Friday, July 16, 2010

Permanent Site!

Last week, I found out where I will be living and working for the next two years. On site announcement day, the PST staff drew a map of Moldova on the floor of the school gym and directed us to our permanent sites, which allowed us to see where we will be in relation to each other and to Chisinau.

I will be living in a village of 3,000 people about an hour and a half north of Chisinau. Last weekend, I went on a site visit, which consisted of one terrifying event after another. First, I had to meet my school director and have a conversation with her in Romanian. But one of the first things she said to me was that the village is waiting for me with love, and I was surprised at how much Romanian I was able to understand and speak. The next day, my school director, some school administrators, and my partner teachers held a masӑ (table feast) for me at school. Again, I had to have a conversation in Romanian – this time for three hours. The mayor was also there (though I did not know he was the mayor at the time…drawback of being introduced to someone in a foreign language). I am the first Peace Corps Volunteer to work in my village, so everyone is super excited to have me there. Again, I was surprised at how well I was able to communicate in Romanian. Then there was the issue of having to get all the way back to my PST site alone on Sunday. Fortunately, I was able to hop on the same rutiera one of my friends was on, and we were able to travel back to our training site together, which made the trip so much less scary. So, not only did I survive all the terrifying parts of the weekend, but they turned out to be not so frightening after all.

My partner teachers are great. They are excited to work with me and are open to new ideas. During my visit to the school, I got to talk to some students, and my partners must know what they’re doing because their kids speak English well. My future colleges are also enthusiastic about starting after school clubs and community projects, which is exciting for me. Excitement was the basic theme of my site visit, and I couldn’t be happier about that.

My new host family is wonderful. I will be living with a middle-aged couple with three children. Two of their kids are married and have kids of their own. Their youngest son is eighteen. He was at home last weekend, but I think he’s going to college in the fall. My parents’ eight-year-old granddaughter was also there this weekend; she was staying with her grandparents while her parents were on vacation. At first she just stared at me, but then she warmed up to me and started showing me all of her toys and jewelry. She also held my hand on the way to the veceu (outhouse) at night. I will be sad to leave my current host family, but I am excited to get to know my new host family better, and I’ve promised my PST family that I will visit them.

On Saturday, I ate all day long. First, I had breakfast at home. Then I went to the masӑ at school. Then my partner took me on a walk around the village, during which we stopped and got some bread at her mom’s house and then at a meal at her sister’s house. Then I went to my host mom’s sister’s house and had cake and ice cream. Then, I went to my partner teacher’s house and ate mӑmӑligӑ (Moldova’s national food; it’s like polenta) with meat and cheese – and there was dessert, of course. By the end of the day, I was determined to never eat again.

So, except for feeling like my stomach would explode, my site visit was a success (and the food was so good, that I can’t truthfully count overeating as a downside). I’m a so excited about living and working with the people I met last weekend, and they seem to like me. There was a lot of gushing over me this weekend, and on Sunday night, one of my partner teachers called me just to tell me that everyone is already talking about me and saying good things. I fear that soon my head will be larger than my foot was after that bug bite.

I’m halfway through with PST. I’ll move to my permanent site in mid-August. Until then, I have plenty of training sessions and three weeks of practice school to keep me busy. But, as I said, theme of last weekend: EXCITEMENT!

Some odds and ends:
-Two weeks ago, my cell phone fell in the veceu. All I could do was laugh. I have a new phone now, and I was even able to get all of my minutes back – and I have another great Peace Corps story.
-Yesterday, I took a shower for the first time in weeks (I've been bathing but not showering), and I felt like I was wasting so much water.
-I have calluses on my fingers from eating sunflower seeds.
-The other day, I found a pair of pants that I’d completely forgotten I’d packed. It was like Christmas.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

By now, I’ve had a chance to make some purchases at some of the shops in my village, and I’ve observed a couple of things. First, if you’re change isn’t very much, the shopkeepers will often give it to you in candy. I also had a clerk give me a travel pack of tissues once, which was great because tissues come in quite handy here. I’ve also seen several shopkeepers use an abacus to calculate a customer’s total.

In the month that I’ve been in Moldova, I’ve discovered that there are two kinds of culture shock. There’s the dull, constant kind that I feel at every meal, every time I use the veceu (outhouse), and every time I navigate my way through piles of manure on a dirt – or muddy – road. Then there are the sudden flashes that feel like a car coming around a corner towards me at night with its brights on. The most recent of these flashes happened last week after a vent cover flew off the ceiling of a rutiera (minibus) that the EEs were on. The next day, the rutiera driver came to the school were we have our training sessions and asked us if we remembered where we’d lost the vent cover. (I guess he was going to try to find it.) We told him that we weren’t sure, but that we knew it was before the sunflower fields. The high beams of this story are not the fact that a bus I was on lost part of its ceiling while traveling at sixty miles an hour (and, yes, Dad, the first thing I thought of when this happened was that Aloha Air 737 whose ceiling ripped off mid-flight), but the fact that a sunflower field was a meaningful landmark. I think that the dull, constant kind of culture shock might decrease with time, but I have a feeling that the sudden, unexpected reminders that I’m in a foreign country will never stop. But don’t worry; the high beams are startling, but they are some of the best moments because they remind me why I’m here.