Roaming

Nothing big has happened to me in the last week with which I can use to introduce the rest of the entry – it's been a pretty slow last week. But I figure I should fill people in on what I've been up to: if I waited for quality material and stories, I wouldn't be able to post anything for quite a while.

- We got our new group of English and Health Education volunteers. They were a little frazzled coming in because they had no layover in Frankfurt due to a delay in their flight out of JFK – they had only a few minutes on the ground in Germany before getting on their connecting flight. I actually didn't have a chance to talk with them the first day because they got in a little late and

I was tired from my 5:30 AM wake-up call. The tradition here is for a lot of volunteers to meet the rookies at a bar near their hotel in the center of the city but rather than go there I went to a different place where they were showing Euro Cup soccer on massive TV screens.

My mentality with the new group is simple: while I wish them all the best and will be more than happy to answer any of their questions when they are received. But because I'll be in America by the time they get out of training I'll never have a chance to get to know any of them. And it's still amazing to me that I was in their position a mere twenty-four months ago.

- On Thursday I had a very fun and depressing evening, all at the same time. I went to the south of Moldova to a girl's going-away party which was very fun because it was celebratory, with a lot of food and wine and dancing. Everyone was in a good mood. It was depressing too because it was organized by the other teachers and it was 100 percent better than the going-away that will not be held for me in my village. (I forgot to write last time: how many words of thanks for my two years of service did I get on the last day of school? Zero. No recognition for all that I did here).

- On Tuesday I did something I hadn't yet done in this country – went fishing. One of my students who finished ninth grade actually invited me during the last week of school to go with him at some point this summer and after missing on a few days, we finally decided settled on last Tuesday.

When he first told me about it I was excited but with one trepidation: I had to meet him near our school at 5:30 in the morning. I thought he was joking when he first told me but my alarm going off at 5:15 in the morning convinced me that he was, indeed, very serious. He actually showed up twenty minutes late which really bothered me as I waited but my feelings of irk were dissolved when I saw him sprinting to our meeting place so that he could make up for lost time.

We went to our local lake with our arsenal – worms, bread, cornbread, and our fishing poles (I felt like Huck Finn – the poles were just eight-foot long sticks with eight feet of fishing line tied to the end with wooden bobbers and hooks). We sat by the lake for five hours and caught only four small fish, although one monster took our bait and was so big that he split the line in half.

- I was exhausted by waking up at 5:15 because 1)It was 5:15 in the morning, and 2) Because I had slept ten hours the previous two nights combined (although if should be noted that when I'm not in my village I go out of my way to not sleep at all, knowing that sleep is one of the tools I use to kill time when at home). The night before the one preceding sleeping I was in a village celebrating 'xram', the day of the city (or village), with eight other volunteers. I've written about these days many times before: basically, people eat and drink in the early evening then all congregate in the center for a huge dance.

At this particular dinner something amazing happened, something that hadn't occurred in almost two years: I ate some much I couldn't sleep anymore. It was a combination of Russian salad, sausage, cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers, chicken, fresh onion, rabbit (very tender), mushrooms, and rice wrapped in grape leaves. I think I ate half a rabbit just by myself. There was also plenty of wine and cognac to go around too.

At around 11:00 in the evening we went to the center where there were literally hundreds of people gathered around, all of them doing nothing but the national dance called the hora in which people lock arms around each-other, form a big circle, and proceed to circle around and around around for the duration of the song, doing some sort of cross-over step with their legs. It's simple and people here love it. I can't express this enough: they love it. At any even where five or more people are dancing, there'll be a hora. And because we were there with all the Moldovans, we fell right into lock step until 2:30 in the morning, when we decided to finally head home.

- The previous two nights I went to a town about two hours north of Chisinau called Singerei to hang with a friend of mine there, another volunteer who happens to have an XBox that drew my attention. I got there at 7:00 on Friday, played until 2:00 in the morning, woke up at 9:00 on Saturday and played until 7:00 at night, breaking for nothing more than the bathroom, a shower, and a three minute run to the local store. It might seem like a big waste of time to the casual reader but I not only would disagree, I would say that I can't wait to get back and do it again, likely next weekend.

In the evening we decided to go out and ended up at a great disco, one of the best that has to be in any regional center in this country. We ended up there and at another place until 5:15 in the morning and I have to say, there's nothing stranger than going to bed and walking past people who have already woken up to start their work day. It's something I did only once or twice in all my time in America but something I've done about a half dozen times both here and in Russia and I'm still not used to it.

- This weekend I'm actually going to do something productive. The cousin of a friend of mine is coming in from America and the cousin's wife works as an optometrist; they're bringing in 200 pairs of glasses and giving them out to villagers in my friends village. But it's a village in which about forty percent of the village doesn't speak any Romanian so I need to go and help translate. It promises to be a really good time, one that will not only benefit me but others as well. I'm already looking forward to it.

- I'll end with a few pictures. The one on top is of me at the wedding with my host-brother and his new bride, taken at about 5:30 in the morning. The second one is of the rather motley crew (said fully complimentary) I met at my host-grandpa's house on the last day of school. Grandpa is on the left, his best friend since childhood next to him, his neighbor next, and finally the woman who comes to take care of him on the far right.