All Vol

This past week I was in Bucuresti for the annual All Volunteer Conference/ My group’s Mid Service Conference or what we just prefer to call “All Vol”. After my “camp” In Singeorz, The group and I headed on an overnight train down south to hang out at Jeremy’s site (Valea Calugareasca) for a little bit before we were due in Bucuresti. We arrived to Jeremy’s at about 8am and headed straight to bed. After having a very long and much needed nap we set out on our main mission and that was to meet this infamous “Nicu”. Nicu is Jeremy’s very good friend who he randomly met one day when inquiring about the various colored 5 liter sized jugs in front of his house. Click here to read Jeremy’s post. We did not only go over to Nicu’s for the intention of meeting this legend, but also to buy copious amounts of amazingly tasting wine. After about an hour of touring the crama, tasting all the wines, getting to personally suck out the visinata from the barrel, we headed back to Jeremy’s house with a total of 25 liters of wine and 6 liters of visinata.

Sunday we arrived to the Rin hotel outside of Bucuresti at around 5pm and were buzzing with excitement of being reunited with the entire group for the first time since our In Service Training which was held in December. Since our hotel was in the middle of nowhere with no attractions other than a waterpark within walking distance, we needed to create our own entertainment and we sure did.

The conference was fairly interesting and I enjoyed the language and cultural sessions the most. I got to meet some of the new Peace Corps Response Volunteers who are former volunteers (usually served elsewhere) and have come to Romania on a short 6-9 month assignment. One of the PCRVs that I met is a social media guru and I am very excited to utilize his skills set in regards to the Train the Trainers and GLOW/TOBE topics. I’m hoping to be able to plan some regional based workshops with the NGOs and Schools that we worked with during the TTT conference to better their use of social media in expanding their reach and publicity.

One of the fun activities that we randomly planned was a makeup night. The guys were given the task of finding a girl partner whom they were supposed to makeup without any help. My partner was Anthony and he did a bang up job. Some of the guys made the girls look like clowns. We were not allowed to help the guys in any way nor answer any questions. When he started using eye shadow as blush and put powder on me after applying the blush, I was a little worried but in the end it turned out amazingly! We were all so impressed as to how well he did my makeup that we think he might have gone into the wrong profession.

Before

Look at that skill!

DONE!

Me and the artist

Marco and Lindsey

Robert making over Melissa

Grant’s finished masterpiece on Megan

After another excruciatingly long train ride back up north, I am here in Singeorz for the weekend. I have a full load on my plate of stuff to get done before I head out on my next set of adventures which will be going to visit Barbara in Drobeta Turnu Severin, visiting Meg in Odorheiu Secuiesc, hanging out at the sea side with Meg, Megan, and her friend from the states and then ending the summer vacation by supervising a young adult weekend long conference sponsored by PSI Romania in Predeal.