Pre-Departure Orientation: Day 3/Week 1 Day 1 (Travel Day)

Wow—the last few days have been kind of insane!

On Sunday, we had a morning of orientation with a presentation about sexual abuse (!) and mainly focused on packing up all of our stuff from the hotel.

After lunch, we went back to the hotel to collect our belongings and get on a shuttle to the airport. Before we left, my family came by to say one last goodbye to me, which was really nice but also a little bit stressful because it made me think about what was about to happen...our whole group had agreed that it would be better not to think until we got to Moldova, to try and prevent our getting too nervous.

Once we got to the airport and went through security we had a while to sit at the terminal and relax. A lot of us chose to get one last drink from Starbucks, as there is none in Moldova. However, several of the participants didn’t have assigned seats on the boarding passes (myself included), so we had to wait for some people from the airline to figure out where to seat us. Everyone was also stressed out because the flight was fully booked and employees were trying to get us to check our bags—I got to keep mine with me, but some others weren’t so lucky.

The flight to Frankfurt itself was alright, if not a bit too long, except for the somewhat traumatic turbulence. About an hour and a half after takeoff, we ran into some turbulence that lasted a good half hour. The altitude of the plane dropped by a lot and it felt like we were just falling, which was scary by itself, but then one or two of the overhead luggage compartments opened itself and just hung there (the flight attendants had been told to sit down) and with the lights dimmed everything just looked eerie. Surprisingly, though, the airplane food was not all that bad.


It was butternut squash tortellini in a pesto-like sauce.

Once we landed in Frankfurt, we separated from the Estonia group and headed up to our gate for our flight to Chisinau. Unfortunately, there was nowhere to fill up my water bottle near our gate, so I got myself a cup of caffeinated tea in hope that it would keep me hydrated AND awake until that evening...no such luck. The tea was too hot to drink immediately and I forgot to take the teabag out so by the time it cooled it was bitter I could only manage to get through half of it. I slept through the entire flight to Chisinau, which was kind of amazing (I hadn’t slept at all on our overnight flight to Frankfurt), but that also meant I couldn’t get any of the water they were handing out during the flight. 

When we got off the plane and had collected our checked luggage we went out to the bus and met Марина (Marina), the American Councils correspondent for Chisinau. She gave us all bags with school supplies, a cereal bar, and water, thankfully. 

I tried to enjoy the drive into the city, but unfortunately I was feeling pretty miserable, and even the water didn’t help very much, so I only managed to get a few pictures.


Next, we had lunch at the hotel, which consisted of some type of tomato-y soup and a chicken skewer.
After lunch we were allowed to go back to out hotel rooms and relax before dinner. My roommate Mattie and I both decided to “lie down”, and we both fell asleep and overslept...we didn’t wake up until our Resident Director, Elliott, knocked on our door to see what had happened to us.

At dinner, we got our phones with Moldovan SIM cards in them, and we had the chance to program everyone’s numbers into them. We had the option to go on a short walk after dinner, but I turned this down as I was in still feeling nauseous, and in desperate need of a shower and some sleep.
Our Moldovan cell phone. 🙃

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