Long Overdue

Just posin'

Dave sliding down the side of the mountain towards the castle.

One of the mountain dogs at the mountain cabana.

At the mountain cabana

Popping into the backyard of Vlad the Impaler

Old city center in Brasov

Good morning ladies and gents. I seem to be falling into the pattern of posting less frequently now, and before you go jumping down my throat seeing that this is probably the most riveting non-fiction you’ve ever read in your life, there is a logical explanation for this. First of all, the strange and awkward feelings I felt coming into Moldova is all but gone. I’m coming up on the one-year mark soon, and with the passing of the time come the feelings of normalcy and complacency. Not to fret, this is a good thing; it shows that my ability to integrate and adapt is getting better. No longer do I stop to gawk at the ladies wearing cabbage leaves on their heads in the market, now I know that this simply is a sign that she has fresh produce (most likely cabbage) to unload. As of late, I have also been quite busy with a number of things: Moving places, hiking the Carpathian Mountains in Romania, and work.

I can’t make this a long entry because I’ve got to go teach a seminar in an hour, but I’ll give you the highlights. Two weeks ago I moved out of my host family’s apartment into a place of my own. It’s on the other side of town, and instead of a four minute walk to work it’s about twenty-five, but it’s not too bad. Already I’ve been bombarded with crazy neighbors, packs of visiting Peace Corps volunteers, and friends from the village. For the most part I love the place. It’s got an awesome patio where I like to put a table to have dinner, but with that outdoor exposure it opens myself up to endless (and most of them pointless) conversations with the crazies around here. One of the neighborhood drunks now has taken to introducing himself everyday, then asking if I have five lei (About 30 cents) every time we see each other. Other than that I love it- it’s a huge apartment, I have three bedrooms, a “music room” where my deep freezer and piano reside, and a kitchen. I find myself spending the majority of my time in the kitchen now. It’s not that I love to cook; I simply forgot how long it takes to make three meals by hand from scratch everyday. For a year now I’ve been absolutely spoiled and pampered, and it’s a weird transition into having to pre-think what you will be eating later on in the day. Already I have baked pre-smoked salmon and had the smoke detector PC gave me go off two times. I’m starting to think salads, rice, and beans are the only way to go.

I took a trip to Romania last week. My close friends in the ARBD program and I took to the mountainside and decided to bushwhack our way through the Transylvania region. I say bushwhack because we had the tendency to loosely follow the marked trail and spent an entire day wandering aimlessly on some quite steep and rugged terrain. I can’t describe the astounding beauty of the Carpathians in the spring. All the trees are bursting with bright green, the mountains still have snow on the peaks, and all the fields and meadows are carpeted with yellow and white wild flowers. While on the mountain we stayed in mountain cabanas, which was like a hostel halfway up the mountain. After several grueling hours hiking up the mountain you reach small cabins, which they call cabanas, where you can pay about 3 dollars for a bed and a meal. We spent the night relaxing with the locals that ran the place drinking beer and playing dominos while listening to the Romanian version of Bob Dylan. On the last day of hiking, the trail literally dropped us off in the backyard of Vlad the Impaler’s castle. For the next two days we lounged around the town of Brasov to lick our wounds and recover from the most strenuous backpacking any of us had ever done. Brasov was nice, and we had some great food there that wasn’t your typical cabbage and potatoes from Moldova, but on the whole I was highly unimpressed and found the town a tad bit boring. If you are into eating and drinking, then it’s a gold mine, but once you have been accustomed to seeing breath-taking views at every mountain top clearing, sitting in a veranda sipping a cappuccino pondering where to eat for lunch just doesn’t cut it for me.

For three weeks now, the ACSA consultant who lives in the small village where we are doing the water project and I have been trying to meet up. On Saturday I thought I was going with one of my partners to the village to simply hand off the money to him so that the final stage of the pipeline can commence. However, early Saturday morning the president of the raion (the equivalent of a Governor) picked me up and took me to the village for a press conference. After he and the mayor spoke for 30-45 minutes, I was once again put on the spot and demanded to give a speech. I am usually no stranger to public speaking, and I don’t have a problem with it, except when I have been completely and utterly caught off guard and have been daydreaming for the past 40 minutes. To a roomful of maybe fifty people I managed to stammer out ”Thank you for letting me be here today, it was an honor to work on this project” blah blah blah, and that’s the pretty version. I made so many Romanian errors that the people were kind enough to clap for me at the end. It reminded me of the Special Olympics. The floor was then opened up for the villagers to ask questions about the project. What amazed me was their hesitance to see this project come to fruition. You would think that after 400 years of a village not having running water and battling health problems due to unsanitary drinking water that everyone would be enthusiastic. However, the villagers were reluctant because this is now another burden for them to pay for something that used to be free. Not to mention the fact that most of their concerns were about the legitimacy of the controller that will collect the money. It just amazed me that these people, living the epitome of poor village life, are petrified that now they will have to start paying for water, and even then they are worried that the collector will be corrupt and will steal the money and will cheat them. I was reminded of the book One Hundred Years of Solitude, hands down one of my favorite books, and after doing community development work in a developing nation it means so much more to me.

Paka for now.