Sunday, April 27, 2008

“Adeverat, Cristos a inviat”

I am attaching some more pictures from Romania. I still don’t have all the pictures and just pulling these off face book from a volunteer who I went with that has posted some of them.

This is phil and I doing hard guy poses in burcurest ( i am diong the arnold flex)
This is is us walking up to the Bran castle or fake dracula castle as it is known... Phil and I goofing off or going to war... you be the judge :-)
That was the view outside of our hostel in Brasov. Beautiful!



This is me in bucurest hanging out with the ladies ;-)


Phil and I once again doing hard guy poses in bucurest. the building advertisment was crazy!

4.27.2008 14:38

“Adeverat, Cristos a inviat”- It is true, Christ has risen

It is Easter today in Moldova. And as uneducated as I am here about religion I don’t know how much of the world celebrates this day as Easter. I know that 90 something percent of moldova is Christian orthodox and about 90% of Moldova is celebrating Easter today so I assume it is a Christian orthodox holiday ;-). I woke up this morning at 6 to the sound of the neighbors talking loudly in the hallway outside my room. I got up to see what the commotion was about and then remembered that it was Easter and that my host dad had gone to church at 4am or thereabouts and that everyone was coming over to eat a breakfast masa with lots of wine. So I jumped in the shower shaved to look presentable then we all masa-ed it up. And drank a lot of wine for so early in the morning. I then went back to bed and slept till noon. I watched an episode of the Sapranos (which I am in to now and allow myself once a day to watch an episode. Now I am sitting outside on this beautiful day outside wrting in my journal a little paranoid of this wasp flying over my head.

I had a good weekend. Friday I set off to chisianu for our baseball game the next day. I decided If I was going to go down to Chisinau I might as well have an adventure on the way. So I called up a volunteer to the south of me on the way to chisianu and said I was going to drop in and see what work was like for him and to see his city. That was easier said then done. It takes a good 3 and a half hours to get to chisnau and his city is close to being on the way and about an hour and a half south of me. So I have never been there before and having really no idea on how to get there set off about 8am on Friday. There was a problem for me finding a maxi taxi south and I had to walk the 45minutes to the bus station instead of just picking up one on the side of the road as they go by. Then I got quickly haggled into taking the bus to beltz which is fine because they have a big bus station and I figure it would be a sinch to get to get to that town from there. So I get there… stand around the station and asked a few people who told me to wait over there and there should be a bus sometime. I got tired of waiting and the busses to Chisinau from there didn’t want to bother taking me only 30 minutes on the 2 hour ride to chisnau and drop me off because it wasn’t worth there effort. I got sick of waiting when I see a buss drive by about 25 yards out that says the name of the town I wanted to get to. So I take off running after it and get on.

So I am riding on this trolly bus kinda thing crawling no faster then maybe 30km/hr (I don’t’ know the conversion here). But it was slow! And standing. We finally turn off the main drag and i watch everyone get off one by one then I realize nobody that was on the bus when I got on was still there but like one person. So I ask this women and she tells me we are in Singeri Noi. I needed to get to just Singeri. Crap… she said I could wait till 2 and there would be a bus there ( it was only about 11am) I said nuts on that is there another way. She said yes and then told the driver to stop at this intersection where I could getr off and hitch a ride from there to the town or atleast close to it. That’s what I did and I got off and walked for a bout a good hour until I found the town! 4 and half hours after I had set off. But I made it there and It was a really nice day out. Had a good chat with Gerald the volunteer there about life and how thigns are going for him. He is 53 and works in the same organization I do but in a different part of moldova. His place of work had an volunteer who ended up leaving because of how corrupt they were and how unwilling they were to work with him. The specificially asked for an older volunteer the next time and got one. Gerald has been having success at least in there eyes because he will write grants.

This brings me to the reason I went there. Not only for some good conversation because Gerald is a great guy and I like talking with him but because he had won a grant for a laptop and projector for his organization and my partner who has had nothing to do with me and has not included me in anything told me that Gerald had gotten a laptop and projector and now they want one and want me to write a grant for it. I don’t even want to get into how much of a problem I have with this but I said well see and went to visit Gerald to talk about how he won it and why he wrote the grant. We talked a while I gave him my reasons why I didn’t want to write a grant for my organization to get them a lap top. He understood immediately and then started second guessing his grant and said he would keep on eye on it and hope that his organization really needed it and used it accordingly.

After having lunch with Gerald I trekked it back to the main road and waited there with my arm out trying to wave down a car or bus or anything to get me into town. I got a bmw to stop for me and we flew all the way there going no slower then 170km/hr at any one time. I was a tad scared at times but I did have a seatbelt on which is more then I can say for anything else I have ridden in since I have been here and I didn’t really know how fast 185km/hr really was so when we were going that fast I just pretended it was 60mph :-) sorry mom don’t get worried here!

I stayed the night with my old host family then went into chisnau for our baseball game the next day Saturday. (yesterday) I hitched again into town.. I am beginning to like hitch hiking now that I can communicate well enough that I can tell them where I need to go. I got the game and had a great time. We played the same team we had played the previous 2 times. The first game losing by over 20 the second by about 3 or 4 and this game we won! Not to brag or anything but I kicked some butt. I threw out 4 guys. 3 of them at second base. I feel like I am playing better now then when I was in highschool. My arm is a lot stronger and I don’t have a problem winging over to second. I was able to play the full 7 innings up and down as catcher mainly because I have been running doing lunges and squats out on the track every other day and it has really helped my back. Because the first 2 games I could barely play 2 innings without having to come out and get a sub because of the back pain. This game I had no pain and played great. I also hit a ground roll double to the out field and scored every time I got up to bat. We all played really well. It was just our day and we needed it! I had a good time Chisinau after the game we all went out for pizza and laughed about that game. I ended up not even leaving until 6:30 that evening and because of the lack of busses the night before Easter I hitched a ride in the back of this tiny car with 3 guys smashed against the door. We had good conversation and were surprised when I said I was American and all congratulated me on learning Romanian and how many Russian speakers still don’t’ put the effort to learn it when they been here for over 18 years since they broke off from Russia.

This week had its ups and downs. As usual. ( sorry for the poor transition). My bench repair group of high school students did come through with the signatures. We have over 500 names and signatures who support the project. We will use this to go the mayor and ask for some money for the materials while we supply the labor and time. We might also use it for local business with our plan to hopefully promote marketing for their business by them supporting the community. And even asking the high school kids to cough up 5 lei a piece (50cents) to support the project which could easily pay the bill for the benches. (just on the signatures a lone that would be $250 and could repair around 5 benches at least with new paint wood and everything).

Work is slow as all heck. I spent more time at the children center helping poor vegetable oil in 1 liter bottles out of a 20 liter barrel. Messy operation that was. The center gave the poorest of the kids noodles and vegetable oil for Easter. Thursday I got to go to a village with the organization down the hall. They worked with the other former peace corps volunteer and had a better reason for getting a volunteer outside of being a grant writer. I got to go to a seminar provide my laptop so they could show pictures to a group of farmers in the nearby town. It was part of a sharing experience program where they had a local farmer go to Romania and learn some techniques they use over there and share there experience. To help his presentation they used my laptop to show pictures of his experiences. It looked somewhat productive and I enjoyed the experience. They keep telling me I should just go work with them and how if my organization doesn’t have anything for me to do they could sure use me. This is getting a little touchy because my organization sees this and is very protective of me. And I have built up relationships with my coworkers and feel about about the whole situation. I almost want to offer them a deal in where I write them a grant for thre time and trouble with me and then leave. We will see it might motivate them to do something with me. But I have had it with sitting in that office. And will spend my time out of the office for now on, may it be just walking around in the local smaller villages by myself or working with another organization or what not. I have been getting negative on my organization and angry with the peace corps for my place ment but its not my directors fault. We have to many volunteers to place and not enough places to put everyone. I will find my own way here and for now I am learning.

I am going to travel more around moldova see more learn more and hopefully find my role here.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Romania and beyond



racel, bobby-joe, phil,becca, janie, me, rasov castle

4.20.08 7:52





Here it is the Romanian trip. I don’t think I will go into too much detail here but I will give the gist of what happened. I will start with us all leaving the peace corps office at about 6. We all are walking and I am having no problems what so ever given the lightness in which I packed. (2 pairs of underwear 2 shirts and 2 pairs of socks). So im ridin light (phil did the same and we were both glad for it given the walking distances we were in for). But unlike phil and I the girls seemed to pack in great quantity. I offered to carry a bag that I regretted as soon as I picked it up. It was a good 30 pounds atleast (I dunno what she had in there but I imaged bricks and dumbbells). As soon as I grabbed the bag I stepped on a manhole cover and as luck would have it caved right in! My foot began to fall but lucky for me I had this 30 pound counterweight bag on my right as my left leg was attempting to detach itself down the hole. Anyway I as able to recoverand slowly do a lunge out of the hole. I scrapped and bruised my leg up pretty good but had I not had that bag I most likely would have broken my leg and ended my trip right there. (good start to the trip).

The bus ride was not too exciting getting there. I was uncomfortable and it was an overnight trip. I took some benadril to help me sleep and became more groggy then anything else. The bus was stopped at the border for 3 hours as our passports were checked and bags and stuff. I really didn’t sleep more then an hour or so during the whole ten hour escapade.

We arrived finally in bucherest about 6am in the middle of a city where we had no idea where we were. From there it was my job to get us to our hostel. This proved difficult because my city navigation skills are sub par but when you have 5 people in a group somebody has to take charge or be forced to take charge or else everyone just second guesses everything. We mad our way on the metro to a part of town that was going to be our launch point in our attempt to find our hostel. (2 hours later we arrived at our hostel).

First day without sleep phil and I wondered around the town a bit while the girls slept and ate some burrito lookin thing on the side of the road at this stand and made conversation with a girl from turkey who ran the stand. We all later met up together and wondered around the city. It was a really beautiful city. I had heard it described as just a larger Chisinau (capital city in moldova) but they were very mistaken. There was utterly no trash on the ground the roads were clean and buildings up kept and huge. The public transportation was great and monuments beautiful and great restaurants. Around 5 pm we all went the air port and picked up one of our companion’s friend from the airport and became 6.

The next day we had not had enough of the city so we walked around some more played near the fountains then made our way to the train station and then took a 2 and a half hour train ride to brasov. The train was great, really comfortable and plenty of space for my legs. Rachel the volunteer in the cab behind me was talking up a storm with these random people she was riding with and was rewarded with a free bottle of wine from them.

We arrived in brasov at the trainstation. I followed the instructions on how to get us from there to the hostel we were stayin at and we succeded. (my sole responsibility for the trip was getting us from transport to our hostels and booking them, I dominated my assignment and our accommodations were great). Now that all my stress was over from getting us to our destinations I was ready to relax and enjoy the town.

The town is beautiful. That first night we all got something to eat and then walked around the city. Beautiful… only word for it. The next day we walked around again (bascily all we did there was walk around and see things. They have a magnificent church there that we went in to see and really the whole town looked ancient but really well kept.

The second day we were all there we went on a castle fest. We took a bus out to Bran and then Rasov to see two castles. The first one was dracula’s castle and was not very impressive. Very touristy and a bit expensive. But we got a good lunch out there in Bran so ill call it a success. Plus phil and I raced up this mountain path and we nearly both had heart attacks because … running up hills as fast as you can will get ya. The second castle was awesome. Its more in a ruin state not restored or kept. Had you know the broken down walls and stuff. Plus it took us about 25 mins to hike up this mountain just to get to the thing. So once you got up there then ontop of the castle lookout you got really magnificent views. We stayed and played around on everything ( there was do not touch signs so we climbed on everything played with everything thre and just a great time). As it was closing we all sat around comsuming a beverage when this guy came up to us an started talking. His name was nigel and was from outside of London. He works there and lives up thre in that castle. He also claims to be the archery coach for the Olympic team in Romania. After the castle was closed he gave us the secrete tour and showed us this well where this show ghost hunters apparently shot an episode. He lit a piece of newspaper on fire and dropped in town this massive well (about 250 feet down and about 10 feet across this thing was massive) then he showed us this skeleton they found while doing some repairs a few years back. It was under glass below the floor but he opened up a secret door and we all got to see it up close without glass or anything… it was crazy.

The next day phil, Rachel and I hiked up this mountain that our hostel was backed up to. It took us a good hour at a steady pace and we were all pretty exhausted from the climb. The highlight was as we are taking pictures of ourselves being kings of the mountain at the top I spotted a bear coming up the path towards us. We snapped a few shots and got the heck out of there! Later that day we hired a private taxi and went out to the Palace about 40 minutes out of town. IT was a palace for the king and queen of Romania about 100 years old. It was easily the most expensive house I had ever seen in my life. They had suits of armor and weapons on all the walls beautiful paintings and statues… my mouth was open the entire tour.

Rachel took all the pictures for the group because she had this really awesome exensive camera and liked to take pictures. During the trip I just dictated what pictures I wanted her to take and she did. She even let us take pictures with her camera it was great. But sadly I don’t have any pictures yet until I get a cd she will make for us all so we have the pictures.

The next day was our last and took the bus back to chisnau. It took a good 11 hours but it was a little exciting. On the way we had a flat tire and drove through a low hanging power line. We drug that power line with us a good 6 minutes before quickly stopping and cutting it off. ( we watched the thing flying behind us as it hit cars (probably doing some damage!)

That’s about all for the trip.


17:30

Now for the past week since I have returned things have not gone all that good or all that bad. Work is still slow if non existent. I asked my partners for work they say just wait … I believe that this putting me off from doing anything is not intentional they just have no idea what I can do and I don’t either. But I am tired of going to work and not doing anything. I will find other work to do or instead of going to office go to the fields and just walk around and try to take in some agriculture. Maybe visit the towns around our city and just walk around and assess the situation myself.

I do not have really high expectations for my work now. The guy I have the best chance to work with has a very negative attitude towards work. I guess they all do because hey their organization will cease to exist in 1 year and their response to everything is why should we do that if we are not going to be around for another year or so? I can’t argue, I can’t put the drive to do their job into them they should already have this.

After talking with my partner about ideas I had that we could do and him shooting them all down saying naa that wouldn’t work, he finally said ya.. maybe that would work but we only have a little more then a year… why should we do this. That was the finality I needed to find other work. He also said “excuse me.. but how can you help me, I know more then you do”. Not that I am going to argue with him on that, he most defiantly does know more then me on everything dealing with agriculture and most likely a lot more things. After that conversation I didn’t go to work the next day. That was this Friday I didn’t go at all and decided I am just going to do something else that day because I didn’t feel like doing nothing at work.

I went to the market bought a saw for cutting metal, some scrapers to take off paint of metal and some rust desolver and headed to the park. I worked on one of the benches by my self for an hour and a half then went to eat lunch then off to play with the kids. Later that day I met with the volunteers that did show up to our meeting and said ok anybody do what was on the agenda. Nobody had of course so I just said alright lets go to the park and start doing what we can’t seem to put down on paper.

So we worked for about 2 hours talking messing around and preparing one of the benches for reparation. They seemed pretty happy about it, they even got some praise by some people walking by (well it was one older gentlemen and he said wow the boys destroy the girls repair). I only had girls that showed up that day and they were the ones doing the repairing. They liked it and they felt like they were doing something. Success! We atleast started!

Yesterday was Saturday and we met again in the park to actually get something done. We needed to get a budget together so we know how much this is all going to cost. I broke us all up into 3 teams. On team goes to the market to find the price of materials there, one group to one of the locations nearby where we can buy the wood needed to repair the bench and the last group to the other nearby place where we can buy wood for some quotes. Because we have to go on foot or with a maxi taxi this process took about an hour and a half. We rconvined shared information and then went our separate ways. One of the volunteers had nothing to do, and of course me and farina didn’t so we decided to go on and excursion! We took a random maxi taxi to a near buy town and then walked around the town. We got some hilarious looks from the people there. Especially on the ride because we asked how far to our destination it was. Well I asked and I butchered the question and they all looked at me like I was nuts until I clarified what I had said. So when we got on the bus they had their suspicions. As we rode for about 15 minutes people started asking wehre we wanted to go. We just said somewhere interesting or pretty to hike around. They told us just to get off and we did. We saw a hill and hiked it. There were flowers everywhere and sheep in the valley and a river and stream. It was a really beautiful little town. We hiked to the forest over there and just enjoyed nature. We hitched a ride home with some stranger along the road and then walked home after they dropped us of about 30 minutes walking distance from our houses. Good day it was.

Today my partner from work called me at 8:30 in the morning to ask if I wanted to come help him work in his field. I said you bet I would and I was in the field at 9am. He owns a orchard and has a good amount of land. I dunno how much 3 hectares is but that’s how much he has in his orchard. I worked 3 hours with him then came home ate then met with my volunteer group for the 3rd day in a row and had 6 people show up to write our plan down ( including budget, what we want to do, and how we are going to do it). It was a real half assed effort by everyone but we got about 2/3rds of it done which is more then anybody had done in the last 2 months we have been working on it.

We ended the meeting with me making some lists of support where each high school will have at least 100 people write that they support the project. That will be around 400-500 kids. From there we take our letters of support to either the mayors office or alternate sources of funding.

The cost for one bench reparation that we figured for paint, wood, screws, and all will be around $50. Yes I have the power to do this myself but that’s not why im here. They are going to find the money in their own community and then project will be 4 times as successful in my eyes. That’s whats going on in my life right now. Ups and downs.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Sauna time!

4.16.08 20:49
This Picture made me laugh :-)

Its has been two weeks… a little over two weeks since I have last written. I hate it when I don’t write for a long time because I forget what happened. Let me try to recap the week before going to Romania. I did some work in the garden with the host dad. Then on my own I did some work in the garden later on in the week and really made a dent in the dirt. I spent a day working for about 5 hours really just cleaning and prepping the dirt for future planting but it looked pretty and I was praised for my effort.

At work I really didn’t do anything. As of this current week I am tired of it and am taking a stand but well get back to that later. Also that week I prepared for my upcoming volunteer meeting that ended up being a flop for the most part. But at the same time it sparked me into taking more action and doing less lecturing because the kids are just not up for it and I am fine with that. I guess well take action now and for the future after we have done something they don’t’ think we can do they will understand they have the power to change if they just do some work themselves instead of just complaining about “that’s just the way it is”

To recap my meeting with them 2 weeks ago or so I did have my whole marketing group show up for their meeting but they had accomplished nothing and just fed me negativity constantly on any ideas I came up with. This is a pattern, they just need more confidence in their abilities and that’s all I can give them. I took it hard though I tried not to let it show, it really brought me down. I had met with the bench design group earlier that week and we had taken measurements of the benches and I gave them the assignment to come up with some costs for materials and where we can get the materials for our next meeting. I had one girl show up and she hadn’t done anything but at least she showed up. I told her well thanks for showing up get your team together try to get some info and ill see you in two weeks.

I left that meeting pretty angry at myself. When you are here for so long and nothing has really been accomplished you get that whole idea in your head that you’re a failure… but that is all on how you judge success. Earlier that day at work I had a meeting with my marketing guy to go to the market and get the prices for the produce ( I had set up this date earlier in the week and he agreed) he didn’t come to work that day. So I was kinda bummed about that too.

So going home that night I was depressed. I sat down and began writing a pathetic journal entry about how pathetic my life is and bummed I am at what I have not accomplished. It was pretty sad really. Then my host dad called me in and was like its dinner time get in here and eat. He had the wine out and told me his uncle had died today. I felt sorry for him and we drank wine and he talked about his uncle and we ate pasta with cheese on it with our wine and I felt like an idiot for feeling so crappy when I have my health and so does my family. How happy I should be to be so lucky for that.

So I went to bed promptly after a few glasses of wine because I am a light weight with wine and it is normal for 2 glasses to make me ready to go to bed. So I fell asleep watching Rome.

Also that day I had one of my partners invite me to go to the sauna. I declined because, hell im not really a fan of saunas. But after about 10 mins of thinkin about it I decided to go for it because I always have this thing telling me not to decline invitations and live for the adventure. He said hed call me the next day.

So Saturday rolled around he called me and picked me up. He drove me to his house. That’s right he has a sauna at his house. He built the thing himself. (a lot of people here have them near their houses. They are constructed in a cement enclosures. This one was about 6x6x7 ft (very intimate) and it works by pouring water onto some really hot coals or something. The fire is made with wood which then heats up these coals or something then poor water and it gets really steamy and unbearably hot. I was told they can get to be 100 Celsius so that’s near 200 degrees and it’s a dry heat! I couldn’t even breathe at some points. Oh ya did I mention I was getting in here with my partner from work who is a 50 year old male and that we got butt ass naked without towels or anything and drank beer out of shot glasses and whipped each other with this leaf stick contraption to make it even hotter ourselves? No? I didn’t well there you go I just told you. It was really awkward at first but I got over it and had a good time and a funny story to tell to others.

Sunday went to chisianu to play baseball and leave on my trip to Romania. Baseball went well. We only lost by 2 to the team that we lost to by about 20 our first game. I threw a few people out as catcher and felt good about my performance and my bud phil hit a home run! It was insane! That night we slept in a Buddhist apartment floor because it only cost $4 to do so :-) then woke up to wait around to leave for our buss at 8 that night to go to Romania. Here I will conclude this chapter and later I will write about my trip because I am getting tired of writing and when im not in the mood to write I will leave things out and not have a good time. So until then. PEACE.