Thats me in my Baseball outfit!
That is our front entrance to the house. My host mom sure loves the flowers.
Just some spring pictures... or I guess the start of summer.
Click on the pictures to expand them.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
picture post!
Thats me in my Baseball outfit! That is our front entrance to the house. My host mom sure loves the flowers.Just some spring pictures... or I guess the start of summer.
Click on the pictures to expand them.
where do i start?
6.4.08 19:04
Where have I been? What have I been doing? Good questions but I’ll most likely just wrap that up as fast as I can here. Lets see, the back thing was bad. I left of laying on the floor in pain. It got worse. I couldn’t stand up for about a day in a half. Then after that I could only sit up for a short while or walk just a small distance. But I recovered.
I painfully wrapped up our bench plan, put it together the pieces that they kids had done and filled in the best I could the areas they had yet to fill in. I worked out the budget making everything look nice with the only requirement being an editing job by them followed by them going to the school director then asking for donations from the kids at school.
Unfortunately, that week they needed me to go with them to school I had to be in Chisinau with the other members of my group for an action packed 5 days of seminars and training program extravaganza! Wasn’t all that thrilled with it, though the language part went well as I was able to communicate my needs to the teacher this time, since my language has improved a little. ( I am still weak, I can’t really carry on complicated conversations but I can get by) It is funny though the people whos Romanian is their second language as well seem to understand me better then native Romanian speakers. Such as most of the Russian speakers in my town that know Romanian understand me and we don’t care when we both leave out grammar that other might pick up and on get confused about.
Among my adventures in Chisinau, I had a fun 3 hour walk in a par of the city I had never been in with a good friend of mine Darren after we both got on a Maxi Taxi bus with the number to take us back to our hotel. No problem except we got on at 10:45 at night and they busses stop running after 11. And little did we know the bus was going in the opposite direction and as soon as it hits 11 the driver pulls over to the nearest bar and buys beer telling everyone to fend for themselves. (we were the only ones that didn’t know this and were left to our own devices and sense of direction).
We made it and had a good time just wondering around (and by no skill of our own finding our way back to the hotel.) we walked 3 hours before find a taxi who took us on a 3 minute ride to our hotel.
Nowadays my mind is occupied too much with being as productive as possible. I am constantly fighting an uphill battle here with attaining productivity here but I am fighting it… because if im not my mind or drive or whatever the heck it is that nags at me tells me to do something.
Last week me doing something was going to work, taking off my ipod out of both ears not just one ear like I had been doing and trying desperately to talk to someone. It really didn’t work but I felt better smiling and trying to be social. Once I got to work I just sat there and bugged the heck out of my partners trying to figure out something to do and putting pressure on them to take me places.
One of the days I went to work for an hour and left to go push some handicapped children with farina in the park to change stuff up. It was a really nice day that day. Almost every day after I got back from work around 2 or so in the afternoon I went to the stadium with some of the children from the center and we played frizbee and baseball and soccer.
Baseball I should have gotten a picture of it was two cigarette packets for bases two gloves, which is all I have and ball. The bat was a creation by one of the kids who went to a random trash pile found a plastic 2 liter bottle filled it with water and rocks, heavy and awkward . but we had a fun.
Highlight of my week was when a man from Chisinau came to visit our work (audit our work) and I was able to ride around with him and my main partner to 5 different villages where our local consultants work at to see how their work is going and what they need to change.
I learned a little bit about the different villages and got to see how they work. The auditor studied marketing and was hell bent on telling the consultants to make their offices very clean and repaired and to hang signs outside of the building to tell people they work there (very elementary marketing but very necessary). I was surprised when 2 of the places had no sign or anything telling people of their place of work.
This weekend we played baseball (our American volunteer team vs the best Moldovan team in moldova) and we got hammered somewhere around 26 to 4.
http://www.protv.md/stiri/sport/meci-amical-de-baseball-la-cojusna.html
That is a video link. They had one of the national tv stations come and show the Moldovans how awful we are. L our problem was lack of practice. In all honesty if we practiced once a week and more then just one pitcher on our team we could hold our own and win. I guess I hope we could :)
This week .. well I spent some time in Peresecina with the old host family. I got to work in the fields for a good half a day hoeing the dirt in the cornfield. I really miss that environment over there. The small town village and the great food and the feeling of family over there.
So I got back Tuesday afternoon. Went to work after I ate lunch around 1 then hung out at work till 4 when farina called me to meet up. We talked a bit (she doesn’t have anything to do now that its summer and the kids stopped showing up to the center). We decided to hike to some far away forest in the distance and I got to see more agriculture getting outside of the city then I knew existed around my city. On our way back we were stopped by this old woman hoeing in here field speaking Russian (without teeth I might add, which makes a language I don’t’ understand even harder to understand) then finally she resorted into some Romanian after a hardy effort to get us to understand Russian. I told her I could help her in her field and she offered me about $30 to do the whole thing. I said no but id come the next morning and do some work if she didn’t mind. She said she didn’t and then we left. So that was yesterday, so this morning.
So I woke up early made some eggs and bread asked my confused host dad if I could borrow a hoe. The conversation went like this…
Me: Hey, Can I take a hoe out of the garden.
Him: Why, what are you doing?
Me: I am going to the field to hoe
Him: who are you going with? Why?
Me: By myself, I don’t know the persons name who’s field im working in.
Him: I don’t understand. But ya take the hoe.
So I took it, went to the field and started working from 7:30 till 12. It felt good to get out there again in the field and do some work like that. My back doesn’t like me for it. But I got some work done. Maybe about 1/5 of the work needed to complete it.
After that I went home grabbed lunch then went off to work. I sat in the office for the rest of the day and talked with one of my partners. I looked over an excel sheet he had that had his hours and then a percentage column next to the hours. It was a really messed up way of putting in your hours and his math was off. We had a fun little battle on math addition me using excel formulas and him his calculator and piece of paper. We both agreed excel rules but the table we were filling out was not correct so we decided to blame the math errors on the guys in Chisinau. ;-)
Out side of that, I gave my partner my plan of action which he told me was dumb but I told him I could not and would not and can’t just sit in the office playing card games on the computer like they might do.
My idea goes like this, I make a little marketing bulletin about our organization where I live with a little bit of who we are what do we want to do, what can we do, and a list of contact numbers. Along with this is a questionnaire asking simple questions like what type of agriculture have you done I the past, what worked what didn’t want did you learn…. What are you doing now… is there any information you contacts we can help you with? Oh ya by the way our service is free! So come and check us out! Buy some really cheap books on specific crops… and so forth.
My partner claims its stupid because he is all negative and claims everyone knows everything about everything in moldova so we really don’t need our organization. That, and claims the only reason our organization is around is because America donated a crap ton of money to get it all started and set up and they are just there to get a pay check. (all true, as I have observed the same).
And onward goes the mission to try to bring knowledge about our organization to people who don’t need it. But at least I will be doing something. I plan on going out on foot through the fields asking people and just talking to people. Either way I will be seeing agriculture and meet some interesting people… that is if they speak Romanian. The questionnaire part I am doing to find a legitimate project to do here. I can’t ask my partners because they just do what they want, it’s the people in the field with the tiny plots of land we should be catoring to, not ourselves…. It’s a wonder nobody comes to the seminars… so I am going to try to use the method of surveying them, then teaching that plan to the other consultants then we all do it, find out what the people want then go about doing it. I plan on doing atleast one demonstration plot based on the information if it is relevant.
Other then that I am just trying to smile more, enjoy life a little more, maybe starting learning language a little more…
Where have I been? What have I been doing? Good questions but I’ll most likely just wrap that up as fast as I can here. Lets see, the back thing was bad. I left of laying on the floor in pain. It got worse. I couldn’t stand up for about a day in a half. Then after that I could only sit up for a short while or walk just a small distance. But I recovered.
I painfully wrapped up our bench plan, put it together the pieces that they kids had done and filled in the best I could the areas they had yet to fill in. I worked out the budget making everything look nice with the only requirement being an editing job by them followed by them going to the school director then asking for donations from the kids at school.
Unfortunately, that week they needed me to go with them to school I had to be in Chisinau with the other members of my group for an action packed 5 days of seminars and training program extravaganza! Wasn’t all that thrilled with it, though the language part went well as I was able to communicate my needs to the teacher this time, since my language has improved a little. ( I am still weak, I can’t really carry on complicated conversations but I can get by) It is funny though the people whos Romanian is their second language as well seem to understand me better then native Romanian speakers. Such as most of the Russian speakers in my town that know Romanian understand me and we don’t care when we both leave out grammar that other might pick up and on get confused about.
Among my adventures in Chisinau, I had a fun 3 hour walk in a par of the city I had never been in with a good friend of mine Darren after we both got on a Maxi Taxi bus with the number to take us back to our hotel. No problem except we got on at 10:45 at night and they busses stop running after 11. And little did we know the bus was going in the opposite direction and as soon as it hits 11 the driver pulls over to the nearest bar and buys beer telling everyone to fend for themselves. (we were the only ones that didn’t know this and were left to our own devices and sense of direction).
We made it and had a good time just wondering around (and by no skill of our own finding our way back to the hotel.) we walked 3 hours before find a taxi who took us on a 3 minute ride to our hotel.
Nowadays my mind is occupied too much with being as productive as possible. I am constantly fighting an uphill battle here with attaining productivity here but I am fighting it… because if im not my mind or drive or whatever the heck it is that nags at me tells me to do something.
Last week me doing something was going to work, taking off my ipod out of both ears not just one ear like I had been doing and trying desperately to talk to someone. It really didn’t work but I felt better smiling and trying to be social. Once I got to work I just sat there and bugged the heck out of my partners trying to figure out something to do and putting pressure on them to take me places.
One of the days I went to work for an hour and left to go push some handicapped children with farina in the park to change stuff up. It was a really nice day that day. Almost every day after I got back from work around 2 or so in the afternoon I went to the stadium with some of the children from the center and we played frizbee and baseball and soccer.
Baseball I should have gotten a picture of it was two cigarette packets for bases two gloves, which is all I have and ball. The bat was a creation by one of the kids who went to a random trash pile found a plastic 2 liter bottle filled it with water and rocks, heavy and awkward . but we had a fun.
Highlight of my week was when a man from Chisinau came to visit our work (audit our work) and I was able to ride around with him and my main partner to 5 different villages where our local consultants work at to see how their work is going and what they need to change.
I learned a little bit about the different villages and got to see how they work. The auditor studied marketing and was hell bent on telling the consultants to make their offices very clean and repaired and to hang signs outside of the building to tell people they work there (very elementary marketing but very necessary). I was surprised when 2 of the places had no sign or anything telling people of their place of work.
This weekend we played baseball (our American volunteer team vs the best Moldovan team in moldova) and we got hammered somewhere around 26 to 4.
http://www.protv.md/stiri/sport/meci-amical-de-baseball-la-cojusna.html
That is a video link. They had one of the national tv stations come and show the Moldovans how awful we are. L our problem was lack of practice. In all honesty if we practiced once a week and more then just one pitcher on our team we could hold our own and win. I guess I hope we could :)
This week .. well I spent some time in Peresecina with the old host family. I got to work in the fields for a good half a day hoeing the dirt in the cornfield. I really miss that environment over there. The small town village and the great food and the feeling of family over there.
So I got back Tuesday afternoon. Went to work after I ate lunch around 1 then hung out at work till 4 when farina called me to meet up. We talked a bit (she doesn’t have anything to do now that its summer and the kids stopped showing up to the center). We decided to hike to some far away forest in the distance and I got to see more agriculture getting outside of the city then I knew existed around my city. On our way back we were stopped by this old woman hoeing in here field speaking Russian (without teeth I might add, which makes a language I don’t’ understand even harder to understand) then finally she resorted into some Romanian after a hardy effort to get us to understand Russian. I told her I could help her in her field and she offered me about $30 to do the whole thing. I said no but id come the next morning and do some work if she didn’t mind. She said she didn’t and then we left. So that was yesterday, so this morning.
So I woke up early made some eggs and bread asked my confused host dad if I could borrow a hoe. The conversation went like this…
Me: Hey, Can I take a hoe out of the garden.
Him: Why, what are you doing?
Me: I am going to the field to hoe
Him: who are you going with? Why?
Me: By myself, I don’t know the persons name who’s field im working in.
Him: I don’t understand. But ya take the hoe.
So I took it, went to the field and started working from 7:30 till 12. It felt good to get out there again in the field and do some work like that. My back doesn’t like me for it. But I got some work done. Maybe about 1/5 of the work needed to complete it.
After that I went home grabbed lunch then went off to work. I sat in the office for the rest of the day and talked with one of my partners. I looked over an excel sheet he had that had his hours and then a percentage column next to the hours. It was a really messed up way of putting in your hours and his math was off. We had a fun little battle on math addition me using excel formulas and him his calculator and piece of paper. We both agreed excel rules but the table we were filling out was not correct so we decided to blame the math errors on the guys in Chisinau. ;-)
Out side of that, I gave my partner my plan of action which he told me was dumb but I told him I could not and would not and can’t just sit in the office playing card games on the computer like they might do.
My idea goes like this, I make a little marketing bulletin about our organization where I live with a little bit of who we are what do we want to do, what can we do, and a list of contact numbers. Along with this is a questionnaire asking simple questions like what type of agriculture have you done I the past, what worked what didn’t want did you learn…. What are you doing now… is there any information you contacts we can help you with? Oh ya by the way our service is free! So come and check us out! Buy some really cheap books on specific crops… and so forth.
My partner claims its stupid because he is all negative and claims everyone knows everything about everything in moldova so we really don’t need our organization. That, and claims the only reason our organization is around is because America donated a crap ton of money to get it all started and set up and they are just there to get a pay check. (all true, as I have observed the same).
And onward goes the mission to try to bring knowledge about our organization to people who don’t need it. But at least I will be doing something. I plan on going out on foot through the fields asking people and just talking to people. Either way I will be seeing agriculture and meet some interesting people… that is if they speak Romanian. The questionnaire part I am doing to find a legitimate project to do here. I can’t ask my partners because they just do what they want, it’s the people in the field with the tiny plots of land we should be catoring to, not ourselves…. It’s a wonder nobody comes to the seminars… so I am going to try to use the method of surveying them, then teaching that plan to the other consultants then we all do it, find out what the people want then go about doing it. I plan on doing atleast one demonstration plot based on the information if it is relevant.
Other then that I am just trying to smile more, enjoy life a little more, maybe starting learning language a little more…
Saturday, May 17, 2008
back pain and complaining
5.18.08 8:30
Awww my back! I am laying on this foldout couch right now in a lot of pain. Its Sunday morning I just threw my back out and now I have the whole day ahead of me to try to recover. I dunno, my host dad thinks its because I was running outside and then took off my shirt (because it was fairly hot out) and the change in air temperature on my back caused my back to lock up. I dunno it could be the case. I ran about 5 laps then stripped the shirt. By the time I got to 10 and started to sprint the straight away instant lock down and here I am whining about it.
This week ugg was a set back. Just as I was coming off of a week of trying to get things figured out with my work and had begun going to local villages peace corps called me Monday afternoon and said we have a driver in the area in 10 minutes get your stuff and meet him at this location. I was in the middle of hide in seek with the kids (very busy) but I complied. I figured it was just gonna be a one shot deal and I would be back the next day. I took nothing with me but a book and a change of underwear. So I get to chisnau and they are closed for the day so I have to stay the night. I get my diagnoses Tuesday that I would be there till Thursday getting some rabies booster shots. Ugg… So I spent the week in Chisinau hangning out with other people who are sick leave. It was not a horrible time but I felt worthless.
The worst part about the stay was the negativity. There was some older volunteers there I was able to talk to about where I was and my concerns on the rest of my service being productive and what not. They all had some very discouargeing things to say for the most part. When I talked with other members in my group there they were in the same boat as I was with partners who really had nothing for them to do and they were just kinda killing time at their site waiting for something to come up. The older volunteers were voicing there frustrations that even after being here all this time people here they have met don’t really want them to be there unless they can write them grants or the volunteer does the work for them (either by writing the whole grant, writing the whole project and carrying it all out themselves). And guess what after the volunteer gives up on the job as a facilitator they are more happy, feel more productive and their counterparts seem to be happy they received money for a grant or credit for something they didn’t do. I know I am being extremely negative here, and I know this can’t be true for everybody but it was just depressing to listen to.
The problem with this is that once this active volunteer who took the time to write a grant or a project or created some program leaves so does any hope of sustainability. Unless the partner or host country national gets involved and learns and cares about the project the idea, the passion runs out. This idea of sustainability is the hardest thing to work for but it is also the best possible solution to any problem out here. My experiences this week were discouraging. I fell into that category of volunteer I realized that was about to just do the work, or write the grant just to feel productive. On this bench project for instance I made the volunteers write the project but they only wrote 75% of it. That was 2 weeks ago. And to get them to finish the rest was becoming impossible. So I wrote it, I wrote it badly given my language ability but I did th work, I organized everything and felt like finally this is done! Then I got some of them to meet up with me finally and had them correct or rewrite what I wrote. You know what… I failed! I went from facilitator to doer. I did this because the school year is over soon. And part of the plan is to raise money from the schools and we have to get this plan done before we can raise the money. And with 2 weeks left to go we had to get our stuff together. Without this we miss out on a huge fundraising opportunity.. at least I hope it is a huge one because we need it.
At work I am near the point of trying to write a grant for the only partner that works for me to get him his fish pond near this lake so he can raise fish. Its not right, I don’t’ feel right about it but I think I could win a grant for it and he would be happy and so would the organization and so would peace corps because they could say I did something. But its crap! It goes all back to the idea of success here. There idea of success is that I bring money here for them, my idea is not the bring money for them but to help them raise the money for themselves and feel as if they did it. “if the coach does the push ups the athlete will not get stronger.”
Awww!!!!!! I just got up to take some ibuprofen for my back and nearly fell down in pain. I guess I really jacked myself up here. Oh geez…This is just what I need. Anyway… I made some connections yesterday meeting people responsible for the park and then someone who works closely with the mayor. All this could help me in the long run but also with this current project if I can get them involved in helping out a little. The plan now is to raise as much money as possible for the benches from the school, then mayors office and then local businesses. And I am also the only one pushing the possibility of this being a success. I am feeling a lot of negativity as if I am carrying this project on my shoulders. I feel this is something they want because they all said this is the project they wanted and people I have asked all support it I just don’t understand this can’t do it attitude. I feel as it is a challenge and I have to prove to these kids if they do some work they can get results here. It’s the work im having a hard time getting them to do.
I feel pretty helpless here, my back is shot and this bench project is in limbo. Hmm nothing really funny happened to me this week I guess… there was this drunk old man on the street that shook my hand then tried to do some karate move on me showing how if somebody gives him their hand he can break it. It was comical and this old woman of his slapped him telling him to stop. I am currently reading a book called “Lies my teacher told me, everything your American history book got wrong. “ so far very interesting, it has some interesting points thus far about how horrible Columbus really was and how the history books exaerate his feat and glorifiy his successes and down play his failures and the otracities he infact carried out. There was also a blurb about Hellen Keller and how she was an outspoken socialist supporter and all this other stuff about here. Its funny when you think about all this stuff you took as fact when really they were quite fiction or sugar coated. .. Ok this is a crummy entry but I had to get it out and down on paper here. Love you all family.
Awww my back! I am laying on this foldout couch right now in a lot of pain. Its Sunday morning I just threw my back out and now I have the whole day ahead of me to try to recover. I dunno, my host dad thinks its because I was running outside and then took off my shirt (because it was fairly hot out) and the change in air temperature on my back caused my back to lock up. I dunno it could be the case. I ran about 5 laps then stripped the shirt. By the time I got to 10 and started to sprint the straight away instant lock down and here I am whining about it.
This week ugg was a set back. Just as I was coming off of a week of trying to get things figured out with my work and had begun going to local villages peace corps called me Monday afternoon and said we have a driver in the area in 10 minutes get your stuff and meet him at this location. I was in the middle of hide in seek with the kids (very busy) but I complied. I figured it was just gonna be a one shot deal and I would be back the next day. I took nothing with me but a book and a change of underwear. So I get to chisnau and they are closed for the day so I have to stay the night. I get my diagnoses Tuesday that I would be there till Thursday getting some rabies booster shots. Ugg… So I spent the week in Chisinau hangning out with other people who are sick leave. It was not a horrible time but I felt worthless.
The worst part about the stay was the negativity. There was some older volunteers there I was able to talk to about where I was and my concerns on the rest of my service being productive and what not. They all had some very discouargeing things to say for the most part. When I talked with other members in my group there they were in the same boat as I was with partners who really had nothing for them to do and they were just kinda killing time at their site waiting for something to come up. The older volunteers were voicing there frustrations that even after being here all this time people here they have met don’t really want them to be there unless they can write them grants or the volunteer does the work for them (either by writing the whole grant, writing the whole project and carrying it all out themselves). And guess what after the volunteer gives up on the job as a facilitator they are more happy, feel more productive and their counterparts seem to be happy they received money for a grant or credit for something they didn’t do. I know I am being extremely negative here, and I know this can’t be true for everybody but it was just depressing to listen to.
The problem with this is that once this active volunteer who took the time to write a grant or a project or created some program leaves so does any hope of sustainability. Unless the partner or host country national gets involved and learns and cares about the project the idea, the passion runs out. This idea of sustainability is the hardest thing to work for but it is also the best possible solution to any problem out here. My experiences this week were discouraging. I fell into that category of volunteer I realized that was about to just do the work, or write the grant just to feel productive. On this bench project for instance I made the volunteers write the project but they only wrote 75% of it. That was 2 weeks ago. And to get them to finish the rest was becoming impossible. So I wrote it, I wrote it badly given my language ability but I did th work, I organized everything and felt like finally this is done! Then I got some of them to meet up with me finally and had them correct or rewrite what I wrote. You know what… I failed! I went from facilitator to doer. I did this because the school year is over soon. And part of the plan is to raise money from the schools and we have to get this plan done before we can raise the money. And with 2 weeks left to go we had to get our stuff together. Without this we miss out on a huge fundraising opportunity.. at least I hope it is a huge one because we need it.
At work I am near the point of trying to write a grant for the only partner that works for me to get him his fish pond near this lake so he can raise fish. Its not right, I don’t’ feel right about it but I think I could win a grant for it and he would be happy and so would the organization and so would peace corps because they could say I did something. But its crap! It goes all back to the idea of success here. There idea of success is that I bring money here for them, my idea is not the bring money for them but to help them raise the money for themselves and feel as if they did it. “if the coach does the push ups the athlete will not get stronger.”
Awww!!!!!! I just got up to take some ibuprofen for my back and nearly fell down in pain. I guess I really jacked myself up here. Oh geez…This is just what I need. Anyway… I made some connections yesterday meeting people responsible for the park and then someone who works closely with the mayor. All this could help me in the long run but also with this current project if I can get them involved in helping out a little. The plan now is to raise as much money as possible for the benches from the school, then mayors office and then local businesses. And I am also the only one pushing the possibility of this being a success. I am feeling a lot of negativity as if I am carrying this project on my shoulders. I feel this is something they want because they all said this is the project they wanted and people I have asked all support it I just don’t understand this can’t do it attitude. I feel as it is a challenge and I have to prove to these kids if they do some work they can get results here. It’s the work im having a hard time getting them to do.
I feel pretty helpless here, my back is shot and this bench project is in limbo. Hmm nothing really funny happened to me this week I guess… there was this drunk old man on the street that shook my hand then tried to do some karate move on me showing how if somebody gives him their hand he can break it. It was comical and this old woman of his slapped him telling him to stop. I am currently reading a book called “Lies my teacher told me, everything your American history book got wrong. “ so far very interesting, it has some interesting points thus far about how horrible Columbus really was and how the history books exaerate his feat and glorifiy his successes and down play his failures and the otracities he infact carried out. There was also a blurb about Hellen Keller and how she was an outspoken socialist supporter and all this other stuff about here. Its funny when you think about all this stuff you took as fact when really they were quite fiction or sugar coated. .. Ok this is a crummy entry but I had to get it out and down on paper here. Love you all family.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
down and dirty
4-9-08 8:57
“Hello my friend” a frequent greeting I get from children who know about 6 words in English. I am about to go on adventure to talk about my last two weeks here and all of the crazy crap that has happened. Of course I procrastinated and I forgot most of what has happened in the past so hopefully this will be quick and to the point. Also please excuse any misplellings or grammar errors that might appear with more frequency given the fact that I was just savagely attacked by a huge Rottweiler and luckily escaped with just a few gauges in my leg. So in my rabid delirious state I will recount the events that has led up to this day.
Let us start with last week. I am not sure if I talked about Easter, we woke up at 6am ate and drank, then repeated that for the rest of the day. The following day was a holiday too and we didn’t have work. I read, watched movies and tried to stay sane as it rained outside. Tuesday I was able to go to work and sit and do nothing as only one other person showed up. I killed time the rest of the day like I did the previous day. Wednesday on my way to work I decided to change plans…
I decided to walk about 45 minutes down the road to a good hitching point to visit a fellow colleague in the town about 45 minutes south of me. I hitched a ride and mumbled where I wanted to go… I had never been there so I was a bit concerned I would not know how to get there but I did my best to explain where I wanted to be dropped off. Long story short, they though I was Russian and refused to speak to me in Russian saying kids these days don’t know how to speak Romanian. That was fine as I listened to them in Romanian talking about me. I just smiled and enjoyed the ride. Halfway through the ride they asked me again where I wanted to get off I told them and then they asked me if I was really from Russia. I said no America! They both said wow im sorry! HOW ARE YOUR DOING! SHAKE MY HAND! Anyway I figured it out arrived at my destination and spent the day with Darren in his town to see what he was up to.
Had a good time and made my way back home that night. The next day I went to work then because last week the center for children was closed for the holidays I decided to go visit Darren again and meet up with Phil who came up. We stayed the night, had a good time then the next day traveled south once again to meet up with a group of people in Orhei. We were celebrating the departure of two volunteers soon to be leaving. Then the following day I went to Chisinau to continue to see people and went to concert to watch our security officer for the peace corps jam on his harmonica with his band singing American cover songs. Great time. Sunday on my way back home I went to Peresecina to visit the old family. They wanted me to stay the night but I needed to get home.
So I got home, talked with the family and went to bed. So this last Monday was the day where everybody goes to the cemetery and visits deceased relatives and friends. They all spend about half a day drinking wine putting food and candles on grave sites and then we all sit and eat there. It was an interesting experience. On a side not it was a little strange at one point. There was a priest that would walk around reading what I assume was latin and blessing the graves. If you wanted this to happen to your loved ones grave you were required to follow the preist around begging him to come and bless your grave and slip him some money. It was quite unnerving. At one point this man started screaming at the priest because (in Russian this all was) he could not afford to pay the priest to bless his relatives grave and so the priest by passed him for someone who could. He hit the priest and pulled on his clothes then walked away raving and ranting for some time after. Quite an exciting time.
Tuesday I went back to work.. didn’t do anything, wait I wrote a letter I think yes, I wrote a letter in English outlining what I want out my experience here. I will then translate this into Romanian and give it to my partners outlining what I want to do. The gist of it is that I will be in the office only 2 days a week for about 4 hours then the other days will be spent going to nearby villages and hanging out with the local consultants where I can actually learn.
Wednesday I went into the office not really expecting to do anything other then begin translating my letter when my Russian partner asked me if I wanted to get out of the office. I said you bet ya! So we went to the bank, then a village where he paid to have access to a pond of sorts. Then we went out to see his land where he is going to put his own pond. From there we left and stopped off by this road and watched the process of draining a fishing pond. It was interesting I never knew how they did it. All the water drains out this tunnel where it catches all the fish that grew that year and they take their nets and scoop them up and put them in a truck.
Thursday I went to another village to visit with a local consultant to see if I could come there once a week so I can get out of the office. It was a good time. I was able to speak Romanian for about 2 hours with the consultants niece while she was given advice. This is by far our best consultant in the entire rayon. She works as a part time consultant and then part time in the local village bank where she helps people apply for credit and payback strategies. So when you combine agriculture knowledge with advice and resources on how to accomplish a agriculture idea you have a successful office. I will be spending at least one day a week I hope in her office and then ask her to set me up with some local farmers so I can just follow them around the rest of the day. Or maybe a half and half thing.
The rest of that day I spent at the center with the kids. I purchased some tiny toy soldiers (though farina was very against any aspect of war to be taught to the children) and got the tyrants building forts in this random sand rock pile we have nearby. It was a great time. It reminded me of the times I used to build sand castles with my dad and sisters in the sand box where I learned the art of crewing. After I got home from that I worked in the garden with my host dad digging very orderly rows of holes for potatoes. Of course the whole time the host mom was right there telling us how to do everything like any woman (wife) would. Anywho we got that accomplished. I enjoy helping around the house, especially learning how to do stuff I had no idea before how to do. To be completely honest I had no idea that you take small immature potatoes put them in the ground and wait for them to grow. I had no idea if you gave potatoes enough time that little seedlings sprout from them. Now I know… ;-).
Friday morning I was running around the track when these two domestic dogs ( I say domestic because their owner comes with them to the track lets them loose and has some what control over them.) So I normally do 10 circles at a even pace then after that I do four laps where I sprint full speed the straight-aways anyway I ran by the dogs at full speed and when I stopped sprinting at the end of the straight away one of the dogs closed on me. It was a rotwhiller and got me on the inside of the thigh then proceeded to tear at my sweats near my calf. Then he got the material stuck in his teeth and proceeded to rip my pants even more. I am posed to hit this animal in the face as hard as I can but I wait watching the 65 year old owner proceed to run that same distance while I dodge the dogs teeth in my calf. The owner ends up falling down on the asphalt rock turf of the track skinning up his hand before he takes control of his animal.
The then claimed it was my fault because his animal had never done this before. But whatever. He apologized and told me he would not let that dog loose in the mornings near the track anymore. So I was very happy. I finished running for a bit until the adrenaline wore down and my leg began throbbing. When I got home I inspected the wounds and they aren’t too bad. There is defiantly some teeth marks where he gauged me it could have been a lot worse. Had the inside thigh bite been about 5 inches higher I might not have my manhood anymore ;-).
Friday was also victory day for Europe. So we had a big celebration in our town. Everybody met up in the center with flowers and walked them down to this monument for WW2 for all the soldiers who had died. The mayor said some words, as well did some other local leaders. I limped along and snapped some pictures. The weekend is the weekend. I spent it in Orhei a village 2 hours south of mine and have escaped the boredom of being in my house when its raining outside. I am looking forward to talking with my parents tonight…. That’s really all I have.
HAPPY MOTHERS DAY MOM!
Also here is a link to an article about human trafficking in moldova. Interesting and sad.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/05/080505fa_fact_finnegan?currentPage=1
Let us start with last week. I am not sure if I talked about Easter, we woke up at 6am ate and drank, then repeated that for the rest of the day. The following day was a holiday too and we didn’t have work. I read, watched movies and tried to stay sane as it rained outside. Tuesday I was able to go to work and sit and do nothing as only one other person showed up. I killed time the rest of the day like I did the previous day. Wednesday on my way to work I decided to change plans…
I decided to walk about 45 minutes down the road to a good hitching point to visit a fellow colleague in the town about 45 minutes south of me. I hitched a ride and mumbled where I wanted to go… I had never been there so I was a bit concerned I would not know how to get there but I did my best to explain where I wanted to be dropped off. Long story short, they though I was Russian and refused to speak to me in Russian saying kids these days don’t know how to speak Romanian. That was fine as I listened to them in Romanian talking about me. I just smiled and enjoyed the ride. Halfway through the ride they asked me again where I wanted to get off I told them and then they asked me if I was really from Russia. I said no America! They both said wow im sorry! HOW ARE YOUR DOING! SHAKE MY HAND! Anyway I figured it out arrived at my destination and spent the day with Darren in his town to see what he was up to.
Had a good time and made my way back home that night. The next day I went to work then because last week the center for children was closed for the holidays I decided to go visit Darren again and meet up with Phil who came up. We stayed the night, had a good time then the next day traveled south once again to meet up with a group of people in Orhei. We were celebrating the departure of two volunteers soon to be leaving. Then the following day I went to Chisinau to continue to see people and went to concert to watch our security officer for the peace corps jam on his harmonica with his band singing American cover songs. Great time. Sunday on my way back home I went to Peresecina to visit the old family. They wanted me to stay the night but I needed to get home.
So I got home, talked with the family and went to bed. So this last Monday was the day where everybody goes to the cemetery and visits deceased relatives and friends. They all spend about half a day drinking wine putting food and candles on grave sites and then we all sit and eat there. It was an interesting experience. On a side not it was a little strange at one point. There was a priest that would walk around reading what I assume was latin and blessing the graves. If you wanted this to happen to your loved ones grave you were required to follow the preist around begging him to come and bless your grave and slip him some money. It was quite unnerving. At one point this man started screaming at the priest because (in Russian this all was) he could not afford to pay the priest to bless his relatives grave and so the priest by passed him for someone who could. He hit the priest and pulled on his clothes then walked away raving and ranting for some time after. Quite an exciting time.
Tuesday I went back to work.. didn’t do anything, wait I wrote a letter I think yes, I wrote a letter in English outlining what I want out my experience here. I will then translate this into Romanian and give it to my partners outlining what I want to do. The gist of it is that I will be in the office only 2 days a week for about 4 hours then the other days will be spent going to nearby villages and hanging out with the local consultants where I can actually learn.
Wednesday I went into the office not really expecting to do anything other then begin translating my letter when my Russian partner asked me if I wanted to get out of the office. I said you bet ya! So we went to the bank, then a village where he paid to have access to a pond of sorts. Then we went out to see his land where he is going to put his own pond. From there we left and stopped off by this road and watched the process of draining a fishing pond. It was interesting I never knew how they did it. All the water drains out this tunnel where it catches all the fish that grew that year and they take their nets and scoop them up and put them in a truck.
Thursday I went to another village to visit with a local consultant to see if I could come there once a week so I can get out of the office. It was a good time. I was able to speak Romanian for about 2 hours with the consultants niece while she was given advice. This is by far our best consultant in the entire rayon. She works as a part time consultant and then part time in the local village bank where she helps people apply for credit and payback strategies. So when you combine agriculture knowledge with advice and resources on how to accomplish a agriculture idea you have a successful office. I will be spending at least one day a week I hope in her office and then ask her to set me up with some local farmers so I can just follow them around the rest of the day. Or maybe a half and half thing.
The rest of that day I spent at the center with the kids. I purchased some tiny toy soldiers (though farina was very against any aspect of war to be taught to the children) and got the tyrants building forts in this random sand rock pile we have nearby. It was a great time. It reminded me of the times I used to build sand castles with my dad and sisters in the sand box where I learned the art of crewing. After I got home from that I worked in the garden with my host dad digging very orderly rows of holes for potatoes. Of course the whole time the host mom was right there telling us how to do everything like any woman (wife) would. Anywho we got that accomplished. I enjoy helping around the house, especially learning how to do stuff I had no idea before how to do. To be completely honest I had no idea that you take small immature potatoes put them in the ground and wait for them to grow. I had no idea if you gave potatoes enough time that little seedlings sprout from them. Now I know… ;-).
Friday morning I was running around the track when these two domestic dogs ( I say domestic because their owner comes with them to the track lets them loose and has some what control over them.) So I normally do 10 circles at a even pace then after that I do four laps where I sprint full speed the straight-aways anyway I ran by the dogs at full speed and when I stopped sprinting at the end of the straight away one of the dogs closed on me. It was a rotwhiller and got me on the inside of the thigh then proceeded to tear at my sweats near my calf. Then he got the material stuck in his teeth and proceeded to rip my pants even more. I am posed to hit this animal in the face as hard as I can but I wait watching the 65 year old owner proceed to run that same distance while I dodge the dogs teeth in my calf. The owner ends up falling down on the asphalt rock turf of the track skinning up his hand before he takes control of his animal.
The then claimed it was my fault because his animal had never done this before. But whatever. He apologized and told me he would not let that dog loose in the mornings near the track anymore. So I was very happy. I finished running for a bit until the adrenaline wore down and my leg began throbbing. When I got home I inspected the wounds and they aren’t too bad. There is defiantly some teeth marks where he gauged me it could have been a lot worse. Had the inside thigh bite been about 5 inches higher I might not have my manhood anymore ;-).
Friday was also victory day for Europe. So we had a big celebration in our town. Everybody met up in the center with flowers and walked them down to this monument for WW2 for all the soldiers who had died. The mayor said some words, as well did some other local leaders. I limped along and snapped some pictures. The weekend is the weekend. I spent it in Orhei a village 2 hours south of mine and have escaped the boredom of being in my house when its raining outside. I am looking forward to talking with my parents tonight…. That’s really all I have.
HAPPY MOTHERS DAY MOM!
Also here is a link to an article about human trafficking in moldova. Interesting and sad.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/05/080505fa_fact_finnegan?currentPage=1
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!
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.
“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 :-)
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.
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.
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