Short But Sweet
On March 15th I called a friend of mine in the states to congratulate hims on his birthday, and he gave me one piece of advice – 'self-edit your blog.' I decided to take his advice and see what happens. It's actually a good week to try because not much new has happened.
1) On St. Patty's Day I went to my regional center of Calarasi and met with the two other volunteers there for a little celebration on our own. One of the volunteers (a TELF teacher) lives in a village in the region, while the other lives with a great family in the regional center and has plenty of space available for all of us. We ended up at a bar for 5.5 hours, until 3:30 in the morning, chatting away with the various people who came in. There was nothing more shocking to these people than meeting me, a Russian-speaking volunteer, because while most of them have seen many volunteers before, all of them in the past have spoken Romanian.
We were in one bar when one guy and I started talking about, of all things, grapes, which ended up in all six of us going to this guy's house at 3:30 in the morning to sample his wine. That was interesting.
And on an interesting note – the volunteer lives with a family that consists just of two daughters and a grandma, the mom and dad having moved to Paris twelve years ago and come home two or three times a year.
And in closing this section, hitch-hiking is one of the more common ways to get around in this
country for volunteers, as sometimes public transportation options are lacking at crucial times. I personally have never done it, but in coming home from the regional center on Sunday I was, in a way, reverse hitch-hiked. While I was standing in the bus-station waiting with the two volunteers (one of which was heading home in a matter of minutes), a man whom I've never seen before came up to me and asked if I was going to Hirjauca, my village. I responded with a yes, and he told me that he was going there too and offered to drive me (it was either that or wait anothet two and a half hours for my next public option). Worrying about getting screwed by a sly taxi-driver, my first question was how much I would have to pay him. When he told me it would be 15 lei ($1.16), I quickly departed from my friends and had an incident-free ride home.
2) My host grandpa has moved in with us, as of my arrival Sunday afternoon when I returned from our St. Patty's Day meeting. He's old and always speaks to me in the Ukrainian dialect that they always speak here and moves really slowly, but it's not too bad to have him around – we spend a lot of time watching sports together on TV. It's also a great help to my language, because while my Russian is coming along nicely, my accent is really strong and the grandpa doesn't understand me unless I focus hard on my words and try to minimized my accent.
3) In closing, I've started playing football with the kids at my school (I'm all time quarterback), and it's safe to say that it's about as much fun as a person should be allowed to have. I actually got the ball a few months ago from my parents but just now pumped it up, and the kids were chomping with the chance to play. So last Thursday I explained to my kids the rules and we went at it, 6th grade against 7th grade, for an hour.
The kids are constantly yelling at each other, especially if they drop the ball or if the person a kids is guarding scores – they also yell at me (not disrespectfully) about how they were open and about how I should have thrown to the ball to them.
And of course, I also love to give them a hard time when they drop the ball of something like that, and the kids really like it when I started joking with them about their performances. Like said, it's about as much fun as a person should be allowed to have.
1) On St. Patty's Day I went to my regional center of Calarasi and met with the two other volunteers there for a little celebration on our own. One of the volunteers (a TELF teacher) lives in a village in the region, while the other lives with a great family in the regional center and has plenty of space available for all of us. We ended up at a bar for 5.5 hours, until 3:30 in the morning, chatting away with the various people who came in. There was nothing more shocking to these people than meeting me, a Russian-speaking volunteer, because while most of them have seen many volunteers before, all of them in the past have spoken Romanian.
We were in one bar when one guy and I started talking about, of all things, grapes, which ended up in all six of us going to this guy's house at 3:30 in the morning to sample his wine. That was interesting.
And on an interesting note – the volunteer lives with a family that consists just of two daughters and a grandma, the mom and dad having moved to Paris twelve years ago and come home two or three times a year.
And in closing this section, hitch-hiking is one of the more common ways to get around in this
country for volunteers, as sometimes public transportation options are lacking at crucial times. I personally have never done it, but in coming home from the regional center on Sunday I was, in a way, reverse hitch-hiked. While I was standing in the bus-station waiting with the two volunteers (one of which was heading home in a matter of minutes), a man whom I've never seen before came up to me and asked if I was going to Hirjauca, my village. I responded with a yes, and he told me that he was going there too and offered to drive me (it was either that or wait anothet two and a half hours for my next public option). Worrying about getting screwed by a sly taxi-driver, my first question was how much I would have to pay him. When he told me it would be 15 lei ($1.16), I quickly departed from my friends and had an incident-free ride home.
2) My host grandpa has moved in with us, as of my arrival Sunday afternoon when I returned from our St. Patty's Day meeting. He's old and always speaks to me in the Ukrainian dialect that they always speak here and moves really slowly, but it's not too bad to have him around – we spend a lot of time watching sports together on TV. It's also a great help to my language, because while my Russian is coming along nicely, my accent is really strong and the grandpa doesn't understand me unless I focus hard on my words and try to minimized my accent.
3) In closing, I've started playing football with the kids at my school (I'm all time quarterback), and it's safe to say that it's about as much fun as a person should be allowed to have. I actually got the ball a few months ago from my parents but just now pumped it up, and the kids were chomping with the chance to play. So last Thursday I explained to my kids the rules and we went at it, 6th grade against 7th grade, for an hour.
The kids are constantly yelling at each other, especially if they drop the ball or if the person a kids is guarding scores – they also yell at me (not disrespectfully) about how they were open and about how I should have thrown to the ball to them.
And of course, I also love to give them a hard time when they drop the ball of something like that, and the kids really like it when I started joking with them about their performances. Like said, it's about as much fun as a person should be allowed to have.
posted by Andy Buchanan at 2:42 PM
2 Comments:
Somehow I am not surprised that you are the "all time QB"
Is it becoming spring there? How cold does it get at night and are you still under a mountain of blankets?
Baseball is starting up here, will you teach the kids that next?
Andy,
On the local Sports scene BSM won easily yesterday and play again today. Ifall goes well the Championship gameis Saturday !
Nice to see a new generation of TOs and Randy Mosses are being developed in Moldova !
Dad
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