Odds and Ends
Usually with my entries I try to start off with some large happening or occurrence and then go on to smaller points of interest. This week, however, there hasn't been one stand out moment. Instead, it's been a lot of small things building up. So without further ado . . .
- From a mental standpoint, these last two weeks have been some of the hardest of the year, especially from a 'get out of bed in the morning' standpoint. It's been cool and foggy (no sun for the last week, just like last year) and there is nothing worse than waking up in the morning at 7:30 and it's still really dark outside and relatively cold in my room. I'm faced with a daily battle – to just lay around and make up for lost sleep (more on that in a second) or to crawl out of my warm bed into a cold room, then put on cold clothes before venturing into the cold weather on the outside. The latter option (getting up) has an undefeated record so far but I have to admit, there's been some close calls. The going will get better in a week or so because, after daylight savings, it'll get darker later. And while it will then proceed to get worse as December approaches, by then we're approaching Christmas break so everyone's in a different mental place as it is. And then after Christmas, no matter how dark it is, we realize that it will just get better and better for the rest of the year.
We've also now finishing (today, actually) the longest stretch of school without any breaks – eight weeks. Our fall vacation starts on Monday, lasts for a week, and it will bring with it a welcome and well earned respite for teachers and students both. Believe me when I say that we all need a break from each-other.
- Last Wednesday, the day I posted my last entry, I came home from school and discovered that I had missed out on a spectacle I was really looking forward to – the fall goose cull. They're at their maximum weight now and will soon start to lose mass so they decided to put them – literally – under the knife. My host mom called in sick that day (more in a second on this too) and my host sister-in-law took the day off from work to do everything – because of the amount of feathers that need to be removed, it's rather labor intensive. I came home from school and saw six be-headed carcasses in and around the kitchen, then sat and watched the process of dismantling them (really interesting). Then they proceeded to fry up one and we ate it with potatoes (the verdict – I'm officially a fan of goose meat. Far better than turkey and chicken).
- In the Moldovan school system there's really no such thing as 'sick leave' – that is, if a teacher is sick and unable to go to school they don't receive any pay for the missed day, a huge incentive for going to school under the most dire conditions. My host mom, however, is in the unique position of receiving a healthy monthly payment from Peace Corps, via me. While I don't won't say just how much it is, I'll just say that just the money from me is double the monthly salary for the average teacher. As a result, my host mom is able to stay home when there is a lot of work to do, call in sick, without really having to worry about the financial consequences. Lucky for her, I guess.
- The reason I've been wiped out this whole week is that last Friday and Saturday I spent a sleep-deprived weekend in Chisinau. I went in on Friday to meet a girl I know who had just returned from a week in Moscow with the plan to come home again on Saturday. So we met and were talking in a bar on Friday night when I got a call from one of the Marines here telling me about a party at their house on Saturday night – I immediately invited the girl to see if she was interested in going and she was, so I then decided to stay the night Saturday night with the knowledge that I wasn't likely to sleep. The reason for this is simple – last time I went out with the Marines I had checked into a hotel and paid seven dollars (a fairly large amount) for a room only to arrive there from the disco at 5:30 AM, a bit of a waste considering that I could have just waited a half hour and gone to sleep at the Peace Corps office here.
So this time I didn't bother to check into a hotel and instead went to the Marine house with the Moldovan girl, where we talked to the soldiers, the Embassy staff there, and the other volunteer who had come. We took a taxi to the disco here (a harrowing experience – the only time in my life in which I've been totally terrified in a car because of the driving. At one point we stopped at a light and smelled something odd. We started talking in Russian about what it was when the driver turned around and with a grin said, “I burned the tires”), and while the people I came with left about 2:30, I stuck around until 3:45, walked a ways to a 24 hour market, bought something to eat, and showed up at Peace Corps at 5:15, where the guard was kind enough to let me in and where I slept until 7:30.
There was one silver lining, however: because of the time difference when I woke up I was able to see the last two minutes of the LSU-Auburn game live. Almost made it worth it.
Naturally, I was so wiped out that on Sunday night I went to bed at 8:30 PM (can't remember the last time that happened) and soundly slept until 7:30 the next morning. Yes, I'm writing this Thursday night and I still and feeling the effects of last Saturday. And yes, if I could do it all again I would.
- I'm looking forward to the coming vacation more so than I've looked forward to something in a long, long time. On Saturday I'm going to the north of Moldova to visit a friend of mine whose village is celebrating what basically translates to “day of the village” (Imagine a town festival in American that's condensed from three days into one). While it's a long way for me to his village – I'll be on the road for eight hours – it should be a great time. I'll come home on Sunday and then from Tuesday to Sunday I'll be in Chisinau; up to Saturday for a conference conducted through Peace Corps for the volunteers that have just come in in June and then on Saturday night to celebrate the birthday of two friends of mine. We'll also be there for Halloween and are going out somewhere (I'll be a cowboy if I can get my hands on a hat somewhere).
- One of the biggest problems facing Moldova is the exodus of the working class – around twenty-five percent of the population has left the country to work abroad. As an example of how prevalent this has seeped into parts of the country and of even the villages, on Thursday after school we had a parent-teacher meeting in which the doctor from our village stood up and told us about a list of maladies that have struck our students and then told the parents how they should take good care of their kids when they are young because if they are not healthy or have bad habits they won't be accepted to work in Italy or Portugal in the future. A lot of parents smiled and snickered but when he said, “I'm just talking about real life here,” the room got really quiet, really quickly.
- You'll notice that the frequency of my entries had been diminished when compared to a year ago. The reason for this is simply that last year, everything was very fresh and new and all that I experienced, I wanted to post here and tell it to those who read my writings. This year, however . . . a lot of what I go through I've already been through once and therefore, written about. As a result, it simply takes me a little more time to come up with an appropriate amount of material to opine about.
- Finally, my favorite part of the previous seven days: last Wednesday I was playing a review game with my sixth graders (who are amazing, by the way) to prepare them for their upcoming test.
Before we started, however, I split them up into teams and asked them to pick team names. After some conversation one girl said that she wanted to name her team 'Hakuta Matata' and when I started started to laugh a little she said, “or maybe they can be Timone and we can be Pumba.”
Needless to say, references to The Lion King are not too often stumbled upon here. And of course, this random mention made not only my week but will also stick with me for a long time.
- From a mental standpoint, these last two weeks have been some of the hardest of the year, especially from a 'get out of bed in the morning' standpoint. It's been cool and foggy (no sun for the last week, just like last year) and there is nothing worse than waking up in the morning at 7:30 and it's still really dark outside and relatively cold in my room. I'm faced with a daily battle – to just lay around and make up for lost sleep (more on that in a second) or to crawl out of my warm bed into a cold room, then put on cold clothes before venturing into the cold weather on the outside. The latter option (getting up) has an undefeated record so far but I have to admit, there's been some close calls. The going will get better in a week or so because, after daylight savings, it'll get darker later. And while it will then proceed to get worse as December approaches, by then we're approaching Christmas break so everyone's in a different mental place as it is. And then after Christmas, no matter how dark it is, we realize that it will just get better and better for the rest of the year.
We've also now finishing (today, actually) the longest stretch of school without any breaks – eight weeks. Our fall vacation starts on Monday, lasts for a week, and it will bring with it a welcome and well earned respite for teachers and students both. Believe me when I say that we all need a break from each-other.
- Last Wednesday, the day I posted my last entry, I came home from school and discovered that I had missed out on a spectacle I was really looking forward to – the fall goose cull. They're at their maximum weight now and will soon start to lose mass so they decided to put them – literally – under the knife. My host mom called in sick that day (more in a second on this too) and my host sister-in-law took the day off from work to do everything – because of the amount of feathers that need to be removed, it's rather labor intensive. I came home from school and saw six be-headed carcasses in and around the kitchen, then sat and watched the process of dismantling them (really interesting). Then they proceeded to fry up one and we ate it with potatoes (the verdict – I'm officially a fan of goose meat. Far better than turkey and chicken).
- In the Moldovan school system there's really no such thing as 'sick leave' – that is, if a teacher is sick and unable to go to school they don't receive any pay for the missed day, a huge incentive for going to school under the most dire conditions. My host mom, however, is in the unique position of receiving a healthy monthly payment from Peace Corps, via me. While I don't won't say just how much it is, I'll just say that just the money from me is double the monthly salary for the average teacher. As a result, my host mom is able to stay home when there is a lot of work to do, call in sick, without really having to worry about the financial consequences. Lucky for her, I guess.
- The reason I've been wiped out this whole week is that last Friday and Saturday I spent a sleep-deprived weekend in Chisinau. I went in on Friday to meet a girl I know who had just returned from a week in Moscow with the plan to come home again on Saturday. So we met and were talking in a bar on Friday night when I got a call from one of the Marines here telling me about a party at their house on Saturday night – I immediately invited the girl to see if she was interested in going and she was, so I then decided to stay the night Saturday night with the knowledge that I wasn't likely to sleep. The reason for this is simple – last time I went out with the Marines I had checked into a hotel and paid seven dollars (a fairly large amount) for a room only to arrive there from the disco at 5:30 AM, a bit of a waste considering that I could have just waited a half hour and gone to sleep at the Peace Corps office here.
So this time I didn't bother to check into a hotel and instead went to the Marine house with the Moldovan girl, where we talked to the soldiers, the Embassy staff there, and the other volunteer who had come. We took a taxi to the disco here (a harrowing experience – the only time in my life in which I've been totally terrified in a car because of the driving. At one point we stopped at a light and smelled something odd. We started talking in Russian about what it was when the driver turned around and with a grin said, “I burned the tires”), and while the people I came with left about 2:30, I stuck around until 3:45, walked a ways to a 24 hour market, bought something to eat, and showed up at Peace Corps at 5:15, where the guard was kind enough to let me in and where I slept until 7:30.
There was one silver lining, however: because of the time difference when I woke up I was able to see the last two minutes of the LSU-Auburn game live. Almost made it worth it.
Naturally, I was so wiped out that on Sunday night I went to bed at 8:30 PM (can't remember the last time that happened) and soundly slept until 7:30 the next morning. Yes, I'm writing this Thursday night and I still and feeling the effects of last Saturday. And yes, if I could do it all again I would.
- I'm looking forward to the coming vacation more so than I've looked forward to something in a long, long time. On Saturday I'm going to the north of Moldova to visit a friend of mine whose village is celebrating what basically translates to “day of the village” (Imagine a town festival in American that's condensed from three days into one). While it's a long way for me to his village – I'll be on the road for eight hours – it should be a great time. I'll come home on Sunday and then from Tuesday to Sunday I'll be in Chisinau; up to Saturday for a conference conducted through Peace Corps for the volunteers that have just come in in June and then on Saturday night to celebrate the birthday of two friends of mine. We'll also be there for Halloween and are going out somewhere (I'll be a cowboy if I can get my hands on a hat somewhere).
- One of the biggest problems facing Moldova is the exodus of the working class – around twenty-five percent of the population has left the country to work abroad. As an example of how prevalent this has seeped into parts of the country and of even the villages, on Thursday after school we had a parent-teacher meeting in which the doctor from our village stood up and told us about a list of maladies that have struck our students and then told the parents how they should take good care of their kids when they are young because if they are not healthy or have bad habits they won't be accepted to work in Italy or Portugal in the future. A lot of parents smiled and snickered but when he said, “I'm just talking about real life here,” the room got really quiet, really quickly.
- You'll notice that the frequency of my entries had been diminished when compared to a year ago. The reason for this is simply that last year, everything was very fresh and new and all that I experienced, I wanted to post here and tell it to those who read my writings. This year, however . . . a lot of what I go through I've already been through once and therefore, written about. As a result, it simply takes me a little more time to come up with an appropriate amount of material to opine about.
- Finally, my favorite part of the previous seven days: last Wednesday I was playing a review game with my sixth graders (who are amazing, by the way) to prepare them for their upcoming test.
Before we started, however, I split them up into teams and asked them to pick team names. After some conversation one girl said that she wanted to name her team 'Hakuta Matata' and when I started started to laugh a little she said, “or maybe they can be Timone and we can be Pumba.”
Needless to say, references to The Lion King are not too often stumbled upon here. And of course, this random mention made not only my week but will also stick with me for a long time.
posted by Andy Buchanan at 1:00 AM
1 Comments:
Andy,
You might be going through the phase where the initial wonders and strange customs turn out to be in fact the timeless themes of the ordinary people, unchanging over the centuries no matter what happens on the surface. This is the Russian culture described by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and others - the toil, the seasons, the water, the air, the simple lives of people, birth, family, marriage, etc. Here lies the great strength with its mysteries.
In what will in fact turn out to be the really short span of the "Petrochemical Age" of which the U.S.A. and Western Europe are the best examples we have experienced what might be described as an acceleration or fast-forwarding of stimulation but seemingly to no lasting benefit or discovery of any new fundamental truths.
I guess that is why I liked Moldova, I started to see the fog lift from my eyes !
Dad
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