Christmas & New Year in Moldova

I was bit upset about not spending the Holidays with my family and even more when I got to Moldova in realise that during the holidays (Christmas, New Year and Ortodox Christmas) there's not much work in the Center for Assistance and Protection (the place were I volunteer). There's room for 20 people in this center and there's been around 5, 3 and now 1 girl. But I didn't want to spend this holidays feeling resentment for not being with my family and after all I agreed with it... quit whining and suck it up! I said to myself.
But the great thing is that I had really good moments in this 2 weeks. I shared great moments with people that don't have any family and with people away from their familes, like my fellow volunteers and travellers I met here in Chisinau. I had experienced this before, God bring lovely people to my life, why didn't I remember that? I guess I was to busy looking at my own "problems" and not looking around me and seeing all the possibilities to love people. But when I decided to take the best of every situation, great things happened.

David is a little boy (about 2 or 3) that was staying at the center with is mom, during his time at the center he spent a lot of time playing with Christina (another volunteer, she's been my angel, helping with romanian and much more). He's mom never showed much afection, and sometimes she was agressive but we could see the difference in the last days, she was even playing with him! I guess it's hard to love if someone never showed it to you before. But seeing the difference and knowing that David's relationship with his mom changed was a great Christmas gift.

Christina invited some friends that are musicians to play in the center. They are friends from Canada and they met here in Moldova. Besides being amazing musicians they are lovely people too, they real pratice the art of love.

Another lady and her son arrived in the center and the boy really wanted to see the big Christmas tree in the center of Chisinau. It was a nice family trip with Oxana, Catalin, Natasha, Christina and me. 

Baking is another activity families enjoy doing in the holidays. We also enjoyed baking some bread and cookies. So cool to see everyone helping out and then eat the "result"... nothing beats a fresh baked bread =)

In the last day of 2010, only Natasha was at the center. We wanted to do something special but the museum was closed. Rebecca (the volunteer that lives with me in the same host family) joined us and we ended up staying at the center and having an youtube party!!! We watched some music videos, baked some cookies, had romanian and russian lessons (I'm learning romanian with Chris and Chris is learning russian with Natasha) and ate the cookies. The only sad part was leaving Natasha at the center, she has a hard hard life, even too hard for me to imagine, but amazingly she kept her sweetness. My wish is that 2011 would be a better year for her and for eveyone that suffers injustice. May justice, peace, joy and LOVE prevail in the next year!

2010 ended with a nice meal, beautiful music and a great view of Chisinau and the fire works on the roof of a 16-floor building. 2011 started with a lot of HOPE, good intentions and a great fire show. May we keep the flame burning throughout the year!