One Year Down, One To Go

Per tradition, the last day of school here in Moldova will be this Thursday, May 31st. Actually, school basically shut down last Friday and we teachers are in school now to 1)Give out grades to all the students, and 2) Hold together some semblance of order.

It's amazing for me to believe that I've been here almost a year (51 weeks to the day of me posting this, but who's counting). I still remember my first day of school well, as it was easily one of the most terrifying days of my life. I knew absolutely no-one, had no idea of the skills of the kids, could barely communicate in Russian, and stood alone in a corner of a square in front of the school while all these odd kids whom I didn't know put on a big show for everyone. Now I walk through my school, know the names of 75% of the students, have met a handful of their parents, know each and every one of their skill levels almost better than the kids themselves know it, and I communicate almost exclusively in Russian. The level of comfort is 100 times higher than it was a mere 9 months ago.

In Peace Corps Moldova there is no-doubt that the TEFL program is the hardest of the four present here. For starters, the topic we teach is simply difficult, as English is far from an easy language. We work with kids, which is far from easy (every day the 1st and 2nd graders hover around my classroom in between lessons, and it's just exhausting to pass through them a few times a day; kids that young are like energy vampires). And the educational system in which we have to work is also totally foreign from the system in place in America. And to top if off, the recognition of our work is far less obvious than in other programs, where volunteers maybe aide greatly in the building of a park for everyone to enjoy – and that everyone can see – while we are teaching Past Participles and and the Present Perfect Progressive tense, the results of which only we, the teachers, can see.

On the other hand, however, the skills that we are teaching are likely to be far more helpful to these kids in life, at least the ones who want to learn English. While something like a park is great, it simply can't help these kids break out of the life-cycle of poverty that many of them are stuck in and will be stuck in unless they give themselves the skills necessary skills life themselves up. English just happens to be one of these skills.

Throughout all the hardships that Peace Corps service has to offer, the one thing that carries me through everything is my students. While the majority have totally zero interest in learning English and don't need to do anything during lessons, there are a handful who really work, who I can see want to learn English and who really hold me here. One of the things that I'm most looking forward to in the next year is getting in with these kids and continuing to work with them, continuing to give them a huge tool that they can use in their futures to greatly better themselves and hopefully, their lives.

Until then, summer is here. On Thursday at school we will have a little ceremony called literally the “final bell”. It should end about 10:00 in the morning, after which I've decided that I will go to my classroom with a celebratory cigar and bottle of beer, lock the door, and just sit and decompress for 15, 20 minutes while I think of all the things that I've been through in that room, good and bad, throughout this last year. Frankly, I haven't been this excited about something in a long time.

Notes:
- I've written before about how there are four of us TEFL teachers from my group who gather together in each-others villages (if you'll remember, when we met the last time it took six hours and forty five minutes to travel a distance of 95 miles). Well, last weekend we all got together in the fourth and final home of ours, a town up in the north by the name of Riscani.

I actually took off from my village on Friday morning at 7:00 and pulling into my friends town at 12:30. It was a time-consuming but fairly easy trip with me passing through Chisinau and stopping for 45 minutes on my way at the Peace Corps office. We ended up having a great time together, as usual, passing the time just strolling around. Also, my friend there plays basketball with some guys every Friday night, so last Friday we dropped by with the intend of just seeing the facilities there (they are actually really, really nice) and ended up playing a 4 on 4 game against four Moldovans for a half hour, which turned out to be one of the funnest times I've had in the last year, especially because we won 21-18. We were actually supposed to play to 31 but it was raining and water started to leak through the roof. Not wanting to snap any ankles, we quickly decided to end it.

As good as Friday night was, Saturday morning was brutal because we had to wake up at 4:00 to leave the house at 4:20 to get to the bus-station at 4:45 so we would be guaranteed seats for the 5:00 ride to Chisinau. We got by OK in the morning basically going on fumes, but by the time we got to Chisinau at 8:30.

On the way to the bus stop however, we saw a concrete example of the type of mentality that we feel holds back many people in Moldova. While walking to the bus station and worrying about being late, we walked by a taxi driver. My friend asked him if he could take us to he bus station so we wouldn't be late. The driver told us that he had finished his shift, hopped into his car, and pulled out while taking a turn in the direction of the same bus station that we were going.

Now, the driver had two options: to go home without us because he didn't have to work, or to pick up a fare and earn a little money because just happened to be going that way and would have had to spend an extra one minute out of his free time. He chose the former.

- Next week the next group of TEFL and Health Education volunteers will fly into Moldova. I'm lucky enough to be a member of the Volunteer Mentor Program, where by for a month or so I've been in contact with 3 individuals who are on their way and, during the summer months, I can be used as a support for them if they have any questions of issues. This also means that, when the group arrives at the airport, I'll be there with eight other current volunteers to properly welcome the rookies here and then we'll escort them to the hotel and through Chisinau for their first day here. It should be a great time. I remember arriving one year ago, looking at these people who had been here for one year, and thinking about how they were these grizzled veterans and not being able to comprehend how much they knew simply about life here. Well, as hard as it is to believe, I'm a veteran now. Wow.

- On Friday morning on my way to Chisinau I got a ride in with a guy from the village. We were racing through the village next to ours on the one street. As happens sometimes, at one point a guy on a tractor pulled out in front of us from a side-street very late, causing the driver of our car to slam on the brakes and swerve a little. This happens fairly often and the driver usually rolls down the window to say a few words or simply wags a finger at the driver of the intruding vehicle.

This time, our driver started to do the same. He slowed down to get on pace with the tractor and started to roll down the window with a scowl on his face. When our driver could see the face of the tractor driver, however, he (in a village where everyone knows everyone) started to smile, gave a little wave, and turned to us – all four of us others in the car – and said, “It's just Vasia.” All three others simultaneously said, “Aahh, Vasia,” like it was the most normal thing in the world.

Jinx On Me

Two weeks ago, while walking around, I spotted a group of people working in their yard, hauling water back and forth between their well and the place they had planted some crops. They were all bent over and covered in sweat, and it looked like hard work, exhausting really, and I definitely remember giving thanks for the fact that I was spared such a task.

Well, I spoke (thought) too soon, as literally two days later my host mom asked me one day if I could help her with some work. Always glad to help, I quickly jumped into action – I was outside for two second before she explained to me that nature of the work – that's right, drawing water from the well two buckets at a time and hauling them the thirty yards to the garden where tomatoes and cucumbers are growing, and my host mom scoops water out, one tea-cup at a time, until all the plants in the 100 square yard are fully fed (interestingly enough, they bought the vegetables already partially grown, as they couldn't plant seeds due to the fact that our literally free-range chickens would make really quick work of anything like that). It's not the most difficult work in the world – far easier than pulling corn from the husks and hauling 100 pound sacks of the stuff through a field or literally picking grapes until thumbs start to cramp-up.

The work is actually made necessary by the lack of rain. One sure sign that I've been fairly highly culturally assimilated here is that I definitely feel the locals pain on things like a lack of rain. Here they're really worried about it and it's effect on corn (I'm sure other crops come into play but corn is always what I hear about). It's rained only once in the last nine days – rained weakly too – but my host mom really picked up yesterday when I reported that, according to weather.com. We're supposed to receive a lot of rain this week, which is exactly what we need.

In fact, I think my weather-indoctrination process came fully complete on Wednesday of this week when I, while playing on my computer, realized that rain was coming and felt my mood instantly sky-rocket. I then went outside and watched the rain with a smile spread across my face (before I was scolded by my host mom for not wearing something to cover my head) . . .

Notes:
- On of the sports channels we have on our satellite is the Italian official sports channel, fun to watch because it shows the highlights between the sports priorities of American and Italy. For example, when glancing at it one can see sports ranging from water polo to cycling, with plenty of soccer to go around.

So you can imagine my surprise the other day when I flipped it on only to find a baseball game. That's right, Italian professional baseball, complete with a dozen people in the stands. I remember reading a while ago about the presence of this league and how the quality of baseball can be compared to junior-college, a comparison that seems dead-on. But nonetheless, having not watched any baseball of any quality for almost a year, I was hooked.

- We also receive the ESPN of Ukraine, which is actually one of my favorite channels (aside from the Georgian HBO that shows nothing but American movies dubbed in Russian and BBC World). And you know who is constantly being showed on TV, playing professional basketball for a team in Lvov? That's right, basketball legend from my hometown of Minneapolis Khalid el-Amin. I thought at least a few people reading this would find that fact mildly interesting.

- There is a new favorite drinking establishment for a lot of us Peace Moldova volunteers – McDonald's. We just realized a few weeks ago that beer is sold there for 10 lei (80 cents) for a half liter. It's fresh, cheap, and it's one of the few places where we can sit outside and drink. Plus, it's centrally located and a great place for people watching.

- It's the time of the year for grades, and it's been a fun process. On Tuesday I had a friend of mine call me and he told me that his motto – which he repeated like a mantra – was simply, “I'm not emotionally invested in your grades.” I loved it and repeated it to my classes again and again on Thursday, especially when they started to complain.

For my 8th, 10th, and 11th graders their task was simple: to write 10 sentences using 10 pieces of grammar we've learned in the last year. I gave them plenty of time to complete the task and was more than willing to help them. Of course, about ½ the kids simply copied sentences from the various textbooks around, not realizing that 1) I know what each and every student is capable of producing – I know what they know – and 2) That their efforts at simply taking other's work would not be well received. I gave all the kids two scores, on a 1 to 10 scale (as the national system goes), the first mark for effort and the second for usage. This is also after I told them at least a dozen times that it's not important to me what they know, it's important what they try to do and produce.

Of course, there is always the kid who simply gets it and who simply got destroyed by me. And when they started to complain, I just told them (in Russian so it would be clear), “I'm like a machine here – I see what you do, what you write, and I register grades. I don't feel anything. I don't favor one student over another.”

The results – 2 kids brought to tears. Can't say that I felt too bad.

- My favorite moment of the past week was Friday evening. We had a dance at my school which was supposed to start at 8:00 but rain started so a lot of kids waited at home for the end of the rain – as a result, I and our gym teacher and another old guy who watches the school at night all were waiting when I realized that I could go for a beer – half liter (16 ounces), sold for 65 cents at our local store.

So I went to the store, got my beer, and stood on the little veranda there watching the much-needed rain come in, thinking about the week. I also ran into one of the women who was a housing option of mine when I first visited in July and had a nice little talk with her. Good times all around, the perfect end to the week.

Victory!

Perhaps the most celebrated (and, arguably, important) day in this part of the world came and went on Wednesday, May 9th. Victory Day. Russia over the 'fascists'.

The amount of human sacrifice that went into this effort is staggering (13 million dead soldiers, 7 million dead civilians in the USSR: my Russian teacher told me last summer that 25 percent of the population of Belarus was killed). Not only are numbers like these hard to believe but one must also consider the impact on society that this loss of live incurred. When I was in Russia, for example, literally everyone I knew had a relative who died in the war, and there are literally countless stories of people going to villages after the war and finding one or two men under the age of 50. So as you can imagine, this day (and the war in general) is held rather dearly in the hearts of those who's soldiers served in it. As anyone who travels through Eastern Europe will quickly find, every village and city, no matter the size, has a WWII Memorial with something written in Russian, a statue of a solider with or without a pistol, and the names of those from the village who died. And every May 9th, the people from the village gather at this monument to remember the accomplishments of the veterans.

With strong interest I went to our ceremony that we held last week ago, and it was a good experience. Maybe 100 or so people were gathered at the monument in our village at 10:00 in the morning, almost everyone standing and with the nine living veterans from the villages around here all sitting on benches, some of the them still wearing uniforms. The day started with a speech from the mayor, then a priest showed up and changed some prayers for 20 minutes, then some more speeches and skits done by kids from school.

The whole time this was going on various old women in the village were passing around bread and wine for everyone and anyone who wanted it, with of course special emphasis placed on the veterans. This gesture was especially touching to see – my village is rather poor, and it's clear that these women don't have much. But nonetheless, they go out of their way to prepare something to honor not only those living who fought in the war but also, in a way, to honor those who died over sixty years ago.

And after the ceremony all the veterans were invited to our school where they had prepared a huge feast in their honor. I didn't go (veterans only . . . ) but our director told us a meeting today in school that all the veterans really liked all that was done. As my host mom would say, it's the least we (they) could do to recognize what they did.

Notes
- As you well know by now, spring is well in the air, and with this has come the birth of animals; earlier I wrote about the animals being born all around here. Well, this last week my host family hatched eggs, chickens and turkeys. They are amazingly small and delicate. While chickens require only feeding twice a day and can be left to roam around the yard all day, mother-hen in tow, turkeys require constant attention for their first two months They have to be fed every two hours so my host mom runs home twice a day between classes at school, and while they're out our their little pen they have to be watched closely because if one gets away they can very quickly – within minutes – die from the cold, even though the temperature is around 60 degrees. My host mom told me that's it's much better if they are born in March because you don't need to worry about temperature – they just sit in a pen under mom and are let out for 2 minutes to be fed.

They die so easily, in fact, that my host mom said she doesn't count them until they've been alive for a month. Sunday, for example, we lost six by 10:30 in the morning. I walked outside and saw all six bodies placed in a cardboard box, two of which were still breathing what was clearly their last breath. As cold as it sounds, you just get used to it. And it's important to keep in mind too that as small and cute they may all be at first, within 18 months the family will have used an axe, cut off the head, and eaten all of them. It's nice to keep a little perspective on things . . .

Speaking of the life cycle, however, last Wednesday, our cow gave birth – for the 14th time, I learned. Thankfully, I wasn't around to see the birthing process. But I did see the little lady (it's a girl) about a half hour after later, trying to figure out how walk. It's a sight to see.

- There is really no doubt that my English skills have slipped a bit. I've stopped using articles sometimes (there aren't any in Russian), and there have been a few times when I've absolutely forgot words. Once, about two months ago, my students asked me what a 'wild pig' (as they said in Russian) was called in English, and it took me a while to think of the word 'boar', and last Sunday I was on a bus to the regional center in the afternoon and a guy got in with a bundle of flowers. I could only remember that the flowers are my grandma's favorite but 100% forgot their name, and it took me literally 30 seconds before the word 'lilac' entered my head.

- Due to 1)The building of a new tower, and 2)My old cell-phone company being bought out and a new service provider coming in, I now have cell phone service in my village. So if the mood should strike anyone, feel free to call me at 011-373-698-258-27. Just don't forget the 8 hour time difference.

- Last Friday evening I was taking a walk through my village (my new habit) when I spotted a group of five guys sitting around in the shade – they quickly started yelling towards me and invited my to sit with them and drink a little wine.
Now, this is a situation that plays out quite often actually. Normally, however, it is a group of 20
– 30 somethings already very drunk at noon a Sunday, and always I refuse their offer. This time, however, was different – they were not drunk, it was clear they had just finished a hard day of work, just a bunch of blue-collar guys relaxing on a Friday afternoon (the Moldovan equivalent of American construction workers gathering for Happy Hour and dollar taps). Realizing all of this, I for the first time accepted their offer and ended up having a really nice time. I sat with them for a half hour, drinking a few glasses of wine and talking about life in Moldova. Good times all around.

- Best moment (it's actually happened many times): the mother hens are, naturally, highly protective of their young. The turkeys just ignore humans – we can do whatever we want – but the mom-chicken used to get a little excited and charge me when I got too close until I kicked it.
That taught the bird who's boss . . .

But the cats are a different story. There's nothing more entertaining than watching the cats accidentally wander a little too close to the roaming chicks then waiting for the birds to lower their poise and charge while the cats flee in terror. I could watch it all day and not get bored.

Pictures from Kiev

Per request, the first request picture is of Independance Square which has housed a lot of different events over the years, the second picture is of the protests that we saw in Kiev in the center square, and the final is of a picture of a church we stumbled upon one day.

A new blog entry to follow in the next few days . . . .

The Toughest Thing . . .

One of the most common questions we are asked as Peace Corps volunteers is simply, What is the most difficult part of Peace Corps service? Outhouses? Strange food? Lack of washing abilities? No, no, and no.

The answer: loneliness.

For the most part, we're very geographically isolated. We have to contend with language issues. As a general rule, we volunteers don't really have any friends in the village (more in a moment on why) – when asked, I always say that my students are the closest thing I have to friends around here, but because they are my students they can't be classified as 'friends' (a sentiment that most other volunteers agree with). Yes, we have host families, but for the most part they are doing their own things and have their own lives to live.

As for me, the most difficult times I have are holidays and family gatherings like the one we had on May 1st, my host Mom's birthday. The language problems I have are becoming less and less, as the more Russian I learn the more I am able to understand the Ukrainian dialect they speak here. But because they all speak the dialect, I find myself reluctant to speak up because in doing so I will be speak the 'second' language of everyone (case in point – on Tuesday my host sister was talking about how she needed to be in Chisinau on Wednesday at 7:00 in the morning and didn't know how to get there so early. Well, one of my fourth graders fathers is a driver who goes to Chisinau every morning with apples for selling and leaves the village at 5:30 and often taking passengers. I actually have the man's phone number and could have easily given it but was reluctant to speak up because they conversing in the dialect and I didn't want to admit just how much I know). Also, I told my host mom that I don't really like our gatherings because no-one really talks to be and she responded that they always talk to each-other because they see each-other and always want to catch-up on news.

As for the lack of people to be friends with, I would say that the majority of young men in my village ages 18-25 are, for the lack of a better word, kind of losers. They are the type of guys who work in the field a few days a week or in Moscow three days a week in order to earn just enough money to buy vodka and cigarettes for the rest of the year, then just sleep and dink around the house. They have no idea what they want to do in life and don't really have a plan – in short, they don't have their things together. In my village I've met about 15 guys in that age group and only two – my host brother and cousin – know what they are doing and what they want from life.

As a result, this loneliness can build up to the point that it can be almost crushing. The more a person thinks about being lonely, the more they think about why, and the more they think about why they more they think about the loneliness, a cycle that build until it can be almost crippling. Fortunately, there is a simple solution – waiting. If we simply wait, any feelings we have will be sure to pass. We simply need to wait through the dark before the light presents itself . . .

Notes:
- Last weekend I went up to the north of Moldova to the village of a friend of mine from my group. I went up there for two reasons: 1) There are four of us in my group who gather in our respective villages/towns and it was finally the turn this friend, and 2) There was another volunteer there and it was his last day in Peace Corps so we timed it up to celebrate his final day in the village.

I actually took off from my village on Friday morning, got a ride to the regional center from a guy waiting near the bus-stop, took a mini-bus from there to Chisinau for a doctor's appointment (nothing serious, they just need to draw blood for the AIDS test required for our document renewal), another mini-bus to a city in the north, Balti (the second biggest city in Moldova), where I met another friend, we took another bus from there to a city of Drochia 30 more miles to the north, and we finally got a ride from there to the village with the family of my friend. It was a lot of trips but relatively harmless (as opposed to the ride back).

On Friday night we sat around eating and talking and drinking wine. At the dinner table there were four Americans and the host parents, and we had one of the weird linguistic situations that can be found here, as four of us spoke Russian, four English, and four Romanian, so we played language-tag with each-other but for the most part emerged unscathed.

The next Saturday the volunteer who was leaving took off finally, and it was a hard day for the family. He had been there for over two years and had accomplished a lot of work, helping everyone immensely (they kept speaking about how he was a part of the village and how this part was leaving), and on his way out tears were shed. The volunteer, however, took it amazingly well, and my friends and I all agreed that he took it better than we will when the time comes for us to leave. We then spent the day just walking around, throwing a baseball and visiting the school where, it turns out, they had lessons to make up for the Monday before May Day when they don't work, much to the surprise of my friend who had been told nothing.

Sunday, we stomped around Drochia, the regional center, for a while before I headed home.

- Speaking of the ride home, one of the realities of Peace Corps life is that we have to rely on public transportation to get around, a inconvenience but one that is usually OK to deal with it.

However, on Sunday I left Drochia on a bus at noon and rolled into my village at 6:45 in the evening. The distance covered was 95 miles. Yes, between slow rides and waiting for options, it took me six hours and forty five minutes to go ninety-five miles, an average of just under 15 miles an hour.

- My brother left a note saying I should post more pictures – I will the next time I'm in Chisinau with my notebook. Sadly, that probably won't happen for a week or two because I haven't stayed in my village for a weekend in a month or so and I think it's a good idea to stick around. But they'll get put-up eventually, likely pictures from Kiev.

- I write the names of these places where things happen in part because if you have Google Maps, you can find any and all of them. It's a great way to kill 20 minutes on your computer.

- I have mentioned several times here how one friend of mine from my group has a cousin who starts for Manchester United. Well, one of the most surreal things that has happened to me lately was watching a Man U game on TV Saturday night with my friend who was watching his cousin (whose phone number he has programmed on his cell) play live.

- Finally, there was a lot of great moments from the weekend, but two stand out. The first: we met the mayor of the village on Saturday, having bumped into her on the street (there have been several volunteers in the village and all spoke Romanian, and there some tension there between people who speak Romanian and Russian as a first language). My friend who speaks Romanian started to introduce me and the other Russian-speaking volunteer to the mayor and when he got to the part of how we didn't speak Romanian, a woman in back of her said in Russian, “Thank God one of you speaks Russian.” My friend laughed and laughed when we told him that.

Secondly, while there is no doubt that being an American has it's advantages here, it also pays off to look like Americans. Case in point: to get from my friends village to the regional center we had to hitch-hike, so on Sunday we all went to wait by the road and start the process of flagging down cars in hopes of a lift. Also waiting there were at least 20 or so people, all with the same idea, so we knew that competition for cars would be tight.

We were all spread out over 40 yards or so and there was about 20 yards between the four of us and a group of women from the village, all wearing the village clothes that are tough to describe but basically look like you would expect from old Moldovan village women without a lot of money. After about 30 minutes of waiting a rather nice car pulled up between us and the women, opened the door in our direction, and asked us if we were going to Balti – while they were stopping the women started to descend on the machine. We quickly responded that we were going to a different location and the car quickly slammed the door and pulled out before the villagers approached too close. It was clear that they would take either us or no-one.

One of the advantages of at least looking like an American.