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Before joining The Journal news team in late February as lifestyles editor, Haberer was a member of the Peace Corps.
"It was something I always wanted to do," said Haberer. "I saw the ads on TV when I was little: 'The toughest job you'll ever love.' It sounded cool."
Haberer spent three and a half years in Moldova, teaching schoolchildren to speak English. Being part of a system that gives children an education, Haberer was helping in what way she could to better Moldovan lives.
"In order to understand people and to help people you have to have a time commitment," she said. "You have to live in their country."
While a psychology student at the University of Iowa, Haberer visited with a Peace Corps recruiter. She found she needed teaching experience to be approved as a teacher by the Corps, so she spent a year with the Washington school district, helping out in classrooms. The teaching experience was valuable, but it is amazing, Haberer said, how much Moldovan schools and American schools differ.
"It's often easier for people without a teaching certificate to teach abroad," she said, "because you don't have the same expectations."
In Moldova, schools don't run on an American-style system. Haberer taught grades 1 through 12, on a more university-style schedule, she said. Students don't come to class every day as they do here.
And while she taught Moldovan youngsters to read and speak English, Haberer fine-tuned her Romanian, which she now speaks fluently.
Some changes in lifestyle weren't as drastic as others for Haberer.
"In a lot of ways, Moldova is a lot like Iowa," she said. "It's very rural and the weather is similar."
But in many ways, the differences were striking.
