A Great End To A Great Summer

This past three months, since the end of lessons on the 31st of May, has been without a doubt the most relaxing three months that I've been able to spend in a long, long time, since the summer after ninth grade of high school. I've spent the time in Chisinau with friends from Peace Corps and, when in the village, sleeping ten to twelve hours a night as well as eating, reading (fourteen books in total), and going for walks around our lake. I've also been lucky enough to travel quite a bit, going to Istanbul, Odessa, and, in my last two weeks, to Moscow for the fourth time. It was, in short, just about the perfect way to end one of the best summers that I can remember having.

As I wrote about in my last, abbreviated entry, I left for Moscow on August 16th, taking a bus for a day and a half. My friends were there to meet me at the bus-station in Moscow and after talking with them (whom I hadn't seen in sixteen months) for a few hours before going to my friends apartment for a night in Moscow discos; finding a decent one was a story in-itself. At the first we went to we were straight up denied, told we couldn't come in (they call it 'face-control'). At the second the guard told my buddy (as a group of Germans, then French came by) that the place was just for tourists, that the place was just full of prostitutes, and that the 800 ruble – 33 dollar – cover was a little steep. The third was closed. At the fourth there was a huge crowd of people all massed around the door while a man with a headset let in people at his whim, seemingly without order - or course, he would let in four beautiful girls, then a few minutes later two beautiful girls and two guys, then three beautiful girls with one guy, then two more beautiful girls. You get the picture. And needless to say, my friend and I didn't try to push our luck. But finally, at fifth place, we found success – it was the place I wrote about last time where I talked to two American girls from the US Embassy in Moscow as well as the three Scottish guys. Went to bed at 7:00 AM and woke up at 2:00 in the afternoon (there are few things more drab than going to bed at 7:00 in the morning and seeing people, while were walking into the apartment to go to sleep, leaving to go to work).

I spent the next eight to nine days in a town called Dmitrov, located about forty miles north of Moscow and the same town where I was lucky enough to live for ten weeks two years ago. I actually slept and spent a lot of time with another family in a town a few miles south of there, a family whom I really consider to be on-par with my own in America. I was basically around those two cities for the whole of my trip with the exception of Tuesday night and Wednesday during the day, when I spent the whole time walking around the center of the city with the younger sister in the family where I stayed as well as two other girls (I'll post pictures in a week, when I'm back in Chisinau). During the days I rested (especially after I came down with a cold in the middle of the week) and in the evenings I would go to the center of Dmitrov and hang out with friends there, people whom I really consider to be some of my best friends in the world but with whom, unfortunately, I'm able to meet with only once a year or so. It was a great time, the almost-perfect trip, an ideal combination of relaxation and festivities.

Making this trip especially comfortable was having, finally, knowledge of the language there. I really can't describe how much better it was to be there and to understand conversations and dialogs and questions, as opposed from knowing nothing at all during my previous excursions. Quickly after arriving I realized just how much better it would be when I was waiting for the bathroom at a restaurant in Moscow when a man came up to me and, in just one word, asked if it was occupied. Now, in the past I would have been in a state distress if this man had not used one of the fifteen or so Russian words I knew at the time – I likely would have said, “I don't know” (my staple response to an un-understood question), which would have led to another question, and it would have snowballed from there. This time, however, I was simply able to say, “Yes, there's a man there.” End of story. It was also just great to get in with the family (like I said, I consider them to really be my second family) and to be able to communicate with them directly, without the aide of a translator or anything like that. Within minutes of my arriving we sat down for dinner, I poured out the bottle of our home-made wine that I brought from Moldova and the grandma started to make a toast. She said a few words then furrowed her brow a little before turning to the oldest daughter and asking, “He understands?”, and upon receiving an affirmative answer, continued in her toast.

It was also a lot of fun to get in and communicate with my friends in their native language, although it should be noted that all my friends there speak English better than I speak Russian – there is no doubt about that. But at the very least my new-found (for them) language skills brought them a sense of comfort, that if they were tired and didn't want to speak English they really didn't have to, or that they could leave me alone for stretches of time in Moscow knowing that I likely wouldn't have any real problems.

I have two little stories of just how nice it was to finally be able to speak Russian in Russia. The first came one day when I was making some coffee and, after spilling some milk, I asked the grandma there where a rag was. She pointed it to me, waited a pause, then said with a small smile, “how good it is that you know the word 'rag'.” The second story happened when, on my first Sunday night, I was in the center talking to some people and there was a girl there whom I've known for two years now and always really liked a lot but could never really talk with. When I arrived she turned to me and said, “Hello!,” in English – which I answered in English – before she continued on with her conversation with another friend. After a little she asked another girl about me and the girl answered that I speak Russian and she could just talk to me. So the first girl turned to me and asked why I greeted her in English, so in Russian I said, “If someone starts a conversation with me in English, of course I answer in English. If the conversation starts in Russian, I answer in Russian.” She had a priceless look of awe painted on her face.

At the end of my trip I was lucky enough to buy an early ticket and, thus, have a spot on a train from Moscow to Chisinau. I was in a compartment with three other people, two women from Transnistria – the breakaway part of Moldova that's basically ruled by Russia – as well as the eight-year old daughter of one of the women. They were very kind and warm to me, terrified that I wasn't eating enough (no matter how much I ate) and put in a state of horror when I coughed once. On the road home we actually had to travel through Transnistria, something we American's are not supposed according to the US Embassy here, and I was a little worried about that, despite reassurances from friends who have taken the same route. However, when the guards came on they simply took the eighty-cent transit fee from me – which they took from everyone – and glanced at my passport for literally two seconds before moving on.

I got to Chisinau on Monday and my goal was to go home Tuesday, as I arrived too late to get home Monday evening. However, I received a text message from my friend inviting me to go to his regional center for 'храм' – day of the city – so I took went up there last Tuesday for the party and finally came home this last Wednesday, fifteen days after I left.

Now, it's time to start up with classes again in school. On Saturday we have a little ceremony in the morning to kick-off things, then we'll all go home around 11:00 in the morning. Sunday's a free day and finally, on Monday morning, we start for real. On one hand it'll be tough to get back into the cycle but on the other hand, it'll be nice to get back to doing the work that really brought me to Moldova. Plus, everyone says that the second year goes by twice as fast as the first year.

So I'll be home in America before I know it . . .

Not-So-Express

On Tuesday evening I went to the train station in Chisinau, two days before I wanted to leave, to buy a train ticket to Moscow. I, in going two days early, , thought I had a lot of time. So you can imagine my surprise when I asked the woman if there was any open space and, after glancing at her computer, she replied, "No. You should have come earlier today. It's all full now."

Naturally I was shocked, left with only one viable option - a bus. So there I was Thrusday morning at 8:15 (having gone to bed at 4:00 and woken up at 6:30), taking my place on the Chisinau-Moscow not-so-express. The target time was 30 hours upon departure, which turned out to be not true. It was 31.

Although, I do have to say, it could have been much worse. When we pulled I decided to get into a mental-zone in which nothing would bother me, basically spacing out for the length of the trip. I slept about 9 hours, and while I could have certainly been more comfortable, I also could have been much more uncomfortable, so I can't complain.

My friends met be off the bus and so far, a little more than a day into my trip. Highlights include talking to 4 really drunk (falling down) Scottish guys at a club in Moscow - I did all the talking with the waiters and they bought my beer, a fair deal. My friend and I went to bed at 7:00 in the morning after falling asleep on the metro ride home and slept until 2:00 in the afternoon.

In general, it's been great. It's so much more comfortable knowing the language - I can't describe it, but it's just very relaxing.

Can't wait to enjoy my next 8 days too . . .

Where I Was

As a young, twenty-something American, there are only a few tragedies on the national scale that I have experienced and that, which each, I can remember exactly where I was when I found out. When the Oklahoma City Federal Building was bombed I found out on the road from my school, St. Bridget's, to our baseball practice at a park about a mile, told by a guy who had tagged along for the ride. When Columbine happened, I was told by our school chaplain in the journalism classroom of my high school. When September 11th happened I was in college, well immersed in the rigors of university life for not even a week, and read about the start of the disaster in the computer lab in the basement of the library in between my calculus lab and freshmen writing class. When the second Iraq was started I was in my dormitory in the my sophomore year at the same college watching the breaking reports on our tiny TV.

And when the bridge crossing Interstate 35W over the Mississippi River in my hometown of Minneapolis fell on of August 1st, 2007, I was awoken at 8:00AM in the morning the next day with a text from a friend of mine who happened to have awoken early and checked the New York Times website, where the story was the lead. His text read: “Bad news via NYT: 35W in Minneapolis falls, 9 dead, 59 injured, 30 missing.” Needless to say, I was shocked but, having gone to bed at 3:15, a few short hours beforehand and a little sleep-depraved, it didn't fully hit me. I thought about it a little as I headed to the Russian Embassy in Chisinau with a friend of mine but like I said, I didn't dwell on it too much. At 9:15, while inside the embassy I received another text message, this time from a girl in Russia that I know, also telling me about this catastrophe from my own city. It was then, having received a second warning as well has having woken up a little, that the severity of the situation fully started to dawn upon me.

Upon leaving the embassy I left my friend to walk around Chisinau alone while I made a bee-line for the Peace Corps office here in order to get on the Internet right away and see the full extent of the damage. Needless to say, when I fully saw what had happened, the severity of the detestation, I was in a state of shock, as was the other volunteer here from Minnesota who happened to be in Chisinau at the time and whom I passed on all information when I learned it. I hadn't then heard anything from my parents or anyone else in America, which I assumed to be a good thing because if anything too tragic had happened to someone I knew, I'm sure I would have been told it promptly.

I then spent a lot of the next day just watching TV in our lounge, listening to the breaking news reports about this disaster in the city where I've lived almost twenty-three years of my life. Believe me when I say, it was odd to watch, an unusual combination of disbelief and awe. I returned home at 3:30 that afternoon and asked my host mom if she had watched the news that day and if she had heard about the bridge that fell, she said, “yeah, I saw that. Where was that?,” and was quickly thrown off when she heard how that's my city, how I've driven over that bridge 100 times in my life and how my brother lives 6 blocks from the location. Later in the evening, when I was at a birthday party of a friend of my host sister, my mom called just to talk about everything and to assure me that no one I know was caught/missing in the mess.

While this happened almost two weeks ago, it's still at the fore-front of my thoughts. I guess it's just a little odd for me because I'm here and not there, in my home-town where all this happened. And in the end, through the tragedy, it's great to hear stories of heroism from the people of the great state of Minnesota, how people there went to great lengths to aide others.

And, like I wrote, I will never forget where I was on August 1, 2007.

Notes:
- This whole event soured a little one of the best weeks of summer so far, when my friend Sasha from Russia came in from Moscow to visit me for a week. We spent time in Chisinau, including going to a great rock-music festival (featuring some of the top Russian bands as well as the group widely regarded as the best in Moldova. Sadly, I can't write their name). We went to bars and discos, spent time in my current village, in the village where I lived last summer, and went to a place called Orhei Vechi, an old monastery literally dug out of a mountain and one of the few real tourist attractions in Moldova here. We took a bus there and, when we got off, found out that a man from Alaska who was touring Moldova just happened to be along with us.

It was a great time together, highlighted for me by the fact that I didn't need to translate anything. Actually, my friends and I were quick to take advantage of his language skills, asking him to do things like get complicated directions to light a burner for the oven in an apartment where we stayed, the type of things which we volunteers would have struggled in comprehending but which he picked up on instantly.

One of the oddest part of his trip was simply his leaving. Before he came here we hadn't seen each-other for about 15 months, but when he left it was with the knowledge that we would see each-other again in a mere two weeks, assuming I got a visa to Russia. That was somewhat strange.

- Speaking of getting a visa, that was far more complicated than it should have been. I've know for a while that to get a visa here I needed an invitation – the original, not a copy – from a company in America as well as ninety dollars as two pictures. They only process visas from 9:00 AM to 1:00 in the afternoon on Tuesdays and Thursdays but it's not too tough. Should be easy, right?

Well, I ordered the invitation a while ago and received it in plenty of time. With my friend I went to the Russian Embassy here on the 31st of July, where there is always a crowd of Moldovans but where, when they see an American passport and the word 'visa', they invite said passport holder inside. It was no different this time. (It should be noted that a lot of my friends here have gone to Russia recently and warned me that the vice-consular there, the man who processes visas, is not the most polite person in the world, that he's the type of bureaucrat that knows that we need something from him and, as a result, feels no need to be polite in his discourse).

After a while inside I was met by this man and he took everything I needed for processing in the back. He emerged a few minutes later telling me that there were two problems: 1)I needed to pay 120 dollars instead of ninety because of the timing of my departure (a small inconvenience, but what could I do . . . ), and 2) That my invitation was not an original but that, when I returned in a week to get the visa, I could bring the original and everything would be fine (a big shock to the system).

I ran back to the Peace Corps office here and quickly sent an e-mail to the company through which I got my invitation, telling them the problem and asking them what happened – I quickly received a response telling me that I had indeed received the original, not a copy, and that they didn't understand where the problem could be and encouraging me to go back to the embassy and find out exactly what the problem was. I did so the next Thursday (when I was finding out information about the bridge collapse), arriving at 9:00 AM sharp; I was the first person in to see the consular and when I started to simply get information from him he brought me into a back room, started yelling and pounding his fist and re-iterated that I needed to get the original. I then, in the midst of finding out information about the bridge, sent another e-mail to the company, telling them of the situation and asking them what needed to be done. I got a response within minutes telling me that there was not really anything that they could do, but literally three minutes after that I got a second e-mail telling me that they had sent another, this time original, invitation. I'm still not sure what happened, although the logical conclusion is that, in triple checking their own information, they realized that indeed, I was sent a copy.

I got the new invitation in plenty of time but, as you can imagine, I was a little nervous because I had already spent 200 dollars and if I didn't get what I needed it would mean that I simply wasted that money. So on Thursday the 9th I went to the embassy again, new document in hand and full of anxiety. Inside I saw the polite gentleman who does visa's, gave him my new invitation with few words said between us, and he took it in back with my passport for another person to process, then returned to help a French guy I met outside. I waited for a while and soon a girl came back in, holding my invitation and passport, and she started to talk to the consular. I held my breath for a moment when she handed passed over everything; at one point they opened up the passport and I caught a glance at a corner of one page holding the tell-tale yellow color of my fourth Russian visa. It was quite the relief.

So I'm off Thursday, taking the twenty-seven hour train from Chisinau to Moscow. I'll be there ten days or so, connecting with my friends there. I really can't wait to get back and start talking to people in Russian, people I've known for three years but with whom I could not yet communicate directly, always through a translating friend. Should be great.

- Speaking of trips, I've got my next one for Christmas lined up: I'm flying with two friends into Cairo and flying out of Tel-Aviv while traveling through Jordan in between. We've also decided that we're keeping it at only three, as trips with Peace Corps have a tendency to balloon quickly as people get interested in the journeys of others, especially one like ours. We've already had to deny a few people and chances are that that list will grow. (And for anyone worried about safety in Jordan, don't fear. You'd probably be surprised to know that there's actually a Peace Corps program there).

- Finally, my apologies for not posting this earlier, for waiting over two weeks since the last time I wrote something. My goal was to polish a first draft and post this on Thursday – however, on my way out of the Peace Corps office that day on my way home I noticed that I received a package from my brother, meaning only one thing: Harry Potter 7 had arrived. As a result, I couldn't do anything else Thursday evening/Friday in the day until I finished the book (my verdict: I agree with my brother when he said it really couldn't get better). I wanted again to post on Friday after I worked with my best student at her house; however, while her mom there won't let me leave without food, her dad won't let me leave without wine. So I couldn't really post then. And yesterday, Saturday, was an open-house party at a volunteer near here. So I couldn't post it then.

As a result, here it is.

And one word of warning – I probably won't be able to post again for another two weeks or so, after I get back from Russia.