An Educational Experience
Things I’ve learned since I’ve been here:
1) How chicken jello tastes: about as you’d imagine. Last Thursday I went out with some other new volunteers and a few veterans. Steph Pulas, my mentor, told us rookies that she has never had a problem with any Molodovan food item save one dish: basically, she described it as chicken and jello in some odd conglomeration. Well, as I learned on Sunday afternoon, no more description is needed. Picture cooked chicken together with some kind of gelatin mass. It looks a lot like it sounds - basically chicken on top of (and mixed in with) brown gelatin. On Sunday my host family had six other relatives for dinner to celebrate the feast of The Holy Trinity. Part of the feast was the aforementioned chicken gelatin. A family member started to scoop some onto my plate and I when I saw what he was doing I told I him I wanted "RJHX-RJHX" - a little bit. Two large spoonful’s later, I was done. Actually, it wasn’t too bad. The gelatin tasted like nothing really, and the chicken tasted like chicken. Once I was past the texture, it was fine to eat. My host family was impressed, actually: everyone stopped to watch me eat.
2) How to drink a lot of wine and a little cognac from 10:00 in the morning to 10:00 in the evening and not really feel the alcohol, as long as three steps are taken: 1) A lot of food is eaten while the drinking is happening, 2) One takes long breaks between stretches of drinking, and 3) One emphasizes the wine and goes easy on the cognac.
3) How dinner looks when it’s young. Baby chickens - new chicks - are really cute. My family here just received a new shipment of fifteen or so chicks in a box, and they are adorable. We feed them cornmeal and put a lightbulb in a jar and turn it on so they have something warm to cuddle up with at night. They’re so tiny . . . there is also one that I really like, the only one who doesn’t start to cry when I pick him up. Too bad they’re dinner soon.
4) How a large group of Moldovans, who are in various stages of drunkenness, love American guests. Also on Sunday was a large celebration, the "day of the town," as it is called. My group went there along with our teacher that evening, along with John and Clara (two Peace Corps volunteers who trained here five years ago and were back for a visit). Soon after we all arrived the mayor invited us to the front of the stage (this is at 11:30 in the evening, in the center of town, in front of a few hundred Moldovans ), where he invited each of us to say a few words in Russian. I just said "Ya lublou Ivansha": I love Ivansha. After we were presented the mayor gave out awards to people in the village in categories such as "Best Well," and "Best Yard." Good times. After we were presented we statyed and danced for a while, basically some people holding hands and walking around in a circle - if you are really lucky and your circle is big enough, couples will dance with each other while the circle is moving outside of them.
5) How to teach (at least, an intro). My biggest fear before I came was my ability to handle a classroom full of students - however, the Peace Corps has me and the other TEFL volunteers covered. We will spend about seventy hours over the next ten weeks learning how to teach English here.
6) How to be a fair-weather fan in another sport. USA soccer is killing me. I’m watching them play the Czech Republic as I write this and it’s getting depressing here. Hopefully their outcome will be more like 2002 (or even 1994) than the debacle in 1998. We need a miracle to advance past the first round.
7) How when your host family speaks half Russian and half Romanian, it’s tough to follow, especially when you don’t know enough of either language to realize fully what is being spoken.
8) How to have a great day. On Tuesday, June 13, the morning began with language training. It was about 4.5 hours, intense but not too bad, the perfect amount. The first half was a study of the vocabulary of the family - a nightmare. Did you know that in Russian, they have a different word for "brother-in-law" and "sister-in-law", depending on if the aforementioned "in-law" is the of husband or wife? Sounds confusing, huh? And the two words are not even close together, seemingly unrelated. The second half was about possession, possessive pronouns, and how they have to relate to gender. It was a hard lesson but just the right level of difficulty - not too bad. For lunch I went home and my host mother and I actually had a conversation, in Russian. Real information was spread about or families. It was great, actually - and the food was as good as the talk, with my mother making a dish that involved some beef stew poured over macaroni. I told her that it was great, that it was delicious, and the I love it - all in Russian. Then, in the afternoon, the other Russian speakers and I (as well as our teacher) went, per invitation, with the mayor of our village to pick and eat sweet cherries in an orchard near our school. Trust me, they taste as good as they sound. After an hour in the orchard, we went with the mayor and the local chief of police to an old resort, a place in the forest the Soviet’s built years ago to serve as a school for kids with TB (it’s closed now). We sat around, seven of us, drank a little vodka and beer, ate some food, and played cards, in a gazebo on the grounds of this old school in the picturesque forest. Jealous yet? And the day ended with my host mother and I studying Russian - me speaking the words and her correcting my pronunciation, while she also would ask what certain words were in English. Good times all around.
Things I will soon learn:
1) How to slaughter a pig. That’s right - I’m excited about this development. My teacher came over with John and Clara on Sunday evening to pick me up for an event, but they had to sit down for some food before my host mother allowed them to leave. While here, my host father informed me (through the teacher) that he will slaughter a pig some time this weekend with my host brother and wanted to know if I wanted to help. Yes I do. I’ll keep you posted on the developments of this - maybe I’ll take some pictures for you to see. But I can’t wait.
2) How to carve a whole chicken. And I mean whole chicken, innards still intact. My host mother had just taken the head off one the other day when I (through her patience and the help of a dictionary) asked her if she wanted help. It was late at night so she said ‘no,’ and my language skills are such that I wasn’t sure how tell her that I really want to know how she does it. However, I had my teacher tell here that I really love to cook and want to learn new techniques and for my host mother to ask me for help with anything, even just slicing. I’ve seen a chicken sliced up into six parts before, but I’ve never seen that and everything taken out too. I’m excited about this also, but not as excited as I am about the pig slaughter.
3)How to conjugate verbs. Yesterday my teacher gave me the priceless 501 Russian Verbs book, compete with full conjugations of every one. Now my vocabulary and conversational skills can finally grow, and my teacher told me and the others that by the end of this week we should getting more and more skills to actually hold conversations. That will be huge.
4) How the Romans in Moldova once lived. I wrote earlier that my training village is near a town called Orhei - well, a few kilometers from here is a place called Old Orhei, originally built (if you can believe it) by the Romans over 2000 years ago. Today, it is a tourist hub, as there are many remnants of the Romans, including parts of bathhouses and several caves where they used to live. My teacher told us that sometime soon we can go on a tour there, which should be great. In fact, when she told us about these ruins it made something clear to me - about once a day I see a large bus full of people driving down the (only) main road here. I always wondered where they are going to - now I know, as they are headed to and from the aforementioned Roman ruins.
5) How the cost of gas impacts people in poorer nations. Gas here is about 13 lei per liter, equaling about 3.80$ per gallon. You can imagine the impact for a people whose average income is around 100 dollars a month. That would be like a person in America who makes 1,500 a month (after taxes) paying 47 dollars for a gallon of gas. Think that would curb consumption? In fact, there is even once Peace Corps farm here where they are no longer using six hectares of land because they can’t afford the gas it would take to cultivate it. And this is from a place which, a year or two ago, was expanding so fast that was negotiation with neighbors to see if they would ‘borrow’ land. Now, they actually lose money if they use the land.
1) How chicken jello tastes: about as you’d imagine. Last Thursday I went out with some other new volunteers and a few veterans. Steph Pulas, my mentor, told us rookies that she has never had a problem with any Molodovan food item save one dish: basically, she described it as chicken and jello in some odd conglomeration. Well, as I learned on Sunday afternoon, no more description is needed. Picture cooked chicken together with some kind of gelatin mass. It looks a lot like it sounds - basically chicken on top of (and mixed in with) brown gelatin. On Sunday my host family had six other relatives for dinner to celebrate the feast of The Holy Trinity. Part of the feast was the aforementioned chicken gelatin. A family member started to scoop some onto my plate and I when I saw what he was doing I told I him I wanted "RJHX-RJHX" - a little bit. Two large spoonful’s later, I was done. Actually, it wasn’t too bad. The gelatin tasted like nothing really, and the chicken tasted like chicken. Once I was past the texture, it was fine to eat. My host family was impressed, actually: everyone stopped to watch me eat.
2) How to drink a lot of wine and a little cognac from 10:00 in the morning to 10:00 in the evening and not really feel the alcohol, as long as three steps are taken: 1) A lot of food is eaten while the drinking is happening, 2) One takes long breaks between stretches of drinking, and 3) One emphasizes the wine and goes easy on the cognac.
3) How dinner looks when it’s young. Baby chickens - new chicks - are really cute. My family here just received a new shipment of fifteen or so chicks in a box, and they are adorable. We feed them cornmeal and put a lightbulb in a jar and turn it on so they have something warm to cuddle up with at night. They’re so tiny . . . there is also one that I really like, the only one who doesn’t start to cry when I pick him up. Too bad they’re dinner soon.
4) How a large group of Moldovans, who are in various stages of drunkenness, love American guests. Also on Sunday was a large celebration, the "day of the town," as it is called. My group went there along with our teacher that evening, along with John and Clara (two Peace Corps volunteers who trained here five years ago and were back for a visit). Soon after we all arrived the mayor invited us to the front of the stage (this is at 11:30 in the evening, in the center of town, in front of a few hundred Moldovans ), where he invited each of us to say a few words in Russian. I just said "Ya lublou Ivansha": I love Ivansha. After we were presented the mayor gave out awards to people in the village in categories such as "Best Well," and "Best Yard." Good times. After we were presented we statyed and danced for a while, basically some people holding hands and walking around in a circle - if you are really lucky and your circle is big enough, couples will dance with each other while the circle is moving outside of them.
5) How to teach (at least, an intro). My biggest fear before I came was my ability to handle a classroom full of students - however, the Peace Corps has me and the other TEFL volunteers covered. We will spend about seventy hours over the next ten weeks learning how to teach English here.
6) How to be a fair-weather fan in another sport. USA soccer is killing me. I’m watching them play the Czech Republic as I write this and it’s getting depressing here. Hopefully their outcome will be more like 2002 (or even 1994) than the debacle in 1998. We need a miracle to advance past the first round.
7) How when your host family speaks half Russian and half Romanian, it’s tough to follow, especially when you don’t know enough of either language to realize fully what is being spoken.
8) How to have a great day. On Tuesday, June 13, the morning began with language training. It was about 4.5 hours, intense but not too bad, the perfect amount. The first half was a study of the vocabulary of the family - a nightmare. Did you know that in Russian, they have a different word for "brother-in-law" and "sister-in-law", depending on if the aforementioned "in-law" is the of husband or wife? Sounds confusing, huh? And the two words are not even close together, seemingly unrelated. The second half was about possession, possessive pronouns, and how they have to relate to gender. It was a hard lesson but just the right level of difficulty - not too bad. For lunch I went home and my host mother and I actually had a conversation, in Russian. Real information was spread about or families. It was great, actually - and the food was as good as the talk, with my mother making a dish that involved some beef stew poured over macaroni. I told her that it was great, that it was delicious, and the I love it - all in Russian. Then, in the afternoon, the other Russian speakers and I (as well as our teacher) went, per invitation, with the mayor of our village to pick and eat sweet cherries in an orchard near our school. Trust me, they taste as good as they sound. After an hour in the orchard, we went with the mayor and the local chief of police to an old resort, a place in the forest the Soviet’s built years ago to serve as a school for kids with TB (it’s closed now). We sat around, seven of us, drank a little vodka and beer, ate some food, and played cards, in a gazebo on the grounds of this old school in the picturesque forest. Jealous yet? And the day ended with my host mother and I studying Russian - me speaking the words and her correcting my pronunciation, while she also would ask what certain words were in English. Good times all around.
Things I will soon learn:
1) How to slaughter a pig. That’s right - I’m excited about this development. My teacher came over with John and Clara on Sunday evening to pick me up for an event, but they had to sit down for some food before my host mother allowed them to leave. While here, my host father informed me (through the teacher) that he will slaughter a pig some time this weekend with my host brother and wanted to know if I wanted to help. Yes I do. I’ll keep you posted on the developments of this - maybe I’ll take some pictures for you to see. But I can’t wait.
2) How to carve a whole chicken. And I mean whole chicken, innards still intact. My host mother had just taken the head off one the other day when I (through her patience and the help of a dictionary) asked her if she wanted help. It was late at night so she said ‘no,’ and my language skills are such that I wasn’t sure how tell her that I really want to know how she does it. However, I had my teacher tell here that I really love to cook and want to learn new techniques and for my host mother to ask me for help with anything, even just slicing. I’ve seen a chicken sliced up into six parts before, but I’ve never seen that and everything taken out too. I’m excited about this also, but not as excited as I am about the pig slaughter.
3)How to conjugate verbs. Yesterday my teacher gave me the priceless 501 Russian Verbs book, compete with full conjugations of every one. Now my vocabulary and conversational skills can finally grow, and my teacher told me and the others that by the end of this week we should getting more and more skills to actually hold conversations. That will be huge.
4) How the Romans in Moldova once lived. I wrote earlier that my training village is near a town called Orhei - well, a few kilometers from here is a place called Old Orhei, originally built (if you can believe it) by the Romans over 2000 years ago. Today, it is a tourist hub, as there are many remnants of the Romans, including parts of bathhouses and several caves where they used to live. My teacher told us that sometime soon we can go on a tour there, which should be great. In fact, when she told us about these ruins it made something clear to me - about once a day I see a large bus full of people driving down the (only) main road here. I always wondered where they are going to - now I know, as they are headed to and from the aforementioned Roman ruins.
5) How the cost of gas impacts people in poorer nations. Gas here is about 13 lei per liter, equaling about 3.80$ per gallon. You can imagine the impact for a people whose average income is around 100 dollars a month. That would be like a person in America who makes 1,500 a month (after taxes) paying 47 dollars for a gallon of gas. Think that would curb consumption? In fact, there is even once Peace Corps farm here where they are no longer using six hectares of land because they can’t afford the gas it would take to cultivate it. And this is from a place which, a year or two ago, was expanding so fast that was negotiation with neighbors to see if they would ‘borrow’ land. Now, they actually lose money if they use the land.
posted by Andy Buchanan at 4:50 AM
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