And the site goes to...

Yesterday was even more special than I expected. The language teachers put a lot of work into trying to make this a fun event for us. They decorated the courtyard outside of our school like an awards show, complete with a red carpet. The sites were divided into categories based upon their common characteristics, such as agriculture, or the black sea. Each was accompanied by a cute description, PowerPoint, and its own mood music.

For each site they would announce the name of the site and a number of nominees. For instance the nominees for my site included Sarah Jessica Parker, and the great monsoon, to name a few. The last name in the series (in this case my name) was of course, always the actual recipient of the site, which is good because I don’t think Sarah Jessica Parker’s Manolo Blahniks would hold up in the rural part of Romania where I am headed, and as it turns out, monsoons are rather partial to the tropics (bad joke alert).

The cherry on top of the ceremony was that the American Ambassador attended and opened the ceremony with a few words of support for the work we are doing and an invitation to Thanksgiving dinner at his house, which will be a 15 hour train ride away from where I will be living at the time.

I really wish I could remember the exact words used to describe the category of sites of which mine was a part, but all I can remember was that there was some mention of small hats. For those of you are not experts on the different regions of Romania, and need me to be a little more specific than “small hats”, I am going to a small tourist town in Maramures, the North Western part of Romania. The small hat comment is a reference to the fact that this region is known for having well preserved traditions, including traditional clothing.

As far as location goes I am not too far from Ukraine and Hungary. I am, however, going to be quite a ways away from most of Romania group 27, and again, a 15-hour ride away from Bucharest and the Peace Corps office. Having never been there I cannot attest for the magnitude of this areas awesomeness, but all of the Romanians who I have told seem pretty enthusiastic about it, but you should go ahead and give it a google and see for yourself, or better yet, come visit me.

At this point all the site really is to me is a piece of paper, I am guessing I would have been happy with anything, but from what I have read it seems as if the site matching coordinator drove up to Transylvania built this town to my exact specifications.

As you may remember the other day I posted a link to a Transylvania tourism website because I am interested in how Romania can build tourism that will benefit both the environment, and economy without destroying the heart of the place. I also am drawn to tourism in Romania because I think it can be a great way to empower the woman in communities throughout Romania, since it allows them to support themselves by doing something that they would be doing anyways, being world renowned hosts.

As it turns out, the people at my site specifically asked for someone who has experience in tourism, and would be able to help them further develop the industry. I don’t know if growing up in Sonoma County and working briefly in the wine industry makes me a qualified candidate, but I am looking really looking forward to getting involved.

Another thing that I had requested was to teach a mixed level, because I like variety, and sure enough I will be teaching 3rd through high school.

The only thing that differed from my initial preferences was the size. The town where I will be living is slightly smaller than what I thought would be ideal, but has always been important to me to be in a community that is small enough so that I can easily get to know the most important influential people in the community so that I can be effective in my development projects, such as the mayor, and since it sounds like I will likely be living in a guest house outside of his residence I think that should be fairly easy, which is great.

So In conclusions I am very happy, and looking forward to the next big step in the process which will be the next weekend, when our counterparts will come to meet us, and the week after that when we will go back to our site, with our counterpart to see our communities for the first time!