And She's Out

For the last week my host mom had been gone from my village, studying in Chisinau for something involving teaching (sadly, while I could explain it to you in Russian, I have no idea how to bring the concept to English. That's not be bragging about my skills – it's just something about another language. More on this later). It's been quite the scene around here without her.

Even before she left she was prepared for any and everything to happen to me – devoured by wolves, drowning in the well, lost and starved in the forest. If she were to come home and hear anything of this, she would not be shocked. She would likely slowly nod her head 'yes' and say, “Yep, that sounds about right.” She's ready for it all. She actually called last Thursday and asked three questions: 1)Had I eaten that day?, 2)What had I eaten?, and 3) Who cooked what I had eaten? It was a thirty-second phone call.

In the meantime, things have been interesting around here. My host-grandma comes over every day to feed the animals, gather eggs, do work like that, but it's odd because she doesn't speak Russian, only the Ukrainian dialect spoken here. Thankfully, after a year and a half in the village my comprehension is such that I basically understand what she wants me to tell me, like what she did, things like that. Sometimes, though, when they are really busy I get to do things like give water the animals (finicky drinkers, I've found): I feel like I'm at some sort of camp in America where people go to live in the country, because that's exactly what I get to do. As for other chores, thankfully my host sister-in-law does the cooking and cleaning for my and my host-brother, which actually works out nice for me because she's actually a little better cook than my host-mom.

Of course, there also comes the unfortunate malady of being treated like a four-year old child. For example, last Wednesday my host sister-in-law called and asked me if I could plug in the light in the hen-house. “CAN YOU PLUG IT IN!?,” she said. “ARE YOU SURE?,” was the follow-up question. I reassured her that, yes indeed, I could plug in a light. I only have one job to do every day: to start the fire in the wood-burning oven that serves as the one heat source for the house. And I have to admit, I've gotten pretty good at it, to the point that it takes me only one match after needing almost a whole box a year ago. I finally figured how it was done one day by watching my host-mom do it for the five thousandth time in life. That's all it took. And the house is warmer and the matches, more abundant, as a result.

Notes:
- We always like to joke here about our workdays – not matter what we say, there is almost zero doubt that we work less than most work in America. For an example day, last Monday I woke up at 7:45, got to school at 8:25, left at 9:15 after the first lesson (per schedule), didn't go back until 1:00 (per schedule), and walked out the door by 2:05. A total of 1:30 minutes of work, 1:35 minutes if you include preparation time. Not too bad, especially compared with a one day of a traditional forty-hour work week in America. And if there is an irony in this, it's that my work here is far, far more stressful than the work I did there.

- As I alluded to at the start, one of the odd things about knowing another language is that I (and any other person) finds that there are certain things that simply can't be translated to the other language at all. There are a handful times a week in which my kids will give me a sentence in Russian and want to know how it's translated into English and while I know every single word and understand it perfectly in the other language, I have no idea how to translate it into English.

Some of my friends make fun of me actually for my propensity to speak Russian around large groups of Moldovans when it's not totally necessary. As one friend jokes, if there is a room of 500 people, all of whom speak English and 497 of which speak Russian (American's being the three uninformed), I will inevitably start speaking Russian. And my answer? Yep. It's not my fault really. If I'm telling a funny story or something that originally happened in Russian, it's not my fault that the story is funnier in the original language. Then I shrug my shoulders and simply say, “What do you want to me?”

- I've written about before how my host-grandpa left about two weeks ago to return to home in the next village – his home is about a twenty minute walk away from mine. Usually I walk for about forty-five minutes every day but in the opposite direction of his house. I was wanting to visit him for a while but the problem is that his house is located at the top of a hill that is unpaved; thus, any attempt to visit him before the last few days would have been met by a mound of mud that would have driven me mad. As a result, I deferred. Until Wednesday.

I walked into house, shook his hand, and immediately regretted that I hadn't decided to come in sooner,. He got a big smile on his face, told to me to sit down, and after a few questions of mine directed in his direction – mainly focusing on the searing temperatures inside his room – he started to talk to me, wondering where and how I had been. I was there for about a half-hour before deciding to leave but when I got up to go he asked me where I was going to and told me to grab a seat again. It was clear that he didn't have much to eat around so I asked him if/when he wanted me to go to the store for him – he quickly responded that he could use three loaves of bread and a pack of butter to go with them. I went to the three closest stores, all of which were closed, before returning home with the sad news. He didn't seem to upset after I promised to get some homemade vodka from the cellar for him.

Thankfully, his disappointment about my inability to find him something to eat was alleviated by a woman who came up. Turns out, she comes by every day to clean and cook and straighten up for him. She fried up some fish, reheated some buckwheat, and went to get the vodka that I couldn't find. Then grandpa and I sat around, drank some of the vodka, and I went home with a promise to return the next day. He seemed to be happy with that.

- There is a lot of conversation going around now amongst Peace Corps Moldova volunteers surrounding a book that's come out not too long ago called “The Geography of Bliss” (the author's name escapes me now), a book in which Moldova is featured as the third least happy country in the world. The man wrote a chapter about life here, about his time spent here investigating just how unhappy people here are. The verdict? Really unhappy. As he was quoted in saying in Newsweek International, “People in Moldova celebrate in the misfortune of others.” He actually started in Chisinau and then went to a town in the south of Moldova called Cahul and interviewed a handful of Peace Corps volunteers, and suffice to say our organization doesn't come out looking too nice; were basically painted as a group of beer-slamming whiners.

The biggest complaint I have against the book is that he takes an amazingly one-sided view of things – he was here for a short amount of time and without knowledge of the language it would far easier to get the misconception of things. For example, just last Sunday I bought a card for my phone and, in a rush, left without getting my change. I realized my mistake after a minute and went back to get it and the woman was at first a little incredulous but after I told her how I just forgot to take it she started to joke around and was quick to give me my seventy lei (about 6.50$).

Also, I'll never forget how a few weeks ago I was waiting in my regional center at the bus station to get back home. A little girl came up asking everyone for money – every bus station has at least a few of these kids – and after she was denied by me she went up to the woman next to me. The woman gave her one lei, asked the girl to sit down, and proceeded to talk to her for a few minutes. The whole conversation was in Romanian and the only things I understood was about “Is Mom at home?,” and something about school. But needless to say, I got the gist of the whole talk. And I hardly find it to be the talk of a people who “ celebrate in the misfortune of others.”

- Before I wrap this up, a warning: we have break from school for the next week and I'm leaving my village on the 29th of February and not coming back until the 8th or 9th of March. I'll be out of my village for as long as I can, basically. As a result I won't be able to post anything for at least two weeks.

- The best part of my last week came on my first visit to host-grandpa on Wednesday. First, I should write the caveat that he's terrified and horribly bothered that I have yet to find a Moldovan girlfriend. It's atop his worry-list. Well, last Saturday I met a girl in Chisinau who seemed cool and with whom I exchanged numbers.

When I went to visit him on Wednesday I told him how I met a new girl in Chisinau. He looked at me and asked, “does she drink?” When I answered in the affirmative he leaned back, smiled a little, and gave me a thumbs-up. It's the type of look – the type of thing that he does – that I'll never, never forget.

He's Back. Again

Just like the last time I was without my power cord for an extended period of weeks, rather than go blow-by-blow about all that I've managed to not post, I'll just go ahead and give a quick run-down. And yes, it's good to be back.

- I managed to kill the last three weeks mainly by doing a copious amount of reading (i.e. about 120 pages a day from Sunday through Thursday). I went on a biography bender too, polishing off two books about Teddy Roosevelt, one on Napoleon, Band of Brothers, which I would count as sort of a group biography, as well as a biography on FBI spy Robert Hanssen and of a horse (Seabiscuit).

- Overall my time in school has been spent well, with a huge exception being last week. To picture how bad things were, picture the one of the worst days you've ever had. That was Thursday (Valentines Day, ironically, and it had nothing to do with love, the usual calamity on such a day. I'll explain some of the reasons in a second). Then picture a day that was still slightly better but still really bad. That was Wednesday. A day again slightly better but still horrible. That was Tuesday. And Monday was just a bad day overall.

Thursday I could either give a rundown of all that happened but instead I'll just jump to the point immediately after which I was very, very close to going to the local store where I could buy a double-shot of vodka for thirty cents. Actually, it's frightening how close I was. Basically, the best way to describe what I saw when I entered into my classroom where I had left my fourth graders is simply make a reference to “Kindergarten Cop” when he meets the kids for the first time. It was chaos, kids running around, shouting. One kid was even lying on the floor like a fish on a dock, flopping around. I looked at him and said, “Dima, what are you doing? Are you drunk? Why are you lying on the floor?” He just shrugged his shoulders and looked at me. I said, “Do you know the floor is dirty? Do you care?” Again, he shrugged his shoulders and looked at me. It was just by the grace of God that I didn't go to the store.

In fact, later in the day I told my host mom this story and about how I almost went for the shot, and she said, “Andy, do you know what kind of people go to the store for vodka after a day of work?” When I answered, “Yeah, the type of people who feel like I felt today after the 6th lesson,” she gave a half-smile, lifted one shoulder a little, and told me that I was right.

- Last Tuesday I was forced to implement a little bit of American discipline. It started the Friday before when a kid in 5th grade wanted to come into my classroom and I didn't let him. He told me some swear words in Russian that, sadly, he didn't think I could understand. I could. So on Tuesday I brought him into my classroom, made him write out numbers one through one hundred on the left side of sheets of paper, then wrote in English “I will respect my English teachers.” I told him how, I having written one sentence, he was going to have to copy it ninety-nine times. He proceeded to look me in the eye and said that no, he wasn't going. Needless to say, this isn't the type of disrespect I take from a kids who's ten years old. I, naturally, insisted that he would and told him he would not be allowed to leave my room until he did.

To make a long story short, he spent two hours joking and running around, telling me that he didn't do anything and that as a result he wasn't going to write. Finally, after two hours, he started to cry and five minutes later asked me to tell him again what he needed to do. Forty-five minutes later he was done. Believe me, it was far more painful for me to be with him than it was for him to be with me.

- To make matters worse last week, on Friday I actually didn't have any lessons so I was free to go to Chisinau early. My plan was to hitchhike out of my village, which is usually not a problem. I've never had to wait more than twenty minutes and when my friends were here two weeks ago we waited literally a minute and a half. This time, though, last Friday I waited an hour in fifteen minutes in twenty-five degree weather for the first ride, which didn't even to take me to my final destination of my regional center but instead to a village about six miles from mine. There, I waited another thirty-seven minutes for another ride. So in total, it took me 1:57 to travel a total distance of six miles. About the speed of a brisk walk.

- I've written before about how much our English has fallen in our time here. Case in point: last Saturday a few of us were at an apartment and talking about pain killers. One guy asked another girl if it was easy to get a 'subscription' for pills and she answered “no, a 'subscription' is easy to get.” Of the five of us present, only one of use noticed that he meant to say 'prescription.'

- A few weeks ago, at the end of January, I went to the south of Moldova to visit another volunteer there, and I walked away stunned. First of all, just pulling up I was in shock of the place – about 3000 people (or 1800 more than are present in my village and the bordering one). There was paved roads everywhere. Even at her house they have running water, a toilet inside, a shower, satellite TV, and high-speed Internet. It was easy to hitch-hike to and from, it's only two hours from Chisinau. I ended up talking to her host-dad for about two hours while drinking wine. I promised to return the next chance I could, as I already prefer her village to mine.

- Actually, my original plan was to go back to her village in a few weeks time when we have the next vacation from school, which starts at 2:00 in the afternoon on Friday, February 29th. Not that I'm counting the days – or hours – or anything. We have conferences in Chisinau from March 2nd to the next Wednesday and I was planning to go hang out for a day or two but there's been a hitch in the plan because I'm fairly sure I'm going to have a team for the national Model United Nations conference that'll happen in Chisinau those days. Another team dropped out, leaving a space for kids from my school. In all honesty I would rather not go, but in looking at my kids I realized that it's the best of the best who are likely going, kids who have been nothing but great to me during all of my time here. I figure it's the least I can do to show them my appreciation and give them this chance to be in Chisinau for three days, to sleep in a hotel and meet other kids. It's the type of thing I just don't want to have pass them by if I can help it.

- I've become increasingly conscious here of my ability to jinx myself. For example, I told people for a year and a half how tough it would be to live here with out a computer when low and behold, my power cord has died (twice) on me. I also made the mistake of always talking about my Ipod, how it was my savior here. Wouldn't you know it, it finally died on me. It actually still works (in theory) – the battery is fine, but when I plug it in I'm told by Itunes that it's corrupted and needs to be reset but, after I do as told, I'm simply told again that I need to reset it. I would take it to a place where they can replace it but . . . that's either in Bucharest or Kiev. And I'm not totally sure they can repair it. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

- Speaking of those places, my vacation plans for my final trip as a Peace Corps volunteer is starting to take place. I may actually go up to Germany or down to a town called Constantsa, in Romania on the Black Sea coast. At the very least, if those don't work out I'm heading to Odessa and maybe Kiev for a few days. Either way I'm excited.

- Finally, I'll end with a note on the weather. Suffice to say, it's gotten cold here after a brief spell of rather warm weather. Actually, outside it's not too bad, getting down to the high-teens during the day and getting into the high-thirties during the day. But for some reason, the house here simply has been unable to warm up, to the point that I can literally see my breath all the time (even as I write this sentence). Ironically, it's not that bad; it takes some getting used to and my fingers get especially uncomfortable, but as long as I wear enough layers the rest of my body is fine. Plus it comes with the added knowledge that 1)It's supposed to get into the high-forties some time later this week, and 2)The spell now is likely to be the final cold spell of the season. I can only hope. And my hands can only hope that warm blood will flow freely through them in the not-too distance future.