10s and sing and dance and entice father winter into going away I think...

Above and below are gifts that our church gave to the children in our school that were not given gifts by Samaritans Purse. Tom and I helped Father Christmas hand them out. They were boxes of good Ukrainian candy

 This is a picture of the gifts from Samaritans Purse. These shoe boxes full of gifts came from Germany but our church packs them too for transport to poor country's.

After the program Tom and I went to meet our youngest 2 in Romania up in the mountains.

 We were in Brasov which is ringed by mountains but we had fog most days so you cannot see them. 

We did get out to hike in them and had wanted to ski but they had little to any snow except on the very top of windy peaks.  We took a cable car up to the top just to see what it would be like. 

The kids left on the 3 of January for Ukraine and we came home to celebrate Christmas again on the 7 of January.  The tradition in Moldova is for children to come to your house to sing and get a treat of candy, $, and cookies. Here are some of the pictures of the local talent singing for us.  

This last picture was on Jan. 19, when the village priest comes and blesses the water, the houses and school in the village. It is a major saint day but I forgot who...

That is what has been happening in the past month and 1/2.  When we came back to school on the 9th of January the boiler on our school furnace had broken and the school was back down to 55 degrees again. The school kitchen stove was broken so no hot lunch (they duck taped this for now) and the hot water heater for the sink to wash your hands after the bathroom was broke and the kids are not washing their hands so we have more illness. But, with the furnace broke, we have shorter (35 minute) classes and everyone is home by 1. Not sure there is a hurry to fix it.  More to come... Love from Moldova, Marcy

Nov. Dec.

This year along with teaching I have started a Health Club. During November  an anti violence campaign is shared in the country.  The club wanted to do puppet shows every morning b4 school started to talk about violence in our school, village and in the world.  Every day a different group of girls (and 2 boys) prepared a poster and message to inform us about the types and ways to avoid violence or how to report. They did a great job with very little prompting. The younger grades loved it.  The next project they wanted to do was a Christmas story for our last day b4 vacation celebration.  Again they came up with a script, we found some fabric and made some costumes and presented. 

There was another celebration at our cultural center that the after school activities clubs presented at.  It was a ”Goodbye to Fall” celebration. In Moldova boys and girls start dancing in syn in kindergarten and this was the 1 and 2 grade preforming. They were great, I liked the pic because the only little guy preforming just kept watching the girls and following along...

The group of health education teachers that came last year put on an overnight for the new health educators in the capital. They have been at work now for 4 months and we remember the frustration and isolation along with loneliness we all felt and maybe still feel. This gathering was a time to get together and enjoy stories, time together, share secrets about working here and encourage each other.
We met Santa in the park and got a photo. As you can see we have no snow here.
More to come,
 Love from Moldova, Marcy