This is a personal narrative of my time as an invitee to the Peace Corps hopefully on through to being a volunteer over the next 27 months starting in June 2010. This blog in no way reflects the views of the Peace Corps nor is it in any way connected. All statements are my own personal views.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Summer flies by
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Softball in Moldova! Otherwise known as slow pitch baseball.
New Future Volunteers
Party in the Forest-A bonding moment with my fellow teachers
The school year is over
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
April!
As ever I feel that it is very important to talk about the weather. The weather affects just about everything I do and feel and sometimes my motivation to the extreme. For example when it was really cold I didn't feel like going out at all because I would have to walk there. Of course I have to say "really cold" with a little bit of an explanation because at no time was it REALLY cold, not even close. It is just that I didn't want to walk anywhere when I knew that it would take me 20 minutes to get there when it was slightly cold. One because I would have to wear a billion layers to do so and then I couldn't do anything fun, like go dancing cause I would die in all the clothes that I would have had to put on to go dancing in the first place. Needless to say I have not done a lot of socializing for the past couple of months. I am a hermit. Second example would be work. My school was heated, nominally, in the winter but as soon as March hit they turned off the heat. So even though it is not really above the 40s yet our school is unheated. And some members of my host family are fond of turning the house heat off in the middle of the day so the house is cold when I get home. Sigh. I turn it on and all is fine so it is better then school it is just that I would never turn the heat off. Thats all. And at school there is no magical turn the heat back on button. So there are days when I cannot wait to leave school because even though I wore layers and kept my coat on the whole time my nose and my fingers are freezing and I can't get any work done at school at that point. So as you can see (hopefully) the weather is very important in my life. And it keeps changing. Who does that? Really? If I have 2 days of 60 degree weather I think it is going to stay. But so far it hasn't it just flits in a couple of days a week to get our hopes up then the 40 degree weather comes back to dash them to bits. I almost miss the 90 degree weather at this point. Almost. Don't hold me to that statement.
As for school, it is school. There are moments of brillance and then there are less sterling moments where I just want to scream and leave the room or send a particular student from the room. Either would be acceptable in my mind, not so acceptable in reality. But I can fantasize, we have detention and I can send any student I want there and .... then I wake up, no detention. I will just have to use all of my creative 5 year old level Russian skills to talk sense into the situation. It works about, well lets not say and it will seem like it works pretty well. Life at site goes along much in the same vein, some days are just beyond anything I could have imagined in a good way and others, well in every sunny day there must come that one particular cloud that stops right over the sun and stays there for awhile. Eventually it goes away it just takes some really positive thinking.
I am excited to say that I have gotten involved in several different projects in the past month or so including planning for PST training, I get to tell new volunteers what to do! Well not really I will be helping to guide them and impart important and very useful information. I am looking forward to being on the other side of the table and sharing what I think was most helpful for me and hopefully putting a lot of worries to rest about what is to come. I am also going to be a mentor which goes along the same lines of giving information and advice and being a new friend and contact in Moldova for future volunteers. Hopefully they will get as much out of the experience I did. There are also just so many projects going on at any one time, so many ways to get involved and to connect with Moldovans and other volunteers. If anyone is interested in checking out an incredible array of what volunteers here in Moldova are do I highly recommend visiting the website
http://www.365peaceandfriendship.com
It is a tribute to the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps and to all the work that volunteers and their partners due on a daily basis. It is full of pictures and posts about the people, places and work that volunteers encounter during their service. There is a ton to see. I hope everyone who reads my blog will go to this website. I cannot say how wonderful it is.
Happy April!
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Updates and all of February and some of March
Well, it has been a month or so since I have written even though many things have happened or passed. One of the best is that spring has finally come!! I say finally, I should say that it has come and for many people it is finally. I am still in shock from the change from 20 degrees to suddenly 65 degrees in the middle of the day. I will not complain though. To go from many, many layers of clothes to a normal amount is always a good thing. I also enjoy being just the right temperature in school. With spring has come happy faces, children running and laughing, sunshine, and warmth. February was also a hot bed of activity. I was lucky enough to take part in an open lesson for English. Open lessons are when the other teachers in the raion (like a county) for a particular subject all come to observe lessons taught by other teachers. In this case it was mostly English and some French teachers who came to observe either a French lesson, an English lesson and then all together an extra-curricular activity in English dedicated to St. Valentine's day. There were around 28 teachers, although it could have been a few less. After all the lessons we all met together and then the teachers discussed the lessons said what they liked and what they would have liked to have seen improved upon. Also during this time several teachers presented research that they had done. I think that it was supposed to be teacher research but it was not very structured so it was hard to tell. After all "business" was over we all went for "coffee and tea" which turned out to be a стол or masa in Romanian which is a meal but bigger scale. There was lots of good food, drinks and talk and of course toasts. The French teacher gave hers in French, there was one in Russian and on in Romanian and then in the end I gave a toast Spanish in keeping with the theme of foreign languages. The whole day was fun but exhausting. At the end I felt like I had just taken a very important test or something along those lines.
In addition to my own experience with the open lesson, there were several more at my school soon after in physical education and Romanian. It was a big event for everyone at the school and required lots of planning and cleaning and preparing. I think they all went well.
Also we celebrated St. Valentine's Day, Affection day (24th of February for everyone where as V-Day is really just for couples), Men's Day (23th of February an old soviet holiday that has been reworked) and then just recently the 8th of March International Women's day. A celebration of women and all of their roles and accomplishments. It included of course many a feast and a speech and flowers and cards and wonderfulness. I wish that we had this day in the USA. The 1st of March is also a large holiday in Moldova and Romania Martisor, it is the official beginning of spring here.
Everyone gives and receives Martisori which are little red and white flowers. There are many legends about the Martisori and they are all very interesting. One that I heard was that the sun used to turn himself into a man and come and visit the Earth and people. Then one day an evil dragon captured the sun and kept him on Earth. The land grew dark and cold because the sun did not return to the sky. A young man saw what was happening and decided to go save the sun but his journey took him a long time to find the evil dragon. But the young man found the dragon and fought him. He fought him so hard that his blood splashed on the ground and on white flowers staining them red. He fought and killed the dragon but he also died. So in honor of the young man who fought for the sun and brought spring we were the Martisori.
There are many more legends this is just one I like.
So many holidays, much work, and now sun. I was also lucky to be able to listen to VP Joe Biden speak when he was here in Moldova and then attend a meet and greet with him after his speech. It was a once in a lifetime event, the VP in Moldova when I am in Moldova and then a special session afterwards were we got to meet him in person. It took about 5 hours of standing but the weather was good, there was live music and I was with friends.
That's it for now. I have lots of projects and plans for the coming months. The 50th Anniversary of Peace Corps has kicked off. If you want to see what Peace Corps volunteers in Moldova please check out our website http://www.365peaceandfriendship.com it has a calendar of events and posts of those events. We are hoping to highlight one event, volunteer, Moldovan, city, activity every day for the next year to commemorate Peace Corps and the people we work with.
Happy Spring!!
Spring brings many changes
Monday, January 31, 2011
It was a draft, errrrrg
I wrote a long post and it disappeared
Spain and Second Semester Fun
Well, winter vacation came, and it went. So sad. But I did get to go to Barcelona, see amazing things, speak a little Spanish, visit Bucharest in Romania and ride on a train. Plus once I got back to Moldova I still had a couple of laze about days and some really neat Moldovan holidays to experience.
But first, Spain. I went with a couple of volunteers and we spent about 7 days in Barcelona with a side trip to the monastery Montserrat. Barcelona is a wonderful city, clean, free of street dogs, and some incredible architecture. I absolutely love Gaudi and anyone of a like mind should make it one of their life goals to see Barcelona. Sagrada Familia is.... words do not quiet describe it, or at least I am not talented enough to describe it in the terms that it should be described. And I love Gaudi's work in general. Its colorful, sinuous, natural and exotic. Sometimes you can't believe that one person had all of that in one brain. I saw many many Gaudi buildings and I could have seen more. Plus Barcelona has managed to hold on to a lot of its history in general so everywhere you look there seems to be one more really neat building to gaze at. In addition to Gaudi I went to a museum that was once a palace, a fort with some really big world war era guns, a sea walk, the gothic quarter with tiny winding streets, and an incredible cathedral. The monastery was like a scene out of a legend. It is set up high on a plateau/mountain thing where the mist never really seems to go away. We took the train for an hour to get to the site and from there we rode a cable car up the mountain. Then, at one of the other girl's insistence we walked up like 40 billion stairs that went further up the mountain. Well, to be fair it wasn't 40 billion but we weren't really dressed or prepared to go for a hike, which is what it would have been. But the whole area is also a national park. So you get an incredible view, wildlife, and a centuries old monastery, the whole package deal.
After Barcelona we spent New Year's Eve/part of the Day in Milan airport, which was not very exciting at all and then went on our way to Bucharest. Bucharest is somewhere in between Moldova and Barcelona in terms of development. But what Bucharest has is its old city and a ruin of one of Vlad Tepes' castle, the man better known as the inspiration for Dracula. We walked around the old city with one of the girl's friend who lives in Bucharest. She knew tons about Bucharest and Romania and was just all around spectacular. She let us stay with her and entertained us, let us rest from our journey and told us tales of a Romania that has a hidden past. Needless to say I really want to go back to Romania and of course visit some of the amazing things she told us about. We also got to see a Christmas market and go ice skating. The Christmas market really reminded me of home, it had little wood cottages for booths and they were wreathed with pine boughs. Ah, home! And a bonus was that I got to buy a gingerbread treat. I love gingerbread.
After that it was back to Moldova just in time to experience a second Christmas on January 7th, orthodox Christmas. Around Christmas children go door to door and sing Christmas carols or chants. In return people give them candy, cookies and a little bit of money, sort of like getting a quarter. We stayed up til 11 or 12 I think before we locked the gate. Towards the end some really interesting groups came by but I was already in my room at that point. I do remember hearing an accordion and a tambourine.
Then we went back to school but the first week was all over the place because that Friday was Orthodox New Year's or Old New Year's. The night before we again had 'carolers' but this time it was only boys and they came to the door and threw seeds at you. Then they would get candy, money, ceremonial round bread, and cookies. My host mom told me that the day before New Year's only boys come and then on New Year's girls come. This was fun, we stayed up and waited for groups to come, then on Friday i went to school like all was normal. But... all the students brought seeds to throw and I spent the day getting wished health, happiness, money and pelted with rice, corn, some other seed and sunflower seeds. It was great and next year I know it is coming so I will come to school prepared with candy and money.
Other than that it has finally gotten 'cold' but it is still about 0 F, and I am perfectly okay with this. :) January has flown by and now we have sun from 7-5 instead of 7:30-4, still not complaining. The only down side is that the English classroom is about the coldest classroom in the whole school. Sigh. But if those are the least of my worries, well then I'm doing just fine. Plus I finally got WIFI at home and a printer. I am a printing fiend and I recommend printers to every single PCV. I love my printer and having worksheets and its all around usefulness. Yeah for printer!!! Of course, love to all those back home reading this long post and I hope everyone had a great holiday season!