Moving up in the world

This is going to be a quick blog update because it is an absolute pristine day and the rooster calls are beckoning me to join them outdoors. If any of you readers actually worry about my well-being here, then fret not. I’m pretty sure life doesn’t get much better than this.

Ever since the middle of winter I have been feeling great. Lately, I’ve been feeling more than great. I am experiencing my village and Moldova in new ways, and every time I think this as good as it gets, Moldova goes off and proves me wrong. Do you know that feeling of falling in love? Everything is new to you at first, your stomach is in knots, you walk around with a smile plastered on your face, and people tell you that you are acting exceptionally chipper? That’s me and my lady-love- Moldova. I don’t want to go overboard with this mushy nonsense, because just like a woman, she can really get me riled up and leave me sulking for several days. However, I haven’t had a bad DAY in a long time. Whenever something does go askew, I’ve found I’m quick to get wound up, but quick to cool down, and I can live with that.

I attribute my mood to many factors. First and foremost, the weather is absolutely beautiful. Today is 70 degrees (~22 C), everything is blooming from tulips to the cherry trees that line all the streets. I was talking to the “gardener” at the District Council today and we were talking about lawnmowers, which they most certainly do not have here. He asked if I could get him one, and I laughed and said we could talk about it later. It might make his job a lot easier, but if you could see the front of the building with purple and yellow wild flowers blooming everywhere, with nice beds of red and yellow tulips stretching towards the sun in every direction, it simply wouldn’t be the same with a nicely manicured bed of grass.

Secondly, my Romanian is really starting to kick in. I’m no where near where I want to be, but it’s like a light clicked the other day and I find myself having much more meaningful conversations without getting strange looks when I say certain things. The grammar in this language is completely foreign to English, and I have really come to appreciate its complexity, which you learn after awhile, it is logically consistent which has attributed to my “A-Ha!” moment. I was at my tutor’s house on Wednesday, and she told me me how much improvement I’ve made since beginning my lessons. Let me tell you, I walked out of there feeling like the king of the world. I got on a mini-bus to come back to my village and had a strange, but great conversation with a little old baba who was telling me all about her cow. I was having a peak Romanian moment, so I decided to bump around the village, and ultimately wound up getting a haircut. Sure enough the sky came falling down shortly after. The girl cutting my hair was absolutely drop dead gorgeous. It was one of those instances where I would have had trouble speaking in English, much less Romanian. I had gotten a haircut from her when I first moved to my village, and like a baby lamb I was timid, nervous, and barely said a word much less I screw up and look like a jackass. Well I know I’ve grown here in Moldova, because it now feels normal to blunder my way through conversations and hope people understand what I’m saying. When I sat down she said”So I hear you speak better now”. That’s all it took, I told myself that I had to make a showing for myself this time, and proceeded to try and make routine small-talk. What’s your name, where are you from, how long have you worked here, will you marry me, what do you do for fun, you know the usual. It was going pretty well, the dialogue was going back and forth, and then I started noticing subtleties of her splendor, and that’s what did me in. I simply couldn’t talk. It took me about five tries to spit out “Ce te gîndești?” what do you think, when she asked how short she should cut my hair. The straw that broke the camels back was when I asked her if she had a wife, instead of husband. The other people in the parlor were ease dropping and once I said that, everyone started laughing, including her. Oiff, doamne ferește. The worst part was that I didn’t get a response from that. Tail tucked in between my legs, I thanked her, paid, and went home.

The story doesn’t stop there, because I told my neighbor, a sweet little old grandma about this incident, and she told me not to worry about it and that she was going to fix it. With that she grabbed my hand, pulled me down the path to the center of town, and was determined that I ask her to take a walk with me in the park (the village equivalent of a date). I wouldn’t classify myself as a shy person, but asking a girl out with a little old lady moderating isn’t my style. Someone in the Big House must have felt bad for me, because ten feet from the door to the salon I ran into one of my partners. Never in my life have I been so happy to hear someone tell me that I need to come with them to finish work that was due that evening.

More big news, I am moving into my own place in an hour and a half! Four months of patiently waiting is finally paying off. I don’t know if I will have a dish, pot, or blanket to my name, but at least it will be a place to call my own. I told a couple PC friends that I was moving out this weekend, and automatically was told that they will be coming in to “lend me a hand”. I don’t know how much helping they will be doing since they are coming conveniently twenty-four hours after I move all my stuff, but I am looking forward to having friends come spend the weekend in my village. One of my PC friends coming is in the Russian language group, and it’s always interesting to see the locals reaction when you put them in the Romanian region of the country. I decided today that it wouldn’t be a party if we didn’t invite the locals, so I’ve got some of my Moldovan friends coming who really know the right things to say when you invite them to a party- “What kind of wine should I bring? You like them both right? No problem, I’ll bring both”.

Work is keeping me busy lately. Between seminars, village visits, and other projects, I have something going on everyday now. Lately, I have been working on a project that was introduced to me awhile back about composting. In the villages in Moldova, the majority of the people have animals, usually a cow, chickens, ducks, rabbits, pigs, and a dog. However, most people don’t use fertilizer or compost in their home gardens and in the fields. A Moldovan counterpart and I are trying to start a business where organic waste will be collected from the houses and brought to a demonstration plot to show the benefits of composting, and where fertilizer and compost can be sold at a reduced price. We are still in the beginning stages, but the project shows promise and I have grand plans to turn this into more than a demonstration plot, and will hopefully be able to get my hands on soil and water testing kits, and conduct on-going research in the area that will add to the educational component.

Fiți sanitoș! Paka paka.

"We live life forward, and understand it backwards"

The rolling hills of Moldova.

Too funny not to laugh.

V.I. Lenin. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov! ...What's he talking about Dude?

I just re-read my blog post from last week, and yikes. I apologize for the incessant droning. Maybe I needed some brînza with that whine. The next day life pulled a 180 on me and everything that I was complaining about fixed itself. My program manager called me in the morning and told me he had (somehow) spoken to the landlord and was meeting us at noon to check the place out. We had a great meeting, the apartment was clean, it has a really nice garden that I’m looking to overhaul upon moving in, and we have a contract for me to move in May 1^st. Maybe the best thing I found out is that it is coming with a laundry machine! I was getting used to the fact that I would be hand washing from here on out, and that thought doesn’t really bother me, but I’m not going to turn down a laundry machine. Although now that I think about it, the last time- the one and only time- I actually used a Moldovan washing machine I ended up shrinking half my clothes to midget size since all the buttons were in Russian. I wonder what my villagers will say about me when I’m walking around in a tight, formerly-white-but-now-is-pink shirt and acid wash jeans.

I’ve been quite busy lately, although I haven’t sat in my office for more than two hours over the last week or two. It’s planting time and I’ve been kicking it with the farmers in the fields learning how to plant beans, corn, onions, potatoes, and peas, while empirically learning that strawberry plants are not weeds and you most definitely will get yelled at if you try to uproot them. This is some backbreaking work, and I sometimes feel like a wimp compared to 70 year old babas that work like horses in the fields. The most amazing part- they don’t drink water, just wine. Gee-zuhs, I can’t keep up with that pace. When I sweat all the water out of my pores I decided to get a couple pulls off of grandpa’s homemade cough syrup. Bad idea. I was hunched over, panting, trying to comprehend Romanian and plant potatoes before I imperatively had to take a pauza and find the nearest water well. Peace Corps Medical staff recommends that we don’t drink this water, but at that time I felt the trade-off of spending a couple extra minutes on the john outweighed the dehydrated dizziness I was experiencing.

For my desk job, I recently was informed that I will be taking over the newly created electronic newsletter that my village is mandated to put out since we won a Democracy grant from the US Embassy. I have only seen this newsletter one time, and what it looks like is a weekly run-down of any current events in the community, grants that are available, and any other tid-bits deemed worthy enough to be sent to a select few that actually have email (although I teach weekly seminars to change that). This is going to suck up some hours out of my week since I’ll be scouring websites in only Romanian and Russian, and then producing a three-page report, in business-friendly Romanian. Truthfully, I wasn’t initially excited about this, but have now come to realize that I potentially have the influence to suede people to look at certain material (grants and programs I’m interested in) and hopefully get community backing for my projects.

This past weekend I went up to the border of Ukraine and Moldova to celebrate the birthday of a good friend of mine and to catch up with other volunteers. The PCVs house we stayed at reminded me a lot of camping. The gas didn’t work and we barbequed outside, no running water so we drank/washed dishes from the well outside, the outhouse was overflowing and it was better to find your own spot than sit in the torture box, and we all smelled to high heavens after three days of debauchery and camp fires. At times the weekend was a little blurry from rachui- distilled liquor made from beets, and a lot of sun. Some of the more specific memories were walking through a beautiful valley full of sheep, goats, lambs, cows, calfs, horses, and ducks; eating a raw goose egg out of a feces covered egg with Moldovansș and my utter incomprehension of the dialect they speak up there. Since it is close to Ukraine they speak Horholește, a Russian/Ukrainian mixture. Throw in some deep country Moldovanește and it calls for one hell of a time trying to piece together conversations.

I can truly say that I’m having the time of my life right now. The longer I stay in this country the more I learn to appreciate and understand not only the Moldovan cultural, but also my own as well. I read in a book onetime (although I can’t remember which one, go figure) that the best way for you to know your own culture is to live in another. This couldn’t truer. Va mulțumesc Moldova!

You can't win them all

I normally don’t like to blog while upset, but it’s been awhile since I’ve last updated and I need a few minutes to put my life in perspective aka vent. Things have been going fairly decent lately. Decent because we have been having some gorgeous weather, but other than that I feel like my life is falling apart.

Numero uno, I somehow can’t seem to shake a cold. I rarely get sick now, and when I get put out of commission for multiple days and miss events that I’ve been looking forward to for a while now, well, it sucks. On Sunday I went out in the countryside to kill some time, take in the scenery, and simply enjoy the outdoors. I was feeling okay enough, the weather was fantastic, and my hike somehow turned into an onion-planting fiesta with a couple locals. Pretty BA. I really enjoy getting out in the fields and getting my hands dirty, I just wish I could do it more often. The shitty part is that I woke up the next day- Memorial Easter where everyone goes to the cemetery to honor their deceased loved ones- feeling rotten and stayed at home all day. I don’t like missing national holidays, especially ones that are so different from our own.

The same day I missed out gettin’ down in the cemetery I found out the marathon I’ve been planning on running in October, the 2,500 anniversary race of the marathon IN ATHENS, is already booked up and I won’t be participating. UUUgggggghhhh. Frustrating. I was really looking forward to that. I know I could do another one around the same time, but all the ones I found are in Western Europe, and well, gross (kidding), no thank you. I’ll stick to Eastern Europe while I have the chance.

Lastly, I’ve been trying to move into another place for about four or five months now. I really wanted to move into a house, but my partners have deemed me incapable of making my own food, much less looking after a house. They told me they knew of a couple that would rent me an apartment. Great, that was easy enough. That was back in January. After waiting a month to simply see the place (it’s big and shitty, but I’ll only be there for a year so I really could care less what it looks like) they told me I could move in March 15^th. I gave notice to my host family, packed up my stuff, and was ready to move, except when time came, I found out I was going to be moving into the landlord’s apartment because there is someone living in the apartment. I wasn’t very keen on this idea, and would rather kick it with a family that I’ve gotten comfortable around for the last ten months instead of diving back into the “is it cool if I walk around in my drawers” stage with a new family. For the past month I’ve been hounding everyone when I can move in, and they finally gave me the date of April 15^th. The apartment would be clean, a family wouldn’t be living there, and all I had to do was get Peace Corps to come check it out before I call it home. The 15^th is tomorrow, and I’ve been trying to get in touch with the landlords all week (These damn holidays are really messing work/life up). My program manager is asking me when he should take the time out of his busy schedule to come to my village to see the place, and I can’t even get in contact with the people. I decided I needed to take a more direct approach and go to their home today to clear things up (not to mention the fact that I heard from my partner that they were going to go up on my rent before I even moved into the place). I got there in the late afternoon and no one was home. I decided maybe, just maybe, the lady was at the apartment cleaning it and getting it ready for me to move in. That was probably a mistake, because once I walked over there and I saw that the family is STILL LIVING THERE, I really flipped out. I don’t know if it’s because I’m foreign, the language barrier, the cultural difference, or what, but there is clearly a miscommunication going on and it is really wearing my patience down; And I consider myself to be a patient person after going through a year of Peace Corps. I decided to throw the towel in at that moment and busted out the big dogs- I called my program manager. In the heat of the moment I’m pretty sure I said verbatim “I’m really sick and tired of all this nonsense going on between everyone in my community and have no idea what to do anymore”. I guess I could have been a tad more composed while talking to my boss.

Life could definitely be worse, and tomorrow is a new day. The older groups are starting to leave and it was bittersweet to see some good friends leave. I am really proud to have known these people and have the utmost respect for them after seeing the great work they’ve done here and for sticking it out the whole two years. If you guys are reading this then I’d like to say thank you for being there for us; it was truly a pleasure getting to know you all, and good luck on your journeys. I need a piece of fruit and a nap now.

Paște

Well, it’s official. Spring is here. Little green buds have been appearing on all the trees, flowers are starting to appear in the gardens, and the goats are back in the fields. I’m sitting on the third story of the Peace Corps’ balcony in Chisinau writing out this blog, and I’m about to let my hair down a little bit and take my shoes and my long sleever off. Weather this good always gets me in the mood to either go kayaking, throw a Frisbee, ride a bike, or go fishing. Sadly, I’m not able to do anything of those things right now- thank god for a vivid imagination and a good book though. It’s pretty quite here at Peace Corps, all the teachers are on Easter Break and are fleeing the country, and the rest of the volunteers are in their respective villages gearing up for Easter tomorrow. I should be in my village right now as well, except I haven’t been feeling very well these past few days and I’m trying to conveniently avoid the tradition of standing all night in an Orthodox church until six am when the festivities start.

By tradition, the Moldovans that are Eastern Orthodox (the majority) are following post right now. Post is roughly the equivalent of Catholic’s’ lent, except a tad bit more stringent. During this period I don’t think you are allowed to eat meat, diary, or animals products for the forty days (and really I think it’s 43 days since Lent starts on a Wednesday and Post starts that Monday), but I don’t think most people follow this tradition- at least my host family didn’t. However, for the past week we have completely cut out meat, butter, cheese, and eggs. I have been eating, and I kid you not, potatoes and beans three times a day. It’s pretty amusing at the dinner table now because my host sister detests beans, and she has been on a bread, jelly, and potato diet. Sounds delicious right? On Thursday night my host mom told me she was preparing my favorite dinner- baked potatoes and baked chicken- and it really got my hopes up. The last time she made this meal she forgot about the food and it was like gnawing on shoe leather, so the anticipation of a good meal was killing me. Once dinner was finally ready (around 10pm since she and my host sister have been going to the church every evening after work) I was sorely disappointed to find baked potatoes and, yes, once again, beans. For the record, I love beans, but it’s getting quite noxious in my room and a break from beans will be nice.

For the Easter holidays, like I’ve said, everyone goes to the church on Saturday night and stands for a ceremony lasting until the morning when food is spread out and the priest walks by dousing it with holy water. By tradition, this blessed food should be eaten over the next three days. Around six in the morning all the little trouble makers in the village go off and make a big bon fire. Somehow burning tires that are spun around to shoot flames in every direction are included in this celebration, but I’m going to have to see this to get the full story. Once the pyrotechnics have been distinguished, the feasting begins. All week long I’ve heard the bleating of dying lambs and pigs, so I’m assuming we will have our fair share of meat. It wouldn’t be a Moldovan holiday without mayonnaise salads and gallons upon gallons of house wine and cognac. I’m going to my partner’s house for this celebration, which is about 15 minutes down the road in another village, and I’m really hoping I make it back to my own bed tomorrow night. The odds aren’t in my favor.

Monday will be spent resting and recuperating, which hopefully means I will have the gumption to finish a follow-up report for the water grant that I just won this week. From all the other volunteers that have seen an Easter in Moldova, I won’t be working for the next two weeks, especially since the following Sunday is Paște bajinelor (Easter something or other). This is a lot like Dia de los muertos in the Latin culture, and every family goes to the cemetery to light candles and give gifts to their deceased relatives. They have permanent tables set up in the cemeteries here, and this is supposed to be an all day event. I have already made promises to visit to several families’ sites and taste their house wine and receive a gift (usually a towel, cup, or flowers). Allegedly my community got a previous volunteer pretty smashed at this event, and he wandered off and passed out in the park, and has forever been known as the “alcoholic American” that can’t hold his booze. The bar has been set.

One similarity between American Easter and Moldovan Easter is the presence of the Easter egg. Not surprisingly, eggs are an international symbol of springtime and the rebirth of the earth. However, Easter eggs in Moldova are traditionally painted red (although this tradition is fading) instead the plethora of pastel colors we use. I asked my tutor why this was and she smirked and told me this was reminiscence from the Soviet Union (she is quite anti-Communist). I don’t know if I buy that because someone else told me it is a symbol of the blood of Christ- a much more plausible answer- but who knows, if I see an Easter egg dyed red with the hammer and sickle painted on it, I’ll have my answer.

I’m going to go shower up, put on my game face, and power through these next couple of days. I just want you all to know that I am doing this in the name of Peace and Friendship, although my village-wide wrestling match is coming up soon and I plan on kicking ass and winning that ram. As for now, I hope everyone has a Paște fericit (happy Easter)! Peace.