Update from Life at Site

Hi everyone!  So I finally made it!  I am officially a volunteer and not just a trainee anymore.  I had an exhausting last 4 weeks of PST.  Practice school is a really wonderful, really draining experience with more emotions involved then I would have thought possible.  There was great achievements in the class room, soaring high!  Then there would be some small disaster, fell back down to earth, hard.  And of course it was 100 degrees or round abouts there which made it hard to want to plan or site at the school for hours on end doing materials development but it had to be done and in the end I feel way more prepared for what is coming next.  The start of school at site.  Bum bum bum!  Our swearing in ceremony was great, we had really good speakers such as Margaret the heading of the language training, Jeffery our country direct and a great pubic speaker, 2 volunteers that MC'd in English and Romanian, and of course two people from our group Ben (Russian speech) and Zach (Romanian speech) that blew the crowd away with their well prepared speeches and snazzy suits.  After that it was say goodbye to the people you just spend 10 weeks with and hello to your new host families.  A whirlwind day that really seems like 3 or 4 seperate days all together.

Since then I have been on sort of a mini-vacation because of a group of holidays here that fall all together meaning multiple days off.  The first was Gagauzian day which was great.  There was a concert in the center that I got to go see that lasted until like 2 in the morning, I wimped out and was home by 12:30, said isn't it?  That same day, I think, was my host-grandmother's birthday which meant I got to meet  a lot of family members and try a lot of good food.  Soon after that it was the Day of the founding of Comrat, which meant I got to march with all the other teachers to the center and each school got called out to walk across an open area.  Then it was the day of the victory of the soviets over the fascists, I think I may not have gotten it all when I thought I did, where we placed flowers on a monument.  Recently it was also the indepence day of Moldova.  And coming up is Limba Noastra or day or our language.  It has been a lot of fun and a much needed break.  I have also atteneded several conferences.  I attended the conference for all teachers in Gagauzia and then I attended a conference about the new curriculum and long term plans.  Lots of Russian, some understanding on my part.  But being surrounded by Russian has been great.  I feel like my comprehension has jumped 3 or 4 places from where it was.  Now I just have to get started on Romanian and not backtrack with Russian and I am set!

School starts in about 2 days.  I will be finally getting started!

PST is over

Well, the time has finally come and PST is over.  Tomorrow (fingers crossed) I will be sworn in as an official volunteer with Peace Corps Moldova.  I am tired, hot, and ready for break but it was all worth it.  Today we did our last PST interviews, in which we sit with several very important people in the PC and talk about how we have been, any suggestions we have, and generally how we thought the whole process went.  I have to say that I feel very lucky to be working the Peace Corps here in Moldova because everyone has been generally wonderful.  My project director is the sweetest, best dressed, best informed, caring, smartest woman I have ever met.  When we did a presentation about the English Education group we introduced her as the best dressed woman you will ever see.  And it is certainly true. :)  In addition to that we have a great country director who absolutely loves the Peace Corps.  

PST was exhausting and very structured.  But looking back, of course in a short sited way because it just ended, it was good in a way.  We were kept busy, mostly out of trouble and given the tools (as we shall see in the next 2 years) to help us with life here in Moldova.  I know that I am starting to sound a little bit like an infomercial for PC but the organization is part of the reason I was so interested in becoming a volunteer.  It is also reassuring to know that some of the glow hasn't worn off.  The support is there so that with a little work on my part it is a great experience.  

Today is my last full day in my PST site and then I am off to my permanent site!!  Exciting, yes?  I have some more packing to do and of course re-packing to do because I magically have more things then I came with. :)  Mostly it is books provided by PC for English teaching but I have also managed to collect a few other things as well all on my own.  I am starting to dread the thought of packing at the end of two years.  It may seem far away but this is a good indicator that I will have a lot of sorting and generally cleaning to do at the end of it all.  I am excited to meet my new host family (there was a switch in host families so I haven't met this one yet) and get started on school and all that.  

I hope that all my friends and family are doing well!  Till next time!

Getting close to the end of the beginning

I may be too fond of funny sounding post titles, for example of end of the beginning, and earlier half-way there to there, or something like that.  I hope that it does not get annoying for anyone who is taking the time and effort to read my blogs.  But it is true this next week will be week 9 of our 10 week pre-service training and then I will be leaving my PST host-family and site to go to my permanent site.  PST has been a mixture of fun, work, exhaustion, and of course heat.  I will be saving a summing up blog for week 10 but as I get closer to then end of PST I am starting to get a little bit more reflective of how my time has been here in Moldova.  

At the moment I am taking a well deserved break from lesson planning and material making to write to friends and family about how my week has been so far.  A friend has some classical music on and the room I am sitting in is sun dappled with a slight breeze to cool me off.  It is a wonderful moment.  The kind where you realize how good life really is or how there is always something that can make your day seem better.  

Today was also the last day that our research teachers are here to help us and observe us as we teach.  It is interesting how it seems like you have been around a person for months only to realize that they were only with you for 2 weeks.  I will miss talking with my research teacher and hearing about her interesting life.  I enjoyed just talking with her the most.  She had some very interesting stories, many which surprised me.  Also, today the COD trainees and ARBD trainees left to go to the swearing in ceremony and then from there on to their permanent sites.  So now the Russian trainees are done to 4.  Sigh.  I will miss them too.  One of them was my next door neighbor so we got to talk a lot and walk to school together as well.

One more week of practice school and then I get a break!!  I am looking forward to a change of pace and to swearing in.  I hope that everyone is doing great where ever the are.  

Practice school

Now we enter the time of practice school.  This is my first real experience teaching children and I must say that I had a rocky start.  I know that I was not really prepared to take on the molding of young children's minds but I may just have a good start when practice school is over.  I have been lucky to be able to work with a Moldovan teacher who helps me through the thorny bits of dealing with a large group of 10 year olds.  Practice school, for those who don't know, is where we, the volunteers, practice teaching Moldovan children.  These are children who volunteer (or their parents volunteer them) to come to like what would be considered an English summer camp for about 7 days.  I am working with the 5th form, which is full of students around 10 yeards old.  And I must say that my students are great.  Some of them are so eager to learn.  But they are also exhausting, they are a group of 10 year olds.  

Mostly what I have to say at this point is that I am a little tired, we go, go, go, go.  It is great but exhausting.  But as someone reminded me, "You didn't sign up to rest!  You signed up to work!"  Of course this person was making fun of me, but the statement rings true.  

On another note the weather has sort of mellowed out.  I think most days it is around 85 degrees not 95 or I have seriously begun to adjust to the weather.  I am going to say that it is more likely that it has just cooled off.  

I hope everyone is doing well and I will try to have some interesting things to say in my next post.

Practice School here I come!

So, as the time goes by we learn a little bit more Russian every day, and then of course we forget it the instant we want to use it.  However this is the last week of full Russian lessons (meaning around 4 hours a day) that we will have for PST.  Next week we start Practice school and that means that we will have around 2 hours of Russian a day.  I will miss it so.  And I truly mean that because it has been so helpful and useful.  I have probably said it every blog but I really do learn a word that I can use every day.  Hopefully when I get to site I will start remembering and then using all this knowledge.

Practice school, I have heard, is a time when we have no free time.  But all the volunteers that have talked to us have said that Practice school was one of the best things for getting them ready to actually teach, especially since many people do not come with a lot of teaching experiences.  I am sort of looking forward to and dreading the whole experience but I know that it will be worth it.  I hope you are all thinking the same thing for me, so that it will definately come true.  :)

Thats it for now.  Not very exciting news but I hope it will sustain you until my next post. 

Sweet, sweet internet

Hello everybody!!  I just wanted to say that I am truly enjoying my time on the internet right now.  I have answered many an email and now I am keeping on track with my blogging schedule.  I am also enjoying being cool indoors because outside it is close to 90 degrees F, which wouldn't be so bad if it were not also very humid.  As you can imagine, coming from Fairbanks I have little experience with extending periods of humidity and wish that it would just away.  We will have a rainstorm and I think "oh good, it will cool off now", no, it just continues to be HOT and HUMID.  Not my favorite combination.  But such is life.  On the plus side my family here has a rainwater shower outside so I get to take a cool, refreshing shower at the end of the day.  How I love thee outdoor shower.  It is really the little things that make life enjoyable.  

Every week leads us closer to the end of PST or in the case of the English education volunteers, practice school.  In practice school we get to test our mettle and knowledge gained from all of the PST in teaching.  On the plus side it ends with what we would call a field day for the students who participated and gave over their young minds to our care.  My group is planning to have some good old fashioned field day activities such as an egg walk, a three-legged race, and who knows what else.  Fun stuff to be sure.  It might be sad but we are looking forward to that day a little more than practice school.  But that is mostly because we know that the field day will be the end of practice school and very close to our swearing in day.  That coveted day where we officially become volunteers and end the exhausting yet exhilarating time of PST.

Even though we, as a group, have been fairly busy I have still had the opportunity to go to events with my host family and experience some Moldovan hospitality.  I have eaten and drank maybe more that I really wanted to but it was all delicious and in the spirit of being a good guest.  They make some great things here like stuffed peppers, compote (like juice with the fruit left in it), meat in general.  Then there is all the fresh fruits and veggies.  I get to eat a tomato and a cucumber on a daily basis.  Right now there a plums, peaches, and apricots in season.  I have to say I did not realize the breadth of the different types of plums, peaches and apricots in the world.  I have had small yellow plums and a wide variety of apricots all delicious.  We definitely miss out by only having a supermarket variety.

    

In Comrat

This weekend I am at my future site of Comrat. It is about the size of Fairbanks but with a lot more fruit, veggies, shops, and fields. Plus a whole lot less winter. I am staying with the family that will be my host family when I come to live in Comrat after PST. Today I got to meet with the director (what we would call a principal), the vice-director, and a French teacher who speaks excelent English. She also teaches a couple of the lower form English classes. She is the one who took me around the city and showed me where to find everything I might need or want. This is also the first time I have been completely surrounded by Russian. In the town where I am living for PST it is mostly Romanian speakers, which I kind of like because it gives me an opportunity to pick up on some Romanian. But for overall exposure to Russian it has been a little hard. This trip has also given me a really good view of all the language skills I really need to work on before I am done with PST. It is becoming apparentent that motion verbs (there is more than one verb for to go) are really important and deserve a large amount of my attention.
At any rate I am really looking forward to coming back to Comrat in the fall. I am also really looking forward to having a fall. :) (those of you from AK know what I am talking about) I also got a little view of the school where I will be teaching and an idea of how many students. Since the bulk of students are in Russian schools our school has very few students. In terms of class size that means I am going to have small classes. I feel like that is going to be wonderful. Of course it is just speculation right now.
Everyone I have met has been absolutely wonderful. My host family here has been interested in AK and my Comrat host mom and I spent close to an hour and a half looking up things about AK and pictures and such on the internet. I managed to forget all my interesting AK things back in Ialoveni.
I also wanted to mention that right now the sunflower fields are blooming. Imagine if you can acres of sunflowers all in bloom. That is what I drove through for a large part of the day yesterday. Beautiful! If i was looking for a more beautiful country I don't think I could have found it.