happy halloween

11-01-07 22:04

Notice the dash and then the quick note above each days paragraph. It is just something I entered in to remind me what I did that day so when I go back to type it I can remember. I decided to keep it there for those who are picking and choosing what to read about as a way to skim the information.


-dancing, homework

It has been a while since I have written on this blog so I thought I would start now. Well not now veronica wants to play cards so I guess I will write in this later. I have made an outline of all the things I want to talk about for last week and I will being writing about them as I remember then very soon.

Ok we played cards and the winner is… Veronica out of 4 different games we tied once and the other three she wooped up on me. I guess that goes along with making their lives better… she feels good about ability to completely dominate me.

I will start with what happened last week, thrusday to be precise. All that I can remember about that day is that we had dancing class in which was very rushed and frantic because we were short on time with too many volunteers wanting to dance participating. We all progressed rather slowly that day and because of the frantic dancing we were attempting to do I was able to build up a good sweat. There were a select few that didn’t look quite as ridiculous but for the most part we did a fair job of amusing our dance instructor.

-lecture then cards and cookies and Halloween prep

Friday went by entirely to quickly. We had our language class in the morning of course but we were left to our own devices after. After standing around in front of jess’s house for about 20 minutes with becky trying to make up our minds on what we were going to do that day we decided to get together anybody who wanted to come to my house and make cookies and play cards with some a little beer to go with the cookies because it is way cheaper then milk J. That night after our get together I also was in charge of coming up with a poem for Halloween for the kids in the junior school near our language class.

-Halloween party with kiddies, ninja, rope, can opener, poem, hokey pokey, Chisinau-much needed items

I realized I never explained that we were going to have a party for the kids but now that I am describing the day Saturday when it took place I might as well give a little back ground on it. I believe it was Thursday we began thinking about doing something for Halloween that would coincide with their holiday party which is more inline with their harvest season. Long story short we got together about 7 of the PCV in our city and began attempting to plan this the day before so that would be Friday. It was a loosely planned event where we all decided on one thing that we could do with aprox 100 kids in the age range of 7-9. My job was to lead the hokey pokey and read an energetic poem about Halloween.

So Saturday rolled around and we went to language class and then put together our costumes if we choose to dress up. I scrambled together some clothing items I had and became Ninja Kyle. My outfit consisted of my Under Armor long underwear which is mostly skin tight spandex with some funky designs in light grey on them with a borrowed full on nylon mask used for running. To top it off i attached a black can opener to my pants or tucked it into my spandex to use as my num chucks. ( this worked way better then I could have ever anticipated as the handles spun freely as I held onto the can opener mechinisim providing a very believable weapon, it helped that none of the kdis knew or had seen a can opener that looked like it all took turns spinning it as best as they could) Long story short everyone did a great job, Jess was a great looking pirate and Gerald comes out of nowhere with ballons attached to his body strung together with dental floss and became the dancing balloon man with a matching colorful flute. The party was a wonderful success to all of our surprises and we walked away feeling really good about the whole event. After the party I went to Chisinau with Jess and Phil (by the way Phill was a professional soccer player for the party) and walked around the city and bought random items. I picked up another towel an extention cord, jump rope and some peanuts. I am sure I played cards that night and lost again but I can’t remember.

-stayed home, enjoyed it, needed free time. Read a lot studied, played games with brother and
neighbor. Watched dad cook rabbit and helped, cried with inion, long discussion with dad and moms brother, with wine. Zodiac sign fiasco

Sunday was another great day. I was able to sleep in because there was nothing going on school wise so I just woke up around 8 or so did some reading and then proceeded to relax the rest of the day. I was able to get some much needed language practice in as I conversed with my host dad and my mom’s brother. I watched them prepare rabbit and helped prepare the vegatalbes. I also was able to sample a couple sweet peppers that have become my new favorite vegitable. After the preparation was complete I sat with the then returned mother (from Chisinau with veronica buying new coat for her) and discussed many random things. Veronica went to a birthday party that night so I was without her for translation if I wanted it or if she felt like helping out so I relied on my handy dictionary and a whole lot of nodding. We determined my zodiac sign as well ( I am a Berbec… that is Aries to the English speakers). It was fun trying to mime the god of war. Try it in sharades sometime. Try to mime the god of war and succed in under 10 minues I dare you J. Afte dinner my parents called me and I was able to talk to my long lost sister jill who I have been without contact for nearly 2 months (longer then that but atleast that was the last time I saw and talked to her). I am still waiting for her to send me some face book messages like my little sister is doing. Thank you Julia for your daily updates I now have a vague idea of what goes on in your life J.

-lecture, teacher said I did a good job, come home didn’t go to dance watched them make compot, watched 4 chickens bite the dust, plucked a chicken, studied got frustrated, got frustrated with family, broke down, cleaned dishes for 30 min talked to mom felt better. Watched brother and mom play computer game

Monday was a little rocky. Lecture went fairly well for the most part. After coming off from a great weekend and feeling my communication was going well I was feeling good about my language. To top it off my professor said that she saw some improvement because of my work this weekend with the family communicating so much. Any who I came home from lecture feeling good to be met by the neighbors across the street making compot. Compot is simply fruit heated over a stove in jars until it turns into a liquid form. It tastes delicious and is 100% natural. After this I was able to observe my mom chase down 4 chickens with Veronica’s help and cut off their heads. I was not quite man enough to do this myself but I’m hoping to have the guts to do this in the future. After the beheading I helped pluck the chickens. I only did one and did a horrible job at it. It was my first time but it was not, first… as hard as I thought it was going to be, or as fun as I thought it was going to be. It was and interesting day and I took some pictures of the event.

Afterwards I went up stairs to study and do my homework when I cam across some grammar work that I had not clue how to do. After beating my head against the wall and trying to look it up for 2 hours I went down stairs to eat dinner in kind of a rough mood. It was at this dinner as I was having a hard time already that my mom brought up my lack of pronunciation ability when it comes to certain words. I was already at my wits end and broke down a little when she compared me to a couple of other PCV that (had in my defense learned several languages before taking on Romanian and had visited the house to further show my inability to learn a language correctly at any given speed). Veronica didn’t really care about my little break down and promptly went to bed. Meanwhile I was still upset and insisted on cleaning all of the dishes after dinner to cool down. I popped on the radio and listened to some story in Romanian about a little girl and that is about all I made out of the story besides words like (the, and, but, and other simple connecting words). The cleaning of the dishes and my mom constantly insisting that I am doing a good job and that she didn’t mean to compare me to others it is just I need to really work on my pronunciation.

After that I was feeling better and went to take a shower. When I came out I witnessed the fun scene of my mom sitting next to my brother as he played a game on the computer that I had recently given him. The game is in Russian but it is a game that I played a lot in the states and understood what he needed to do to win. He needed to read the texts which are in Russian that he can’t read but his mom can and I quickly got my mom involved in the game and soon we were all three translating the game. I was pointing to different things he needed to do and what his mom needed to read and she would translate it into Romanian and then he was able to beat the level. Great fun watching my mom get excited about this seeming uninteresting computer game.

-lecture, difficult, then social networking. Boiled my clothes, 2nd time. Did homework, ate placenta mom cooked bread and placenta and some chicken in big concrete oven, then we talked kitchen, played cards watched star wars

Tuesday was a good day. It started with a difficult language session and then a technical session on social networking in our community. I Boiled my clothes for the 2nd time to kill this fun gift that I received from a hotel I contracted on the day I came into this country with my moms help who has been very good about the whole matter. After this I ate placenta my mom cooked in our brick oven along with bread and rabbit meat that has become my new favorite type of meat. After dinner I had a great time talking with Veronica and her mother in the kitchen for about 2 and a half hours. We discussed everything from the names of all of my old girlfriends to what are my plans when I get out of the peace corps. For the most part it was in Romanian but Veronica helped during rough patches when she could. We laughed a whooped it up as we looked back on the first time I met my host mom in the hotel before I would be living with them. It was a great expression on my mom’s face as she described her thoughts of seeing this large 6’4” American boy holding flowers knowing nothing else in her language except hello. After this we played 4 way Egyptian rat screw that my mom and brother picked up rather quickly. This game continued for upwards of nearly 1 and a half hours (longest single game of ERS I have ever played in my life) and had a really great time in the processes though towards the end I was not completely sad to lose finally to Veronica the Queen of any card game I have introduced to her thus far. I finished off the night with my usual 30 minutes of a movie I brought with me on my lap top. In this case it was the final 30 minutes of Star Wars Return of the Jedi.

Wednesday was Halloween in America but just another day here in Moldova. To spice it up a little I tried to entice Veronica and Tudor to get into the spirit and dress up and say trick or treat. I bought half a kilo of candy for the occasion and told them all they had to do to get it was dress up in some costume and say trick or treat. Veronica finally comes out of left field borrows my ninja mask from the clothes line and puts on a sports jacket and say trick or treat. Tudor failed to play along so Veronica got the entire bag of candy. She of course shared it with the rest of the family so we all had a mini Halloween.

That night my dad and mom tried on the Ninja mask and we all had a good laugh about how ridiculous I must have looked in front of all of those kids. handed out candy for costumes. Everyone tried on the ninja mask. Played with Tudor, read just a little bit because my mom won’t allow me to because it messes up my Romanian she says. She’s probably right.