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Where is Moldova, anyway?

Musings on my Peace Corps experience in this small, Eastern European, Republic.
 

And it's hard to hold a candle...

Monday, November 27, 2006

... in the cold November Rain.


(the push to december, and then, sigh)

The end of training!

Monday, November 13, 2006

So PST (training) is about to be over, we just took our language proficiency exams (I will find out how I did tomorrow or Wednesday), all our fellow Americans are about to disappear to their different sites all over Moldova (yes it is a small country, but it is still far away), our daily schedule is about to be changed, we are about to move in with our new host families and we are about to be volunteers. Eek! How could two months have gone by so fast? I am not really sure, but it definitely feels like it flew by. I am excited even though, or possibly because of the fact that, everything is about to change. For 2 months we have gotten so used to our schedule for training, it was easy to think that that was how life was going to be here. I feel comfortable now, but I now this is not “life in Moldova, this is life in training under the protectorate of the Peace Corps staff and our language teachers. I know that that was life as a trainee, this will be life as a volunteer. And although it will be different, it is what we all came here to do. We have been so busy, I know I haven’t given very accurate or comprehensible descriptions of what is going on so let me try to do a mini wrap up here. I will be serious, descriptive, and honest, of course. What I can’t promise is creativity, sentence structure or perspective—I am too overwhlemed and semi-exhausted at this present moment.

What have we been doing for the past two months, LANGUAGE LANGUAGE LANGUAGE! Seriously, 5 or 6 hours a day, so much sometimes that my head hurts. This is a picture of our classroom, that I stole from Chris, but it definitely is a good perspective of what learning Romanian looks like. It is intense, but it has been very pleasant. Everyone who knows me knows how much I love school, in the sense that it is fun to learn something new. But living in a situation where it is sink or swim—where it is necessary to learn these skills to survive, to interact, to express your emotions comes with a lot of pressure. And I think we could feel it. Sometimes you want to learn language but it is just too much. We all try to make language classes more fun by coming up with interesting things to say, or cool phrases, much to the dislike and amusment of our teachers. For example, we use “dulce” which means “sweet” like we would use the word sweet in America, very causally and about situations. But apparently that doesn’t translate at all, and we get werid looks. Also, another fun game that I like to play is to look up random words in our often incorrect Romanian-English dictionary at home, and then use them in class just to see the reaction of our teacher. It makes language class more fun, more interesting, and more tolerable. And although my teacher thinks I am a litle obraznica (cheeky), I think putting the fun in it has really helped me learn. I remember the first day I realised how immersed in the language I had become. I walked into my room and forgot what I was trying to get. But instead of talking to myself in english, I said “am uitat” which is “I forgot” in Romanian. Not bad, huh? How’s that for intergration? Our language teachers were wonderful though, very patient and very helpful, we were really lucky. They definitely helped us with every aspect of our lives, travel, dealing with our families, getting appropriate winter clothing. It was like having guardians for two months.

For breaks after language I would usually go for a run around the town, go for hikes to interesting places (more on this to come), go on walks around town and get lost, only to meet some interesting person who handed me fruit, or actually knew where I lived better than I did, read (the peace corps office has a shelf of books volunteers have left in the past) or play some games with the children who hang out on the street by my house (think kids playing kickball, not gang-style). I taught them how to play Old Maid, which I think they enjoyed—I thought it would be an easy game to teach given the language that I have. Also, I attempted to show them my card tricks which amaze and dazzle children in America—but here, without the stories to accompany them, they are less than my usual state of glamourousness. Sometimes (but suprisngly only twice) I would need an escape, so I was glad I had my computer and a few dvds.
I know I mentioned it before but out of our group of 36 or so trainees (for Community Development and for Agriculture) we are split up into 5 smaller groups, each living in our own villages. At first I didn’t really warm to this idea—I thought it would be weird to be seperated from most of the group for the majority of the week, but it definitely was helpful for a number of reasons, and I understand why they set it up that way. First, it gave us a smaller group of people to interact with everyday. It was easier to get to know people when we weren’t with the large, and sometimes overwhelming, group. And also, these people (from Milest) became like our family. We got to see everyone else two days a week on hub site days, where everyone game from their respective villages and congregated in a “town” for lectures about safety and technical skills and health. Also, each town kind of formed their own support system and did their own activities to become involved in their communities.

For example, withour host parents, everyone in Milestii Mici got together for a traditional Moldovan dinner. Because we are mostly female (6 girls and 1 guy) and none of us are married, our host mothers decided apon themselves to impart on us important knowledge about how to be a moldovan woman, so we will all be suitable for marriage. Remind me to thank them later. So at this dinner we learned how to make placenta and mamaliga (which is kind of like corn bread), we also learned how to peel potatoes and how to iron clothes correctly. I actually thought it was pretty funny—at least for me—to be here. You know how I dress at home. But here everything needs to be “frumoasa” or beautiful. Its hard for me to get used to, but I think that frumoasa is the word that people here use for good or nice. He is nice, she is nice, that was nice, your shirt is nice, the house is nice. I have a feeling that is how they use frumoasa, although I know I’m not to the bottom of it yet; More updates to come, until then, I will keep using it to the best of my ability. At this party, we attempted to teach them twister. It wasn’t as succesfful as we wished, because people were hesitant to get on the floor—but it was definitely fun.

What else did we do in our community, you ask? So glad you asked. We had a great halloween party with the kids in the school. It was actually very fun. We taught them about bobbing for apples and about pin the tail on the donkey (played pin the nose on the pumpkin). They talked to us in english about what they thought or heard Halloween was about, and it was interesting to hear their perspectives. I love Halloween, so it was great to be able to celebrate it here. But although we had some candy, it wasn’t nearly enough to get that great sugar high, too tired to move, but veigns coursing with sugar feeling. Maybe next year

I know I mentioned it before, but we also went on a very lovely excursion to the world famous wine cellar in Milestii Mici. My host mother works there, she is the head microbiologist, and was able to secure us a cheaper rate for visitng. Also I was able to confirm that it indeed is in the Guiness book. Go figure.


For a final thank you to our host families we prepared a huge american dinner party for them. We made spaghetti and meat balls, a fruit salad, quessidilas and apple crisp. This was a huge undertaking because of our lack of ingredients, and accessibility to other ingredients, and lack of time. But we really wanted to share a little bit of our culture with them—they have been doing everything for us for 3 months. And although some people resented being treated like a child, it is hard to resent it because in their eyes we are children—we speak like children, know as much as children know, and make the same mistakes.

I am very glad to have been in Milestii Mici (if you are wondering why I am speaking in passive and making gramatically incorrect sentences it is because my english is failing me, and I can’t speak Romanian fluently—this poses a problem, loosing one language before you gain the second). The town was small and very friendly, making it easier to adapt and integrate. My fellow trainees here were wonderful and as a group we had good cohesion and good balance. We definitely have become like familiy and I am looking forward to hearing about their new lives at their prespective locations (we are spread out all over the country) and visiting them. My host family was very gracious, and although we had a few personality conflicts, or issues, overall it was a good experience and I hope to come back and visit them.

Thursday we will have a ceremony for swearing in where we will become official volunteers. It seems to be pretty glitzy, at least from what I hear. Some of us have been practicing a traditional Moldovan dance, which will be performed there. After the ceremony we will all leave with our respective future partners to our new sites. While I am nervous about this new relationship, and about starting all over with a host family, I am excited about what it will become. Two years can sound like a lot, but I know that I will have a lot to do. More on the future site later, I don’t want to describe my work until I am actually doing my work (go figure).

That’s my clousure, at least for now. November is a hard month to be away from home for me, but I know that with all the busy-ness of living in a new place, it will help to pass the time. I am moving this week and will be getting to know a new community, so if I am slow on responding to you, don’t take it personally. O zi buna! (have a good day!)

And, to top this one off... I like to think about a quote someone important once shared with me (to end on a philosophical note, of course).

“When you come to a point where you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.” – Louis L’Amour

Thy sons will never forget thee...

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Yes, it is true-- becuase you won't let them!. And now I know why, with a sly smile. Since I have been in Moldova I have received 3 (yes count them three) letters from Hamilton. One about me graduation, another about me graduating, and one asking for a financial contribution. And I don't think I mentioned this before, but last week I actually got a package from our fine college-- a paperweight with a scene of the hill on it. Very nice, or in Moldova we would say, foarte frumos, but seriously-- Hamilton knows I am in the PC, it says it on my address... and they send me a paperweight? Oh well... That's Hamilton for you. It definitely is very impressive to the people here, though, and it will make a great gift to my new host family. There, I am being a good alumna and spreading Hamilton in Moldova.

I thought all you Hamiltonians might enjoy this tidbit. Maybe I would feel more comfortable with the issue if I had my dark side shirt with me... Miss you all on the hill-- someone eat at the cidermill for me!

All I wanna do...



Is take a shower. But I can’t. And there are numerous reasons why I can’t, none of which are the lack of a showering facility, oddly enough. And surprisingly, or not surprisingly at all, the reasons why I am not allowed to shower when I want to, are intimately tied to the difficulties I am having living with my current host mother. Maybe some of these reasons rest in cultural differences about health and what casues a cold, it's definitely similar to "wives tales" in the US, but most of my difficulties have been lying in understand just what my host mother wants from me-- there seem to be so many rules that I don't know about, and it just gets frustrating. She defintitely wants me to shower (who wants a smelly house guest?) and she always showers, yet for some reason, I never can... or rather, for lots of reasons, like below...

1) You cannot shower now, it is cold outside. Yes it is true, if water touches your body when it is cold outside, you will definitely get a cold, get really sick, and if you are really wet, you might die. Or so says my mama gazda (host mother). And why would you want to shower when it is cold outside? Crazy Americans—didn’t your parents teach you that leaving the house with your hair wet will land you in the hospital immediately? Or leaving the house within 3 hours of showering is just asking for a disease equal in measure to the plague. The fact that I do not believe these “facts” leads my host mother to feel the need to overly protect me from the unknown.

2) You cannot shower now, it is too late. When it gets dark outside, you don’t want to be caught wet. Why not? Well first, you cannot go to bed with your head wet (see above reasons why this is bad), and second, you cannot be wet after dark (see above reasons, again.)

3) You cannot shower now, it’s not the right time. Or it’s Sunday. Or you showered already this week. Or we are using the buckets to collect potatoes. Or we have to go to a birthday party in 5 minutes (didn’t you know?)

4) You cannot shower now, you are going to leave the house later. (see above references to the weather and wet hair—this is effectively ruling out all the time I have to shower… because if I am going to stay in the house after a certain point in the day, that usually means it is night time, and dark…)

5) You cannot shower now, we have no water. If you have been reading my previous posts you would know that my family recently got running water in a sink in the bathroom. Sweet right? But as soon as we got this they stopped taking care of the well and it was left gross and uncovered. Then, of course, our running water stopped working… no idea why—and no one seemed to be worried by it. I thought I would go fetch water down the street, but like I said before, this task can really only happen between certain hours of the day. Good thing this only lasted a few days.

This is just trying to give you an idea of thedifficulties I have been encountering with day to day living here with my host family. Don’t get me wrong, this is just a highlight reel of the problems I have been having with my mother, I am having a great time here, and I get along with her most of the time—it can just be sooo frustrating when our cultural ideas, or personal ideas, of health and sanitation clash. And I think because I know so little of the language, she just assumes I know so little about everything else-- and need her to help me out. I know the intentions are good, but sometimes, obviously, it gets to me.

For example, if you are sick, it is not because of a virus, it is because you didn’t wear socks one day, or forgot to cover your throat with a scarf. My host mother also thinks I drink too much water for the cold weather, and that drinking water that is not hot (and not tea or coffee) is making me sick. (you see the water gets cold within your body and… ) Not all the host mothers are like this, mine just seems to be a little over protective… and she thinks she has to be based on her judgement of my "odd" behaviors of running down the streets, drinking water, coming home muddy, and not ironing my clothes.

And its not like living with your parents at home when you were littler where you can just choose to disobey them and deal with the consequences (sorry dad). Here, and especially with bath and health related issues, it’s not a choice. I have been physically prevented from showering before—by a blocked bathroom or a sudden disappearance of the buckets. But like I said before, I know she is trying to take care of me by doing this.

I guess my only recourse from here, and the way I have been dealing with it, is to just shower (or bathe, let’s be realistic here) and play the whole “I don’t understand Romanian” card.

Until then, I will continue to “sneak” showers while everyone is at work—and between my classes, just pray my deodorant lasts. One more week of this then we are off to our future sites… talk about the vanishing Americans. I might actually miss this game of "you can" and "you can't" with my host mother, because at least it makes me feel cared about. who knows though. Anyway, I miss you all!

 
   





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