Greetings from Ploiesti (pronounced ploy-esht for those Romanian-challenged).  I am currently finishing orientation here in Romania and will start language training on monday.  I met the 72 other volunteers in Philly for two days of staging where we learned about Peace Corps policy and hung out at night with our newly acquired living stipend (which was more than ample, thank you American taxpayers).  After bonding at the pub and playing ice breaker games at the Sheraton hotel, we headed out on a bus to NYC to kick off 30 hours of travel which was not special and I don’t really want to talk about it.

When we arrived in the Bucharest airport everyone stayed pretty silent as we all realized that we weren’t in Ohio anymore.  We got on another bus to head an hour north to the city of Ploiesti (pop. 250,000).  There, we stayed in the nicest hotel in the city (it was alright) and had a few more days of orientation where we learned some basic Romanian and talked about our host families that we would live with for the next 3 months.  We meet them on Sunday so wish me luck on a family that doesn’t treat me like a 16 year-old but still gives me a fantastic introduction to Romanian culture. 

So far I love how the Peace Corps has handled us so far and have been pretty impressed with our group.  the ages range from slightly younger than me to over sixty.  We are one of the biggest groups to all train together (73) and are all very excited to grow relationships with each other.  We have gone out in constantly rotating groups so that we can hang out with as many people as possible.  Romania has pretty much the same climate patterns as southern ohio so I am able to handle the humid heat that is setting in for the summer. 

Now I must go and study up on my Romanian… Noapte buna!