Social Happenings
After four hours of Romanian every day, the most one can hope for is to rest, do something relaxing, and then do homework for a few hours every night. Although there are 7 of us in the village together, we do not spend much of our “down time” hanging out with each other. This is issue that Peace Corps pushes—your time out of the classroom is best spent with a host country national, or a Moldovan in this case, learning about the culture, observing and improving your language in a real situation.
We do, however, spend some time together outside of class, and that time is well deserved and really does help ease the stresses of the day to day. We go on walks around town, last night we had a movie night and watched the Princess Bride on my laptop. It is hard for us to “hang out” in the village, because there are 6 females and 1 male, and the only place to really “hang out” outside is at bars—and that is a culturally unacceptable gender ratio to be wandering the streets at night (not that it is unsafe, necessarily). Although one night last weekend we accompanied our host sibilings (not my brother, as he was “too cool” for this activity) to the down discotech. Not to bad for my first disco experience, imagine if you will a 7th grade dance, with techy music and a little older of a crowd. It was fun, not something I necessarily am looking forward to doing again, but I think a good thing to experience. (That’s my motto with everything here… try to experience it with an open mind, if I like it, great, if not, then I will just let it go so to speak).
Twice a week we mix things up and get to hang out with the other 30 volunteers currently located in 5 other sites. Hang out might be an exaggeration, but we attend lots of informative sessions together. The peace corps definitely stresses to spend less time trying to make “American Friends” which I agree with, and I think most people do also, it is just hard to conceptualize leaving the large group in a few months and “really” being in the Peace Corps… so we are trying to soak up a lot of comfort while we can. I know that these posts have not been overly intellectual or containing much substance, but I haven’t really had the time to stop and think—so for now, enjoy the information as it is!
Also, on a homey note I received a call from my family today and found out the jets are tied for first in the east. WOOhoo. (yeah, right). Also I found out that Osama is not dead, and that a t-shirt I bought my brother (Scott) for Christmas last year landed him Stones tickets. Hows that for a productive conversation? Hopefully we can do it often because apparently it is pretty cheap to call here from the
AND how could I forget but CONGRATS AMBER AND DAVE! Married! Yay! (I am betting that some Hamiltonian will read this before Amber does, so can you let me know how the wedding went and possibly send me some pics? Thanks!)
This entry was posted
on Monday, October 02, 2006 at 2:20 PM.
