Here is my birthday masa, thats the host mom and the far left followed her friends and then my site mate on the far right Andrea.
Thats my host dad Johnny dominating the garden with this shot back. He is placing carrot seeds in that shot. to the right of that is a little part of onions and to the right of that is garlic yum. :)
Its the man him self Jackie Chan our dog just 3 months old. I dominated him into that pose too.NEW videos --->> link videos Host mom 1 birthday and Host mom 2 birthday
3.29.08 10:05
Good morning! Update time. I guess I left this blog at last Thursday. Since then oh geez lets go down the memory lane here… My birthday came and went, my host moms birthday came and went, my site mates birthday came and went… I went on back to Chisinau for hep A or B shot… I don’t’ know which one I received. Hung out in Peresecina for a bit, talked with the new volunteers in an awkward speech at one of their training meetings, and came home and held another volunteer meeting with the local high school kids at my site… accomplished nothing but it feels like progress…
Host mom’s birthday was Saturday night from last week. That was an interesting time. 4 and a half hours or so of pure Russian. I understood really very little ..ok nothing for those 4 hours but kept busy trying to eat as much food as I could possibly fit in my mouth to counteract the celebratory vodka shots or putting water in my shot glass to act like I had water in it. ( a trick I learned from the older ladies at the table.. though when caught its pretty humiliating). I made a little video of it. I mixed the few pictures I took with some video footage to capture the moment. I tried to add a little humor in there with the subtitles and I mean no offence but there was a lot of alcohol.
After the party (my host brother who works in Chisinau and I went out on the town for a bit and had a classy drink at the restaurant Classic (mine was water ;-) and then headed off to the disco .. the place I tell everyone I never want to visit I visited. I told my host bro like 20 times no… no… no! but conceded after telling him I would stay no longer then 5 minutes. Went in stood there for a bit… choked on the smoke for a bit did a few head nods to some of the kids I knew in the town and then went on home after no more then 5 minutes. First.. last time going there ;-).
Sunday I went to Balţi to go play a little baseball. Failed to catch routiaria on time and ended up getting there a little late. (it was just practice) only 4 people showed up so I caught up with them for pizza and had a few laughs then came home in time to find out there was another “masa” for my host mom’s birthday where other friends came the couldn’t the night before. I came in on the tail in and show a few glasses of wine and ate some good food and fell asleep shortly after.
I think Monday there was no birthday masa for the host mom but I could have been mistaken. I spent the day at work… translating stuff working on my park bench project for most of the work day. Came home ate played a the children center with 1 child because nobody else showed up. We played soccer for about an hour then cup stacking game (speedstacking check it out on youtube some kids can do it with remarkable speed) for an hour or so then came home read a little ate and the sleep.
Tuesday was my birthday, My host mom baked me a cake and I got some deodorant and body spray package from them. SWEET! Smelling good now :). Went to work with the cake my mom baked in a plastic sack, oh did I mention it was a blizzard that day? I walked to the local store and bought a bottle of champagne and a cup, fork, and plate package and then trekked to work fighting to storm for the 25 minutes it took to get there. Once there did some work, helped my partner with some copy paste work and showed him the power of the print screen paste in paint edit picture and then paste in word document trick. If you know it you know how awesome it is and if you don’t you should learn :). Then we had a masa drank our champagne and ate our cake I went off to my language lesson then home. Then ate a small meal then off to the children center to repeat playing with the one child for a few hours before heading home to my birthday masa that was combined with another host mom birthday masa. Went smoothly and I did my best to eat more then I could to drowned out the vodka shots which I quickly faltered and said im not doing this again its too much. My site mate made me look like a little girl by continuing to take the shots with my host dad. That caused me some ridicule from him but I took it and enjoyed not waking up with a hangover.
Good thing because I woke up at 5 am to catch the 6 am bus taxi to Chisinau for my hep a or b vaccination. Did that, hung around Chisinau with the other volunteers till around when I left with old host mom to go to Peresecina to stay the night there because its free and its always fun to see the family. Plus my program manager said I could stay the night out of site if I would give a little how my service has gone so far talk to the new volunteers. That night was fun, ate a birthday masa with some relatives. Guess what I got for my birthday present? Jeans! ;-). My host mom knew my size because she had at one point washed my clothes for me and like all moms looks at sizes. Anyway she brought home 3 pairs with her and had me try them on. I the host sister, bro, mom and neighbors judging which fit the best and what not, it was ridiculous. It was expensive and I felt a bit bad for accepting it but my host mom basically said I had to take them ;-)
The next day I didn’t have to be at the hub site meeting till 1 so I just hung around the house with the old host dad and did some bonding. We walked around the garden and he pointed things out to me and joked around for a bit. We then ate lunch and nearly fell asleep watching a movie before I realized I had to be at the meeting. So I ran to the hub site hung out a bit did a little talk about my experiences ( might have been too pessimistic on my work but a few guys came up and thanked my for my honesty because they wanted to know what it really was like at site. I remember saying the same thing to a guy that came and talked and didn’t sugar coat it though I ended my speech with I am optimistic and looking forward to the future which I am :-).
Friday or yesterday was a good day. I went to work at 9 and worked till 2:30 on my planned meeting I was going to have with the volunteer group. I had done a lot of thinking about how I wanted to run the meeting and I had done a lot of work to get prepared for it. I had 6 show up and 4 tell me they couldn’t make it. Not the best of numbers but at least I had some show up. The bench project is underway. After our last meeting the kids said they were lazy and didn’t want to write the project and asked me to do it. I told them no but compromised by organizing the thing. This way I divvy up duties to the volunteers so they all do a part in the plan and I am there to advise and guide them when they need it.
We met up and one of the kids said she heard the mayors office was already repairing the benches or would this year. So for about 30 minutes we tried to get a hold of the mayors office to get some info and failed. We resorted to walking to the park together and asking the workers who were cleaning up some branches and trash. They said go to this other building because they didn’t’ know about any benches. We walked another 20 minutes to the building that had the people responsible for the clean up and finally tracked down our guy. He said nope nobody wants to pay or do the repairs and gave us a big smile and a POFTIM! (that means go for it). So after everybody was tired… I quickly divided out material and objectives for them to start on before our next meeting. I formed a marketing group ( in charge of spreading the word and raising money.. or figuring out how…) then a bench design group who will come up with the budget and plans for how we are going to go about doing the repairs and then a group that takes their info along with some of their own work for write out a plan which we will use to get permission for the mayors office or raise money for local businesses! Its on!
After that I came home to find my host dad just came home from work. He threw his back out the night before working in the garden and was waddling around. I told him if he wanted to plant the carrots I could help he just needed to tell me what I needed to do. He was pretty stubborn and did most of the work but finally his back would not let him anymore and let me do some stuff though I did mess the rows for the onions leaving us with too many onion bulbs and not enough space so I had to destroy my work and start over. I still messed it up and he did it. We raced the sky as it was getting darker by the second and we have to be able to see the spacing for the bulbs and which side has the “virf” (that’s a Romanian term but I don’t know the English term because ive never done any of this before) or the part that points up. We were rushing as fast as we could to beat the darkness and accomplished just as we could barely make out the details. I hope I did it right or the will grow upside down and I assume that doesn’t work ;-)
I just got back here about an hour ago. I was at my Romanian language lesson. Holy crap that was difficult. Its grammar time now so enough with me listening to random stories about my tutors life and me answering with the affirmative da.. but this was participatory as it could be. Mainly because I had no idea what she was trying to teach me and neither did she. Shes not a Romanian teacher and her first language is Russian I gather. So she has her manual out trying to teach me the grammar using my langage books and hers in the collaborative mess. For two hours I debated and asked her why this was so and what not. We got very little accomplished but i do have some homework now and I think we are on our way to making me make a whole lot more sense when I talk. I was gonna have my bud Darren come visit me today but he called and said he had to cancel. His partner called him and asked him if he could talk about strong women leaders in America in a five minute speech on Sunday and he needed to go to his tutor and work on it. He was freaking out as I would be to. I wouldn’t want to give the speech in English let alone Romanian. ;-)
So I will go and play in the garden. Clean up the field a little and build a dirt fence under the now small fence to keep our German Shepherd puppy from running and playing in the crops and thrashing my host moms flowers. At least it will keep me out of the house which is my goal every day not to be in. I will attach some pictures to this entry. Also I added two new videos which are from this year… so in the last 3 months one of my old host moms birthday and one of my new host moms birthday. Keep on rolllin.
Good morning! Update time. I guess I left this blog at last Thursday. Since then oh geez lets go down the memory lane here… My birthday came and went, my host moms birthday came and went, my site mates birthday came and went… I went on back to Chisinau for hep A or B shot… I don’t’ know which one I received. Hung out in Peresecina for a bit, talked with the new volunteers in an awkward speech at one of their training meetings, and came home and held another volunteer meeting with the local high school kids at my site… accomplished nothing but it feels like progress…
Host mom’s birthday was Saturday night from last week. That was an interesting time. 4 and a half hours or so of pure Russian. I understood really very little ..ok nothing for those 4 hours but kept busy trying to eat as much food as I could possibly fit in my mouth to counteract the celebratory vodka shots or putting water in my shot glass to act like I had water in it. ( a trick I learned from the older ladies at the table.. though when caught its pretty humiliating). I made a little video of it. I mixed the few pictures I took with some video footage to capture the moment. I tried to add a little humor in there with the subtitles and I mean no offence but there was a lot of alcohol.
After the party (my host brother who works in Chisinau and I went out on the town for a bit and had a classy drink at the restaurant Classic (mine was water ;-) and then headed off to the disco .. the place I tell everyone I never want to visit I visited. I told my host bro like 20 times no… no… no! but conceded after telling him I would stay no longer then 5 minutes. Went in stood there for a bit… choked on the smoke for a bit did a few head nods to some of the kids I knew in the town and then went on home after no more then 5 minutes. First.. last time going there ;-).
Sunday I went to Balţi to go play a little baseball. Failed to catch routiaria on time and ended up getting there a little late. (it was just practice) only 4 people showed up so I caught up with them for pizza and had a few laughs then came home in time to find out there was another “masa” for my host mom’s birthday where other friends came the couldn’t the night before. I came in on the tail in and show a few glasses of wine and ate some good food and fell asleep shortly after.
I think Monday there was no birthday masa for the host mom but I could have been mistaken. I spent the day at work… translating stuff working on my park bench project for most of the work day. Came home ate played a the children center with 1 child because nobody else showed up. We played soccer for about an hour then cup stacking game (speedstacking check it out on youtube some kids can do it with remarkable speed) for an hour or so then came home read a little ate and the sleep.
Tuesday was my birthday, My host mom baked me a cake and I got some deodorant and body spray package from them. SWEET! Smelling good now :). Went to work with the cake my mom baked in a plastic sack, oh did I mention it was a blizzard that day? I walked to the local store and bought a bottle of champagne and a cup, fork, and plate package and then trekked to work fighting to storm for the 25 minutes it took to get there. Once there did some work, helped my partner with some copy paste work and showed him the power of the print screen paste in paint edit picture and then paste in word document trick. If you know it you know how awesome it is and if you don’t you should learn :). Then we had a masa drank our champagne and ate our cake I went off to my language lesson then home. Then ate a small meal then off to the children center to repeat playing with the one child for a few hours before heading home to my birthday masa that was combined with another host mom birthday masa. Went smoothly and I did my best to eat more then I could to drowned out the vodka shots which I quickly faltered and said im not doing this again its too much. My site mate made me look like a little girl by continuing to take the shots with my host dad. That caused me some ridicule from him but I took it and enjoyed not waking up with a hangover.
Good thing because I woke up at 5 am to catch the 6 am bus taxi to Chisinau for my hep a or b vaccination. Did that, hung around Chisinau with the other volunteers till around when I left with old host mom to go to Peresecina to stay the night there because its free and its always fun to see the family. Plus my program manager said I could stay the night out of site if I would give a little how my service has gone so far talk to the new volunteers. That night was fun, ate a birthday masa with some relatives. Guess what I got for my birthday present? Jeans! ;-). My host mom knew my size because she had at one point washed my clothes for me and like all moms looks at sizes. Anyway she brought home 3 pairs with her and had me try them on. I the host sister, bro, mom and neighbors judging which fit the best and what not, it was ridiculous. It was expensive and I felt a bit bad for accepting it but my host mom basically said I had to take them ;-)
The next day I didn’t have to be at the hub site meeting till 1 so I just hung around the house with the old host dad and did some bonding. We walked around the garden and he pointed things out to me and joked around for a bit. We then ate lunch and nearly fell asleep watching a movie before I realized I had to be at the meeting. So I ran to the hub site hung out a bit did a little talk about my experiences ( might have been too pessimistic on my work but a few guys came up and thanked my for my honesty because they wanted to know what it really was like at site. I remember saying the same thing to a guy that came and talked and didn’t sugar coat it though I ended my speech with I am optimistic and looking forward to the future which I am :-).
Friday or yesterday was a good day. I went to work at 9 and worked till 2:30 on my planned meeting I was going to have with the volunteer group. I had done a lot of thinking about how I wanted to run the meeting and I had done a lot of work to get prepared for it. I had 6 show up and 4 tell me they couldn’t make it. Not the best of numbers but at least I had some show up. The bench project is underway. After our last meeting the kids said they were lazy and didn’t want to write the project and asked me to do it. I told them no but compromised by organizing the thing. This way I divvy up duties to the volunteers so they all do a part in the plan and I am there to advise and guide them when they need it.
We met up and one of the kids said she heard the mayors office was already repairing the benches or would this year. So for about 30 minutes we tried to get a hold of the mayors office to get some info and failed. We resorted to walking to the park together and asking the workers who were cleaning up some branches and trash. They said go to this other building because they didn’t’ know about any benches. We walked another 20 minutes to the building that had the people responsible for the clean up and finally tracked down our guy. He said nope nobody wants to pay or do the repairs and gave us a big smile and a POFTIM! (that means go for it). So after everybody was tired… I quickly divided out material and objectives for them to start on before our next meeting. I formed a marketing group ( in charge of spreading the word and raising money.. or figuring out how…) then a bench design group who will come up with the budget and plans for how we are going to go about doing the repairs and then a group that takes their info along with some of their own work for write out a plan which we will use to get permission for the mayors office or raise money for local businesses! Its on!
After that I came home to find my host dad just came home from work. He threw his back out the night before working in the garden and was waddling around. I told him if he wanted to plant the carrots I could help he just needed to tell me what I needed to do. He was pretty stubborn and did most of the work but finally his back would not let him anymore and let me do some stuff though I did mess the rows for the onions leaving us with too many onion bulbs and not enough space so I had to destroy my work and start over. I still messed it up and he did it. We raced the sky as it was getting darker by the second and we have to be able to see the spacing for the bulbs and which side has the “virf” (that’s a Romanian term but I don’t know the English term because ive never done any of this before) or the part that points up. We were rushing as fast as we could to beat the darkness and accomplished just as we could barely make out the details. I hope I did it right or the will grow upside down and I assume that doesn’t work ;-)
I just got back here about an hour ago. I was at my Romanian language lesson. Holy crap that was difficult. Its grammar time now so enough with me listening to random stories about my tutors life and me answering with the affirmative da.. but this was participatory as it could be. Mainly because I had no idea what she was trying to teach me and neither did she. Shes not a Romanian teacher and her first language is Russian I gather. So she has her manual out trying to teach me the grammar using my langage books and hers in the collaborative mess. For two hours I debated and asked her why this was so and what not. We got very little accomplished but i do have some homework now and I think we are on our way to making me make a whole lot more sense when I talk. I was gonna have my bud Darren come visit me today but he called and said he had to cancel. His partner called him and asked him if he could talk about strong women leaders in America in a five minute speech on Sunday and he needed to go to his tutor and work on it. He was freaking out as I would be to. I wouldn’t want to give the speech in English let alone Romanian. ;-)
So I will go and play in the garden. Clean up the field a little and build a dirt fence under the now small fence to keep our German Shepherd puppy from running and playing in the crops and thrashing my host moms flowers. At least it will keep me out of the house which is my goal every day not to be in. I will attach some pictures to this entry. Also I added two new videos which are from this year… so in the last 3 months one of my old host moms birthday and one of my new host moms birthday. Keep on rolllin.
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