Freedom
I realized something this last week: these next free seven weeks will be the last time until I retire in a few decades that I will have this much time off – seven weeks with no responsibilities, no duties, and the ability to form my own schedule in regards to work (my lessons with my kids in my village), doing as much or as little as I want and doing it when I want.
So far, my first ten days of vacation have been great. I've not really done much of anything. In my village, I sleep, eat, run, read, and . . . . That's about it. I've also developed a sort of reverse tolerance to life here; I can stand it for seventy-two, maybe eighty-four consecutive hours before I have to get out again, before I just can't take it anymore. I regularly forget what day of the week it is. When I'm not in my village I'm either in Chisinau or in a friends village and my plans change from day to day. On Monday of this week I was in the village of a girl who lives in the south of Moldova and I called my host-mom, telling her where I was and then saying how I had no idea when I would return home – maybe in a day, maybe two days, maybe in another week – and that no news from me means that everything was OK (I ended up returning home the next day due to a lack of clean clothes).
A good example of all this happened last week. My original plan was to leave last Wednesday to go to xram – the day of the city – in the village of one girl who lives about thirty-five miles from the Ukrainian border but the day before her mom de-invited me. Then I wanted to go to my regional center and hang-out with the girl who lives there on Thursday but she had too much work so I waited until Friday. From there I didn't really have a plan but got an invitation to go the south to another girl's village with some other volunteers. Again, my plan was to get there on Saturday and roll out on Sunday morning on the bus at 6:00 AM.
But all five of us went out to a bar/disco in the village on Saturday night (one of my top ten nights out ever in this country) and didn't go to sleep until 3:30, quickly erasing any thoughts I had of getting up two hours later. Which turned out to be a great decision because the next day we didn't really do anything. We woke up, ate pancakes cooked with Bisquick mix, then laid out on the sun all day doing almost nothing (more on this at the end). Two other volunteers showed in the afternoon, bringing the total up to seven of us (or five percent of Peace Corps Moldova), and they just continued in the laziness. It was great. The day ended with dinner, house wine, and Euro Cup 2008 soccer.
My plans for the next week? I got home Monday afternoon, I'll be here on Tuesday, leaving Wednesday morning, and not coming back until next Sunday. I'll be in Chisinau, in the North, in the South. Everywhere but home.
Notes:
- On Wednesday the 11th we're getting our new group of volunteers, which is always a great day. It'll be a little odd because I'm not going to get a chance to really get to know any of them, but it's great because they all look at us second-year volunteers like we are wise sages.
- I wrote that I was in a village on Saturday and Sunday but the word 'village' is a bit of a misnomer because it's basically a town of 6700 (or about five times larger than my village). They have things like flowers in the median, no-passing painted lines on the road, a large museum, gas and water. It felt like I had gone about 500 miles to the west. The host family is awesome, perfectly happy to have guests over. It's actually a Bulgarian village, the language heard everywhere there, but they all speak Russian too so I had no problems. It was a lot of fun, walking into a bar and having the girl point to everyone and tell the bartender, “They're my friends – they all speak Romanian,” to which I could answer, “Except me.”
- I've got a new pet-project here in my village: I'm teaching computers to the mom of my best student. It's a little odd because she has no clue about computers, not even knowing how to turn one off and on. I show her and explain to her how to do tasks like the opening and closing of folders, how to click on things and what not, but it's tough because she has no idea what she is opening and closing and I'm not really sure what to do. Even a basic program like Word causes a lot of difficulties because she has no idea how to use any of them.
But nonetheless, I really like my time there. The mom is really nice and always kind to me and it's good for the daughter because she has a chance to practice her English. They always feed me too, with the mom not letting me leave unless I've eaten an acceptable amount and the dad not letting me leave unless I've drank an acceptable amount of their home-made whiskey.
- I'll end by explaining what happened on Saturday that interrupted our afternoon of nothingness. We were lying in the driveway in the sun and on towels with music playing when the host-dad and brother drove in a tractor that was pulling a lot of hay that when set on the asphalt ended up being about 25 feet by 10 feet and 5 feet tall. There was another guy there from Iowa who actually grew up on a farm and we were quick to ask if they needed any help.
So they gave us two pitchforks and we joined them in their task of transferring it to the barn where it could be dryly stored for the winter. There were four of us total working, two Americans and the brother and dad. The brother and Americans manipulated the hay from the big pile into smaller, more manageable piles, then pushed those piles fifty feet (through a doorway) to near the barn, where host dad shoveled them into the barn itself. It was hard work, really labor intensive, and it had been over a year since I had done work like that. It was fun too because three of the girls there sat and watched while chatting with the host-grandma, making jokes.
It was great though. Half-way through we all took a break, drank some wine and ate a little. It was clear that as happy as we were to help they were equally happy to receive it.
So far, my first ten days of vacation have been great. I've not really done much of anything. In my village, I sleep, eat, run, read, and . . . . That's about it. I've also developed a sort of reverse tolerance to life here; I can stand it for seventy-two, maybe eighty-four consecutive hours before I have to get out again, before I just can't take it anymore. I regularly forget what day of the week it is. When I'm not in my village I'm either in Chisinau or in a friends village and my plans change from day to day. On Monday of this week I was in the village of a girl who lives in the south of Moldova and I called my host-mom, telling her where I was and then saying how I had no idea when I would return home – maybe in a day, maybe two days, maybe in another week – and that no news from me means that everything was OK (I ended up returning home the next day due to a lack of clean clothes).
A good example of all this happened last week. My original plan was to leave last Wednesday to go to xram – the day of the city – in the village of one girl who lives about thirty-five miles from the Ukrainian border but the day before her mom de-invited me. Then I wanted to go to my regional center and hang-out with the girl who lives there on Thursday but she had too much work so I waited until Friday. From there I didn't really have a plan but got an invitation to go the south to another girl's village with some other volunteers. Again, my plan was to get there on Saturday and roll out on Sunday morning on the bus at 6:00 AM.
But all five of us went out to a bar/disco in the village on Saturday night (one of my top ten nights out ever in this country) and didn't go to sleep until 3:30, quickly erasing any thoughts I had of getting up two hours later. Which turned out to be a great decision because the next day we didn't really do anything. We woke up, ate pancakes cooked with Bisquick mix, then laid out on the sun all day doing almost nothing (more on this at the end). Two other volunteers showed in the afternoon, bringing the total up to seven of us (or five percent of Peace Corps Moldova), and they just continued in the laziness. It was great. The day ended with dinner, house wine, and Euro Cup 2008 soccer.
My plans for the next week? I got home Monday afternoon, I'll be here on Tuesday, leaving Wednesday morning, and not coming back until next Sunday. I'll be in Chisinau, in the North, in the South. Everywhere but home.
Notes:
- On Wednesday the 11th we're getting our new group of volunteers, which is always a great day. It'll be a little odd because I'm not going to get a chance to really get to know any of them, but it's great because they all look at us second-year volunteers like we are wise sages.
- I wrote that I was in a village on Saturday and Sunday but the word 'village' is a bit of a misnomer because it's basically a town of 6700 (or about five times larger than my village). They have things like flowers in the median, no-passing painted lines on the road, a large museum, gas and water. It felt like I had gone about 500 miles to the west. The host family is awesome, perfectly happy to have guests over. It's actually a Bulgarian village, the language heard everywhere there, but they all speak Russian too so I had no problems. It was a lot of fun, walking into a bar and having the girl point to everyone and tell the bartender, “They're my friends – they all speak Romanian,” to which I could answer, “Except me.”
- I've got a new pet-project here in my village: I'm teaching computers to the mom of my best student. It's a little odd because she has no clue about computers, not even knowing how to turn one off and on. I show her and explain to her how to do tasks like the opening and closing of folders, how to click on things and what not, but it's tough because she has no idea what she is opening and closing and I'm not really sure what to do. Even a basic program like Word causes a lot of difficulties because she has no idea how to use any of them.
But nonetheless, I really like my time there. The mom is really nice and always kind to me and it's good for the daughter because she has a chance to practice her English. They always feed me too, with the mom not letting me leave unless I've eaten an acceptable amount and the dad not letting me leave unless I've drank an acceptable amount of their home-made whiskey.
- I'll end by explaining what happened on Saturday that interrupted our afternoon of nothingness. We were lying in the driveway in the sun and on towels with music playing when the host-dad and brother drove in a tractor that was pulling a lot of hay that when set on the asphalt ended up being about 25 feet by 10 feet and 5 feet tall. There was another guy there from Iowa who actually grew up on a farm and we were quick to ask if they needed any help.
So they gave us two pitchforks and we joined them in their task of transferring it to the barn where it could be dryly stored for the winter. There were four of us total working, two Americans and the brother and dad. The brother and Americans manipulated the hay from the big pile into smaller, more manageable piles, then pushed those piles fifty feet (through a doorway) to near the barn, where host dad shoveled them into the barn itself. It was hard work, really labor intensive, and it had been over a year since I had done work like that. It was fun too because three of the girls there sat and watched while chatting with the host-grandma, making jokes.
It was great though. Half-way through we all took a break, drank some wine and ate a little. It was clear that as happy as we were to help they were equally happy to receive it.
posted by Andy Buchanan at 3:08 AM
1 Comments:
Andy,
Seven weeks means less then 50 days, the sand is indeed rapidly pouring through the hourglass. With pleasant weather, time, and friends scattered here and there it will undoubtedly be a fairly smooth transition to the looming Rat Race. Good honest farm work suits the time and place, you won't forget it !
Dad
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