Reality Hits
As I’ve written before, the family that I live with now had their father pass away from prostate cancer about a month before I moved in - the man died on July 21. In fact, I visited with the family on July 8th, and then it seemed like the man was not going to be around much longer. Overall, the family seems to be in good spirits most of the time - sometimes they seem despondent and sad, but of course that’s to be expected.
One day I came home getting my haircut (courtesy of my host sister-in-law, who runs her own salon) and my host mother and her mother were in the midst of preparing a massive feast outside on our fire-oven. I asked her what she was making and she told me, and when I asked her why so much she told me, and among her Russian I understood it was something about her husband and she kept repeating a again and again - when I looked it up in the dictionary it translated as "funeral respite." Turns out, in Orthodox tradition families have a large memorial meal 40 days after someone has died, done to commemorate their life.
So the next day I woke up, went to a teachers meeting at school (more on these in a second), and when I returned home there were about twenty people in our courtyard and a table set up full of food. It was a very somber event, with not much talking - at one point my host mom teared-up and went into the house, returning later with red eyes. Also, the father of the father who died - my host siblings grandfather - was there too. I’ve met him once before: he’s very old and not of the soundest mind (when they told him I was from America, he wasn’t really sure what they were talking about). Well, at the end of the meal he had tears his eyes thinking about his son - you’d have to be a corpse to not be affected by that.
About an hour after the feast (and I do mean feast - the five of us in the family spent 3 days finishing off the uneaten food), after all the cleaning had been done, I was in my room working on Long Term lesson plans when my host mom came in and asked me if I wanted to go somewhere with them, but she said that if I didn’t want to go that was ok - I wasn’t sure what she was asking about but I assumed, so I looked up "cemetery" in the dictionary and sure enough, that’s what it was. By the time I had looked it up they were gone, although I didn’t really want to go anyways; it seemed like far too personal a thing to go to. However, in hindsight I wish I had gone.
Notes:
- I’ve officially met about 75% of the staff at my school - my colleagues. There’s around 22 teachers and only four of us are men: I’m the only one who comes in at under fifty-five years of age. And meetings are great entertainment to watch. Our director (a man) will make a statement and after a pause about five women will instantly start yelling to/at each-other and to the director, who just sits back and lets things subside. It usually takes a minute or two for things to calm down, then he moves on to the next point. I usually don’t understand much of what is going on in these meetings but I can guess the theme, and it’s always great fun.
However, there has been one sad thing, one that needs some clarification to be fully understood.
In Moldova there are different types of ‘schools’: there’s a Gymnasium (2nd - 9th grades), a School (2nd - 11th) and a Lyceum (9th -12th grade). Usually their prestige lies in the order that I just listed, with Lyceum being the highest. Now my school is simply that, a School, and when I first met my director there was talk of us possibly becoming a Lyceum in the future. Now, however, it looks like we’ll become a Gymnasium, which is not only a downgrade but it means that after ninth grade, students will have to travel to either Chisinau or Calarasi, the regional center, for classes, meaning not only an inconvenience but also a likely added expense and a loss of jobs for some teachers. We learned of this information first at a teachers meeting, and the second the topic was brought up the mood in the room changed to very serious. And when I got home my host mother asked me what we did, and when I told her that the school was likely to become a Gymnasium, she also instantly became serious. The following day we had a parents meeting (more on this) and the parents were all surprised and upset too. I figured that they would be, but it wasn’t until my host mother stood up and said her opinion that I fully understood why - our school is a Russian one. They are scarce in the region: the regional center has only one, so spacing might be limited and students will have to travel forty-five miles - one way - to attend class.
For some perspective, when I was in 6th grade my Catholic school closed, and naturally it was a huge issue for parents who fought like mad to save it. However, I could only imagine just how upset people would get if the nearest Catholic school was not two miles away but instead, fifteen - or forty-five - miles away. The intensity of the ire would be upped just a little, don’t you think? Well, that’s exactly what is happening here.
- At the aforementioned parents meeting my school director introduced me to a round of applause and told everyone that I would be in Moldova for two years. Then the parents asked me if I could stay longer if I wanted, and when I told them ‘yes’ and asked why they wanted to know, they asked me what would happen if I were to get married.
I wrote last time how often I get this question. This story just goes to prove how prevalent it is.
- I got a question about why I distill water here. The reason is simple - I value my health and want to do as little as possible to jeopardize it. All the water is drawn from a well, and although the Moldovans can drink it without problems, Americans are virtually guaranteed to have major problems. It’s the same thing when Americans head to Latin America - while those there can eat the meat all day and never have an issue, an American usually can’t touch it without Montezuma’s Revenge hitting hard.
In fact, even with proper handling of food and water people get sick. A little thing called Giardia (Google it) is highly prevalent here and I want to do everything possible to not make it’s acquaintance, although Peace Corps has told us from the first day that it’s just a matter of time until it hits - statistically, it’s a guarantee. But don’t worry - if (when) it hits, I’ll exclude it from blog entry.
A quick story on how quickly a person can get sick: a volunteer from the group before ours had it in his mind that he was going to acclimate to the water, even talking about it during training in Philadelphia. His plan was to drink just a little a day - the equivalent of a shot - and he was convinced that over time he would be able to consume it regularly because his body would adjust. Everyone told him it was a really bad idea but he was convinced it would work.
Giardia hit him on his second day in country.
- I’ve taken to the habit of walking in the woods near my house some nights a week, which is great exercise (it’s a twenty minute walk almost straight up-hill) and very relaxing. The only problem is that the people here don’t go into the forest too often, leaving spiders plenty of time to build up webs across the paths. And as anyone who spends time outdoors knows, they love to build the nests at approximately face level - there nothing worse than walking along quietly and suddenly getting a face-full of spider web. Ticks are also highly prevalent, as I discovered when I was going to bed one night after a stroll and found one firmly entrenched in me. In fact, now I’m in at the Peace Corps office now getting my preventative antibiotics.
- Throughout the summer all trainees were told, numerous times by numerous people, that on the first day of school we would not need to teach any lessons, that there would just be a large ceremony with a lot of pomp and circumstance and that we need only sit back and relax, to not prepare any lessons.
However, two days before the start of classes I was at school and I asked the other English teacher what the schedule would be for the first day, basically just curious what time the events would start - she directed me to a board that teachers were huddled around which told me that the meeting was only forty-five minutes and that I would be teaching four classes that day. That’s right, four classes. Thankfully noone near me understood English curse words because quite a few flew from my mouth at that moment. The shock was overwhelming, and I think I was visibly flustered because the other English asked me if everything was okay.
Well, two days later was the start of school, and I’ve there is one Golden Rule for teaching in Moldova, it’s simply that ‘Schedules Are Made To Be Broken." We were supposed to have a school wide meeting at 8:30, followed by 45 minutes session that would have amounted to homeroom in America (during which I would have free time), and then four classes to follow.
In reality, I woke up early with the intention of getting to class by 8:00 to get ready. Well, because of delays in breakfast I didn’t leave until 8:30, and my host mother (a teacher at the school) was still getting ready and didn’t seem too worried. I arrived at school and the other English teacher met me and told me that she wasn’t sure when the meeting would be held but would tell me. About 9:15 I heard a bell ring and saw students scramble somewhere, so I just followed and sure enough, the meeting was outside in-front of the school. It lasted about an hour, and it was just a welcoming of students and teachers (myself included - my director gave me a Russian novel), and the new students fresh out of kindergarten were featured. There were about fifteen of them all dressed in their best clothes, and first they sang a song featuring lines like ‘goodbye kindergarten, we’re in school now’, then a microphone was passed along and they recited a poem, which was great because they had no concept that if they yelled into the microphone the sound would be amplified tremendously. Some of them sounded like Ted Nugent shouting to a stadium.
Then homeroom commenced, followed by classes. After the first class the other English teacher told me that there was likely to be only two more classes on the day. Not bad. Then after the second class she came up to me and said that classes were over. Time to go home. All that worry for nothing.
- My host mother asked me one day which classes I would be teaching, and when I told her that I would be teaching six classes she told me, very honestly, that it would be very difficult. "Yes", I said, "especially the first month." She agreed whole-heartedly.
- I’ve learned courtesy of my brother Moldova has now adopted the policy of Ukraine and declared that starting Januray 2007, Americans no longer need a visa to visit here. So if anyone was thinking of visiting but didn’t want to pay the extra 150 or so dollars on top of the airfare, well now . . . you have one less reason.
- There’s really only one thing that I really miss about America so far - sports. No joke. I’m so desperate for sports information that if I’m on the internet at all I cut and paste documents from ESPN.com to a Word document so I can read them later. And when I talk to my dad we usually spend at least a half hour discussion sports. I’ve said from the start that college football season would be like torture - yes, I know that things start today and it’s a killer.
- I don’t know if I’ve said this before, but people here drink wine like a really big shot, usually about three or four ounces - there’s no sipping allowed, especially for men. And people often all drink from the same glass that’s passed around - at the feast to commiserate the deceases father, fifteen or so people poured through three liters of wine and all drank from two cups.
- I’ll end by saying this: a lot of volunteers say that most difficult part of service is the culture shock of returning to America. I’ve only been here a few months and have two years to go, but I can already guarantee that culture shock will be huge.
In America, if I want to go somewhere I just got in a car and drive. Here, I either need to get up at 5:00 in the morning to catch one of three busses a day that leave the village or else hitchhike. In America, if I want to use a bathroom I walk ten feet. Here I walk thirty yards and on the way navigate through chickens (one of whom will fluff her feathers and charge if I get too close), two pigs, two horses, and a cow. In America if I want something to drink I go to the tap. Here if I don’t have any water I need to go the well, get some, then wait three hours while for a machine to distill about a 1.5. liters.
And that’s just a start.
One day I came home getting my haircut (courtesy of my host sister-in-law, who runs her own salon) and my host mother and her mother were in the midst of preparing a massive feast outside on our fire-oven. I asked her what she was making and she told me, and when I asked her why so much she told me, and among her Russian I understood it was something about her husband and she kept repeating a again and again - when I looked it up in the dictionary it translated as "funeral respite." Turns out, in Orthodox tradition families have a large memorial meal 40 days after someone has died, done to commemorate their life.
So the next day I woke up, went to a teachers meeting at school (more on these in a second), and when I returned home there were about twenty people in our courtyard and a table set up full of food. It was a very somber event, with not much talking - at one point my host mom teared-up and went into the house, returning later with red eyes. Also, the father of the father who died - my host siblings grandfather - was there too. I’ve met him once before: he’s very old and not of the soundest mind (when they told him I was from America, he wasn’t really sure what they were talking about). Well, at the end of the meal he had tears his eyes thinking about his son - you’d have to be a corpse to not be affected by that.
About an hour after the feast (and I do mean feast - the five of us in the family spent 3 days finishing off the uneaten food), after all the cleaning had been done, I was in my room working on Long Term lesson plans when my host mom came in and asked me if I wanted to go somewhere with them, but she said that if I didn’t want to go that was ok - I wasn’t sure what she was asking about but I assumed, so I looked up "cemetery" in the dictionary and sure enough, that’s what it was. By the time I had looked it up they were gone, although I didn’t really want to go anyways; it seemed like far too personal a thing to go to. However, in hindsight I wish I had gone.
Notes:
- I’ve officially met about 75% of the staff at my school - my colleagues. There’s around 22 teachers and only four of us are men: I’m the only one who comes in at under fifty-five years of age. And meetings are great entertainment to watch. Our director (a man) will make a statement and after a pause about five women will instantly start yelling to/at each-other and to the director, who just sits back and lets things subside. It usually takes a minute or two for things to calm down, then he moves on to the next point. I usually don’t understand much of what is going on in these meetings but I can guess the theme, and it’s always great fun.
However, there has been one sad thing, one that needs some clarification to be fully understood.
In Moldova there are different types of ‘schools’: there’s a Gymnasium (2nd - 9th grades), a School (2nd - 11th) and a Lyceum (9th -12th grade). Usually their prestige lies in the order that I just listed, with Lyceum being the highest. Now my school is simply that, a School, and when I first met my director there was talk of us possibly becoming a Lyceum in the future. Now, however, it looks like we’ll become a Gymnasium, which is not only a downgrade but it means that after ninth grade, students will have to travel to either Chisinau or Calarasi, the regional center, for classes, meaning not only an inconvenience but also a likely added expense and a loss of jobs for some teachers. We learned of this information first at a teachers meeting, and the second the topic was brought up the mood in the room changed to very serious. And when I got home my host mother asked me what we did, and when I told her that the school was likely to become a Gymnasium, she also instantly became serious. The following day we had a parents meeting (more on this) and the parents were all surprised and upset too. I figured that they would be, but it wasn’t until my host mother stood up and said her opinion that I fully understood why - our school is a Russian one. They are scarce in the region: the regional center has only one, so spacing might be limited and students will have to travel forty-five miles - one way - to attend class.
For some perspective, when I was in 6th grade my Catholic school closed, and naturally it was a huge issue for parents who fought like mad to save it. However, I could only imagine just how upset people would get if the nearest Catholic school was not two miles away but instead, fifteen - or forty-five - miles away. The intensity of the ire would be upped just a little, don’t you think? Well, that’s exactly what is happening here.
- At the aforementioned parents meeting my school director introduced me to a round of applause and told everyone that I would be in Moldova for two years. Then the parents asked me if I could stay longer if I wanted, and when I told them ‘yes’ and asked why they wanted to know, they asked me what would happen if I were to get married.
I wrote last time how often I get this question. This story just goes to prove how prevalent it is.
- I got a question about why I distill water here. The reason is simple - I value my health and want to do as little as possible to jeopardize it. All the water is drawn from a well, and although the Moldovans can drink it without problems, Americans are virtually guaranteed to have major problems. It’s the same thing when Americans head to Latin America - while those there can eat the meat all day and never have an issue, an American usually can’t touch it without Montezuma’s Revenge hitting hard.
In fact, even with proper handling of food and water people get sick. A little thing called Giardia (Google it) is highly prevalent here and I want to do everything possible to not make it’s acquaintance, although Peace Corps has told us from the first day that it’s just a matter of time until it hits - statistically, it’s a guarantee. But don’t worry - if (when) it hits, I’ll exclude it from blog entry.
A quick story on how quickly a person can get sick: a volunteer from the group before ours had it in his mind that he was going to acclimate to the water, even talking about it during training in Philadelphia. His plan was to drink just a little a day - the equivalent of a shot - and he was convinced that over time he would be able to consume it regularly because his body would adjust. Everyone told him it was a really bad idea but he was convinced it would work.
Giardia hit him on his second day in country.
- I’ve taken to the habit of walking in the woods near my house some nights a week, which is great exercise (it’s a twenty minute walk almost straight up-hill) and very relaxing. The only problem is that the people here don’t go into the forest too often, leaving spiders plenty of time to build up webs across the paths. And as anyone who spends time outdoors knows, they love to build the nests at approximately face level - there nothing worse than walking along quietly and suddenly getting a face-full of spider web. Ticks are also highly prevalent, as I discovered when I was going to bed one night after a stroll and found one firmly entrenched in me. In fact, now I’m in at the Peace Corps office now getting my preventative antibiotics.
- Throughout the summer all trainees were told, numerous times by numerous people, that on the first day of school we would not need to teach any lessons, that there would just be a large ceremony with a lot of pomp and circumstance and that we need only sit back and relax, to not prepare any lessons.
However, two days before the start of classes I was at school and I asked the other English teacher what the schedule would be for the first day, basically just curious what time the events would start - she directed me to a board that teachers were huddled around which told me that the meeting was only forty-five minutes and that I would be teaching four classes that day. That’s right, four classes. Thankfully noone near me understood English curse words because quite a few flew from my mouth at that moment. The shock was overwhelming, and I think I was visibly flustered because the other English asked me if everything was okay.
Well, two days later was the start of school, and I’ve there is one Golden Rule for teaching in Moldova, it’s simply that ‘Schedules Are Made To Be Broken." We were supposed to have a school wide meeting at 8:30, followed by 45 minutes session that would have amounted to homeroom in America (during which I would have free time), and then four classes to follow.
In reality, I woke up early with the intention of getting to class by 8:00 to get ready. Well, because of delays in breakfast I didn’t leave until 8:30, and my host mother (a teacher at the school) was still getting ready and didn’t seem too worried. I arrived at school and the other English teacher met me and told me that she wasn’t sure when the meeting would be held but would tell me. About 9:15 I heard a bell ring and saw students scramble somewhere, so I just followed and sure enough, the meeting was outside in-front of the school. It lasted about an hour, and it was just a welcoming of students and teachers (myself included - my director gave me a Russian novel), and the new students fresh out of kindergarten were featured. There were about fifteen of them all dressed in their best clothes, and first they sang a song featuring lines like ‘goodbye kindergarten, we’re in school now’, then a microphone was passed along and they recited a poem, which was great because they had no concept that if they yelled into the microphone the sound would be amplified tremendously. Some of them sounded like Ted Nugent shouting to a stadium.
Then homeroom commenced, followed by classes. After the first class the other English teacher told me that there was likely to be only two more classes on the day. Not bad. Then after the second class she came up to me and said that classes were over. Time to go home. All that worry for nothing.
- My host mother asked me one day which classes I would be teaching, and when I told her that I would be teaching six classes she told me, very honestly, that it would be very difficult. "Yes", I said, "especially the first month." She agreed whole-heartedly.
- I’ve learned courtesy of my brother Moldova has now adopted the policy of Ukraine and declared that starting Januray 2007, Americans no longer need a visa to visit here. So if anyone was thinking of visiting but didn’t want to pay the extra 150 or so dollars on top of the airfare, well now . . . you have one less reason.
- There’s really only one thing that I really miss about America so far - sports. No joke. I’m so desperate for sports information that if I’m on the internet at all I cut and paste documents from ESPN.com to a Word document so I can read them later. And when I talk to my dad we usually spend at least a half hour discussion sports. I’ve said from the start that college football season would be like torture - yes, I know that things start today and it’s a killer.
- I don’t know if I’ve said this before, but people here drink wine like a really big shot, usually about three or four ounces - there’s no sipping allowed, especially for men. And people often all drink from the same glass that’s passed around - at the feast to commiserate the deceases father, fifteen or so people poured through three liters of wine and all drank from two cups.
- I’ll end by saying this: a lot of volunteers say that most difficult part of service is the culture shock of returning to America. I’ve only been here a few months and have two years to go, but I can already guarantee that culture shock will be huge.
In America, if I want to go somewhere I just got in a car and drive. Here, I either need to get up at 5:00 in the morning to catch one of three busses a day that leave the village or else hitchhike. In America, if I want to use a bathroom I walk ten feet. Here I walk thirty yards and on the way navigate through chickens (one of whom will fluff her feathers and charge if I get too close), two pigs, two horses, and a cow. In America if I want something to drink I go to the tap. Here if I don’t have any water I need to go the well, get some, then wait three hours while for a machine to distill about a 1.5. liters.
And that’s just a start.
posted by Andy Buchanan at 1:15 AM
1 Comments:
Do people wear contacts there?
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