keep rolling....

2.15.08

“cause he gets up in the morning,
then he goes to work at nine.
Then he comes back home at 5:30,
catches the same train every time.

Cause his world is built on punc tu ality it never fails

And hes all so good,
And hes all fine.
And hes all so healthy in his body and his mind.

Hes a well respected man….”

“A well respected man” – the kinks

That song cracks me up. I heard it off the movie Juno which I am in love with to say bluntly. It’s a good heart warming film tackling the issue of teenage pregnancy, with an underlying love story in it enough to make me a sap. I do enjoy a good love movie now and again and have a sweet spot for the meg ryan, tom hanks combo. You can stop judging me now :-).

I am in a wonderful mood! Enough said really. I am a tad lonely in the respect that I don’t have anybody to hang out with tonight. (its Friday night for me… about 6:30). But outside of that im doing well. I just got back from my second meeting with this volunteer group I organized. This meeting went really great. I felt good going into it because of how I prepared for it this week. I spent a good amount of time with my tutor this week… well about 3 hours so not all that much time but more then I have for sometime now. To go off on my tangent now I designed my tutoring sessions to really just help me with this group of volunteers. I write up a plan for Friday when we are to meet and I prepare all the material in Romanian and then ask my tutor to correct them and talk with me about my ideas I with her input when it is possible as a way of productively learning the language. I just don’t have it in me to sit there and study the language with the intent of just learning the language… I need a goal.. like in order to hold this meeting I need to have material prepared… so I need to write it all out and make sure it makes sense then write a script so I know what I am going to say in the meeting in Romanian.. then wallah! And excuse to study!

So I got back from a wonderful meeting that in all fairness I was scarred nobody would come. This meeting had more meat in it then that last one and I put a lot of thought into how I am going to go about teaching project design and implementation from brain storming ideas, to picking the ones that are feasible based on certain criteria, then how to actually go about writing a project proposal so that it has all the structural points that it needs to have to have a chance to get funded. Now to jump again… last Friday was rough!

I left you with a cliff hanger I know… well last Friday … oh geez… I held the meeting, and to be honest, I was not have a great language day. I was speaking almost all English that day with my site mate and even reading English at work because I found a new book on agriculture that has grasped my attention so I am putting in some time reading it… all those excuses put into the mix I held me first meeting with not a complete idea of why I was forming the group or how I was going to teach or assist the group. There was a lot of self doubt, complicated by a language barrier. I was going back and forth on ready to call the volunteers to come or not that Thursday night.

Well I decided to do it. I was a little nervous when the meeting commenced but I began rolling. I created an agenda for that day on kind of an outline about what we were going to talk about and why I asked them to all meet up. Wow did I butcher the pronunciation! Aww it was awful. It has never been my strong point.. always my weakness… and so it was here. Well about halfway through I had a language break down and just could not speak. Its like freezing in a speech it was just awful. The kids were nice, they either understood what I was trying to say or acted like they did. I got some nods like they would come the next week at the end but I was skeptical.

I know… I already ruined the story by telling you how wonderful today was but I have to set you up for how low my expectations were for this meeting today. I really thought at most 3 would show up. Guess what! 11 showed up! One more then showed up the week before! And 3 of them were new. One of the volunteers that did not show called ahead and said she could not be there, and the other one I dunno what happened. She probably was like… eh this guy can barely speak better then an infant.. what can I learn with him?

Anyway the group was great. My material worked great. I wrote a whole script like I said to run the meeting off of, asking for volunteers to read the material I prepared so I didn’t’ have to butcher it and the tempo of the meeting really had pace to it. We now have formed 4 groups where each one had to come up with some ideas for projects in their city/town. This was their assignment last week and this week I had them write them down and we discussed feasibility so they could get feedback. Wow did this turn out great. By the way I was having an on language day so I could actually respond give them feed back and spur conversation when needed. The students came up with some great ideas. And we had really good feasibility discussions, and they were providing good feedback to each other. There homework is to fill out some questions I prepared, and to narrow down their project ideas to one per group. They seemed pretty excited about the whole thing and I feel like this has a possibility of really a great thing.

Really.. lets think about other things.. hmm at boxing, I did purchase some bag gloves and a helmet and mouth guard. Everything was really expensive and ill have to recover a month or so because our salary here doesn’t give a huge amount of leeway to go spending our money on boxing equipment. It has picked up over there with boxing. I took a really great shot in the chin, that I feel proud to be standing after it and came back with a great counter combo to earn me some respect over there.

Work is.. well not really anything going on over there. I just read and practice my language by doing some translation for agriculture terms and mostly work on my volunteer group material. When I have time I read about the basics of agriculture. This week I have begun to get into soil basics (exciting I know.. but I am getting into it a little…).

This last weekend at Chisinau was a good time. Got to see some good people, went bowling in the city there and just a bunch of great laughs. Not to much to really talk about. I talk to my old host mother in the city are her work and had a fun chat for about an hour or so. They are getting another volunteer I think the 1st of march. So I dunno if I can still go over there to stay the night or not. Well see.

Emotionally I am still doing really good, really positive. I can only wonder what the future has in store for me… am I on the hill going up the roller coaster… am I on the verge of the drop? I dunno… guess ill find out.

can't bring me down

2.08.08

Here is a little flash back to PST when phil and I were racing in this mini competition with our host moms to see who could make this type of food sounded out ... cultsunash. it was chaotic! im going to date that picture in mid november

Ok, it is friday. I am at work its snowing outside and my back hurts an awful lot. Let me tell you why… ok well I will start with wendesday. Wednesday was a normal day. I had work then got to play with the kids, dominate farina in chess at the center with the kids. Followed by a fun filled day at boxing.

unfortunately the power went out at the school when we were all warming up so we went outside to play soccer to warm up instead and wait till the lights went back on. Im horrible at soccer and made a fool of myself as I slid around the concrete trying to keep up with younger more energetic kids who have grown up playing soccer all their life. The rest of practice was normal nothing too exciting to report.

Thursday was a fun day. I did my laundry Wednesday night because I had been putting it off cause it had been kind of over cast and the clothes take forever to dry in that kind of weather. So finally on my last pair of underwear and socks I decided that night was the night…. So Thursday… I wake up with a splitting headache… I have no idea why but its killing me. I guess I had one Wednesday as well but I thought it would have gone away after I slept.

… so anyway its pouring outside. My clothes that were supposed to try are now soaked. Bummer. I have a horrible headache clothes are soaked and I get to walk in the rain for 20 minutes to work! Sweet! So I am walking to work right watching people give me bizarre looks as normal… I guess I look weird cause I have this orange northface jacket on with my hood up and stomping outdoor boots and lighter jeans then I have seen in all of moldova even though they are a darker shade… but outside of the normal weird looks I am getting a few horrified looks. Now that’s a new look. I don’t normally get horrified looks from people because I am just not a scary person. Anyway this starts to alarm me…when I notice a weird taste on my lips. I have a savage nose bleed. I quickly wipe it with my hand and realize it is a pretty good bleed. So I get it under control, wipe it off and not is all over my hands. I have nothing to wipe my hands off on and have to use the muddy wet grassy mud water. Anyway that goes on for the remainder of my 20 min walk making for a wonderful start to a wonderful day.

For some reason though nothing is brining me down, not the headache, not the rain, not the wet clothes, not the nose bleed nothing! I get to work it stops thankfully and I go about my day. On the way home I wish I was joking I get splashed by a car as it drives by me. Now im muddy. No worries! The rest of my day I have a horrible headache but nothing gets me down. I am happy at my Romanian lesson, happy at workout, happy at basketball. So that night I go to lay my sleeping bag down when I realize there are ants all over the floor. WHAT THE HECK!? My trash sack I guess has a colony of ants in it. And they now own my room. And its so dark in my room because only one working bulb is ever on ( to save power and the electricity bill no doubt) its hard to really see anything on the ground. So anyway this explains why I have ants on my from time to time, or I wake up in the night swatting one or two or when im walking to work I have one on me. It all clicks! So I put the trash bag outside not knowing what to do with it. (it was gone this morning and I assume my host dad took care of it but I never got a chance to explain why it was outside or anything). So I spent the rest of the night with a flash light and a slipper killing those little buggers with a passion before settling down to watch along came polly. I didn’t sleep on the floor and had to resolve sleeping on my bed, so now my back hurts because of how soft the dang thing is.

Ok well done with that story. Thought it was fun how so many wonderful things can happen in one day. Today I am preparing my papers I wrote in Romanian to give my little pitch to this group of volunteers on how to go about identifying a problem in the community, what resources do they have in their community to solve the problem without using grant money, but if its necessary I will show them how to write a grant and what things are required to write a grant so they don’t’ have to rely on outsiders to write the grants for them like they are now.

Im a little nervous about the whole thing because im shooting from the hip on this one, my language is not amazing! And I am talking about things like sustainability, ranking possible projects by problems, needs, desires.. and so forth. It will be interesting to see if they even understand me or take me serious. Tomorrow I am going to chisnianu to get some boxing gloves, mouth guard, and helmet. As well as meet up with some friends and hopefully see my old host family for a little bit.

Until I decide to write more… 2007.

more boxing info and random other stuff

2.5.08 8:38

It has been more then a week since I have last put some thoughts down on paper. Not too much going on in this head of mine lately. I have been entirely too tired to really do anything except live. I guess I am staying busy but so busy that when I do have free time an average of an hour or two before bed I don’t really want to do anything constructive. A movie or a computer game here and there has been my vice in my off time. It is a shame too because I was reading some really good stuff and becoming more of an informed person only to have that taken away and replaced with entertainment. Oh well.. I can always learn tomorrow ;)

No really, that reason my days have become a lot busier is that boxing is upon me. Glorious boxing! Last Monday was my first actual practice and boy was it a work out. Luckily I am still treated as an oddity and in a weird way a celebrity that the other guys don’t want to hurt me quite yet with an exclusion of one so, thus far without the mouth guard and head gear I have been ok. That’s right I am throwing in an exception in there. There is this one boy .. there is always one boy in these types of gyms that just doesn’t understand the term warm-up or practice and always goes full out at any opportunity. They can be very dangerous individuals when not controlled. At the old gym I worked out at, the first day of sparring they trainer says go easy its his first time and he hears… Kill him. enough said Monday we are doing this wrestling warm up drill and this kid goes straight at me for a take down. Though he was unsuccessful I reversed it took him down then we are sitting there with each other in choke holds breathing heavily until we realize the coach is yelling at us to quit it. I have had similar experiences since but I do have about 30 pounds and nearly a foot on the kid thankfully, I should be able to handle him.

Little knuckle talk…

Outside of that, they are great. Sorry mom, my knuckles are pretty gruesome looking. If you thought my knuckles looked bad at home after just doing knuckle push ups you would be very angry with me now. The first day we did this drill where your partner grabs your legs and you walk on your hands around the gym. The Second time you do it on your knuckles… and the floor is about as hard as concrete… it rips up your hands pretty good if you are not used to it. I love it.

Done with the knuckle talk…

Any who so I box Monday Wednesday Saturday for 2 hours in the evenings and Tuesday Thursday is basket ball in the evenings. Thus I normally don’t’ get home earlier then 7:30 3 days and week and no earlier then 8 2 days a week. Those are some long days.

So given the speed at which last week flew I don’t have too much to talk about. I have turned away alcohol the entire week and will continue to do so because boxing has started up and I have a valid reason to tell the host dad no thanks on the wine… at least no more then half a glass.

I have been doing the tutoring thing now. I started it up so where my tutoring … ok let me catch you up.. I am trying to learn Romanian here so im working with a tutor about 3 hours a week now. Though I am quite in the mood for grammer and just need someone to talk with and correct me. So … this last week went ok I guess. I hear all kinds of crazy gossip about everyone in the city and learn random home remedies to any time of illness. I have not quite worked it out so I am talking all that much yet because she loves to talk and frankly I don’t’ have that much to say in return but it’s a start.

Saturday we met outside and had my “lecture” while walking around the city. I thought this is a great way to practice my language and see the city while she would explain what things were and where thigns where. Saturday we took a walk to our hospital compound. It is a huge place kind of set back in a park like setting. It would be beautiful in the summer and even more beautiful without the falling apart concrete walls and buildings. Good thing is I never knew where it was and now I know. I also walked around and got to see the forest that is protected by the government and where a milling factory is located. My teacher read my tutor manual the peace corps gave me to help teach me and it said something about helping the student learn about what ever he is working with so she thought that was close enough to agriculture so why not? I thought it was a successful outing and I look forward to our next adventure.

How about this. The kids absolutely love this cup game I brought them. Thank you Aunt Sue for sending it. Its called speed stack or something equivalent. Where you stack these cups in pyramids as fast as you can and then take them down into one stack. You can race each other or race your time. That combined with the introduction of skip bo at the center has greatly improved my life. You can only play a german version of uno that has added rules so that the game never ends so long before you just wanna scream. Skip bo is a favorite card of mine and I thoroughly enjoy playing it with the kids. And of course dominating every opponent in chess who dares to pick up a pawn… they are all under 13 with the exception of farina and she really has no excuse for the lashings I put on her in that game… :P.

Anybody seen blood diamond? That’s a depressing movie, don’t watch it if you are in kind of a downer mood. Stick to the uppers like Super Troopers to get you through the day, you will be a lot happier for it. I watched the Packers play the Giants a couple of days ago on NFL replay I got of itunes. It took forever to download but it was worth it. I must say the Giants looked tough and at the end when micheal strayhand … that’s not how you spell his name but whatever…. Said now that they won that game they aren’t just going to the super bowl they were going to win. And the looks on his other teammates faces and their confidence really made me believe that they had it in them to win. I can of course say that now that they did beat the undefeatable patriots but I did see something there.

Super Duper Tuesday today! I await the results and will actively listen to NPR tomorrow in podcast form as I listen to the wrap up of what happened and everything. Exciting day, and this is the first time I have ever really listened to or read about this polotics and its kinda exciting.

Told you all nothing really happened this week, but I had to come up with somthign to write so nobody thinks I fell off the end of the earth, plus I guess in future years when I am bored or my kids ask me what it was like in the peace corps… if they ask that question… I dunno if I would have been interested when I was a kid…. I can just hand them my book of blog entries and they can have a field day.

Love you family! Happy birthday Julia!