Dear All, Happy New Year! And belated happy holidays! I will skip the obvious "it has been ages" and get to what we are here for - all the juicy gossip you have been craving about the where and when and how of America's finest redheaded couple who used to be volunteers in Romania, specifically Odorhei. That is correct - used to be for you who are out of the gossip loop, we are RPCVs. Unlike all those others who get to say the R before the Peace Corps Volunteer means Returned, in our case it means Retired as we have [View Full Entry]

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Greetings Friends, Alecia and I have now officially finished Peace Corps and so thought it might be time to fill you all in on the big ‘what’s next?’ Alecia and I have decided to stay in this beautiful part of the world for at least 3 more years. Alecia is working on a small company that will collect, dry and export the region’s delicious natural bounty (i.e. wild blueberries, mushrooms, sea buckthorn etc…). She and her business partner were lucky to find a used industrial scale drier which they acquired for the low low price of “take it out of my [View Full Entry]

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Greetings one and all, so the big update is that we are staying in Romania post-peace corps. We have decided to take a leap and start some new things on this side of the pond. Alecia will start a small business in wild gathered products, Chris will manage the community foundation he started and we will both do some editing and consulting on the side. More on all that in the next blog but in the meantime, Wish us luck! Once again we’ve let our blog go into hibernation… I’d blame it on a busy schedule, but who doesn’t have one [View Full Entry]

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Happy Holidays! Well, we once again find ourselves tardy on the blog front. So, we would simply like to make a short note of what we have been up to and present you with our favorite pictures from the late summer, fall and the holidays. The glossy overview: This summer we were blessed to have friends and both sets of parents, Alecia and Chris brothers and Erin (Scott, Chris brother’s fiancé) here. We had a fabulous time with everone traveling around Maramuresh (famous for its wooden churches), Bucovina (famous for painted monasteries), and Szekelfold our little corner of Trans [View Full Entry]

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Hello again all, below is a reprint of an article we have submitted for publication regarding Chris' experiment in social-entrepreneurism with Agora... Recently, a group of 11 American and British volunteers gripped sticks and cheese graters with a mix of anticipation and consternation as blackened loaves of sourdough potato bread emerged from a traditional wood fired oven. A couple of grandmothers handed a loaf to each volunteer and stood back smiling… This somewhat surreal scene occurred on a late July day in a small village in Transylvania - though the idea was born nearly 9 [View Full Entry]

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Hello friends, It’s been a few months now since our last post, and we hope you’re well. For us the summer has been wild - trips around Europe, visitors from home, and various work related shenanigans. This is the first attempt to fill in the busy summer and give you a peek at what we’ve been up to. Thanks for your patience, and we hope you enjoy the pictures! With that preface, back in June (I think) we packed up our bags and traveled with Zsolt and Ildiko, our 2nd gazdas (host family) to Portugal. Why Portugal? It is where Chris’s [View Full Entry]

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Dear All, It has been a while since our last update but in retrospect the pictures, until recently have been rather dull. But now that the dark and stormy months seem to be passing into a spring time we are coming out of hibernation and have some pictures and stories to share. For the most part, life in Odorhei/Undvarhely is increasingly busy. Alecia is deep into the fruit project with Agora and we have had several meetings with various folks in the villages regarding re-vitalizing traditional fruit drying practices and creating some traditional product focused cooperatives. People have [View Full Entry]

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Dear friends - Our blog had some technical difficulties but I think everything should be fine now so I am resending last week's blog to everyone. Plus - bonus pictures from a trip to the villages last week. We headed out to Almas on a snowy day and visited many of the local craft makers and I have attached pics. Thanks and have a great week! Last week's blog: Greetings from finally snowy Transylvania. And what a lot of snow…it has been coming down for about a week and yesterday we got out to play. We traveledto one of the nearby [View Full Entry]

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Dearest one and all - Happy New Year! We hope your holidays were pleasant and that 2007 will bring you a year full of happiness and success, peace and interest. Well as you might imagine, spending the holidays in Sicily was great. Not just great - stupendous, scrumptious, delightful and just about any other positive adjective you’d like to tack on. Granted the trains didn’t run on time, the weather didn’t always cooperate and we didn’t get to visit their famous volcano (Mt. Etna) but you can’t have everything can you? Our trip started off in Catania, one [View Full Entry]

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Dearest Friends, Happy Holidays to you! We are glad that we have been able to share some of our adventures throughout this year with you through this fantastic medium. While there is much one might reflect on, considering the major changes in our life, thanks to the blog there is less to recap! Instead, we look forward to what the new year will bring. We are headed to Sicily for the holidays and when we return we will come home to the newest member of the European Union. There are many ups and downs to this as I am sure you [View Full Entry]

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