A New Beginning

SO much has happened since I last had a chance to write it all down! Everyday is filled with noteworthy occurrences…like the birthday party I went to with a receiving line …and a (Moldovan ) celebrity guest. I have survived TWO language assessments and come through the other side with flying colors. I have left my dear family in Costesti…moved into a hotel in Chisnau…I have passed frm being a Trainee to a full fledged Volunteer and eventually have arrived in my new home…which top secret and can’t be revealed on line by the way! We had a two hour long sessions on what we can and can not share in public forums…it was a depressing talk to sit through. Such is life working with a government agency. Anyway…many things have contributed to my infrequent postings.
Everyday I am reminded how blessed I am…I have never had so little and so much at the same time. I have two site mates who are generous with their time and resources! And too my surprise I have two beautiful Swedish neighbors (for one month). ..they are volunteers from a Swedish organization and will report back to various NGO’s about organizations that are in need of funding. Having them here has been a lot of fun. I have found my self eating chocolate chip cookies (twice!) and leading and impromptu yoga class-not exactly what I thought I was going to be doing when I joined PC.
I t is with a heavy heart I think about the end of October when Sara and Maria return home and Drea-my wonderful site mate goes through her close of service.
Living in a foreign country comes with challenges and Moldova is no exception. Sometimes I feel completely embraced and sometimes I feel like an alien from another planet. Attitudes and the way situations are handled have occasionally been foot stampingly frustrating…Things are just different-The first day of school was full of flowers and ceremony! In a touching scene a boy and girl form the twelfth and first grades walked around the student body officially beginning the school year. I happened to blend right in…I thought long and hard about what to wear my first day and chose what I thought was a very professional suite…but as I approached the school everyone around me was wearing the same color scheme as me….and they weren’t the teachers! I somehow managed to wear the same uniform as the students! And to my horror I was stopped from entering the school building because and administrator thought I was a student! Only my broken Romanian saved me…I seriously have contemplated drawing on fake wrinkles! The first few weeks have been an adventure….the teachers don’t know the schedule or the class roster…I never know who is going to walk through my door or when. I have found myself having to think fast on my feet more than once…not a situation I’m comfortable with just quite yet. The language ability ranges amaze me and I constantly have to re-evaluate the material (am I pushing to hard…not enough?). Most of my students are not used to my American teaching style and I get more than a few stares when I ask them to sing/ act/ or draw…on a side note I AM brave enough to sing the ABC’s all by myself in front of a class of 12th graders…I did not know this until it happened. My latest project that has had little to no reception is the introduction of writing essays in Chunk form…(intro, three part thesis that you expand on in you body and conclusion) I have been handed essays written in such beautiful language my A.P. High School English teacher would have wept as she read them…unfortunately the students who turn them can rarely tell just what it is exactly that they “wrote” about. Until now (I mean me) this has been acceptable. Hopefully with my new format students will take upon themselves to complete their work. I have students from the 3rd ,5th,7th,8th,9th,10th,11th,12, forms. Everyday is different for sure.
I have a wonderful partner teacher who has become a very important part of my surrogate family (My Moldovan Bunica!) She is so full of energy and life late into her seventies. I am showered with gifts of homemade jam, cookies and warm cups of tea…not to mention the treasure trove of amusing stories she has. She is also extremely proactive and wants her students to be involved international debate contests and she approached me with a proposal to create a language and health resource room in the school-this s a woman who grew up in the soviet era mind you…where signs saying “Initiative is Punishable” hung on school walls. I am in awe of her.
The weather has changed from sweltering hot to freezing finger numbing cold…we skipped right over fall! I literally have a pair of shorts and thermal underwear in the same load of laundry. The heaters will not be turned on until mid November….Yikes! And to think just last week I was contemplating buying a fan…I don’t even want to think about one now unless its used as a source of firewood.
Last weekend I went on my second Moldovan road trip (first was to Gaugozia to see the horse farm) to Orheiul Vechi with a wonderful family of a girl in our English Club. This is a valley surrounded by steep cliff faces that are dotted with caves. It is an awesome site to behold and it is not hard to see why Humans dating back to the stone age have been drawn to the area. Drea and I had our noses pressed to the car windows as we drove through . In the 16th cebturey 12 monks decided to build a monastery and chiseled one out of the cliffs face. The church they built remains in use to this day. The history of the area is amazing and witness to how Moldova’s population has been constantly influx ethnically.
The school day beckons.
Send warm thoughts my way *said with chattering teeth
R

Noroc!

As I write this I should be doing something else…I always should be doing something else. But I find that small joys such as playing with kittens, going to the “magazine” (small shops) to get an inghesata (ice cream), picking flowers…to be much more soul feeding than home work…actually I think cleaning the latrine would be more “soul feeding” than homework. I went on a nature walk yesterday it quickly turned into material for a d-list science fiction film….Attack of the Gnats! There were millions, no , billions, no TRILLIONS of them…in your hair , up your nose, dancing in your eyelashes. And it wasn’t just in one area but everywhere. I thin black veil descended upon the village. Windshield wipers were turned on and spiders gorged. My attempts to capture this phenomenon with a camera unfortunately failed. The PC has us so over programmed I find myself daydreaming far more often about my bed than I would like to admit. I have actually taken up running in the morning in order to stay awake and mentally checked in during class. A friend and I have been jogging down through the village on the main road…a typical run includes passing villagers who are taking the cow/goat/sheep to their plot of land for the day, receiving various amused/quizzical stares, and of course dodging vehicles who have little empathy for pedestrians, I have a new theory …the reason gas is so expensive over here is because they use rocket fuel!…at least that would explain the way everyone drives!) Its about a 45 min run and there’s no way to get out of running back up hill…this is how I now justify my Snickers a day habit.
Our school day is usually four hour day six days a week! And we move rapidly from one chapter to the next…barely having time to digest what we just learned before leapfrogging to the next concepts. Though everyone in a while I stop and am in awe that the government is paying for me to learn a foreign language (and a new found snickers addiction). We also receive cultural and history lessons…as I have stated before this regions political past and future are anything but solid. It is hard for me to grasp how fragile the idea of “Moldova” is, or how that affects those who are Moldovian. In the cultural session today we had representatives from minorities speak to us today to discuss thei experiences in Moldovian society. By far the most enlightening for me was the “gypsy” girl. The term “gypsy” is from greek decent and means “untouchables” they do not referr to themselves as “gypsys” but rather call themselves Roma. They face harsh discrimination which makes near impossible for them to assimilate into society.
Twice a week we make it to Ilovean (pronounced yellow van) to learn teaching methods and classroom management/ long term planning. These meetings are interesting because 1;we get to ride on a routiarah -a passenger van meant for 30 people but often time has upwards of 40, (I literally spent one ride squashed against the windshield, and had a very rude awakening when the driver reached for the open door lever! and 2:We also have been getting vaccinations on these expeditions as well (I feel like a pin cushion) bring on the rabid dogs! And 3:because we get to see the other members of our group…exchange host family gossip and discuss the various things happening to our bodies since arrival. Honestly, I have never heard so many conversations about bathroom issues…I believe I know the detailed gastrointestinal recent histories of the other volunteers well enough that I could I identify them by reading a doctor’s chart! Aren’t you sad that your lunch conversations don’t include exactly what that lunch going to look like when it finally makes its reappearance in the world? The food is bountiful here. I doubt there is a bare table anywhere in Moldova, perhaps the pet’s dish, but certainly not the table! I have been eating the most delicious fresh foods. It seems strange and unnatural that I never considered seasons before…I wanted an orange …I’d go to the store and there would be oranges winter/spring/fall /summer. Its fun to watch the tomatoes on the table grow in color and size as their season progresses. I have my fair share of tomatoes and at least two cucumbers a day. We can pick the cherries from the trees and strawberries from the garden. Soups and chicken also seem to be quite fashionable to eat. I try to eat everything put in front of me and this system has worked quite well…new discoveries…I do NOT like dill as a flavoring nor do I care for crème.
Other discoveries include the shocking price of clothes here. Last weekend I navigated the markets of Chisinau with my host sister….we picked through piles of second hand clothes under the steely gazes of Russian vendors…when at last we found the perfect pair of jean shorts that met her every requirement we were told they were 200 lei…that’s right $20 for a pair of off brand used shorts!? Which of course we took home with us, along with a pair of $12 used flip flops! I am not talking high quality clothes here…discards from the US and Western Europe…IBM base ball hats, Remington High School band shirts…Next time you clean-out your closet riding it of cheesy corporate freebies you may very well be clothing the people of eastern Europe. Even in the new clothing stores the prices didn’t make much sense to me…clothing that is made in the not to distant China were selling for equivalent if not higher American prices…somebody is making a LOT of lei.

These are my thoughts and experiences for now...
Thank you for your e-mails and thoughts , Sending love
R

This I have learned

After a head spinning amount of traveling I'm here! After a extensive staging session that took place in a conference room of a pretty swanky hotel in Philadelphia…don’t be too jealous…all I saw was the hotel. Our plane left Frankfurt on an unmarked plane. Welcome to Air Moldova :) In Chisinau (pronounced Keesh-now) we saw stray dogs running around on the airfield...little did I know how much this part of Moldovan culture would become a part of my life...Our group has about 30 people in it most of us are in our early to mid 20's with two adult women and two in their 30's. Most are Teaching English as a foreign language (like me) and some are in Health education....the PC has been in Moldova for 17 years and a very good system has been put in a place for just about every situation one can imagine. The staff greeted us at the air port and we were whisked away to a Hostel in the city center...(on a side note they made us leave our two big bags ...the hotel was too small and have only one small bag! I of course packed my shower shoes...and was forced to bath on a plastic bag...what fun!) Our first night was FILLED with the barking of dogs echoing through our soviet style (a.k.a no frills) hostel built to evoke a disdain of the luxury of travel. I’m embarrassed to say I had never woken up to a rooster crowing (which they apparently they do not just at sunrise but 2hrs pre&post sunrise…to be safe that they have indeed woken up every living creature within a 2 mile radius) Chisinau is similar to every country capital in the world….full of hustel and bustle of life…big buildings filled with important people…except it also has a aspects that one would not expect…a very rural feel to its dusty roads and markets is definitely there. Imagine a hybrid city/small rural community. We attended hours of classes on safety language and what to expect over the next 27 months. Up at 7 and into bed at 11, jet lag be damned. Our meetings included the security of the US embassy, the US ambassador himself, older volunteers, the head of the PC chief of staff world wide and of course the Moldovan PC staff. Everyone has been extremely supportive and I am extremely impressed with the support system that is in place. The medical staff has given us each a first aid kit…let me re phrase that..a personal pharmacy! We have medicine for every thinkable ailment and a book which I recommend everyone go out and by “Where there are no doctors” which instructs one how to do anything from give birth to pull teeth-Dr. free! Doubtful I will ever have to use it…I have a small army of doctors at my disposal…but what a read. Because we cannot drink the water…which come from wells (jack and jill style) we have all been issued a water purifier and brita filter. We also received a laundry list of foods we have been forbidden to eat…which of course I have inadvertently treated as a “recommended foods” menu…who could turn down home made strawberry jam? Who I ask you?!
Three days into our arrival in this country we were joined our host families and separated into small communities near Chisnau to continue our training. The event is worth recording. Flowers are very important in this culture so were taken to the flower market to buy a present for out new families ( I chose a cheerful pot of red gerber daisies)…then shoved into tiny buses filled with our previously missing luggage and now we had massive cellophane wrapped bouquets to jostle with…I’ve never seen so many frowning faces squished between such beautiful floral arrangements. After some minor rearranging in which I believe the jaws of life were involved we managed to unload the buses at the school where the mountains of luggage gave it a refugee camp feeling. All of the prospective host families eagerly awaited our arrival…nervous smiles were not hard to find. The PC placement staff went around pairing up the volunteers with the host families…two minuets after I met my mom and sister I was literally whisked away…it was more of a friendly kidnapping really. We drove away at such speed and with such urgency I was sure we were going to a hospital to rush to the bedside of a dying family member! Though it turned out our destination was a less dramatic charming house where I will be living for the next nine weeks. My host family is wonderful beyond words. The father passed away 5 years ago and the older brother lives abroad in London…My mama gadza is a sweet hardworking woman who I never see relax…the most important person in my life right now is Natasha my host sister…she is 20 years old who takes care of my every need and want…she speaks beautiful English, is full of interesting stories about village gossip and Moldavian politics. She answers my endless questions and patiently listens to my crumbly Romanian. I also have a 17 year old boy who the family has kindly taken in who is every bit a teenager (he was embarrassed to join us for my first meal here because he thought I would “stare” at him, hahah) who I‘m living with. Natasha hen pecks him constantly and I am often witness to some very loud conversations which end up with Dino pouting off to his room…what about I have no idea, even not speaking Romanian has its perks; ) My family owns a small magazine (shop) where everything from ice cream to toilet paper are sold…similar to Mexico (also similar to Mexico…dirt roads, latrines, lack of indoor plumbing, no flushing the TP…if you have the luxury of a flush toilett that is) Our house is a charming two story casa behind a bright blue fence with a full rose garden in the front, vegetable garden in the back…three dogs, two momma cats various kittens, chickens and geese in the back…I can spend hours just looking around. We have no plumbing which has been surprisingly easy to adapt too! The latrine is best o be avoided in mid afternoon when flies billow out of the dark recess below…this I have learned.
Soviet style motorcycles with passenger carts often zip down the road with anything from a family of four to a load of branches balanced on it. Stray dogs roam the village with heartbreaking hungry eyes. Older women with bright colored head scarfs shuffel to the market herding their goats or cows...all of this takes one back in time.
However this is a country of stark contrast…my host sister has a nicer cell phone than I have or will ever have! Tough the house phone is older than me and questionably works…Satellite dishes adorn even the most ramshackle of shacks…and while I may have to heat up water from the well in front to bathe ad run out back to “the hole“ to go to the bathroom…I also have a dsl connection in my room! We have been warned that the facilities in our village are not normal Moldova and not to become too comfortable before get assigned to our permanent cites…I see it as a chance to slowly acclimate myself
Language…ah yes language it is a surprisingly politically charged subject here…the majority are bilingual Russian and Romanian though what they choose to speak is determined my various factors and strictly held personal beliefs…part of the country the Transonista Region is currently trying to defect to Russia. While others believe the country should be absorbed by Romania. I recommend looking up this issue on the internet. All but two volunteers are learning Romanian.
We have been given a wonderful language training staff! My small group of 12 meets at he local squala (school) for four hours everyday to work on our language lessons and 2-3 hours of study/homework a night…Romanian is a romance language and very similar to Spanish and sometimes sounds a bit like Italian…but make no mistake it is a challenge…for me personally to keep up with the lighting speed the lessons go at. This is serious business.
I have been warmly welcomed and treated with kindness by everyone I have met thus far…while I’m apprehensive about learning the language and moving to a smaller village I am at ease with my decision to come.
Things I am SO glad I brought so far:
My galoshes-the road was sooooo muddy after a rain shower
My flash light-pitch dark muddy roads to navigate through
My watch-best spent $10 ever
My ipod shuffle-Jennifer you’ll never know HOW much I appreciated it and the thoughtful play list
My pictures
My computer…
Things to know: I have a cell phone! all incoming calls are free…skype is super cheap
I’m 8 hours ahead of OK time
I get taxed on packages based on a holding fee and what the customs label says the contents worth
Please keep me updated on your lives…I appreciate the e-mails
Sending love,
R