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inca doua luni (two more months)

hollylivesabroad — Tue, 21 May 2013 19:23:00 +0000

I’ve passed the two month countdown, I realized today. The calendar hanging on my wall is filled with reminders of visitors and promises I’ve made to participate in whatever activity is going on somewhere in Moldova. Today was another purge of my room, ending with a lot of paper in the dumpster and unwanted clothes being packed into a Moldovan punga (sturdy plastic bag with zipper and painful handles). Luckily as volunteers we have our own version of a goodwill called Loot Me, where we can leave functional items that we no longer want. Loot me tends to be overflowing this time of year, when volunteers start sorting their things. I’ve been making Loot-Me deposits for a few months now, since I live so far from the capital I am dreading the day I drag all my luggage to a Moldovan van and hope it will all fit in the two square feet allotted for bags. I will probably have to buy a second ticket for all my stuff, but that’s still about two months away. Luckily some of the things in our apartment are on loan from my Moldovan counterpart, so those things, like our mamaliga pot and my comforter, will return to their rightful owner.

Most of my projects are done or wrapping up. All the grades are counted for my classes, even though we’re not technically done until the end of May. My third form classes will be done on Friday because the elementary levels do their own thing the last week of school. Ninth form will stop coming to class because we’ve given them grades. Twelfth form will show up twice more, for extra reviews before their big tests (although one will be a short lesson). I promised them a comprehensive tense review in English, so I’ll prepare that this weekend. I still don’t know how I feel about the Baccalaureate system here, where they have an exit exam/SAT/final in one big sitdown test that is created by the Ministry of Education. Looking at the questions for the English BAC test, I see why students cheat. Honestly I’m ready to be done as a teacher here. I like a lot of my students and my partner teachers have been great friends, but I can’t work easily within the established system. That’s what PC comes down to in the end. The attachments we make are with people, and that is what is sustainable, not the grant project or classroom improvements.

Hoping for another thunderstorm tonight. As my partner told me today, “the soil is thirsty” and I’ve become integrated enough here to worry about the crops along with the farmers.

diminăţa pe răcoare

hollylivesabroad — Sat, 11 May 2013 12:10:28 +0000

Spring is in the air here. Usually it only lasts for a few weeks, but its pretty glorious. The man purses and capris have also made their way out of storage and I am reminded yet again that I live in Eastern Europe, where men’s fashion differs wildly from the American standards. My roommate has been working on an Anti-human trafficking festival that will start on Tuesday, so we’re prepping to have guests for most of the week. She cleaned the apartment top to bottom while I was away last week, so it was nice to come home to that. Laundry only takes a few hours to dry now instead of days, so I look forward to cleaner clothes. Still waiting to hear about my future, but that’s okay. Just taking it one day at time.

there’s nothing lonelier than being an atheist at a funeral.

hollylivesabroad — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 18:54:14 +0000

I haven’t posted here for a long time. It’s not because of Peace Corps, or because of my students, or any kind of seasonal depression. I was home in the US for a month on Emergency Leave, which as PCV tells you something very serious happened. I lost someone in my family.

I’ve been back in Moldova for a week now, which I think has surprised a lot of people here. I’m not the same, I never will be again. But I know that I’m going to see this through, that I can grieve here and still do my job. I can share my sadness and memories and let my Moldovan friends and PCVs get me through it, because I have made a family here too.

My family in the US believes in following through on commitments, no matter what. I didn’t promise my dad I would finish my service, like he wanted, but after being here I can see that I will.

Amuurica and back.

hollylivesabroad — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 10:17:02 +0000

The heat is out in my apartment again–for some reason it has decided to only function in the kitchen, which is of course the only room we can heat manually by turning on the oven. My roommate and I were both gone for winter vacation, and so we were responsible and turned off the heat and the boiler before we left. The funny thing is that neither of us were phased by the lack of functionality of our appliances. I don’t even mind the extra chill in the apartment—the only real annoyance is that my hands get cold when I type–but I learned from my brief foray back into the US that I’ve become accustomed to living with breakdowns. No hot water? Bucket baths. No heat? Put on an extra layer. No gas? Make sandwiches.

It wasn’t hard for me to leave Moldova, but it also wasn’t hard to come back. I missed my apartment, speaking Romanian, and the friends that I’ve made here. It was great to go home and eat my mother’s wonderful cooking, hang out with friends, and party more than I should have, but it felt like a vacation, unreal and dreamlike. By the end I was so tired that I could barely say goodbye to my friends, let alone work up the emotions to comprehend leaving again. The day before I was leaving New York, I felt that familiar stomachache of panic—the one I had the whole week before I packed up and left. I guess saying goodbye to Brooklyn will always feel like kicking dust over my college years, but I realized that I want to go back and live there, eventually.

Peace Corps is truly a learning experience. I’ve come to realize, especially as I’ve had to explain my position on how I feel about the Peace Corps as an institution to my American friends, that what I do here can help the people around me, but the greatest gift I’ve received here is self-growth and the ability to reflect on what is important in my life, and what steps I want to make in the future. Moldova will largely go on unaffected once I leave, but a few people, maybe three or four, will know what it was like to have an American friend, and what our values are, and what idealism can mean from the ground up.

I’ll be turning 25 soon, which is a pretty common age for volunteers, but I know that this chunk of my 20′s was when I developed some solid opinions on serious topics. There are things that I’ve realized here, which probably would have taken me a bit longer to discover in the States. I have definite positions on marriage (-), children (+), international aid organizations (eh), and foreign language curriculum (!!) which were still so fuzzy in my head before. I don’t know if that’s just growing up or if being here helped me come to these conclusions faster. Peace Corps tells you from the get-go that you have to be flexible to succeed as a volunteer, so I can positively say that even though I’ve developed some opinions on life, the universe, and everything–I know that they will probably change as time goes on, and that’s just fine.

inceputul toamnei (start of autumn)

hollylivesabroad — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 15:30:26 +0000

Back in PST (Pre-Service Training) over a year ago, we were warned that volunteers will go through psychological ups and downs, and that generally there is a trend of a ‘mid service slump’ among many volunteers the world over. One of the reasons I haven’t been posting much is because I was in this down period for the month of September, and I am just now coming out of it in the middle of October. Even now, I still don’t feel completely right–like something is a little wrong or that I miss home too much. However, I’ve made an active choice to pull myself out of this dark mood and face the rest of my service with some enthusiasm.

I can’t say much about what has caused this, even though I am quite aware of the reasons. Most of it has to do with the mentality here, the kind of fatalism that accompanies poverty and inefficacy. It’s easy to get swept up in negative emotions, but so much more meaningful when you can push it aside and try to bring some light into a dark room. Part of being a volunteer is knowing that you’ll leave after your two years of service. To some this is a kind of buoy, for others a source of guilt. I am going to make an active choice to do as much as I can before I leave, because that’s why I’m here.

tabare de vara (summer camps)

hollylivesabroad — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 19:42:46 +0000

This morning, while I sat in an empty English classroom waiting for my partner to arrive, I had to recount everything that I did this summer in a work report for my program manager. Every volunteer is responsible for reporting, and twice a year we have these hefty report forms for PC Washington that take our work, mash it up into a database and spit it out in numbers that Congress can use to decide our funding. This report was a lighter version of that, since Education volunteers are expected to have lighter loads when school is on vacation. With a word document, I found that I could actually express what I liked about what I did this summer, rather than account for every person that I had contact with. It actually made me think about all the kids I met this summer and what my presence could have meant to them.

So, here are some highlights from my report.

Ograda Noastra is an amazing NGO that works with disadvantaged minorities in Moldova (with the most experience in the Roma community). They gave funding to two local NGOs to run a summer camp for the Roma kids in each community, and I got to help with logistics and finding volunteers to assist. I went to two of these camps and did team work/critical thinking activities, skits about community problems and solutions, as well as discussions about how the can be active in their community.

Both my experiences were pretty incredible, and I’m glad to be involved with the Roma (Gypsy) community. We were hosted by a family in Minjir for about three days, and they opened their home to three strangers from America with no questions. Every night we had dinner with a glass of wine and talked about life in the village. We called Valeriu’s (our host) mother “mama” because that was the only thing she would let us call her. Moldovans are proud of their hospitality, and I was lucky enough to be on the receiving end a lot this summer.

I’m fresh returned from a weekend at the Black Sea in the Ukraine, so now its time to put my head down and get back to work on teaching. Tomorrow is a meeting with all of the English teachers where we’ll discuss classes and basically where I’ll be for my final year in Moldova.

Deep breath. Here we go again!

agost

hollylivesabroad — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 12:43:22 +0000

Freshly returned from a wonderful vacation in Spain, I’m now looking at two straight weeks of summer camps with Roma NGOs. Jumping right back in! New volunteers are starting to come to sites next week too, so I think I will be very busy in August. Then school starts and I’ll be talking about my COS plans…living life in the Peace Corps bubble makes things seem very surreal. Might start working on a grant project with the Salvation Army in Cahul, so I may not have time to breathe this year. Which is pretty much how I like it until I get sick (prob Nov). Missing my friends from vacation already, and it was strange not to be able to tell then when I’d see them again. Right now my life is in the air after next year.

vara

hollylivesabroad — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 13:03:51 +0000

Things have started to heat up here, finally. Today I stood in a magazine waiting to make my order and felt the sweat dripping everywhere, so I know its summer. Jenn and I changed apartments last week when it was still cool, so I’m grateful that we’re not hauling our stuff now that the heat has come. We’re living with our friend Erin and her roommate right now because of our finicky landlord, but I’m happy to be out of that situation. Erin leaves on the 20th of June, which we are dreading because she has been such an amazing person to be with here in Moldova. I know she’s going to do great things and I’m happy that I got to know her. She’s moving to Nepal after this, and Jenn and I have agreed that we will visit her on our COS trip, but losing her emotional/work support here in Cahul is going to be hard. Jenn and I have been talking a lot about friendships that are built during a volunteer’s service–often we find ourselves in groups of people that we would never have been a part of in the States–but the things we go through together make us overlook whatever character differences there may be. Erin and Jenn and I have become somewhat inseparable so I know that Jenn and I will be cranky with each other for awhile. Este viata.

Anyway, its been an emotional couple of days–my sitemate Ryne COSes today (Close of Service) and he will also be sorely missed. He was sort of a brother to me in Cahul–always told me when I was overreacting to something, or would tell me to shut up and drink a beer when things were out of my control. I will be bothering him in Romanian via skype.

I am going to miss them, but that’s a volunteer’s life. People come and go, and eventually we have a network spanning the globe of people’s couches we can crash on. I’m lucky that I got to share my experiences with people like this, and I hope that the new volunteers heading down south feel the same way about us.

Speaking of the new volunteers, they arrived on Thursday. I’m a part of a special PC Moldova initiative called “Mentors” who help ease new volunteers into PC life, especially in PST. Moldova is such a small country that its easy for us to come to Chisinau where they have their trainings and help them buy things at the piata or offer an understanding ear. We went to the airport to welcome them and haul luggage, and set up their new phones, and offer advice for the first few days of PST. I stayed with my PST host mom a few nights before they got here and gently reminded her that the new volunteer that would stay with her wouldn’t speak Romanian yet. She seemed pretty excited, so I think it will be nice for them both.

Saturday I went to a leadership training at my friend Rachel’s site which is about an hour south of Cahul. It’s another PC Moldova initiative called “Haiducii” which means the Rebels. We travel to villages and do leadership and group activities. It was my first real one, so it was interesting to realize which words I didn’t know but needed to, like for ‘rope’ and ‘follow me’ but I had a lot of fun. I will be doing this training again in Chisinau next week for the new volunteers, and it will be in English. Of course that’s also Jenn’s birthday, so it will be a six hour commute kind of day so I can make it back to celebrate.

sfîrşitul anului şcolar/end of the school year

hollylivesabroad — Wed, 16 May 2012 19:39:49 +0000

School is coming to a close, and so is my first year of service in Moldova. My partner Aliona told me yesterday that she felt as though two days had passed since we first starting working together in the village of Cojuşna in August. I feel as though this year went faster than my freshman year at Wagner, which I can barely remember thanks to dorm parties and all night study sessions. There are definitely things I’ve grown accustomed to here (ketchup on pizza, carrying kleenex for TP, switching between Russian and Romanian greetings) and others I never will (keeping my shoes clean, dressing to the month instead of the weather, thinking I should be married at my age) but I’m definitely learning my way around the Moldovan school systems, which, as my memory serves for grade school in the US, is radically different from how elementary/middle/high schools are run in the US. One thing I can’t grow accustomed to is how students and teachers handle test taking, and I’ve accepted that I can’t change it (if only influence my partners), so I will be completely unavailable on the day that the 12th form students take their final exam. I think my students know me well enough not to ask me to help them cheat on their Baccalaureate exam, but there is a tiny part of me that thinks I will get a desperate phone call/test/facebook message with a plea for help.

I wish I could boost their self esteem. To make them see that if they study, it means they don’t need help. I try to teach this in my classes, but even my best students feel like they need a safety line.

These are my stresses at school.

Outside of school, this week is Festivalul Libertăţii (Festival of Liberty) a week of human trafficking awareness events in my town. My friends worked very long and hard on making this week happen, so I’m showing my support by attending as many events as possible, which also means that sleep has been lacking lately. Monday night Erin and I stayed up til 1 working on various projects so we could have more time during the week, but last night it was much the same since I had to write a test for the 4th form. Friday there will be a social theater event near the park, and Saturday is a roundtable discussion and open air concert.

This summer is jam packed, but since teaching will be on the backburner, I get to try some different kinds of events. Very excited to explore Moldova and Europe (Germany/Austria/Czech Republic with my mom; Spain with friends I’ve known most of my life–including my friend Nicky in PC Senegal). I’m also in Haiducii (the Rebels), a PC Moldova group that does teambuilding events for summer camps, so I’m heading to Bălţi (2nd largest city in MD) next weekend for a training there.

Paşte şi vacanţa

hollylivesabroad — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:55:23 +0000

Tomorrow marks my first day back at school after a week and a half. It also means that April is almost over, and four months of something different are about to occur. Let’s start with Easter.

Easter (Paşte) is celebrated the Orthodox way in Moldova, meaning that it follows a different calendar and that this year, Easter was a week later here than in the States. Normally Easter isn’t a big celebration for my family, but in Moldova the whole country goes nuts. The week before is the week of flowers, where everyone does spring cleaning in their homes, repaints their gates, plants flowers and begin to seed their gardens. My contribution to this was scrubbing down the kitchen and refolding the clothes in my room. Also in preparation for Easter, women begin baking cozonac or pasca, both are types of Easter cakes. From my understanding, cozonac is the bigger, wider bread while pasca is tall and made with tvorog, which is basically Russian ricotta. Both are slightly sweet and usually have a glazed look on the crust. They’re pretty good, and everyone has their own variation. I will say though, after two weeks of it, I’m ready for a break.

I wanted to spend Easter with a Moldovan family since Jenn and I weren’t planning anything special, but my host mom from PST is a Jehovah’s witness, so she doesn’t celebrate, my host moms in Cahul were both out of the country, one of my partners went to Romania, the other speaks Russian at home, and I thought my main partner was spending it with her boyfriend’s family. So Jenn and I planned for the apocalypse, since we assumed all the markets would be closed for several days. We planned out our meals, stocked up on TP, and made sure we had extra supplies for sandwiches. Of course, after we shop on Friday, my partner called to invite me to the village Saturday and Sunday for Easter. Go figure. Apparently she didn’t think I’d want to go up with her and her daughter on Friday and wasn’t sure if I could get there on my own. Her mother told her just to invite me anyway, so I showed up in her village around 3pm on Saturday, no problems. It’s just funny because volunteers tend to know more about traveling around in Moldova since we do it more, so a lot of people are surprised when we can get around.

We spent Saturday cleaning up dead grass and twigs in the vineyard and then prepping salads for Easter lunch. My partner’s mom felt bad for putting me to work, but I liked it. I learned a lot of new vocabulary and how to prepare some Moldovan style salads. My partner had never really heard me speak Romanian, so she was surprised when I could keep up with the convo. Sometimes she would stop and make me tell what we were talking about in English. Sometimes it felt like a comprehension quiz, but I was glad she did it because there were a couple of times when I was way off.

Easter morning we washed our faces with water that had an egg dyed red and one dyed white. The bucket also had money in the bottom. Its supposed to purify you and then mean a rich year ahead. Sanda, my partner’s daugther, spent the next part of the morning delivering plates of cozonac, dyed eggs, and candy to the neighbors. We ate goose, racituri (chicken jello), mushroom salad, egg salad, this salted fish thing with potatoes and beets, bread, potatoes, and we ate for two days straight. Easter morning breakfast was a little rough because we did it with a shot of raiku (moonshine).

Monday morning I caught the 7:45 morning bus back to Cahul, where I rested for a bit then we had a big lunch with our sitemates in Cahul plus Erin’s friend that was visiting from Budapest. It was a very busy couple of days. Then Wednesday night I started the trek to Bucharest so I could catch a plane on Thursday to Warsaw. Spent a couple days hanging out there with my friend from high school who has an internship at the Embassy. Warsaw is a cool city. I need some more time to process before I make any concrete opinions on my trip, but I did like the city a lot.

May will be a lot of prepping for new volunteers, writing finals, and enjoying the warm weather.