Up And Down

One of the many realities of Peace Corps life – and something that is repeated to us early and often in our service – is that we have to be prepared for the up's and down's of life in our host countries. We can be glowing from successes one minute and then, literally seconds later, questioning our decision to become volunteers and start to check airplane schedules for flights to our hometowns. (Un)luckily, this happened to me twice last week in the span of four days.

It started Saturday morning on my trip to Chisinau. First, I was really excited to get out of my village for the first time in eleven days, and I was headed to Chisinau for a birthday party and just wanted to get there. There is usually a man waiting in front of our school who goes to our regional center waiting at 7:00 in the morning with whom I like to go – I prefer him greatly as opposed to the mini-bus that leaves at 7:10. I arrived to his usual waiting place at 6:53 and he wasn't there, meaning that his car likely filled up and he had taken off. There was another woman waiting too and after a minute another car pulled up, taking on passengers. Sadly for me, they had space for one and the woman who had been waiting longer than me had claim to the spot. So I waited. And waited. And waited. Finally I saw our white mini-bus pulling up, full of people and terribly slow: I then knew that it would be a while on that road. Of course, I was hot and uncomfortable frustrated by the fact that I was on the really slow transportation option.

Then when we got to our regional center we eventually had only four people left, two of us headed to the bus station and two headed to sell apples and the food co-op but not really sure about where to go. Rather than drop off the two of us with a set destination, our driver decided to stomp around the town looking for the place for the others to dump their apples, adding to my annoyance. Part of me wanted to get really upset before I realized that 1)The driver was just trying to help out these people, and 2)These people were just trying to get a little money to live better. (But nonetheless, I didn't like it).

I naturally got off the mini-bus a little . . . bothered and I went to the ticket office to buy a ticket to Chisinau on another mini-bus. I felt a little lucky because I got the last of the twenty seats but when I poked my head into the mini-bus all the seats were taken. This happens sometimes; sometimes the mistake is the part of the ticket distributor, sometimes the driver, sometimes the passengers. I just wanted to get to my destination and was prepared to do almost anything to get there so when the driver came up I showed him my ticket, told him that there was no free space, and asked him if I could just stand. He said 'no' in Russian then proceeded to say something in Romanian which I didn't really understand but which I made out to be something like, “oh, don't worry – we'll get you a space.” Turned out, there was a woman who had two kids, one of which was sitting on the space that was mine. The driver told her something again in Romanian and told me to take a seat. And just like that, the terrible experience of trying to get to my regional center was quickly erased by the generosity of the driver.

Then on Tuesday, in the middle of our school day, our vice-director changed around our schedule of classes; it wasn't entirely a huge problem in and of itself except for the fact that he 1) Didn't tell any students of the change, and 2) Put the schedule somewhere, left, and didn't tell anyone where it was. So while normally I have my ninth graders for the last lesson, he had changed things around so my seventh graders were supposed to be with me instead, without alerting any of the aforementioned ninth graders who wandered into my room expecting a lesson and started asking me what to do. I spent a frustrating ten minutes walking around, trying to either find the vice-director, the schedule, or someone who knew the schedule while the whole time I had a group of ten ninth graders pestering me questions about what to do.

Finally, frustrated by the whole thing, I let them go home rather than hold them for forty-five minutes with nothing to do and no lesson to go to, bothered that I had been put into that position (which turned out to be the right move anyways, as their lesson had been moved to a different day).

That series of events, however, was followed by a great lesson with my favorite class – the seventh graders. You know the episode of the Simpsons when Principal Skinner announces to the school that there's no need to panic but “a dog is in the vents” and, after a pause, all the kids start screaming and jumping? That's my seventh graders. They have this maniacal energy that can be frustrating sometimes but, at other times, makes them a total joy to work with. This day happened to, lucky for me, fall into the latter category.

Notes:
- Last Saturday night, from 6:00 PM to 6:00AM on Sunday morning, was probably the best twelve hours I've had as a volunteer.

It started when my buddy and I made dinner (pasta) in an apartment next the Peace Corps office. I actually did the cooking and he did the dishes, a fair trade off in both of our opinions. It was great to eat some regular American-style food – while we both have no problems with Moldovan food, it was nice for a change of pace. Then we went to the Peace Corps office and, thanks to our recently purchases satellite dish, watched live college football for the first time in two years. We proceeded from to there to a birthday party at a bar for a girl in my group. It was at the only Irish bar in town and probably the best bar in city, full of westerners usually and always a place to have a great time. There were about fifteen of us there, drinking and dancing to the old-style music they were playing.

We finally took off about 12:30 to an apartment that we were planning on sleeping in. We sat around talking until, about 2:00, a friend of mine asked if I felt like going to sleep or if I was interested in walking around the city until morning, something I'd been wanting to do for a while. Naturally, I took up his offer and spent the next 3.5 hours with him and another, just walking around the center of Chisinau, stopping at times for coffee or food at a 24 hour market, a bus station that is always open, and finally ending up at Peace Corps at 5:30, where the guard was kind-enough to let us in and where we quickly crashed on the couches in the lounge (I didn't sleep until I watched about ten minutes of the LSU – Virgina Tech game – live, of course). We proceeded to sleep 2.5 hours. It was great.

- Last weekend I received from my dad one of the most valuable things that I ever could have received – a pair of rubber galoshes. The reason for this simple – the amount of mud in villages here literally has to be seen to be believed. Now, thanks to my new toys, I no longer dread going to school on days after a heavy rain. In a way, I look forward to it and actually go out of my way sometimes to stomp through the mud along my route, smiling inside (yes, I've only had them for four days at site and have thoroughly enjoyed every minute. And yes, because of the massive rain we've been getting after the summer drought, I've needed them every day). After less than a week I actually am surprised when I think that I lived here for a whole year without them.

- Finally, some of the radio stations here play a very odd assortment of music, especially American. This ranges from the time I heard “Kiss the Rain” by Billie Myers while getting off a bus in Chisinau, or the time when they played “Jump” by Kris Kross (that was actually at a Moscow disco). But Tuesday morning topped it all. While sitting and eating breakfast before school, my head almost exploded when “You Can Leave Your Hat On” by Joe Cocker came on the radio. To say it was surreal, to hear that song in my village here, is to say it lightly.