Ziua Limba

When I say I have free time, I'm not being facetious, I really have nothing better to do than play around with PhotoBooth on my computerI used to have a reoccurring dream that I was a Siamese twin. I don't think it would be that bad...
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Happy holidays to everyone reading this, be it a Kyrgyzstani celebrating your Independence Day from the USSR, a Malaysian celebrating Merdeka Day, or a Moldovan celebrating National Language Day. August 31 here is the national holiday when Moldova switched over from the Cyrillic alphabet to the Latin alphabet. Besides an all day concert going down in Chisinau, I’m not sure what the Moldovans are doing to celebrate. I spent the day recuperating from the four previous days of feasting, celebrating, and being gluttonous. I’ll go over some highlights mai tirzui, or “more later” for you Romanian challenged folks. I first want to start of this blog wishing students everywhere good luck with your semesters. It feels really strange for me not to be gearing up for classes, doing last minute scheduling changes, and getting psyched for football season.

Life here is going, for the most part, well. I have settled in nicely with my new host family. I thought it was going to be a difficult adjustment going from my PST host family with lots of kids around, to it simply being my new host mom and sister in Telenesti, but there is always extended family coming over and lots of surprise, at least for me, parties that my h. mom throws. The food here is pretty good, nothing fancy, lots of salami, potatoes, soup, bread, cheese, and cabbage, but I’m not hard to please and I’m sticking to my guns that I’ll try anything once (The PC medical office would probably cringe to hear me say that, sorry Illiana). Work has been a tad stagnant lately, and since my partner is having back problems I have been opening and closing the office. Remember the guy that came in a week or two ago that wanted to immigrate to Canada? Well he’s back, except this time he doesn’t have any forms for me to fill out. He is about 65 years old, skinny as a rail, and has a big, dark mustache, and the most important detail as of lately, shirtless. This dude is priceless. He comes barging up into my office wearing the biggest grin on his face and trousers up to his belly button, and shakes my hand. Before I could even ask why he wasn't wearing a shirt, he goes off into this whole spiel about how the floor that our offices are located on is a furnace in the summer, and a refrigerator in the winter. I’ve gotten used to his lack of attire now seeing that he has done this three or four times, and am becoming immune to the fact that I have a shirtless old man chilling in the chair pulled up to my desk either talking to me, or if I’m busy, reading a pamphlet about agriculture or economic development. Truth be told, I’m a little jealous, because it can get a little hot up there. Soon enough though I’ll be freezing my you-know-whats off dreaming of the warm, sunny days of August.

Tomorrow I go back to work, but like I said I have had the previous four days off, as well as today, so a nice five day stretch without seeing my scrawny-shirtless friend at the office (Picture the naked guy in the movie Waking Ned Divine, now put a black mustache on him, BINGO), anyways I’ll move off him and recount my holidays. Thursday was Moldova’s Independence Day. I knew that they gained their independence from the USSR in 1991, but whenever you have a limited vocabulary in a foreign language you take what you can get, so I asked multiple people about the holiday. I was pretty shocked that some gave me the wrong years- 1990, 1992, and one guy even told me they were celebrating their independence from Germany in 1945. Riiiggghhhtttt. There wasn’t much going on that day in the village, my host mother told me that there was a celebration in the center at 10am, and I made it down there for 10:20, which should have been either right on time here, or still early. Either the celebration never happened, or by an act of God it had occurred on time because I didn’t see any celebration, but I’m putting my money on the former because 20 minutes seems like a really short time to celebrate Independence Day.

Friday was, from what I gather, the closest thing to the birthday of the village. I knew we were going to be going down to the center for a concert that started at 9pm (in reality it was kicked off at 10:30). I was trying to get a nap in so I would be well rested for the festivities when my host mom knocked on my bedroom door around 2:30 and asked if she could put a table in my room. I thought she was just rearranging, nothing new because she has been cleaning and rearranging like a madwoman for days now (In retrospect I should have picked up on this foreshadowing because what does it mean when people get their houses clean as whistle?…Company). No sooner than she had deposited a table in my bedroom, I was seated at it with 15 guests staring at me probably wondering why I looked like I had just rolled out of bed. You know how your brain doesn’t function immediately after a nice slumber? I was doing my best at small talk, but the words just weren’t coming to me. It was a pretty awkward situation. But after seven and a half hours of eating and drinking, I was back to fine form. Actually we all were, you should have seen us all trying to make our way down to the center for the concert, it was a train wreck. The concert was held in front of my office building, and before the show got kicked off we went inside because my h. mom had to use the internet. The next thing I know, eight girls ranging in ages from 16 to 25 came barging in the office and start changing clothes. It was like Christmas came early, but before I could appreciate my surroundings, two guys came in and started talking to me about the girls and how they were the bands that were performing tonight. My American status definitely scored some celebrity points, and I was able to take in a lot of the concert backstage with the performers, mayor, and other VIPs-yeah, that’s how I roll. After the concert ended somewhere between 12 and 1, the girls wanted to know what I thought, if they would do well in America, if I wanted to go out and celebrate with them, etc. The 16 year olds, god this sounds awful, were really hott, but it weirded me out that their entire concert was a striptease and I’m sure many guys that night went to sleep with really impure, improper, and illegal thoughts conjured up from the temptresses tweens. I’m not sure mainstream America is quite ready for them. Give it two years and they’ll be breaking the hearts of every pimple-faced American boy.

This is a disclaimer for my mother. I know you internalize my struggles here, and I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your willingness to hear out my problems, and try to be there for me. However, I know that you can get worked up over some of the events and emotions going on with me right now, so you can either skip to the paragraph below this one, or you can read on, just understand that I’m having the time of my life right now, no matter all the ups and downs that come along with it. With that being said, I took a day trip to visit friends in the 2nd largest city in Moldova, Balti. I somehow managed to make it out of bed for 7 the morning after the concert and on a bus 30 minutes later for the hour ride north. It was really nice getting to see friends and we ran into several other PCVs. Balti is a really nice city, except they only speak Russian there so it was fun making my friend Dave order for me at restaurants (although slightly emasculating, but I was really impressed with his Russian skills). I ended up taking an “illegal” bus back at the end of the day. These are the vans that are parked kind of close to the bus station that are direct routes straight to Chisinau, and are considered illegal because they aren’t state owned and don’t pay the $5 entrance fee to get into the bus station. I’m pretty sure the mafia has this market cornered. I asked the driver how much it was to go only half the distance to Chisinau, dropping me off on the side of the highway in a village about ten miles from mine, since my village isn’t on the route. I could have sworn he said 15 lei, and considering that it cost me 20 lei to go from my village to Balti, I thought that was fair. Half way into the trip, one of the mafia minions started collecting the money, and that’s when I started running into problems. Instead of it being 15 lei, it was really 50 lei, and of course, I only had 30 some odd lei on me. Man! I hate getting yelled at in Russian and was pretty sure they were going to kick me out of the van right then and there in the middle of nowhere. But for some reason, the gods smiled down upon me and they didn’t kick me out, I was just yelled at in a strange language and given dirty looks for the rest of the trip. Once we got to the village I needed to get dropped off at, the crony collecting the money let me out, gave me some lovely parting obscenities detailing how I need to go back to America, and planted a fist firmly in my stomach. It’s a strange feeling to be doubled over trying to catch your breath on the side of a highway, in the pitch dark, nowhere close to your own village, with no money, in a foreign country. I had the choice of either walking back and arriving home around 5am, or try hitching it back with no money. The way it works here is that you give the same amount of money to the driver willing to pick you up, as you would have spent for a bus or rutiera. So to keep a short story short, I found a ride after only thirty minutes of waiting, and luckily the guys were very hospitable and said they wouldn’t have accepted money even if I had any.

Yesterday I thought I would be lounging and was really appreciating the fact that I was in bed at 10:30 in the morning drinking a cup of coffee and reading a book. That didn’t last long though and after an hour or so my phone started ringing and I was off to meet up with another PCV that lives in a village not too far from mine who was in my village for the day. I had never met her and she has been here for 18 months so I wanted to see what she thought about our raoin. The next thing I know I’m sitting at an internet café with the PCV and two Moldovans helping to plan a leadership conference for high schoolers this up coming Saturday. I’m not opposed to helping out because I really want to, I’m just afraid that me leading one of the groups will take away from the kids’ experience because I don’t feel fully capable with the language yet. We’ll see how it goes….

After that I made it home, and again wasn’t informed that we were having guests, and that we would be making a party in my room. I don't really mind that we have it thre, and it makes sense because I have by far the biggest room in the apartment. I just wish I had some kind of warning for these events. All in all it was a lot of fun, and it was kept really informal. One of the lady consultants that I work with at ACSA came over with her 20-year-old daughter, and we ate, drank, and talked for a good couple of hours. The lady I work with and my h. mom got pretty giggly by the end, and some of the stuff they were saying was cracking me up (If anyone wants to marry at 55 year old Moldovan woman, who has the heart of gold, and the teeth to match it, let me know). It was also nice to get to interact with a Moldovan around my age, and even though she was making fun of me most of the time about, well, everything, it was still nice to get to hang out.

September is almost upon us, and today is the first day I sought out a pair of sweatpants to wear around the crib. Its nicely chilly at night and in the morning, but I know that with this weather also comes rain. I’ve been dreading the winter, but I’ve always liked fall in the past so we’ll see what’s it’s like here. I’ll leave you all with a quote that I like about this time of the year, and it does a nice job describing my village.

“The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many.”
-Oliver Wendell Holmes

Layed up in bed with my first Moldovan cold

Yours truly infront of the Catholic church in Orhei.
We had to walk around the church a couple times listening the priests say prayers.
Leading the group.

This chair signified something important in a museum, I just don't remember what, sorry.

My kitchen.
Main road in Ialoveni.
Wine factory in Ialoveni. You could fill up a one liter bottle full of wine for a dollar.
My view from my window. I live in a building that looks exactly the same.

Salut. I'm starting this blog off at the office this morning. Yes, I know I should be working and not surfing the web, but if you consider what I actually do here on a daily basis, this is being productive. This is only due to the fact that I am still very new to my community, and I still haven't gotten the language under my belt. My first week of work I only had to go into the office for three days. The first day I sat at my desk, studied limba romana, and read a book. The next day my ag extension office put on a seminar for apiculture. It was a great seminar, set in amongst apple trees and boxes of bees. We had a feast for lunch, and took the afternoon off. The next two days my partner went to Chisinau so I bummed around my village, studied, and read. Then Friday comes, I'm at work for 30 minutes and my partner tells me he has to go to the hospital and I need to lock up at 5. To tell you the truth, I was fine flying solo, except when the phone would ring. I don't think I got one message right. My partner should have known that was inevitable. That was also the day I ran an immigration office for Quebec. I might have mentioned that in my earlier blog post.

This week has shown a little more promise. Monday we were running spreadsheets in Excel and I was told to brace myself, that it was going to be a long couple of days. I finished them all in four hours. My partner was so stunned that he gave me the biggest gold-toothed smile and a bear hug. After that we celebrated over a beer at lunch, and I was then informed that since all the work was complete I didn't have to go to work the next day. Usually this would be music to my ears, but if you would understand the boredom that off days bring, you would want to be at work yourself.

This sounds all gravy in black and white. But really, since moving into my new site, my head has been all out of sorts. It is slowly getting better though. I attribute this to the fact that I only understand about 10% of, well, everything. It is a very humbling experience, and it leaves no room for ego. So now I'm back to peaks and valleys. I've extended my running a considerable amount, and am now hitting the trails for about an hour and a half every other day. These are the days I look forward to the most. The runs help me put things into perspective; two years has the perception of a long time, but one step at a time, one day at a time, perseverance is inevitable.

These runs also help me sleep at night, because man, do I have a dog problem. Sorry Mom and Dad, but I'm going to have to call you out on this one. You think you have a problem getting a goodnights rest when your neighbor's dog likes to bark all night? Multiply that noise by 50 more dogs, barking, howling, snarling, and fighting, all night, every night. Stray dogs are everywhere here. A friend of mine and I were going to take pictures of them and start a fauxblog called "Adopt a Dog". However, I can't bring myself to do this anymore, because I can't stand the sight of dogs. They really need to implement an extermination program here. I'm sure PETA is ready to crucify me for that comment, and in anticipation of that I say "F---You. Come spend one night here and you will empathize with me." I'm all about saving the whales and believe in animal rights, but when I can't walk down the street without at least one dog sizing me up and trying to bite me, that's when I say there is a problem. It's odd, though, that the most vicious of them all are the little dogs (I've always been a fan of big dogs, having owned several of them, I know they're rowdy and energetic, but what's the point of a little one? Just get a cat, much quieter). I've got a feeling that one of these little yippers will be getting a booting if they don't watch out.

Saturday I went with journalist friend to a town an hour away for the one year birthday of a Catholic church. It was a beautiful service that lasted for two hours and was given in Romanian, Russian, and Italian. I was forced into communion, my first time for a Catholic mass. A) I'm not Catholic and B) I'm not even baptized. I don't have a disposition with the fact that I let a spongy, tasteless wafer dissolve on my tongue, because in my eyes it was just another experience, but I realize that this is probably taboo for Catholics; Get over it, I feel that dedicating two years of my life towards volunteering and helping others off-sets the opinion that I'm going to hell.

After the service we had a feast next door, and I had to privilege of dinning with the holy men- the head of the Moldovan Catholic Church, two priests from Italy, an Orthodox priest, and two Moldovan priests. Let me just say, these guys know how to drink. After four courses of food, many shots of wine, whiskey, and cognac, I was feeling good (I abstained from a good amount of the debauchery rounds too), and ready for a nap. In true Moldovan fashion, I dug deep, tapped into energy reserves, and hitchhiked home.

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Further evidence that I am no longer in America:
1) Today I woke up with a sore throat. It happens right? Well my host mother is a social worker/nurse, and her medical opinion is that I'm sick because I drink cold water. I told her I didn't think that was the reason, because I've been drinking cold water my entire life, most of the time with ice. She responded "I don't drink cold water and I don't have a sore throat." Statements like that remind me of the LSAT....

2) At restaurants and in every ones houses there is a bowl of salt, no salt shaker. When you want salt, you lick your fork, dip it in the bowl, and then eat your food. I don't eat salt here. Also, at restaurants there is usually a half eaten hot pepper in the bowl of salt. If you want to soak it in your soup, by all means, go ahead. If you want to take a bite out of it, that works as well, they simply put it back in the bowl of salt, leaving it for the next customers. I don't eat the peppers here either.

3) I told my partner I need a tutor, he told me I need a woman. After lunch he paraded me around town trying to find me one. I told my host mother about this, and she replied that he is crazy and I shouldn't listen to his nonsense, but I do need to start thinking about marriage, to either a Moldovan or American. Do you see what kind of pressure I'm under?

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As I've mentioned, I run a good bit here. I don't know what I'm going to do during the winter since there will be several feet of snow and mud on the ground. But for now I am the village idiot, and get the Moldovan stink eye every time I pass someone running. My host mother finally asked me why I waste my time running. Knowing how much the Moldovans appreciate competition, I told her I am training for a race, and that seemed to satisfy her. So with that I committed myself to running the Athens Classic Marathon in Greece next November. If any of you want to join in on the fun by running or simply being there for moral support that would be fantastic.

I see hurricanes are starting to brew in the Caribbean. My door is open to any evacuees, I assure you I can show you a good time here. La revedere!

Hot dogs and congealed chicken feet

There is construction on the other room in my apartment, so this is what I moved into. Getting ready to dance.
My former host sister.
The building I now work at.
Random path I decided to start my hike on yesterday.

August 9, 2009
What do you get when you add eight weeks of stress, awkwardness, wine, sweat, sour cream, Romanian, and lots of fruit together?....A Peace Corps Volunteer. Yes, that’s right, no longer am I mere trainee. At 10:30 this morning, I took the official United States governmental oath to defend my country against all foreign and domestic threats and promised to uphold the Constitution to the best of my abilities, or something along those lines. If only I had a metal coat hanger, I would discombobulate it into a PC logo, and brand it on my right butt check. Just kidding, the medical officer here would freak out if she found out, so no worries.

This past week has been an absolute whirlwind. It seemed like the last week in classes I actually digressed in my language abilities, which sad to say, doesn’t call for one happy camper when you have to sit through hours of lecture everyday. At least I wasn’t in the sinking ship alone. A lot of my other comrades felt like they were in the same situation. But, it’s all over now and I can say that I am stronger because of it.

I’ll miss PST, well no, scratch that I’m lying; I’ll miss parts of PST. I’ll miss getting to see friends everyday, the beautiful village of Milestii Mici, the proximity to the capital, my host family and neighbors, and my professors. I’ll especially miss the random health advisories about the dangers of drinking water from one of my teachers. Anytime I would pour a glass of water this lady would tell me to wait a little bit, that I shouldn’t drink water now, it’s not good for my health. Albeit, “It’s to early in the morning”, “It’s too hot outside, you don’t want to sweat too much”, “You just ate cucumbers, wait a little while to drink water”, “My son plays outside in the sun, and if he drinks water when he comes inside he gets a headache”, and many, many more. I think Moldovans are just adverse to drinking water in general. For some reason I would even take heat from my host mother about this as well. “Neal, we’re about to drink champagne, its not good to drink water”, “Why do you want to drink water right now? It’s not good to drink water before bed” even though my five year old host sister sat there and drained, I kid you not, 3/4th of a quart of chefir- it’s similar to buttermilk, but chunky and they put salt in it, at 11 o’clock at night. I’m pretty sure this is a commonality in Moldova about water, because my new host mother even thinks I’m crazy for wanting to put water in the refrigerator, “You want cold water? Why? It will only make you sick”. Although it’s completely normal to try to get their American to drink wine at 7:45 in the morning before they move out. Nu e nimic, tot e bine, nu asa?

When I went on a site visit to my permanent site visit a month ago my host partner was out of town. Hmm, let me rewind a bit to explain what a host partner is first. Peace Corps wants all our projects here to be sustainable, because, our goal is to help develop human capital. To do this, we all (Health, English, ARBD, and COD) get host partners that are host country nations that work side by side with us in our respective NGO’s, schools, offices, etc. I think a lot a people have a misconception about developing countries…I am not here to come in a point out all the problems I see with their village and/or country, that would never be sustainable. My job is to work with my host partner, first and foremost learn from him/her and then we go about collaborating with the community about what their needs and wants are.
Getting back on track, I met my partner, and man is he a cool guy, very friendly and warm. He seems like a real shaker and a mover, because we got to discussing the projects he has underway, what they’ve done in the past, and why he requested to have a volunteer. From the sound of it, we have the potential to do great things in the way of agriculture projects and economic development.

The pictures I am posting are from our last day in our village. The ARBDs and the CODs get sworn in two weeks early and we had to put together presentations, learn songs and dances, and one person from each group had to give a goodbye/thank you speech to our host families. I worked on a presentation with my friend Vince about the problems Milestii Mici has with foxes. Many a night, my host family would chase a rogue fox, trying to steal one of our ducks, chickens, or rabbits, out of our yard. We actually put together a really nice presentation on all the different prevention methods that people use around the world, but somehow in the delivery of the speech we screwed it up and all the Moldovans thought we were talking about how the poor foxes are being discriminated. I was the one from ARBD to give the speech in Romanian thanking the host families for their hospitality and generosity. I volunteered for the position, because for some reason I love the thrill and nervousness I get when public speaking. I understand why it’s a fear for people to get in-front of a crowd and deliver a speech, but I’ve found that if you embrace that fear, it can be quite a rush. I know, I’m weird, but the challenge of preparing and presenting a speech in a foreign language was too much to pass up.

August 13, 2009
I could have sworn I posted the earlier entry until I got an email today saying that I haven’t updated my blog in awhile. My bad. I don’t want to say I’ve been too busy to post, because that would be a lie. I’ve just not gotten around to it lately is more of an acceptable excuse. I attribute this to the fact that the initial culture shock is wearing off, good sign. However I do have some good updates of what has been going on.

I’ve been at my new site now for a good part of a week, and I’ve only gone to work for a day and a half. Monday was the first day at the office. Most of the day I spent reading a book and working on Romanian, and throughout the day people would wander in, talk with my host partner, and then ask me if I knew the volunteer that was here last year, named Danny or Donny, which they pronounce Joy, don’t ask. That was news to me, I had been told the last volunteer at my site had been an English teacher back in the ‘90s. Now, if my Romanian servers correct, this cat Donny couldn’t handle the Moldovan nectar and would apparently start sippin’ grandpa’s cough syrup before he even made it to lunch, and was kicked out of the PC. What blows my mind is that you have got to be hitting the bottle pretty f-ing hard if Moldovans start thinking you have a drinking problem. Because while I was getting told this story, and warned not to drink very much, my host partner was serving us beer, at work, at 11:30 in the morning. Not only that, but the next day my firm conducted a seminar about apiculture. After the seminar ended, me and six Moldovan farmers went to one of their houses and proceeded to eat probably five chickens, three loafs of bread, a school of fish, half a cow, two watermelons, and drained it all down with about 5 bottles of wine. Needless to say, everyone took the afternoon off. I took a nice four-hour power nap and still had to go to bed at 10 that night.

For the past two days my host partner has been in Chisinau and I haven’t had to work. Yesterday I read a book and a half, watched a movie, took a three-hour walk through the town and surrounding areas, caught a nap, knocked out some studying, and then had dinner. After dinner my host mother showed me food in the fridge, told me it was my breakfast, and told me to lock the door behind her. Okkkaayy, goodnight? I was just about to settle into my book around 10pm when I get a call on my cell phone from my host mother. “Nehlo, vini aklfaklfaskfjdsakafkjasbfasf”, I didn’t understand one word she said. “Bine, la revedere!”- Ok, goodbye! was my response. Thinking that did the trick, I was disrupted 15 minutes later by the doorbell ringing. I threw on some workout shorts and a shirt, and was greeted by the fattest, sweatiest man (shirtless, wearing tiny shorts that disappeared under his bulging stomach) I think I’ve ever encountered in my life. He said something about my host mom, said that his car was downstairs, so I figured what the hell, let’s see where this goes.

Thirty minutes later, after driving through the dark, past any sign of civilization, we pulled off the road to a lone house and was greeted by strangers I’ve never met before. Thoroughly confused, I introduced myself, came inside, and was relieved to see my host mother and sister at the table. It was a terribly strange evening, the father of the family left when I got there and was headed to Moscow, and for the rest of the night the family and I kicked it in one of the bedrooms eating fruit and listening to Moldovan pop music. Around 11:30 they asked if I was tired and then showed me a bed. All right, the night was already weird enough, but since I didn’t have a choice, or the vocabulary, I went along with it. I got up at 7 knowing that my host mom had to be at work by 8, but was sent back to bed. So I got up again at 9:30, ate a breakfast of bread, hot dogs, and congealed chicken feet, and was told that my host mom and sister left an hour before. Not knowing what they had in store for me, I was doing a fine job at asking a bunch of worthless questions and doing my best to understand what they were telling me. This story is really starting to ramble, and the stool I’m sitting on sucks, so I’m going to skip ahead a couple hours. I was asked to look over a loan application, I told them I couldn’t read it, and once I was deemed useless the older brother and myself set off back to my town.

There isn’t a bus that far out, so we had to hitchhike. An old man, with a young woman and her two kids picked us up after ten minutes on the side of the road. Did that old man know how to feed some speed to his ride. At one point, we were doing 70 mph down a dirt road, and doing a great job scaring the shit out of the American in the car. We started swerving all over the road, and then came to a fairly abrupt halt, great, flat tire in the middle of nowhere. We get out to see what happened, and I made it out of the car just in time to see one of the back tires rolling down the hill. It was quite a sight to see this old man sprinting down a hill, leaving his, I presume, daughter and grandkids in his beat up Russian clunker of a car, with three wheels. The guy I was with simply turned, and said “Ha diem” Let’s go.