Finally, It Hits

In my first six months of Peace Corps service I have been very lucky in that my health has been flawless, even to the point of bragging about my health to other volunteers whenever they complained about their ills.

Then it hit.

Don’t worry, it’s nothing too serious, just a cold and not even a bad one. Considering I didn’t get a cold last winter, I figured I was due for one - it hit me first last Thursday during the day, came worse Friday, stayed neutral Saturday, worse Sunday, before starting to improve on Monday - the usual cold cycle. The surprise is not that I came down with a cold but the reasons that my host family came up with for my sickness.

Now, in general Moldovans are known for some of their . . . unconventional thoughts about health and the body. For example (and only one is needed), women are constantly told here that they should never, under no certain terms, sit on a cold floor; their ovaries will freeze. So when I told my host mom that I came down with a cold on Thursday and that it hit me during the day her reason for my sickness was clear: I worse shorts Thursday morning. That’s was it, and the other members of my host family quickly agreed that yes, she hit it on the head, completely ignoring a few key facts: 1) I wear shorts every morning, even when the temperature was in the teens here, and did not get sick then, 2) It wasn’t even cold Thursday morning, in the low 40's, and 3) The fact that I work in a school in which at one point two weeks ago forty kids were out with a cold on the same day didn’t factor into their thought process.

Interesting . . .

And then this last Sunday I was coming out of the outhouse not watching where I was going and my forehead head slammed right into a low overhang, giving me a pretty good scrape. That wasn’t fun.

Notes:
- I thing I forgot what the sun looks like, having seen it only twice in the last two weeks. It’s cloudy every day, which gets a little depressing after a while. In fact, when it broke through some clouds Sunday when I was walking to my bus in the center of Chisinau I stared at it like a prisoner just out of solitary confinement, momentarily shielding my eyes from this odd brightness descending from the sky.

- I spent the weekend of the ninth and tenth in Chisinau - two volunteers have a birthday on the ninth and tenth of December, so they decided to celebrate it out together by renting out a bar, playing music with some Moldovans (one American volunteer played the harmonica in a band with a group of Moldovans, playing some actually amazing covers of the Doors, Ray Charles, Elvis, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and others, all the songs done with a blues twist), and in-general having an amazing time. Also there were a ton of Americans who work at various NGO’s in the area - there was a guy actually from Minneapolis who words at an agency that specializes in human trafficking. It was one of the best evenings I’ve had in my time here, truly, just sitting around with others talking about life, sharing stories. It doesn’t get any better than that.

- Last weekend also, just for fun, I checked out the Billboard Top 40 songs on their website. I’ve heard only 2, and I’ve been away just six months (exactly 28 weeks, but who’s counting . . . .). I can imagine how weird things will be when I get home in two years and every song will be totally different. It will be just a part of the culture shock that I’m facing in about twenty months time - to give an example of just how tough it will be (I think), my tutor was in Iowa two years ago for two weeks and was showing me pictures of her trip. Just seeing the pictures, I was slightly taken back.

- I received my first SMS from this website - actually, I’ve received only one. But now I know that the website works . . . Lets get those messages coming, people, and don’t forget to identify yourselves so I know from whom I received a note.

- To answer a question that has been asked repeatedly (by one person, actually), my family does my laundry for me every three weeks. We actually have a machine, but I hesitate from calling it a ‘washing machine’ because there is a chance it’s just an agitator, but to be honest I’m not sure exactly what the difference is but have been told a few times that the two are not the same. Actually, my host sister cleans my clothes when she comes home from her studies in Chisinau. Then they dry the clothes outside on the line, which when the temperature hovers around 35 degrees can take about five days but takes only about 24 hours as long as the temperature stays above 45 or so.

During the summer my family in a different village also washed my clothes for me and I paid them for it, about a dollar a pound. Here, however, my host family haven’t asked for any money, and I thought it was odd until when the TEFL Manager from the Peace Corps came out to my village just to check on things, and when we all talked a while my host mom said that they don’t ask me for money because they figure I help them enough around the house, in the field and what not, and they would feel odd asking for money.

- In my last entry I wrote about how my host family speaks the Ukranian dialect all the time - I had my numbers wrong on how it’s connected to Russian: it’s about 70 percent Ukranian and 30 percent Russian. And to tell you the truth? I’ve grown to despise it. I mean, I really don’t like it. While I realize that it’s the language of the home, the whole time they speak I just constantly think about how much more difficult it is for me to learn Russian without hearing it often enough. Usually at dinner I bring a book or something, and if they start to speak Ukranian I start to read. As for my comprehension of Ukranian? Enough words are the same with Russian or sound close enough that I can usually figure out the subject of the conversation. After that, I try to tune out.

- Off to Istanbul on Saturday, and I can’t state just how excited I am to go (which, I thing, goes without saying). My only fear I have now is having a problem getting to the airport. My original plan was to take off Friday after lessons at school, spend the night in Chisinau, and have a stress-free Saturday morning - my flight leaves at 12:00, meaning I have to be at the airport by 10:30.

However, the Friday before my school is celebrating "New Year," which will feature a big presentation by every class in the school that promises to be a good time. The first through seventh graders present in the day, and the older kids present at night, which I would have to miss if I had chosen to leave after school. The kids have been preparing themselves for two, three weeks, and I the more I think about it the more I thing there is no way I can miss it.

So the new plan is to get on the bus at 6:00 Saturday morning, which should get me into Chisinau between 8:00 and 8:30 AM, leaving me more than enough time to get to the airport (only fifteen or some minutes from the center). Assuming there isn’t a problem with the bus, all will be fine. Should a problem happen with the bus . . . well, assuming I get as far as the regional center it won’t be a problem too. And even if a problem happens before the regional center, I should be able to hitchhike my way to Chisinau. I just hope it doesn’t come to that.
As for what we will do there? Still not sure. One of the friends with whom I’m going has a host mom who runs one of the most successful businesses in Moldova, who does a lot of business in Turkey and has a lot of contacts there - one of her contacts is going to meet us at the airport, bring us to the city, and help set up with a place to stay during our time there. From what I’ve read and heard, there are a lot of cheap places in the center of the city within a half-mile of all landmarks and they are cheap, at the most ten dollars a night. During our time there I don’t think we really have any plans - I know my friend and I want to cross the famous Galata Bridge that connects Asia and Europe, but that will only kill one hour out of the eight days. I think we’ll spend a lot of time just wandering around the city, soaking in the sights of the place and seeing what we come across. And of course, we’ll be there for New Years, which promises to be a great time.

- Last Wednesday was the day of St. Andrei in the Orthodox Church. Because the Russian version of my name is "Andrei," it meant my dad did not pass without problems.
First, the day before all the kids told me what would happen in the evening, saying that they would take a gate, hide, and drink wine. I understood everything that they were talking about bud had no idea what they meant - the night, however, passed without incident.

However the next day I was in between classes writing in the grade books that the school keeps when my host mom came in and told me that, because it was my saint’s day, I needed to go to the store and buy coffee, sugar, something called ‘pechinei’ (basically little coffee biscuits), and half a liter of brandy so we could celebrate together. Not a problem. So between the next two lessons (the fourth and fifth of the day), I sat around with five or six other teachers drinking coffee, a little brandy, and these biscuits. Not a bad time.

- Someone asked me a few weeks ago what I meant by the term, "Andrew Scottovich." Well, the Scottovich is my patronymic name. Allow me to explain.

In my village (and in Russian culture in general), they don’t refer to people by their first and last names except in documents and things like that; instead, they refer to them by their first name and their patronymic name (the first name of their father plus ‘ovich’ for a man or ‘ionva’ for a woman), which is the most polite way to refer to someone. For example, my host mom is not Valentina Vdovchenko (her last name) except in official documents. Everyone in school and outside knows her as Valentina Nicholiovna, while my director is Vacheslav Ivanovich, my partner teacher is Galina Illyaionva, my tutor is Tatiana Andreevna, my vice-director is Stepan Densiovich, and so on.

- In closing, I finally figured out why my host brother doesn’t dance at all - it’s connected to the death of his father, who died last July. Not only was his death an absolute horror for the family, it delayed the wedding of my host-brother and his fiancee which was scheduled for last summer but now will happen this summer.

His not dancing is something I first noticed during my first weekend here, when we all went to a BBQ in the forest and everyone started dancing the ‘hora’ (just everyone holding hands and going around in a circle - it’s the national dance of Moldova) except my host brother. I asked them why he didn’t dance, and his fiancee told me it was ‘because of his father’ who had died just a month earlier. I thought it was simply a mourning thing.

However, at school two weeks ago we had a dance on a Friday night and my brother and the said fiancee came. My host brother just sat and listened to music (what I usually do), and when I asked why he doesn’t dance at all, the fiancee told me that he promised his father, before he died, that he would not dance again until his wedding. A great memorial to a tragic event, I think.