I love good weather, because it means that people are out and about. I get out to run almost every day now, and I usually go the same route, about 8 km towards another village and back. It is not a main road, it simply links the main road to this other village. There are a few large farms along the way that belong to a company that makes juice and canned fruits and vegetables. This company buses in workers from all over the region to work in the fields. Well, the bus drives by at almost the same time every day while I’m running. So now the driver always taps the horn and waves, and some of the workers on the bus have even started waving. I also feel like I know the tractor drivers who also always drive by and wave, or give me a ‘thumbs up.’ Strange, I’ve never even talked to these people, and I see them (through a window) for 5 seconds each day, yet I feel like they are my friends. ‘Oh, there goes my friend the bus driver! Oh, and here comes my friend the blue tractor driver!’
The following is a story of my walk home one day. I really enjoy such days as this, when it seems like everyone is happy and glad to talk, when I don’t have to rush, and when I feel like just another member of the village:
I was waiting on the side of the road to try to get a ride home from Soroca. My village is only about 6 km away from the city, directly on the main road to Chisinau, but it can be impossible to get there sometimes! There are two mini-bus drivers who drive between Soroca and my village every day, but there is not a regular schedule. It is not uncommon to be riding with one of them when he decides make a detour to his house to pick up a snack or something. Also, they don’t go anywhere until the bus is full. So sometimes I could spend up to an hour just sitting in the bus waiting for more people to come. Sometimes hours go by and neither of the buses come. Then you just have to hitchhike. There is a parking lot at the edge of the city, across from the bus station, and everyone wanting to go to the surrounding villages waits there to hitch rides. If a car stops, it can be a mad dash for who gets the seats.
Anyhoo, I was waiting to get a ride, and it was a beautiful day, the mini-buses were nowhere in sight, and I was tired of fighting people to get to a car first, so I decided to walk home. It’s really quite a nice walk, the first kilometer is along the Nistru River (which marks the Ukrainian border), and then there is a huuuge hill. The road does a long switchback, but there is a path straight up through the woods, which I took. Then it is another 3 kilometers up on a hill, which overlooks the city, and endless farmland. Upon reaching the edge of my village, I decided to stop in and see my friend who just had her baby. I popped in, and we caught up on the events of the past two weeks, and I admired the baby. I then headed out, because I had to be at choir practice.
I took the shortcut through the woods and met up with the main road. I ran into the friend’s 7-year-old, who was munching on some popcorn on his way home. He stopped me and made me eat some, and I promised him I would bring him candy from Russia when I went there the following week. I continued on, but soon realized the my jacket had fallen out of my bag. So I went to retrace my steps to try to find it. As I reached the entrance to the woods, I heard a friendly voice call out to me in Russian. Two young men were working on a car on the side of the road up ahead. Ah, one of them was one of the only people my age in the village. He had been working in St. Petersburg most of the time, but due to the ‘economic crisis,’ there isn’t much work there anymore, so he came home. He had given me his sim card to use while I was in Russia, and he wanted to know how my preparations for my trip were going. I struggled through a few minutes of conversing in Russian, but then switched back to Romanian and told him about my jacket. He wished me luck, and I went on through the woods. No sign of it. I couldn’t figure out where I lost it. I made it all the way back to my friend’s house, and found her, her husband, and the boy sitting in the back room. They all started laughing when I entered. ‘Looking for something?’ The asked. The boy had found it in the woods on his way home. ‘Be careful not to lose my candy on the way home from Russia!’ he told me. And I continued on my way home. As I exited from the woods, I held up my jacket to show the two guys working on the car down the road and they shouted a congratulations.
A bit further down the road I met up with a woman who was coming out of the field carrying a huge burlap sack on her back. She was wearing one of the bright, floral-patterned bathrobe-like things that all Moldovan women wear, and a bright, floral-pattered head scarf, which doesn’t at all match the bright floral-patterend bathrobe. I didn’t know her, but she seemed to know me, which isn’t uncommon, I guess. She asked me if I walked all the way from Soroca, and I said yes, it’s a nice day, why not? She replied with ‘yeah, nice to exercise a little!’
Then, on the other side of the road, going in the same direction, appeared a horse-drawn cart. It was extremely over-loading with twiggy branches sticking out in all directions, and the two watchmen from work were sitting atop the pile. ‘Katerina!’ the shouted to me. ‘Where are you coming from?’ We yelled across the road to each other for a bit, and they continued on. A bit later, they stopped to talk to someone else, and I passed them and made the turn into my part of the village. A few minutes later I heard the cart approaching from behind, so I move as far as possible to the side of the road for them to pass me. It got closer and closer, and I kept waiting for it to pass me, but it never did. Finally I turned around to see why they were going so slowly, and the horse’s head was about an inch from my shoulder! I yelped a bit and jumped into a bush, and the two watchmen were sitting atop their branches laughing their heads off. I laughed to, and then continued on.
As I walked on, I greeted people with the required ‘Christ is risen!’ (for 40 days after Easter, instead of hello). I got enthusiastic responses and smiles from all. I turned on to my old street, and the old man who lives on the corner waved from his garden. A bit further on I turned onto my new street, and another jokingly asked me if I hadn’t lost my way home. Finally, two and a half hours after setting out from the town, I arrived home, in a good mood and with just enough time to grab my notebook and make it to choir practice!
So I’m really liking my new home. My partner and the girls are very interested in my ‘gymnastics.’ That is, my body circuit exercises – jumping jacks, squats, sit-ups, push-ups, lunges, etc. I do a lot of the exercises with a large medicine ball, which they love. One evening they all came into my room and I tried to show them how to do some of the exercises. There was a lot of shrieking and stumbling and falling off of the medicine ball. In trade for the gymnastics instruction, I was instructed on how to hang up my laundry. I did a very large load the other day, and I hung them up on the clothesline in the order that they came out of the washing machine. But apparently, I have to put the pants by the pants, shirts by the shirts, etc, and in order by color. Otherwise people might walk by and think that I don’t know how to do things right. Hanging up my clothes that way never even occured to me, but now that I know, I have noticed throughout the village that everyone does it that way!
Awhile back I really got to put my language skills to use. There was a soccer game between Switzerland and Moldova (I don’t think I need to tell you the outcome) here in Chisinau. After the game a bunch of us were out at a bar where there is live music, and one of the Moldovans who works at Peace Corps plays the harmonica there. Some Swiss fans showed up, so we talked with them a bit. Lots of the Moldovans in the bar also wanted to talk with them, being so obviously foreign, dressed all in red with big swiss flags. But of course the Moldovans speak only Russian and Romanian, and the Swiss only German and English. But I speak all four! So I got to be translator. Man, that was a riot. My Russian is very poor, but I was able to facilitate a Russian-German ‘hi, how are you, where are you from, what are you doing here, how do you like Moldova, do you want a beer’ conversation! I don’t know if I’ll ever again find myself in a situation where those four languages all come into play. Crazy. Fun.
Stayed tuned for tales from my adventures with both of my siblings in Russia, and with my sister in Moldova and Romania!
June 5, 2009
May 4, 2009
Spring Finally!
The weather at last is nice! Trees are blooming, sun is shining, roads are dry, flowers are sprouting up, and there are baby rabbits, baby goats, baby sheep, baby geese, and baby people! Yes, baby people! One of my Moldovan friends, the social worker with whom I used to share an office, just had her second child, a healthy baby boy. I’ve been working (for a long time now) on knitting a blanket for him. I’ve been getting help from the home ec teacher, and I just have the border left. I hope to have it done in time for the baptism!
Work has been going along as usual – rabbits, bees, English, women’s empowerment camp, informal computer lessons, and random side projects. One of the random things I did lately was subbing for the civic education teacher for a day. She left the topic open to me, so I chose to talk about volunteersim, a relatively new concept here. The ninth-grade class was a bunch of brats, but the 7th-graders were really great. They decided that they wanted to get together a bunch of kids and clean up the cemetary before Easter of the Dead. (This is a holiday the week after regular Easter, in which families take elaborate picnics to their loved ones in the cemetary. They give gifts to the dead (usually a special round bread, a candle, and some candy), and the priest comes around and says blessings.) They asked me to help supervise, so one afternoon we met at the cemetary and picked up all the trash (sad, probably left from last year’s Easter of the Dead), trimmed hedges, hacked weeds, and fixed up benches. They worked for about 4 hours and didn’t get nearly as far as they wanted to. Well, some town council members saw what they were trying to do, and the town hall ended up paying some money to have it cleaned up for real. I was very proud of those kids for taking action and for leading others to take action!
Unfortunately, planning for the women’s empowerment camp is going less than smoothly. Peace Corps has issues with its ‘sustainability,’ and we had to spend a lot of time convincing them. Also, due to the less than wonderful state of the economy, our two major funders will not be funding us this year. Hmmmm. Well, part of our long-term strategic plan was to become as locally-financed as possible, so I guess we’ll have to switch that over to our short-term plan, haha. We are exploring different options for corporate sponsorship, as well as applying to other funder organizations. The biggest cost is of course the feeding and housing of the women during the camp. Through fellow volunteers, we may have found a campsite that we will be able to use for free and only pay a minimal price for food. We are keeping our fingers crossed that this will work out! We are also focusing a lot this year on working with our Moldovan counterparts (a young woman who was a previous counselor at the camp, and a youth development NGO in Soroca) to transfer more of the planning and implementation responsibilities over to them.
We (my local counterparts and I) also have been having problems with the local savings and loan. The new loan cycle was supposed to begin at the end of March, but because of the economy and the problems with the elections, the national bank didn’t distribute the money when it said it would. So 50 people in my village who were relying on around $1000 each in order to buy seeds to plant their crops, or to pay for weddings, or to buy animals, or what have you, have been left waiting. They were expecting the money at the end of March, and it is now the beginning of May, and they are just starting to receive it, but just a few people at a time. For those who wanted to buy seeds for planting, the time to plant has come and gone! What are they supposed to do now? People keep calling or stopping me in the road to ask when the money is going to come, and I don’t know what to tell them, since we ourselves don’t know when the bank is finally going to give it to us. I feel so bad, but I don’t know what I can do to help the situation, other than to sympathize with them and try to explain as best I can.
In other news, I recently switched host families. I decided it was time for a change, and with only 6 months left, I thought it would be good to see how another family lives. I’m now living with my counterpart and her family. The two girls (7th and 12th grade) learn English from me, and we get along great. My new host dad is one of the most talkative Moldovan men that I’ve met, and I appreciate that he’s always telling interesting facts and takes the time to translate the most important things when watching Russian television. And since I’m living with my counterpart, we’ll be able to work more often together. I’ll have to get used to new routines, new food, and different personalities again, but that’s what this adventure is all about. And it will be a lot easier this time around, since I already know the language and the family!
So next week I’ll be taking an 8-day trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg, and I can’t wait! I’ll finally get to see if all of my learning Russian efforts are going to pay off. I’ve been doing little lessons with the Russian teacher at the school, and many people in the village know that I’m going, so have been greeting me and making small talk in Russian to help me get ready. Also, these two cities are two of the main destinations for Moldovans trying to earn money abroad, so I was flooded with offers to meet up with husbands, wives, friends, neighbors, who are currently living there. I’m am armed with a cell phone sim card, and telephone numbers of these people, including a taxi driver. I also finally received my visa. I had to make two special trips into Chisinau and face the scary people at the Russian embassy in order to get it. And luckily I had help from a Moldovan friend, without whom I’m sure I would still be standing at the gate trying just to get in! Ooh, and the best part of all this is that my traveling companions will be my sister and brother!
Well, I suppose that is all for now, I wish I had an entertaining story or two, but I guess I have gotten so used to everything now, that nothing seems suprising or unusual anymore!
Work has been going along as usual – rabbits, bees, English, women’s empowerment camp, informal computer lessons, and random side projects. One of the random things I did lately was subbing for the civic education teacher for a day. She left the topic open to me, so I chose to talk about volunteersim, a relatively new concept here. The ninth-grade class was a bunch of brats, but the 7th-graders were really great. They decided that they wanted to get together a bunch of kids and clean up the cemetary before Easter of the Dead. (This is a holiday the week after regular Easter, in which families take elaborate picnics to their loved ones in the cemetary. They give gifts to the dead (usually a special round bread, a candle, and some candy), and the priest comes around and says blessings.) They asked me to help supervise, so one afternoon we met at the cemetary and picked up all the trash (sad, probably left from last year’s Easter of the Dead), trimmed hedges, hacked weeds, and fixed up benches. They worked for about 4 hours and didn’t get nearly as far as they wanted to. Well, some town council members saw what they were trying to do, and the town hall ended up paying some money to have it cleaned up for real. I was very proud of those kids for taking action and for leading others to take action!
Unfortunately, planning for the women’s empowerment camp is going less than smoothly. Peace Corps has issues with its ‘sustainability,’ and we had to spend a lot of time convincing them. Also, due to the less than wonderful state of the economy, our two major funders will not be funding us this year. Hmmmm. Well, part of our long-term strategic plan was to become as locally-financed as possible, so I guess we’ll have to switch that over to our short-term plan, haha. We are exploring different options for corporate sponsorship, as well as applying to other funder organizations. The biggest cost is of course the feeding and housing of the women during the camp. Through fellow volunteers, we may have found a campsite that we will be able to use for free and only pay a minimal price for food. We are keeping our fingers crossed that this will work out! We are also focusing a lot this year on working with our Moldovan counterparts (a young woman who was a previous counselor at the camp, and a youth development NGO in Soroca) to transfer more of the planning and implementation responsibilities over to them.
We (my local counterparts and I) also have been having problems with the local savings and loan. The new loan cycle was supposed to begin at the end of March, but because of the economy and the problems with the elections, the national bank didn’t distribute the money when it said it would. So 50 people in my village who were relying on around $1000 each in order to buy seeds to plant their crops, or to pay for weddings, or to buy animals, or what have you, have been left waiting. They were expecting the money at the end of March, and it is now the beginning of May, and they are just starting to receive it, but just a few people at a time. For those who wanted to buy seeds for planting, the time to plant has come and gone! What are they supposed to do now? People keep calling or stopping me in the road to ask when the money is going to come, and I don’t know what to tell them, since we ourselves don’t know when the bank is finally going to give it to us. I feel so bad, but I don’t know what I can do to help the situation, other than to sympathize with them and try to explain as best I can.
In other news, I recently switched host families. I decided it was time for a change, and with only 6 months left, I thought it would be good to see how another family lives. I’m now living with my counterpart and her family. The two girls (7th and 12th grade) learn English from me, and we get along great. My new host dad is one of the most talkative Moldovan men that I’ve met, and I appreciate that he’s always telling interesting facts and takes the time to translate the most important things when watching Russian television. And since I’m living with my counterpart, we’ll be able to work more often together. I’ll have to get used to new routines, new food, and different personalities again, but that’s what this adventure is all about. And it will be a lot easier this time around, since I already know the language and the family!
So next week I’ll be taking an 8-day trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg, and I can’t wait! I’ll finally get to see if all of my learning Russian efforts are going to pay off. I’ve been doing little lessons with the Russian teacher at the school, and many people in the village know that I’m going, so have been greeting me and making small talk in Russian to help me get ready. Also, these two cities are two of the main destinations for Moldovans trying to earn money abroad, so I was flooded with offers to meet up with husbands, wives, friends, neighbors, who are currently living there. I’m am armed with a cell phone sim card, and telephone numbers of these people, including a taxi driver. I also finally received my visa. I had to make two special trips into Chisinau and face the scary people at the Russian embassy in order to get it. And luckily I had help from a Moldovan friend, without whom I’m sure I would still be standing at the gate trying just to get in! Ooh, and the best part of all this is that my traveling companions will be my sister and brother!
Well, I suppose that is all for now, I wish I had an entertaining story or two, but I guess I have gotten so used to everything now, that nothing seems suprising or unusual anymore!
March 20, 2009
Rain, Rain Go Away!
The weather here is ridiculous this year. Winter was too warm, barely any snow, but now it won’t warm up. The temperature hovers right around freezing, and I think I’ve seen the sun a total of 4 days in the last month. It is windy, rainy, muddy, and depressing. All of my pants have mud splashes at the bottom, and no matter how hard I try to preserve their cleanliness my boots are beyond help. Plus I have worn them so much on the rocky village roads that holes have been worn into the bottom, so if I happen to step into a puddle (every fifth step or so), my feet get soaked. Grrr. Not to mention it’s hard to run every day, as I’d like to.
But in other news, I’ve been pretty busy at site. The local savings and loan where I work gives out loans in cycles, and this month a lot of people had to make their last payments. In addition, we were collecting all requests for new loans, so that we can go to the bank in Soroca and take out one large loan. So there have been lots of people coming in and out. I’ve been busy explaining the crediting process to people, helping them fill out requests, and receiving payments on outstanding loans. With my counterpart I’ve been working on advertising the savings and loan, as well as on stream-lining the crediting process (eliminating paperwork, using the computer to make calculations, creating a database of members, etc.).
I’ve finally given in to persistent requests to start up another English group. But then it ended up being two more groups, since the age range was too large. So now I’m still going with my 7th graders that I’ve been working with for a year and a half now, as well starting from the beginning with two new groups, one of 10 5th-graders, and another of 10 students who go to high school in Soroca. It’s a lot easier with the older group!
The rabbit project is well underway now. On Sunday we took a full car-load of people down to a village near Chisinau where we purchased the first 14 rabbits (12 females and 2 males) and had a seminar. We were hoping to have purchased all the rabbits by now, but we didn’t physically receive the money in time, and now no one is selling because it’s breeding time. So in May we will purchase another 14 rabbits. In the meantime, the first two farms have been started, and we will be inseminating the females in a few weeks.
At the end of February beginning of March I spent a lot of time rehearsing with the village choir ladies. We had two performances within a short period of time, and it was kind of stressful for me, since I had to learn 8 songs within 1 week. And I didn’t even get to practice them...I heard it once, sang it once while reading the words, then went home and memorized the words, and tried to remember the melody. So I went to the concert having never actually sung some of the songs from memory. I had a bit of a freak out right before we got into the mini-bus that was to take us to the neighboring village where the concert was, but the ladies convinced me to go anyways. It turned out to be fine. We sang at the cultural activities hall, and there were about 75 people, mostly younger kids and older ladies, but a few adult men who part of a music group. It was a very casual and laid-back atmosphere, and afterward the men struck up an impromptu band and we danced a bit. Then just as we were leaving in the mini-bus (really just a large van), the 6 men in the music group crammed themselves in an started passing out chunks of bread with salami and vodka shots. Classic.
The social worker with whom I used to share an office has gone on maternity leave now. She’s due in May! I’m working on knitting a blanket for the baby, but it’s very slow going. I’m getting help from the home ec teacher at the school. I thought that it was going to be very sad at work now without her, but her replacement is another very nice lady, and we have already become quite good friends. She has already invited me over for lunch a few times, and a couple days ago I met her husband. He said he has been waiting a long time to talk to me because it is the first time he has ever talked with a ‘live’ American. So I spent about 4 hours answering all of his questions and looking at all the pictures in their house...about 500 hundred or so. And he showed me who was in each one and what the occasion was. It actually was pretty interesting when there were old black and white photos of him and his dad and grandpa in the Soviet army.
I suppose that’s about all I got for now...numai bine!
But in other news, I’ve been pretty busy at site. The local savings and loan where I work gives out loans in cycles, and this month a lot of people had to make their last payments. In addition, we were collecting all requests for new loans, so that we can go to the bank in Soroca and take out one large loan. So there have been lots of people coming in and out. I’ve been busy explaining the crediting process to people, helping them fill out requests, and receiving payments on outstanding loans. With my counterpart I’ve been working on advertising the savings and loan, as well as on stream-lining the crediting process (eliminating paperwork, using the computer to make calculations, creating a database of members, etc.).
I’ve finally given in to persistent requests to start up another English group. But then it ended up being two more groups, since the age range was too large. So now I’m still going with my 7th graders that I’ve been working with for a year and a half now, as well starting from the beginning with two new groups, one of 10 5th-graders, and another of 10 students who go to high school in Soroca. It’s a lot easier with the older group!
The rabbit project is well underway now. On Sunday we took a full car-load of people down to a village near Chisinau where we purchased the first 14 rabbits (12 females and 2 males) and had a seminar. We were hoping to have purchased all the rabbits by now, but we didn’t physically receive the money in time, and now no one is selling because it’s breeding time. So in May we will purchase another 14 rabbits. In the meantime, the first two farms have been started, and we will be inseminating the females in a few weeks.
At the end of February beginning of March I spent a lot of time rehearsing with the village choir ladies. We had two performances within a short period of time, and it was kind of stressful for me, since I had to learn 8 songs within 1 week. And I didn’t even get to practice them...I heard it once, sang it once while reading the words, then went home and memorized the words, and tried to remember the melody. So I went to the concert having never actually sung some of the songs from memory. I had a bit of a freak out right before we got into the mini-bus that was to take us to the neighboring village where the concert was, but the ladies convinced me to go anyways. It turned out to be fine. We sang at the cultural activities hall, and there were about 75 people, mostly younger kids and older ladies, but a few adult men who part of a music group. It was a very casual and laid-back atmosphere, and afterward the men struck up an impromptu band and we danced a bit. Then just as we were leaving in the mini-bus (really just a large van), the 6 men in the music group crammed themselves in an started passing out chunks of bread with salami and vodka shots. Classic.
The social worker with whom I used to share an office has gone on maternity leave now. She’s due in May! I’m working on knitting a blanket for the baby, but it’s very slow going. I’m getting help from the home ec teacher at the school. I thought that it was going to be very sad at work now without her, but her replacement is another very nice lady, and we have already become quite good friends. She has already invited me over for lunch a few times, and a couple days ago I met her husband. He said he has been waiting a long time to talk to me because it is the first time he has ever talked with a ‘live’ American. So I spent about 4 hours answering all of his questions and looking at all the pictures in their house...about 500 hundred or so. And he showed me who was in each one and what the occasion was. It actually was pretty interesting when there were old black and white photos of him and his dad and grandpa in the Soviet army.
I suppose that’s about all I got for now...numai bine!
February 18, 2009
National Moldovan TV debut!
Good news – the rabbit project was funded! So now I’ll be busy with organizing technical seminars for the women, as well as working with them on marketing and tracking expenses. Right now the rabbit houses are being built, and in a few weeks we’ll be going down to a village near Chisinau to buy the rabbits. This week I’ve also got another business lesson to teach to the bee kids. The subject this time is Management, with a focus on goal-setting. Saturday I have a meeting with our new counterpart for the empowerment camp. We’re going to get them up to speed on what the camp is all about, and start with our advertising and planning for this year.
Last week I taught a budgeting/financial planning as part of a business planning seminar series in a region in the south of Moldova. The audience was about 15 40- to 50-year-old men who want to expand their rural businesses – buy tractors, build greenhouses, etc. So the audience wasn’t the usual women and youth that I’m used to, so I was a bit intimidated. I taught for two hours and we only got through half of the material. Going through the process of thinking about and calculating all of the initial costs and operating costs, and projecting income is not something that most people do. If they are looking to get funding via credit or grant, it usually goes something like this: ‘Put down 20,000 lei (Moldovan currency) for the equipment. Yeah, that sounds right. Oh, and another 10,000 for seeds. Yeah, that should do it.’ And that’s about it. There’s no researching vendors, no market research, no thinking about smaller costs that add up. Just one large estimation, which means they either end up paying interest on money they didn’t need to borrow, or they end up short and don’t have enough to get the business off the ground. So anyways, at the seminar we went through a sample budget for the construction of a greenhouse, which seemed to get them thinking, and I was able to leave lots of materials and some excel pre-formula-ed worksheets to help them in their planning.
I made my Moldovan national TV debut last Sunday. As I mentioned last month, my village choir sang at the 20th anniversary celebration of a tv show that discusses rural/agricultural issues. There were 4 musical groups from throughout the country who performed, as well as 4 famous Moldovan singers. I of course didn’t know any of them, but the ladies in my group were clearly star-struck being in their presence. We took a rutiera down to Chisinau early in the morning, and when we first got there we recorded our two songs. Then we sat around all day (seriously, like 6 hours) while they filmed the show, which consisted of important people talking about agriculture in Moldova, broken up by these cultural acts. There was the Minister of Agriculture, the mayor of Chisinau, and some other big wigs, but truth be told, I was kinda bored (and hungry). We finally went on in front of the cameras late in the afternoon, and more or less lip-synced while our recorded tracks played. I had learned our two songs to perfection by then, and being all dressed up in Moldovan national costume, you couldn’t even tell that I was an American. Good experience, but I have no desire to be a star....
While there are a lot of things here that really get on my nerves (like the horrendous customer service), I’ve had a few surprisingly pleasant experiences lately. For example, I was at the bus station in Soroca last week to buy a ticket to Chisinau ahead of time, and headed toward the ticket booth. There was a rutiera just pulling out, one that I have taken many times. The driver saw me, assumed I wanted to go to Chisinau, and sent someone out to run after me to see if I wanted him to wait. I said no thank you, but I would leaving later in the day. I was shocked – usually the case is that I come running up trying to flag one down, and they take off anyways. Another example, the driver who took me and another volunteer down south for the business planning seminar heard that we were in need of some art supplies when we got back to Chisinau. We asked him where we could find them (straws and cotton balls), and not only did he tell us, but he actually made two stops and made sure we found them before dropping us off at Peace Corps. Had we gone alone, it could have taken all day; instead, thanks to his kindness, we accomplished the mission in less than 15 minutes!
So the local grade school/middle school won a grant for a project to do activities with the students whose parents are working abroad. This week was the opening of the project, and all of the kids without parents from grades 1-9 gathered together to talk about their experiences. In a school of 250 students, 123 kids are living with grandparents, neighbors, aunts/uncles, or even alone. One 14-year-old girl hasn’t seen her parents in 13.5 years! Most of the kids say they think their parents have left them so that they can give them a better life. But in the end, they would rather have their parents home than to receive the candies, laptops, and clothes that their parents are sending them. I knew all this, but to see them all gathered there and talking about it, and realizing the true magnitude of this problem, was really heart-wrenching.
A happy event, on the other hand, was the ‘English Song Contest’ at the high school in Soroca. I and two of my colleagues were asked to be judges for this event, and it was awesome. There were 11 contestants, ranging from a quartet of girls singing ‘Sway’ to a lone young punk trying to rap to Eminem, to a girl singing Listen to Your Heart with 3 back-up dancers and two dudes who lifted her onto their shoulders during the climax of the song. Great stuff, really great stuff.
Last week I taught a budgeting/financial planning as part of a business planning seminar series in a region in the south of Moldova. The audience was about 15 40- to 50-year-old men who want to expand their rural businesses – buy tractors, build greenhouses, etc. So the audience wasn’t the usual women and youth that I’m used to, so I was a bit intimidated. I taught for two hours and we only got through half of the material. Going through the process of thinking about and calculating all of the initial costs and operating costs, and projecting income is not something that most people do. If they are looking to get funding via credit or grant, it usually goes something like this: ‘Put down 20,000 lei (Moldovan currency) for the equipment. Yeah, that sounds right. Oh, and another 10,000 for seeds. Yeah, that should do it.’ And that’s about it. There’s no researching vendors, no market research, no thinking about smaller costs that add up. Just one large estimation, which means they either end up paying interest on money they didn’t need to borrow, or they end up short and don’t have enough to get the business off the ground. So anyways, at the seminar we went through a sample budget for the construction of a greenhouse, which seemed to get them thinking, and I was able to leave lots of materials and some excel pre-formula-ed worksheets to help them in their planning.
I made my Moldovan national TV debut last Sunday. As I mentioned last month, my village choir sang at the 20th anniversary celebration of a tv show that discusses rural/agricultural issues. There were 4 musical groups from throughout the country who performed, as well as 4 famous Moldovan singers. I of course didn’t know any of them, but the ladies in my group were clearly star-struck being in their presence. We took a rutiera down to Chisinau early in the morning, and when we first got there we recorded our two songs. Then we sat around all day (seriously, like 6 hours) while they filmed the show, which consisted of important people talking about agriculture in Moldova, broken up by these cultural acts. There was the Minister of Agriculture, the mayor of Chisinau, and some other big wigs, but truth be told, I was kinda bored (and hungry). We finally went on in front of the cameras late in the afternoon, and more or less lip-synced while our recorded tracks played. I had learned our two songs to perfection by then, and being all dressed up in Moldovan national costume, you couldn’t even tell that I was an American. Good experience, but I have no desire to be a star....
While there are a lot of things here that really get on my nerves (like the horrendous customer service), I’ve had a few surprisingly pleasant experiences lately. For example, I was at the bus station in Soroca last week to buy a ticket to Chisinau ahead of time, and headed toward the ticket booth. There was a rutiera just pulling out, one that I have taken many times. The driver saw me, assumed I wanted to go to Chisinau, and sent someone out to run after me to see if I wanted him to wait. I said no thank you, but I would leaving later in the day. I was shocked – usually the case is that I come running up trying to flag one down, and they take off anyways. Another example, the driver who took me and another volunteer down south for the business planning seminar heard that we were in need of some art supplies when we got back to Chisinau. We asked him where we could find them (straws and cotton balls), and not only did he tell us, but he actually made two stops and made sure we found them before dropping us off at Peace Corps. Had we gone alone, it could have taken all day; instead, thanks to his kindness, we accomplished the mission in less than 15 minutes!
So the local grade school/middle school won a grant for a project to do activities with the students whose parents are working abroad. This week was the opening of the project, and all of the kids without parents from grades 1-9 gathered together to talk about their experiences. In a school of 250 students, 123 kids are living with grandparents, neighbors, aunts/uncles, or even alone. One 14-year-old girl hasn’t seen her parents in 13.5 years! Most of the kids say they think their parents have left them so that they can give them a better life. But in the end, they would rather have their parents home than to receive the candies, laptops, and clothes that their parents are sending them. I knew all this, but to see them all gathered there and talking about it, and realizing the true magnitude of this problem, was really heart-wrenching.
A happy event, on the other hand, was the ‘English Song Contest’ at the high school in Soroca. I and two of my colleagues were asked to be judges for this event, and it was awesome. There were 11 contestants, ranging from a quartet of girls singing ‘Sway’ to a lone young punk trying to rap to Eminem, to a girl singing Listen to Your Heart with 3 back-up dancers and two dudes who lifted her onto their shoulders during the climax of the song. Great stuff, really great stuff.
January 30, 2009
And then there were 184 more holidays...
So I reported on my two thanksgivings. Well then I had 2 Christmases, 2 New Year’ses (I’ve never tried to make New Year’s plural before...), and 2 Saint’s Days. Let me just say that it’s a bit of a miracle that I’m only a little bit fat right now. The Christmases and New Year’ses were pretty standard; I spent them in the village with extended host family, which was nice and relaxed. I cooked dinner on my Christmas, and helped out with food on their Christmas. Saint Vasile Day (the last of the holidays!) was probably my favorite. I have the fortune of knowing 3 Mr. Vasiles, so I got to go to 3 celebrations. (The tradition is that if you are named after the saint whose feast day it is, you are supposed to put together a meal for your family and friends). Well Saint Vasile is the largest feast day of the year, so these celebrations were all a bit over done. Especially on the eve of the feast day, because this is also Second New Year’s. The tradition on Second New Year’s is for the high-school aged kids to go around the neighborhood dressed up in weird clothes and painted faces, yelling poems and in general just making noise. The idea is to be thankful for the harvest and the year that has passed, and to wish people well for the year that is coming. So on the eve of Saint Vasile/Second New Year’s, I started at my host dad’s brother’s; about 20 people, 3 hours of eating and drinking and (loud) singing. As soon as I got home, I walked down the path (falling down once due to the ice) to my counterpart’s house. Her husband’s name is Vasile, and she always has good parties. I’ve met most of their relatives now; they always come from other parts of Moldova for various celebrations at my counterpart’s house. There were also some neighbors that I know, and the village choir director. So I knew almost all of the 25 or so people, and it was a pretty jolly atmosphere. A few large groups of students came by to yell poems at us, so we would all push and shove to get outside and watch their merry-making. The dad of one of my English boys told me that he likes it that I run, because when I run past when they are working out in the fields, his son works harder. Hehe. So anyhoo, the next day I had barely recovered from the evening’s festivities before we were off to another Uncle Vasile and 5 more hours of eating and drinking. Whew. They tell me it’s all over now, and yes, it has been about two weeks since I’ve stuffed my face.
Since things have somewhat gotten back to normal now, I have been quite busy. We had a lot of reporting to do for Peace Corps, and my two counterparts and I had a brainstorming session to evaluate the previous year and discuss what we want to do this year. I gave my second business lesson, on entrepreneurship, for the beekeeping project. We’ve had more English lessons than usual, and I’m working on updating the English manual that we currently use, which is available to all volunteers. This week I found out that one of the girls in my class, an 8th-grader, has been in turn using her free time to teach English to some of the 4th-graders! She always surprises me with how much she goes above and beyond, and how much she manages to learn on her own. Good for her.
I’ve spent a very large amount of time lately working on a rabbit-farming project. The idea is to train 20 unemployed or under-employed village women in all aspects of rabbit farming and to provide them with a few high-quality rabbits, known for the quality and quantity of meat, in order to start their own small farms next to their homes. We will also be working with them on the business side, especially on marketing and financial management. The idea is that even small farms will be able to provide supplementary incomes, as well as give the women something to do and feel pride in. I’ll be going with host mom tomorrow to Chisinau to present the project to the grant committee and convince them that it is a good idea to fund us. I’ve also been working individually with 3 people from the village who would like to start or expand their own businesses. I’m hoping at least one of them will get off the ground. Finally, I’ve also started working with the ‘Youth Eagles’ group at school, to help them improve their volunteerism/community involvement program. Oh, and of course, there is always women’s empowerment camp stuff to do! We’re currently searching for a new Moldovan NGO to work with this year, to which we can eventually turn over the reigns of control to on all aspects of camp planning and implementation.
So the weather here is a bit ridiculous right now. While those of you back in the midwest are experiencing blistering cold and extra-normous amounts of snow, we are experiencing temps in the high 30s, even low 40s, and extra-normous amounts of mud. I have never in my life experienced a January like this one. One of my fellow volunteers joked that we should make mud-walking an official sport, with points for speed, amount of mud on shoes, and cleanliness of pants. And I’m pretty sure Romania hates me. While I was there in September to go hiking, it was too cold and we were snowed out of the mountains. Now, I had planned a trip for this week to go skiing, and it is too warm and we we will ‘mudded’ out of the mountains. Seriously?
Just for fun this month I thought I’d pass on some Moldovan superstitions (I am making no judgments on said superstitions, but simply putting them out there):
-If a girl sits at the corner of a table, she will never get married
-If you sit on the floor your ovaries (if you have them) will freeze
-If you stand in the ‘current’ you will get sick. In fact, most sickness is caused by the current
-If you forget something you can’t turn back to get it or you will have bad luck
-If someone doesn’t recognize you as you approach them, you will have a good-looking spouse
-50 grams of vodka cures anything
In other news, I’m still singing with the village choir. Rehearsals are a stitch because the 8 or so ladies are always arguing and yelling at each other and gossiping. Generally, we don’t actually start rehearsing until about 45 minutes into rehearsal, and then they start arguing again about the grammar of the song or whether there should be a pause after the second verse or not, or if we’re really going to sing that at the upcoming concert or not. I have to say that the actual singing is a bit of a challenge. This next week we’re going to Chisinau to sing at a large 20th anniversary celebration of some TV (that I’ve never seen) that broadcasts from Chisinau. We are singing two songs, neither of which I had heard before last week. But of course the 8 women know them by heart and have sung them a million times. There is of course no music, so I copied the lyrics out of one of the lady’s notebooks, listened to them sing it once to learn the melody, and then tried to sing. But it was really fast, and the vocab is rather strange so I wasn’t that familiar with it, and my tongue just got all jumbled up. I get eyed with disdain from one of the older women, but the rest just told me to shake it off. I’ll know it all just fine by Thursday. Might take a few private lessons, but I’ll get it....
Funniest thing I saw this month: at one of the many celebrations, forgot which one, there was a bowl of mini-marshmallows sitting on the table. They were left over from when I had made sweet potatoes on Christmas. My two-year-old baby cousin tried one. And then another. Nice, she likes them, but I didn’t give it much thought. Well, we turn our attention back to her two minutes later, and the entire bowl is empty, and her cheeks are stuffed with mini-marshmallows, just as if she had been playing ‘Chubby Bunny’! HAHAHA! Ok, maybe you had to see it, but trust me, it was hilarious.
Since things have somewhat gotten back to normal now, I have been quite busy. We had a lot of reporting to do for Peace Corps, and my two counterparts and I had a brainstorming session to evaluate the previous year and discuss what we want to do this year. I gave my second business lesson, on entrepreneurship, for the beekeeping project. We’ve had more English lessons than usual, and I’m working on updating the English manual that we currently use, which is available to all volunteers. This week I found out that one of the girls in my class, an 8th-grader, has been in turn using her free time to teach English to some of the 4th-graders! She always surprises me with how much she goes above and beyond, and how much she manages to learn on her own. Good for her.
I’ve spent a very large amount of time lately working on a rabbit-farming project. The idea is to train 20 unemployed or under-employed village women in all aspects of rabbit farming and to provide them with a few high-quality rabbits, known for the quality and quantity of meat, in order to start their own small farms next to their homes. We will also be working with them on the business side, especially on marketing and financial management. The idea is that even small farms will be able to provide supplementary incomes, as well as give the women something to do and feel pride in. I’ll be going with host mom tomorrow to Chisinau to present the project to the grant committee and convince them that it is a good idea to fund us. I’ve also been working individually with 3 people from the village who would like to start or expand their own businesses. I’m hoping at least one of them will get off the ground. Finally, I’ve also started working with the ‘Youth Eagles’ group at school, to help them improve their volunteerism/community involvement program. Oh, and of course, there is always women’s empowerment camp stuff to do! We’re currently searching for a new Moldovan NGO to work with this year, to which we can eventually turn over the reigns of control to on all aspects of camp planning and implementation.
So the weather here is a bit ridiculous right now. While those of you back in the midwest are experiencing blistering cold and extra-normous amounts of snow, we are experiencing temps in the high 30s, even low 40s, and extra-normous amounts of mud. I have never in my life experienced a January like this one. One of my fellow volunteers joked that we should make mud-walking an official sport, with points for speed, amount of mud on shoes, and cleanliness of pants. And I’m pretty sure Romania hates me. While I was there in September to go hiking, it was too cold and we were snowed out of the mountains. Now, I had planned a trip for this week to go skiing, and it is too warm and we we will ‘mudded’ out of the mountains. Seriously?
Just for fun this month I thought I’d pass on some Moldovan superstitions (I am making no judgments on said superstitions, but simply putting them out there):
-If a girl sits at the corner of a table, she will never get married
-If you sit on the floor your ovaries (if you have them) will freeze
-If you stand in the ‘current’ you will get sick. In fact, most sickness is caused by the current
-If you forget something you can’t turn back to get it or you will have bad luck
-If someone doesn’t recognize you as you approach them, you will have a good-looking spouse
-50 grams of vodka cures anything
In other news, I’m still singing with the village choir. Rehearsals are a stitch because the 8 or so ladies are always arguing and yelling at each other and gossiping. Generally, we don’t actually start rehearsing until about 45 minutes into rehearsal, and then they start arguing again about the grammar of the song or whether there should be a pause after the second verse or not, or if we’re really going to sing that at the upcoming concert or not. I have to say that the actual singing is a bit of a challenge. This next week we’re going to Chisinau to sing at a large 20th anniversary celebration of some TV (that I’ve never seen) that broadcasts from Chisinau. We are singing two songs, neither of which I had heard before last week. But of course the 8 women know them by heart and have sung them a million times. There is of course no music, so I copied the lyrics out of one of the lady’s notebooks, listened to them sing it once to learn the melody, and then tried to sing. But it was really fast, and the vocab is rather strange so I wasn’t that familiar with it, and my tongue just got all jumbled up. I get eyed with disdain from one of the older women, but the rest just told me to shake it off. I’ll know it all just fine by Thursday. Might take a few private lessons, but I’ll get it....
Funniest thing I saw this month: at one of the many celebrations, forgot which one, there was a bowl of mini-marshmallows sitting on the table. They were left over from when I had made sweet potatoes on Christmas. My two-year-old baby cousin tried one. And then another. Nice, she likes them, but I didn’t give it much thought. Well, we turn our attention back to her two minutes later, and the entire bowl is empty, and her cheeks are stuffed with mini-marshmallows, just as if she had been playing ‘Chubby Bunny’! HAHAHA! Ok, maybe you had to see it, but trust me, it was hilarious.
December 17, 2008
2 Thanksgivings!
The last month and a half has been pretty eventful. I suppose the biggest event was that I went home (home home) and surprised my (real) parents for thanksgiving. That’s right, they went over to Anne’s (my sister’s) for Thanksgiving dinner thinking they were going to call me, but there I was, hehe! It was awesome. I hadn’t planned on going home at all, but in September I got pretty homesick and decided I wanted to go home for Thanksgiving. But by then I had already convinced my parents that I wasn’t coming home, so I decided to make it a surprise. I did enlist the help of two brilliant agents (my brother and sister), and we successfully completed the mission. My parents didn’t have a clue. I was able to pack a lot into my 8 full days at home, and I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep on this trip. But it was wonderful to see some friends and spend so much time with my family.
Was it strange to be back? Not really. It had been 1 year, 2 months, 2 weeks, and 1 day since the last time I had been in America, but in a way it felt like I had never left. There were things I appreciated more – like good roads, streets lit at night, hearing English everywhere, taking a shower every day, drinking water from the tap, not having to build a fire to heat the house, a toilet indoors, etc. But there were things that clearly just seemed wasteful – how much energy and water we consume, how much we drive unnecessarily, how much we throw away, how unnecessarily big everything is. I knew that we are a wasteful society before I even went to Moldova, but after experiencing the two lifestyles, the contrast is striking.
The second major event of late was Thanksgiving #2. I thought it would be a good idea to cook traditional Thanksgiving food for 50 Moldovans. It was. I billed the event as my 25th Birthday/Thanksgiving/American Christmas, and invited everyone who works at the school, my extended host family, all of the people working at the town hall, my partners and their families, and some random other villagers whom I have gotten to know over the last year, as well as 7 of my volunteer friends (no way could I do this myself). So I was prepared to have almost 60 guests. I was able to find most of the ingredients at the new supermarket in Soroca, but I had planned ahead and brought back a few items from home. It took a full week of preparing – gathering all ingredients, making sure I could use the space (the school cafeteria), writing my speech, preparing the entertainment, and of course, making all the food. We had one turkey (which was brought over the morning before, killed my my host dad, plucked my friend Lauren, and gutted by my neighbor), 8 grilled chickens, 8 batches of cornbread, 2 pounds of cranberry sauce, 14 cans worth of green bean casserole, 6 large bags of stuffing, 15 bowls of jello with floating fruit, 2 gallons of gravy, 25 pounds of mashed potatoes, 5 apple pies, 4 pumpkin pies (my first attempt at making a pumpkin pie, and with a pumpkin from scratch!), candy corn and candy canes, 4 liters of vodka, 20 liters of house wine, and 24 liters of water and soda. Whew. The liked the green beans and the stuffing, were interested by the cranberries (they don’t have them here), and loved the pies. We read some Thanksgiving facts, sang Christmas carols, put up turkey hands on the wall, and told about the various foods they had never seen. We laughed, we cried, we talked about how much we like each other. I got so many flowers my room is like a green house. The Moldovans all wished me a handsome husband and healthy children. They gave me a gift wrapped in 25 sheets of newspaper. We sang some more. They were amazed at how much the American guys helped out with everything – making food, serving the food, and cleaning up afterwards. All in all, it was a successful cultural exchange, and a feel-good afternoon. And my fellow volunteers were awesome; they made food, cleaned up, ran to the store and back, sang songs without complaining, and made me look good. I couldn’t have done it without them.
I had my ‘mid-service’ crisis in October (according to my manager), and while I still am not thrilled with me work here, at least I feel appreciated. When I went to my English class for the first time after having been gone for 2 weeks at home, the kids were all waiting outside, lined up on the front steps outside the school. As I approached from around the corner, they began singing Happy Birthday! It was so nice!! And they each gave me a kiss. My friend Lauren was with me, as this was the day that we were baking all the pies for Thanksgiving, and she was very impressed by how well the kids were doing with English, so that made me proud of them too. And the 50 Moldovans I invited to the party all chipped in a bought me a pair of really nice gold earrings – they know I love earrings, and they wanted me to have a pair that will last forever so that I will always remember Moldova! Wow.
The beginning of November was pretty relaxed. I spent a lot of time fighting with Windows Movie Maker while trying to put together a 10 minute film of my experiences in Moldova to be able to share with people at home. (My father now has a copy of it if you care to watch.) I put together more information for the Xavier choir, prepared and had my first business class with the kids in the bee project, took care of a lot of logistical items for that project, worked on some TARE preliminary planning (including choosing the new directors), continued with English lessons, translated and worked on improving a grant proposal with one of my partners, and studied for and took my Romanian language exam (I’m advanced now!). As a side project I edited my Austrian friend’s 180-page thesis on international business ethics (written in English). That in a way made me glad I’m no longer in school, and in a way made me wish I were still in school. It also made me miss Vienna terribly. There was also hram (village day) in the neighboring village, the opening of Mall-dova in Chisinau (looks like a real mall, but outrageous prices -- $150 for Lees jeans??). And I finally got Natasa (host sister) to come out with a bunch of volunteers – salsa night at a club in Chisinau. A good time was had by all, and I think I will have no trouble convincing her to come out in the future! ;-) Also, I’ll be singing with the village adult choir for the Christmas season. We’ve had a few rehearsals already; the director says I sing beautifully, hehe!
Well, I wish you all a very merry and blessed Christmas season. Enjoy the time spent with your families as we celebrate Christ’s arrival!
Was it strange to be back? Not really. It had been 1 year, 2 months, 2 weeks, and 1 day since the last time I had been in America, but in a way it felt like I had never left. There were things I appreciated more – like good roads, streets lit at night, hearing English everywhere, taking a shower every day, drinking water from the tap, not having to build a fire to heat the house, a toilet indoors, etc. But there were things that clearly just seemed wasteful – how much energy and water we consume, how much we drive unnecessarily, how much we throw away, how unnecessarily big everything is. I knew that we are a wasteful society before I even went to Moldova, but after experiencing the two lifestyles, the contrast is striking.
The second major event of late was Thanksgiving #2. I thought it would be a good idea to cook traditional Thanksgiving food for 50 Moldovans. It was. I billed the event as my 25th Birthday/Thanksgiving/American Christmas, and invited everyone who works at the school, my extended host family, all of the people working at the town hall, my partners and their families, and some random other villagers whom I have gotten to know over the last year, as well as 7 of my volunteer friends (no way could I do this myself). So I was prepared to have almost 60 guests. I was able to find most of the ingredients at the new supermarket in Soroca, but I had planned ahead and brought back a few items from home. It took a full week of preparing – gathering all ingredients, making sure I could use the space (the school cafeteria), writing my speech, preparing the entertainment, and of course, making all the food. We had one turkey (which was brought over the morning before, killed my my host dad, plucked my friend Lauren, and gutted by my neighbor), 8 grilled chickens, 8 batches of cornbread, 2 pounds of cranberry sauce, 14 cans worth of green bean casserole, 6 large bags of stuffing, 15 bowls of jello with floating fruit, 2 gallons of gravy, 25 pounds of mashed potatoes, 5 apple pies, 4 pumpkin pies (my first attempt at making a pumpkin pie, and with a pumpkin from scratch!), candy corn and candy canes, 4 liters of vodka, 20 liters of house wine, and 24 liters of water and soda. Whew. The liked the green beans and the stuffing, were interested by the cranberries (they don’t have them here), and loved the pies. We read some Thanksgiving facts, sang Christmas carols, put up turkey hands on the wall, and told about the various foods they had never seen. We laughed, we cried, we talked about how much we like each other. I got so many flowers my room is like a green house. The Moldovans all wished me a handsome husband and healthy children. They gave me a gift wrapped in 25 sheets of newspaper. We sang some more. They were amazed at how much the American guys helped out with everything – making food, serving the food, and cleaning up afterwards. All in all, it was a successful cultural exchange, and a feel-good afternoon. And my fellow volunteers were awesome; they made food, cleaned up, ran to the store and back, sang songs without complaining, and made me look good. I couldn’t have done it without them.
I had my ‘mid-service’ crisis in October (according to my manager), and while I still am not thrilled with me work here, at least I feel appreciated. When I went to my English class for the first time after having been gone for 2 weeks at home, the kids were all waiting outside, lined up on the front steps outside the school. As I approached from around the corner, they began singing Happy Birthday! It was so nice!! And they each gave me a kiss. My friend Lauren was with me, as this was the day that we were baking all the pies for Thanksgiving, and she was very impressed by how well the kids were doing with English, so that made me proud of them too. And the 50 Moldovans I invited to the party all chipped in a bought me a pair of really nice gold earrings – they know I love earrings, and they wanted me to have a pair that will last forever so that I will always remember Moldova! Wow.
The beginning of November was pretty relaxed. I spent a lot of time fighting with Windows Movie Maker while trying to put together a 10 minute film of my experiences in Moldova to be able to share with people at home. (My father now has a copy of it if you care to watch.) I put together more information for the Xavier choir, prepared and had my first business class with the kids in the bee project, took care of a lot of logistical items for that project, worked on some TARE preliminary planning (including choosing the new directors), continued with English lessons, translated and worked on improving a grant proposal with one of my partners, and studied for and took my Romanian language exam (I’m advanced now!). As a side project I edited my Austrian friend’s 180-page thesis on international business ethics (written in English). That in a way made me glad I’m no longer in school, and in a way made me wish I were still in school. It also made me miss Vienna terribly. There was also hram (village day) in the neighboring village, the opening of Mall-dova in Chisinau (looks like a real mall, but outrageous prices -- $150 for Lees jeans??). And I finally got Natasa (host sister) to come out with a bunch of volunteers – salsa night at a club in Chisinau. A good time was had by all, and I think I will have no trouble convincing her to come out in the future! ;-) Also, I’ll be singing with the village adult choir for the Christmas season. We’ve had a few rehearsals already; the director says I sing beautifully, hehe!
Well, I wish you all a very merry and blessed Christmas season. Enjoy the time spent with your families as we celebrate Christ’s arrival!
November 2, 2008
Pumpkins
Autumn is my favorite season. I love the crisp chilly air, the colors, the smells, the food! And in rural Moldova, there’s another whole element: the harvest. October turned out to be a beautiful month, with as much sun as there was rain in September. Everyone was out on their pieces of land, gathering their corn, or grapes, or potatoes, or whatever they had out there. Busloads of kids are taken from schools to work in the larger orchards, and everywhere you look you see horse-drawn carts stuffed with corn stalks and some dude sitting way up on top.
I’ve been spending as much time as possible outdoors, whether running or just walking around the village, trying to figure out who I could help. I spent one afternoon helping an older woman shuck her corn. She was sitting there on a little stool, with a huuuge pile of corn stalks from which she was removing the ears of corn and building smaller piles of the remaining stalks. The corn will feed the pigs in the coming year, and the stalks will go to the cows. Anyways, I had finished work early for the day, so I offered to help her out for awhile. We talked about everything, but she mostly chattered on about her family, which I didn’t mind hearing about. I admired her large pile of beautiful pumpkins in the back yard (we all know how much I love those!). After we finished for the day due to darkness, she of course invited me in for a tea, and as I was leaving she gave me the best pumpkin of the bunch! Woo hoo!
I spend another whole afternoon collecting mushrooms with one of my counterparts. We just took a pocket knife and plastic bag each and marched off into the woods across the street. The mushrooms are a big deal here. Everyone is always asking, ‘oh, did you go collect mushrooms yet?’ or, ‘I heard the Alexander Bun forest has better mushrooms than the Voloave forest!’ They are all trading recipes and methods of preserving them. It’s funny to see all these babas coming out of the forest with big bags of ‘shrooms. Anyways, my counterpart and I went aways back, since the woods had been pretty picked over already, and she showed me the difference between the good and bad mushrooms, and gave me tips on where to look. Well, I struggled at spotting them at first, because the forest floor was covered with leaves and the mushrooms blended in. But I started to get the hang of it. I had about a quarter of a bag and thought I was doing pretty good when I went over to check in with my counterpart, and she already had a whole huge bag and was well on her way with the second! Jeepers. But by the end of the day I had a whole sack, and my host ma was so proud of me when I dumped them out for her at home!
Last weekend I went with the whole host family to my host dad’s home village about 30 minutes north of my village to help his brother collect apples in his orchard. This was also a (mostly) pleasant experience. The weather was perfect, and the surrounding countryside beautiful and colorful. The orchard was about 15 rows, each a bit longer than a football field. There were 15 of us, and after a full day’s work, we managed to cover about 2/3 of it. It went like this. About 3 people per row went down one time and just picked the good apples, putting them in buckets, and then transferring them to larger sacks, which were then picked up by a man driving around the rows in a Lada. He then brought the apples to the edge of the orchard where he dumped them all in a huge pile. The second time down the row, we picked absolutely everything, even the fallen ones half-eaten by rabbits. These apples are destined for the juice factory. The work wasn’t too bad, although the weeds hadn’t been controlled, so I had so many scratches and burrs and thorns, and it was hard to find the apples that had fallen to the ground. I banged my head on branches so many times, and a lot of the time someone would just shake the tree to make the apples at the top fall, and I didn’t always hear the ‘get away’ signal and was thus bopped on the head more than once. The overall atmosphere was jolly, and of course there was food and vodka involved! At noon they spread out the food on top of the old Lada, and someone asked me, ‘I bet you don’t have this sort of uncivilized eating where you are from!’ And I said, actually we do, but we eat out of the trunk! Later in the afternoon we were busily working when all of a sudden a large chocolate cake appeared and everybody just rushed over, over-turned their buckets in between two rows, and dug in. It was pretty delicious, and welcomed.
Halloween was nice. I turned down various volunteer get-togethers for some chillaxin’ at home, and a mini party with my English kids. I told them about our trick-or-treating tradition, gave them some candy, and they came over and we carved pumpkins outside my fence. They were all pretty proud of theirs, but they all agreed that mine was the coolest, hehe. Well, since we couldn’t actually go trick-or-treating, they decided to take their lit jack-o-laterns and walk around the village scaring people. Well, I had made the mistake of singing that dumb kids song, you know the one -- ‘trick or treat, smell my feet....i’ll pull down your underwear.’ I gave them a rough translation, and then made it clear that we wouldn’t actually sing that at anyone’s house. Well, at one stop, there were a few older teenagers hanging out outside, and one of my girls, who usually is very quiet, yells out, ‘give us some candy or we’ll pull down your pants!!’ It was so incredibly hilarious, especially coming from her. Ya, I'm a real good influence on the kids over here.
Another fall event was the anual Wine Festival. There were small celebrations in each of the regional centers, and one large festival in Chisinau. A rather large number of us volunteers gathered on a gorgeous Saturday, took over an area of tables set up in the park, and just sat around talking all day, buying wine and food from the numourous exhibitioners in their booths surrounding the main square, listening to the music being played by different groups on the huge stage, moseying around the arts and crafts exhibits set up in the park, and talking with people from all over. I was ‘cheers-ing’ in about 6 different languages that day. And so we celebrated Moldova’s most prized product. Good times.
Have I done any actual work this month, you ask? Well yes, as you can see from the previous entry, we’ve finally gotten the beekeeping class up and running. I begin my business lectures in a week, so I have been preparing those. I have been preparing a bit better for my English classes, now that we have manuals that we can work with. My kids brought me apples last week, it was so cute. What else...my co-directors and I have had some strategic planning sessions for our women’s camp. I’ve been doing the occasional research/advising for various community members who have come into the office asking for information. There are a few women who would like to grow mushrooms (seems a little less risky than just going out to pick them, know what I mean?). I’ve also worked out a deal with the Xavier (my high school) choir to trade Moldovan music and culture for a little bit of financial support for the children’s music group in the village. So I’ve been busy putting together music and information for them.
I’ve also been busy adjusting to life with parents again. As I mentioned last month, my host parents returned from the Czech Repbulic, so it is a full house. I had just started to be really comfortable with my life just me and Natasha, and then all of a sudden it was like I was back to being a guest. I no longer make dinner, wash dishes, sweep, clean stuff, feed the dog, etc, because they just do it all while I’m at work. So I feel like a lazy worthless bum at home. Sometimes I manage to convince them to let me wash the dishes. And it’s strange hanging panties out on the line right in front of my host dad, ya know? And if Natasha and I want to talk girl-talk, we have to switch over to English, which is strange since we never spoke English before. But I’ll get used to it all, I suppose!
Well that’s all for this month folks, thanks for reading!
I’ve been spending as much time as possible outdoors, whether running or just walking around the village, trying to figure out who I could help. I spent one afternoon helping an older woman shuck her corn. She was sitting there on a little stool, with a huuuge pile of corn stalks from which she was removing the ears of corn and building smaller piles of the remaining stalks. The corn will feed the pigs in the coming year, and the stalks will go to the cows. Anyways, I had finished work early for the day, so I offered to help her out for awhile. We talked about everything, but she mostly chattered on about her family, which I didn’t mind hearing about. I admired her large pile of beautiful pumpkins in the back yard (we all know how much I love those!). After we finished for the day due to darkness, she of course invited me in for a tea, and as I was leaving she gave me the best pumpkin of the bunch! Woo hoo!
I spend another whole afternoon collecting mushrooms with one of my counterparts. We just took a pocket knife and plastic bag each and marched off into the woods across the street. The mushrooms are a big deal here. Everyone is always asking, ‘oh, did you go collect mushrooms yet?’ or, ‘I heard the Alexander Bun forest has better mushrooms than the Voloave forest!’ They are all trading recipes and methods of preserving them. It’s funny to see all these babas coming out of the forest with big bags of ‘shrooms. Anyways, my counterpart and I went aways back, since the woods had been pretty picked over already, and she showed me the difference between the good and bad mushrooms, and gave me tips on where to look. Well, I struggled at spotting them at first, because the forest floor was covered with leaves and the mushrooms blended in. But I started to get the hang of it. I had about a quarter of a bag and thought I was doing pretty good when I went over to check in with my counterpart, and she already had a whole huge bag and was well on her way with the second! Jeepers. But by the end of the day I had a whole sack, and my host ma was so proud of me when I dumped them out for her at home!
Last weekend I went with the whole host family to my host dad’s home village about 30 minutes north of my village to help his brother collect apples in his orchard. This was also a (mostly) pleasant experience. The weather was perfect, and the surrounding countryside beautiful and colorful. The orchard was about 15 rows, each a bit longer than a football field. There were 15 of us, and after a full day’s work, we managed to cover about 2/3 of it. It went like this. About 3 people per row went down one time and just picked the good apples, putting them in buckets, and then transferring them to larger sacks, which were then picked up by a man driving around the rows in a Lada. He then brought the apples to the edge of the orchard where he dumped them all in a huge pile. The second time down the row, we picked absolutely everything, even the fallen ones half-eaten by rabbits. These apples are destined for the juice factory. The work wasn’t too bad, although the weeds hadn’t been controlled, so I had so many scratches and burrs and thorns, and it was hard to find the apples that had fallen to the ground. I banged my head on branches so many times, and a lot of the time someone would just shake the tree to make the apples at the top fall, and I didn’t always hear the ‘get away’ signal and was thus bopped on the head more than once. The overall atmosphere was jolly, and of course there was food and vodka involved! At noon they spread out the food on top of the old Lada, and someone asked me, ‘I bet you don’t have this sort of uncivilized eating where you are from!’ And I said, actually we do, but we eat out of the trunk! Later in the afternoon we were busily working when all of a sudden a large chocolate cake appeared and everybody just rushed over, over-turned their buckets in between two rows, and dug in. It was pretty delicious, and welcomed.
Halloween was nice. I turned down various volunteer get-togethers for some chillaxin’ at home, and a mini party with my English kids. I told them about our trick-or-treating tradition, gave them some candy, and they came over and we carved pumpkins outside my fence. They were all pretty proud of theirs, but they all agreed that mine was the coolest, hehe. Well, since we couldn’t actually go trick-or-treating, they decided to take their lit jack-o-laterns and walk around the village scaring people. Well, I had made the mistake of singing that dumb kids song, you know the one -- ‘trick or treat, smell my feet....i’ll pull down your underwear.’ I gave them a rough translation, and then made it clear that we wouldn’t actually sing that at anyone’s house. Well, at one stop, there were a few older teenagers hanging out outside, and one of my girls, who usually is very quiet, yells out, ‘give us some candy or we’ll pull down your pants!!’ It was so incredibly hilarious, especially coming from her. Ya, I'm a real good influence on the kids over here.
Another fall event was the anual Wine Festival. There were small celebrations in each of the regional centers, and one large festival in Chisinau. A rather large number of us volunteers gathered on a gorgeous Saturday, took over an area of tables set up in the park, and just sat around talking all day, buying wine and food from the numourous exhibitioners in their booths surrounding the main square, listening to the music being played by different groups on the huge stage, moseying around the arts and crafts exhibits set up in the park, and talking with people from all over. I was ‘cheers-ing’ in about 6 different languages that day. And so we celebrated Moldova’s most prized product. Good times.
Have I done any actual work this month, you ask? Well yes, as you can see from the previous entry, we’ve finally gotten the beekeeping class up and running. I begin my business lectures in a week, so I have been preparing those. I have been preparing a bit better for my English classes, now that we have manuals that we can work with. My kids brought me apples last week, it was so cute. What else...my co-directors and I have had some strategic planning sessions for our women’s camp. I’ve been doing the occasional research/advising for various community members who have come into the office asking for information. There are a few women who would like to grow mushrooms (seems a little less risky than just going out to pick them, know what I mean?). I’ve also worked out a deal with the Xavier (my high school) choir to trade Moldovan music and culture for a little bit of financial support for the children’s music group in the village. So I’ve been busy putting together music and information for them.
I’ve also been busy adjusting to life with parents again. As I mentioned last month, my host parents returned from the Czech Repbulic, so it is a full house. I had just started to be really comfortable with my life just me and Natasha, and then all of a sudden it was like I was back to being a guest. I no longer make dinner, wash dishes, sweep, clean stuff, feed the dog, etc, because they just do it all while I’m at work. So I feel like a lazy worthless bum at home. Sometimes I manage to convince them to let me wash the dishes. And it’s strange hanging panties out on the line right in front of my host dad, ya know? And if Natasha and I want to talk girl-talk, we have to switch over to English, which is strange since we never spoke English before. But I’ll get used to it all, I suppose!
Well that’s all for this month folks, thanks for reading!
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