Fiti bineveniti!
Welcome to the land of beautiful children... awaiting your arrival!

I was born in Barlad, Romania on September 8th (my mother's birthday also) in 1966. Sept 8th is for the orthodox church a big holiday, as we celebrate the day when Jesus' mother, Maria, was born. My mother has always told me that I must be meant for something important since I was born that day. She is right, since I got to be involved in working with Global Volunteers and the children from Tutova Hospital.

I spent my early childhood at a farm in a small village with my grandparents and my only brother who is three years younger than me (my parents were both working long days and nights). My brother now lives in Italy. I went to school in Barlad, at a music school where I studied piano for eight years.

After I graduated "Codreanu" high school from Barlad (where Global Volunteers maintained a teaching project until two years ago) in 1984, I studied Romanian and world literature at college in Bucharest.

I was married in December 2002, and I am the proud mother of a girl, Delia-Elena. My husband, Dan, is on paternity leave for two years from his job as a technician in a ballberaring factory, so he is home with Delia while mommy is working.

We have the great help of my mother who cooks for us, plays with Delia when Dan is tired, and does other chores. I think I was supposed to do that! Well, I am a modern woman and a blessed one.

I graduated college in 1989 (the year of the Revolution) and I was assigned to teach Romanian literature in western Romania in a small town close to the Hungarian border. Three years later, I came back to my native town and I became a teacher at the same high school where I studied. About the same time I met a nice couple from St. Paul, Minnesota in the US, Chuck and Jo-Ann Copeland. They were volunteering at Tutova Hospital through a small St. Paul foundation. We became very good friends and they invited me to visit them in St. Paul.

It took me a few years to finally get a US visa. Waiting for a better chance to be granted a visa, I decided to take a course of Ecology in Bucharest while I was still a teacher in Barlad. I spent the beginning of each week for about half year in Bucharest attending courses and I was lucky to get a scholarship for six months to study Ecology in Brussels. It was an international course and my first trip out of the country. The experience was incredible. The course was an international one and there were students from all over the world. That was my first "global" experience.

I visited US, St. Paul for the first time in 1998; that's when my friends, the Copeland's, told me about Global Volunteers. We went to visit together with Bud Philbrook and while my friends told Bud about Tutova Hospital, I, as a teacher, asked Bud to send teams of volunteers to the high school where I was teaching. I really didn't believe that volunteers would come until I saw them getting off the train!

I worked first as a consultant for Global Volunteers from April to October 1999. I became a team leader after attending team leader training, and I have lead since lead over 40 teams! The program has grown considerably, so we now employ an assistant to help me when we have large teams of volunteers or to lead teams when I am at training in the U.S.

I love reading. I am a teacher after all. I also like traveling. I don't know if that can be a hobby or just a part of my personality, but I enjoy very much making friends and my job as a Global Volunteers country manager has offered me this opportunity.