They Laughed at Me!

Well, I’ve been here over 6 months now. Jeepers. February 20th marked the end of our 3 month ‘lockdown’ period, during which we weren’t allowed to leave our sites except for New Years and a two-day language training. Now we are more or less free to come and go as we like. My group (that is, almost all of the 34 of 40 of us who still remain) got together in Chișinău to celebrate our freedom and trade stories. Two of the volunteers who’ve been here two years already were gracious enough to host us at their apartment, and we made delicious food such as Kraft mac and cheese, soft shell tacos, brownies, and raw veggies and ranch dip. Now I probably won’t eat those things again for another 21 months.

The weather has finally taken what I believe to be a permanent turn for the warmer. We’ve enjoyed beautiful sun-shiny days and temperatures in the 60s. This is great for me and my aversion to mud and fading willpower to run in the cold. The other day I was out running without a hat on (gasp!) and an old lady down the street shook her cane at me and yelled at me for running without a hat. I laughed. Then when I was further out in the countryside one of the young men from the village was driving home with his family and honked (a crazy weeooo-weeeoo sound) and waved. I’ve never actually talked to him, so I was glad he recognized and acknowledged me rather than offering me a ride like most people do. The downside to all the sunshine and warmness is that things are drying out – not good for an agriculture-based economy. And if it does freeze again, all the trees that have started blooming will be doomed. So let’s hope for the best. Oh, and another good thing about being warm – my laundry dries in less than 24 hours instead of a week!

I’ve picked up a hobby – crocheting. All of the girls at school have to learn the arts of knitting, crocheting, and sewing, which they do while the boys are out in the field learning boy stuff. The social worker (with whom I share an office, if you remember) is crocheting a ‘summer sweater’ and solicited help from the crocheting teacher at the school, so I decided to go along and learn a bit myself. I’ve picked it up pretty quickly, and I too would like to make myself a little somethin-somethin. We’ll see if I get further than the time I started knitting a scarf....

I think you all know that I love language, which certainly an attractive part of being in the Peace Corps. I’ve started to feel pretty good about where I’m at – almost everyone understands me, and even though I make mistakes and have a funny accent, people love the fact that I’m trying. And then there are the 9th grade punks. I had finally overcome my fear of speaking in Romanian in front of larger groups of people, especially people I don’t know. So I didn’t think anything of holding a short meeting to give some preparatory information to the 9th graders (who I haven’t met before) who were attending the business seminar that weekend. I began speaking and two of the boys in the back burst out laughing. I thought they were having a conversation of their own, so I waited a few seconds for silence to come and began again. They burst out laughing again, and this time it was clear that they were laughing at me. At me! I was like, what? I’d like to see you get up here and speak in English! I had gotten so used to people accepting the way I talk that it was a bit of a shocker for me. But no worries, I let it roll. The little kids like me anyways.

Last weekend I hosted a two-day business seminar for about 20 of the high-school aged kids in my village (fortunately, the aforementioned punks didn’t show up). Four Moldovans came from Chișinău and taught them the basics about entrepreneurship, marketing, management, economics, making a budget, and writing a business plan. At the end of the two days, each of four teams wrote and presented a busins supply and demand. It was some what of a rigorous two days, and I was very impressed with how active and enthusiastic these kids were, and how good their business plans were considering the circumstances. A couple of the 15 year-olds wanted to start up the business now!

Back to the language, I made another boo boo this week, but a really funny one. The words for ‘copies’ and ‘children/babies’ are very close – pretty much the only difference in the accent of the syllables. I tried to tell the social worker that I was going to the computer center to make copies for the seminar. But of course it came out that I was going to make babies. To make it even better, the guy at work who jokes 95% of the time overheard and said ‘What?! Do you have someone to help, or do you need me to come?’ I don’t think he’s going to let this one go for a long time.

Going back to the frettings of my last entry, I’m still racking my brain trying to figure out how I can help create more jobs for the people in my village. It really is sad and alarming how many people have left and continue to leave to find jobs in other countries. While I was at my crocheting lesson last week, the teacher read a few of the essays the kids had written about what they would do if they were president. Almost all the lists started with ‘create more jobs so my mother/father/sister/brother/neighbor can come home.’ Similarly, during Christmas, letters to Santa often began with ‘I want my mother/father/sister/brother/neighbor to come home.’ It breaks my heart.

Last weekend I went to Bălți, the second largest city in Moldova and predominantly Russian-speaking, to meet up with one of my co-directors for the women’s summer camp. We went around to different NGOs that we hope will provide us with speakers and/or informational materials for our camp. After that, we stopped at the piața to pick up some veggies for dinner, and of course all of the vendors spoke in Russian. However, I whipped out my mad Russian skills and correctly understood that the carrots cost 15 lei. Woot. Later that afternoon, we went to the orphanage, where my co-director volunteers every Friday, to play with the kids there. Again most of them spoke Russian, but I wowed them with my ability to ask, what is your name? And to respond, ‘my name is catuișa.’ Woot woot. Also, even though I just met these children, I managed to get four ‘pups’ (pronounced ‘poops’ – kisses) and two hugs!