Try to solve this biological riddle: When is a mother half the age of her daughter?

The top photo offers a clue.

Answer: When an older Peace Corps trainee lives with a young “host mother”and her two sons.

That’s what Champa’s been doing in the Moldovan town of Costeşti. Here she is with her host mom, Maria, in the white shirt, along with Maria’s two sons and mother.

Maria’s husband is in Tel Aviv, working construction to make money to send home, like so many Moldovans. Maria’s friend, who teaches English in the local school, stopped by last night and told us her husband is working outside the country as well, in Germany, as are all four of his brothers.

Maria lives in this lovely home along the road where you see Champa standing. It’s a short walk from the center of the village, which is not far from Chisinau, Moldova’s capital. If we were back in the Washington, D.C., area, it would be considered an outer suburb like, say, Leesburg or Germantown, although with more goats and fewer McDonald’s.

Like me, Champa has a nice living situation. Her house has a modern kitchen and bathroom, wifi and a dining room, as well as her own bedroom. Maria is very friendly and even speaks some English. Champa does have a long uphill walk to the school where she has her language classes and technical training, but she says it reminds her of walking in Nepal.

I saw all of this for myself this weekend when I left my own host family and village to spend a day with Champa. There are three married couples in our training group and we are the only ones allowed to leave our host villages unaccompanied during the first several weeks. Even so, we’re required to check in with Peace Corps at each step of our travels so they know we’re OK.

I had to travel all the way into Chisinau and then back out again to reach her, since there are no direct buses between our two sites. To use a North Carolina analogy this time, it was like traveling from Durham to Chapel Hill via Raleigh each time.

It was worth it — mainly to see Champa, of course, but also to meet Maria and her family. Now I have two adopted families here in Moldova! For dinner, Maria made plăcintăs — traditional pastries stuffed with cheese or other goodies. We enjoyed them with some wine her father produced, which is common here. The meal was delicious and we cleaned our plates.

We always want to keep mom happy, no matter how old she is.

Yes, my shirt says “Straight Outta Moldova.”

No, you can’t have it.

At a Peace Corps picnic today at a beautiful park in Chisinau, I was asked repeatedly where I got the shirt and, a bit less seriously, whether I’d consider giving it away or selling it.

Here’s Donna, one of the other trainees, trying to tear it off me. (OK, we were joking.)

My cousin Mark and his wife Cindy ordered the shirt for me shortly before Champa and I left to join the Peace Corps in Moldova. I’m sure they had no idea how much fun I’d have wearing it. Neither did I.

There were plenty of other thematic shirts on display at the picnic, which Peace Corps organized to bring together our training group with current volunteers and staff.

Here are Chelsea, left, and Rose, right, making their own fashion statements in support of peace and the Peace Corps.

Rose is eating some of the delicious Moldovan snacks Peace Corps provided along with fresh fruit and soft drinks. People played volleyball and soccer, strolled the grounds and enjoyed taking a break on a beautiful June day from our demanding schedule of language classes, technical training, cultural lessons and homework.

Champa and I have been training in different villages, so we enjoyed being together. We both have made lots of new friends, though, so we also spent time catching up with them. Here’s Champa with Reggie, a member of my language group and a fellow North Carolinian.

That’s a nice Durham Bulls cap she’s wearing, don’t you think? You can’t have that either.

Welcome to the many new readers of “Not Exactly Retired” and renewed thanks to all of you who have shared this journey with us from the start.

Since the blog’s audience is larger and more eclectic than ever, I want to take a moment to review what it’s all about.

Most obviously, “Not Exactly Retired” is chronicling the adventure Champa and I have been pursuing since I stepped down a year ago as the head of news and communications at Duke University. We took an extended trip across the United States, then in Nepal, and are now beginning our service with the U.S. Peace Corps in Moldova. You’ll find links to those earlier posts in the right-hand column of the blog’s home page.

The blog is also exploring larger questions about what it means to be “not exactly retired” — trying to live a full life of service and adventure after stepping away from a conventional career, or at any age. In addition, it is promoting the Peace Corps “third goal” of enhancing understanding among Americans of other people around the world.

Some new readers don’t know Champa and me personally but are looking for ideas for their own changing lives. Some just met us in Moldova. Others stumbled across the blog and decided to stick around.

To all of you: Hello, or “Buna!” as they say here in Moldova. I hope you’ll find the blog entertaining and worth your time, even if we’ve never met. Regardless of whether you’re a new or longtime reader, I welcome your comments, requests and suggestions. Please share them! I also invite you to sign up for the blog, even if you’re seeing it on your Facebook feed. Doing so will help me serve you better.

And now, back to the journey …

Meet my new language teachers, cousins Marcu and Ovidiu, both ten years old. Saturday afternoon I walked with them through the village where I will be living with their family for the next two months.

Along the way they taught me the Romanian words for tree, dog and other things, like this village well adorned with religious figures.

You can see vines behind Ovidiu and Marcu. Many Moldovan families grow grapes to make their own vin, which means … did you guess “wine”? Well, then, as my Peace Corps language teacher Diana likes to say: Bravo!

It’s hard to believe we were in North Carolina less than a week ago. We had two busy days of staging in Philadelphia, then traveled by bus to New York, where we waited for several hours at JFK before boarding Lufthansa flights to Munich and finally Chisinau, Moldova’s capital. Some of the current Peace Corps volunteers greeted us at the airport with cheers and signs. We drove through the city, ate pizza outdoors at our hotel and held our first orientation session before finally being allowed to crash.

The next morning we began intensive language lessons, which some volunteers continued late into the following evening with a vocabulary contest in the hotel lobby.

The orientation was nonstop. We received briefings about health, safety, money and local customs. We visited a local lab to provide blood samples. We walked around the city. Here’s one of our teachers offering advice about how to interact with our host families. Moldova is still very new to us but, so far, we love it.

The 59 volunteers in our group are divided among four programs: education, health, small business development and community/organizational development. Champa is in the first program; I’m in the last. Since each program is staying in its own village or two, Champa and I are living separately during the week and seeing each other on weekends.

My new home is just beyond the outskirts of Chisinau. Since Moldova is only the size of Maryland, Champa’s village isn’t far away. With local Sim cards in our iPhones, we can call each other easily. Here’s the home I’m sharing with the two boys and the rest of their family. I have my own bedroom, a good Internet connection and a house full of friendly teachers, some of whom don’t even ride bicycles.

What better way to get ready for Peace Corps than with some pan roasted lump crab cakes with lemon caper dill creme?

They went ever so nicely this afternoon with the cucumber cheese triangles, shrimp cocktail martinis and other hors d’oeuvres I enjoyed with a cold IPA beside a beautiful golf course.

I was attending a retirement party for a former Duke colleague, held outside at the Washington Duke Inn & Golf Club. I even wore a suit for only the second time since I retired from Duke myself nearly a year ago.

As a writer and editor, I know how to spell “disorienting,” and now I have a great example to illustrate what it feels like.

In three days, Champa and I will leave Durham to serve in the Peace Corps for 27 months in Moldova, in eastern Europe. We will be living on about $350 each per month, pursuing modest lives alongside our neighbors.

For the past several weeks, we’ve reduced our possessions to what fits in this small storage room in our house and some items in our attic. We gave away nearly an entire house of furniture to Habitat for Humanity and brought so many donations to the local Goodwill store that we probably could have asked for our own parking spot.

Our bags are now packed. Most of the rooms in our house are empty. Our kitchen shelves are nearly bare. We’re sleeping on an inflatable bed. Tomorrow I’ll turn off our internet service, and we’ll say goodbye to our beloved dog, Bailey, who will be staying with friends.

I suppose I should feel guilty about indulging as I did at my friend’s party. However, the crab cakes were delicious. I even went back for seconds.

This post is going to be awesome. Yay!

I recently ordered some iPhone camera lenses from an online company called Photojojo. The lenses weren’t quite what I expected, so I e-mailed Photojojo to find out how to return them.

“I’m so sorry you weren’t into your order!” responded Christina, the “Smile Distribution Coordinator.” She advised me how to return the package, concluding: “Once we receive and inspect it, if it’s in okay shape and it’s got all its packaging, we can give you a refund for the cost of the item, if it’s totally used we’ll getcha store credit.”

“Into your order”? “Getcha store credit”? Phrases like that never would have made it past my red pen when I was the head of news and communications at Duke.

But Christina was just getting started. After she received my package, she wrote back:

“Hey Hey,

“We have received your returned goodies! (Yay!)  I’ve just refunded $54 buck-a-roos to your credit card.  The moola should be racing your way as we speak (erm… type?) and should show up in a day or two.

“Let me know if you have any questions, I’m only a keyboard away!”

I wrote Christina to thank her and asked whether she was trained to use this kind of language, which is abundant on Photojojo’s website. Her response: “I’m native in Photojojo speak 🙂 Have a sweet day!”

“Hey hey”? “Returned goodies”? “Buck-a-roos”? Yikes! I felt like Lou Grant when he said to Mary Tyler Moore: “You know what? You’ve got spunk. {pause} I hate spunk!”

Then I stopped to ponder that my cultural reference was from a TV show that aired 46 years ago. Perhaps I’m just ancient. After all, I was impressed with Photojojo’s products and service, and with Christina’s helpfulness.

Sure enough, I found this review from another Photojojo customer: “I just wanted to hug the person who responded. They talked to me like I was their best friend in the world. They were nice, personal, helpful, and still professional. They also said that I can refund it, and the way they used very personal language like ‘snazzy’ and ‘easy peasy’ just made me know that I was an appreciated customer. This is customer service.”

Wow. Now there’s an alternative viewpoint.

I’m also mindful that Champa and I will soon be serving alongside Peace Corps colleagues who are, for the most part, much younger than us. One of the best parts of my job at Duke was interacting with bright, talented younger people. I’m really looking forward to doing that every day.

I’m not sure what to make of all this. Am I clinging to outdated language and editorial standards? Does the future lie with Photojojo’s approach? Help me out! Please write a comment and share your opinion.

I might even say “yay!”

As Peace Corps people who avoid shopping centers, buy things on sale and keep clothes for years, how did we accumulate so much stuff?

During the past several weeks, I’ve been hauling bags of clothes, kitchen goods, books, toys and other stuff to local charities. Here are just some of the receipts I’ve accumulated from Goodwill and others.

Champa and I have been cleaning out closets, cabinets, dressers and shelves. We’re getting rid of everything we can’t fit into a small storage room or bring with us to Moldova, where we’ll be serving as Peace Corps volunteers. Each of us is allowed to bring two bags weighing 50 pounds or less. The bags need to carry winter clothing, summer clothing, dress clothes, boots, shoes, electronics, photos, gifts and more, including school supplies for Champa.

We just met with a representative from Habitat for Humanity, to which we’re donating almost all of our furniture. We’re keeping only a couple of couches, two beds and not much more, depending on how much space remains in our upstairs storage room. Once everything is stored or removed, we’ll be living in a nearly empty house and sleeping on an air mattress until we depart on May 29.

It’s been humbling to confront how much stuff we’ve accumulated during 36 years of marriage. We don’t think of ourselves as materialistic, and we’re not hoarders. But all of those suits I needed for work, the books we bought for children and grandchildren, the sports equipment, kitchen gadgets, old sneakers, photo albums, CDs, LPs, DVDs and so much else — well, it added up more than we realized.

Getting rid of it has been liberating. We’ve already downsized so much that our house will be nearly empty when we return, which will probably motivate us to sell it. We’ll worry about that later. For now, we feel like we’re unloading the excess baggage of our old lives. Already we can sense how this lighter load will give us more flexibility to seek adventure and embrace what life has to offer.

Leaving my job and then joining the Peace Corps was the nudge we needed to undertake this process. Now that we’ve nearly completed it, I feel like someone who waited until a heart attack to get serious about losing weight. I wish I’d begun moving in this direction years ago. Stuff happens in life, for sure, but it doesn’t need to accumulate in such a large pile in my closet.