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.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
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.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
birthday festivis for the rest of us
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.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
red bull!
3.20.08 6:52
Here we are at the old host familys house doing the masa thing. thats phil lower left followed by darren, johan, angela, new voluteers i forgot thier names... i think that guy on the right is thomas and then sarah next to my host mom. sarah is the new voluteer at my old house.
Is this wierd or what. thats the old host parents when they were younger holding veronica as a baby.
Here we are at the old host familys house doing the masa thing. thats phil lower left followed by darren, johan, angela, new voluteers i forgot thier names... i think that guy on the right is thomas and then sarah next to my host mom. sarah is the new voluteer at my old house.
Is this wierd or what. thats the old host parents when they were younger holding veronica as a baby. I will start with yesterday and work backwards because going the other way is too difficult. Hopefully by the time I need to remember what happened over a week ago my brain will start working. So yesterday I had work… I had a red bull upon waking up because I get one caffeine drink a week though it has been more or less a month or more since the last time I had one. I then took myself to the school to do my jungle gym workout routine that I have begun to grow fond of though it was really cold yesterday morning and my hands were nearly frozen to the bar.
On my way there I met some soldiers outside of my house looking for something though I never did find out what. They looked at me a little strange in the early morning and asked me something.. I answered im sorry what did you say? The guy repeated and I said I had no idea and don’t understand, this made the guy a little un trusting like I was hiding something. And they walked with me as I headed to the park. They asked where I was from and upon telling them they answered awww that’s why you don’t understand, hes not hiding anything hes just American. I left them with a hand shake and a nice have a successful day!
Well back to the red bull I was way to awake for my own good. On the walk to work my brain was on overdrive thinking about my future here in moldova and what I was to accomplish or do here. Needless to say a little red bull goes along way. I brainstormed on the way to work and by the time I got there said my hellos then went right to the desk to write out my thoughts on a little chart.
I decided on the way that I wanted to have two goals. One with my current organization or partners and then another with the community. For the community I decided I would lead a youth empowerment group. Kinda rally the students who are wanted to enact change but don’t know how or have the means to do so. I will educate them in project design, give them the confidence to just go out and do it and then send them off. Sounds all fine and good but there is more to it then that but until I do it im not writing to much more on it. Working with my organization and my new found knowledge from this weekends meeting with peace corps and the other volunteers is that my organization is going down the drain in 2010. They are not getting funded anymore. So its all about sustainability for them. I am really not a fan of their set up now and either are they so I think it will just fall apart so my goal is to get all there set up with work for the future. Because one of my partners is an enterprising man he has ideas on what he wants to do.
For him it will be the dried plums or a fish farm he already has the plans for. I will try to get him hooked up with credit at a low credit rate that a couple of world wide organizations offer to encourage entrepreneur ship because credit here is somewhere around 30% a year. Combine that with a small business startup grant that this organization Soros offers I think we can get him funded. My other partner is interested in green houses and has most of one built he just needs a way to heat it. So we will decide on what kind of heater and go from there with his plans and funding.
Earlier this week at work I also poked around and one of my partners to help him with excel again. I might get involved walking around the piatza (the local market) and gathering price information and putting that information into a spread shit with a graphs showing historical trends. Really easy but also really fulfilling given my lack of contribution thus far.
At the center for children that same day I drank the red bull I played chess after the kids left with farina. I was pretty down trodden. Farina had my queen both bishops knight and one rook. It was not looking good for me but with the power of the red bull I came back out of nowhere and dominated here again.
It was also my site mates birthday so I gave her a couple of diet cokes and a bar of chocolate. She loves diet coke and shes giving up chocolate and coke for a month before her vacation so I thought she might as well drink it all down tonight before she goes on her fast. It was fun, a volunteer from the south came up to hang with her, farina and I came over too and they made spaghetti. Wow it was great with beef and everything. First time I have had it like that since last summer cooking in my apartment. I had quite the case of homesickness after it but what are ya gonna do.
Ok so I just remembered I dreamed last night that my host mom in perescina died. How awful is that? I was crying in my dream and it was just a really horrible dream… I think there was also ww2 bombers hitting the coliseum as I was running through some jungle. Must have been the red bull.
Well the previous day I got my hair cut. I walked to the frizeria (hair cut place) about 9:15 and sat down to wait. As I sat there I called my work and told them im getting my hair cut and Id come in later. They responded with oh don’t’ worry about it your getting your hair cut today. Whatever … so I sit there.. an hour goes by and 2 people had gone infront of me. They turn on the Russian television and I wait another hour watching the tv understanding nothing. I swear 2 people cut me in line but I don’t know cause they all were speaking Russian. And I was getting a little heated but I had already waited 2 hours so I could not very well leave. Long story short I didn’t get out of there until 12:30 but my hair looks pretty good. (very Moldovan, or too normal according to farina).
Later that day I had a masa with my host mom and her friend from Chisinau her friends daughter. Her daughter was very pretty and I could tell this was a set up for me to meet her. I made convo with the daughter and ate a little bit. Then my host mom points to my forehead (I have a huge zit) and gasps with this oh what is that!. I look at her in disbelief and just say what do you think it is? She starts fretting over it and goes to the med kit to get some ointment or something I tell her its fine its not mortal ( though at this point my confidence with this girl is mortally wounded). She backs off finally only to have the subject revisited at dinner that night with my host dad where upon they lecture me on how to use medicine on my face for zits. I could only imagine what they would do if they knew me in high school when I really had an acne problem.
Going to try to skip around here and wrap up this entry. I can’t really remember anything that happened last week all that well but that only means it was just normal days flowing entirely to fast for my liking. This last weekend I was in Chisinau and played baseball. We got destroyed by a local team here. We were playing actually baseball like I did in high school. Fast pitch full 90 ft plate distances and everything! It was really great. I caught the first 3 innings before my body just couldn’t take it anymore. My back acted up towards the end. I felt like it was just yesterday I was playing ball in high school sitting behind the plate there catching. I threw a guy out at second but made my share of over throws to first and third in attempt to catching overzealous base runner leadoffs. I even hit a line drive down third base and stole a couple bases. It was a good time.
I also got to visit the old host family and hang out with a couple of the new volunteers. Phil came down with me along with Darren and angela and johann (who are all in my group) we had a masa at my old house and just shared stories and laughed. Awww good times.
That’s all I have.
On my way there I met some soldiers outside of my house looking for something though I never did find out what. They looked at me a little strange in the early morning and asked me something.. I answered im sorry what did you say? The guy repeated and I said I had no idea and don’t understand, this made the guy a little un trusting like I was hiding something. And they walked with me as I headed to the park. They asked where I was from and upon telling them they answered awww that’s why you don’t understand, hes not hiding anything hes just American. I left them with a hand shake and a nice have a successful day!
Well back to the red bull I was way to awake for my own good. On the walk to work my brain was on overdrive thinking about my future here in moldova and what I was to accomplish or do here. Needless to say a little red bull goes along way. I brainstormed on the way to work and by the time I got there said my hellos then went right to the desk to write out my thoughts on a little chart.
I decided on the way that I wanted to have two goals. One with my current organization or partners and then another with the community. For the community I decided I would lead a youth empowerment group. Kinda rally the students who are wanted to enact change but don’t know how or have the means to do so. I will educate them in project design, give them the confidence to just go out and do it and then send them off. Sounds all fine and good but there is more to it then that but until I do it im not writing to much more on it. Working with my organization and my new found knowledge from this weekends meeting with peace corps and the other volunteers is that my organization is going down the drain in 2010. They are not getting funded anymore. So its all about sustainability for them. I am really not a fan of their set up now and either are they so I think it will just fall apart so my goal is to get all there set up with work for the future. Because one of my partners is an enterprising man he has ideas on what he wants to do.
For him it will be the dried plums or a fish farm he already has the plans for. I will try to get him hooked up with credit at a low credit rate that a couple of world wide organizations offer to encourage entrepreneur ship because credit here is somewhere around 30% a year. Combine that with a small business startup grant that this organization Soros offers I think we can get him funded. My other partner is interested in green houses and has most of one built he just needs a way to heat it. So we will decide on what kind of heater and go from there with his plans and funding.
Earlier this week at work I also poked around and one of my partners to help him with excel again. I might get involved walking around the piatza (the local market) and gathering price information and putting that information into a spread shit with a graphs showing historical trends. Really easy but also really fulfilling given my lack of contribution thus far.
At the center for children that same day I drank the red bull I played chess after the kids left with farina. I was pretty down trodden. Farina had my queen both bishops knight and one rook. It was not looking good for me but with the power of the red bull I came back out of nowhere and dominated here again.
It was also my site mates birthday so I gave her a couple of diet cokes and a bar of chocolate. She loves diet coke and shes giving up chocolate and coke for a month before her vacation so I thought she might as well drink it all down tonight before she goes on her fast. It was fun, a volunteer from the south came up to hang with her, farina and I came over too and they made spaghetti. Wow it was great with beef and everything. First time I have had it like that since last summer cooking in my apartment. I had quite the case of homesickness after it but what are ya gonna do.
Ok so I just remembered I dreamed last night that my host mom in perescina died. How awful is that? I was crying in my dream and it was just a really horrible dream… I think there was also ww2 bombers hitting the coliseum as I was running through some jungle. Must have been the red bull.
Well the previous day I got my hair cut. I walked to the frizeria (hair cut place) about 9:15 and sat down to wait. As I sat there I called my work and told them im getting my hair cut and Id come in later. They responded with oh don’t’ worry about it your getting your hair cut today. Whatever … so I sit there.. an hour goes by and 2 people had gone infront of me. They turn on the Russian television and I wait another hour watching the tv understanding nothing. I swear 2 people cut me in line but I don’t know cause they all were speaking Russian. And I was getting a little heated but I had already waited 2 hours so I could not very well leave. Long story short I didn’t get out of there until 12:30 but my hair looks pretty good. (very Moldovan, or too normal according to farina).
Later that day I had a masa with my host mom and her friend from Chisinau her friends daughter. Her daughter was very pretty and I could tell this was a set up for me to meet her. I made convo with the daughter and ate a little bit. Then my host mom points to my forehead (I have a huge zit) and gasps with this oh what is that!. I look at her in disbelief and just say what do you think it is? She starts fretting over it and goes to the med kit to get some ointment or something I tell her its fine its not mortal ( though at this point my confidence with this girl is mortally wounded). She backs off finally only to have the subject revisited at dinner that night with my host dad where upon they lecture me on how to use medicine on my face for zits. I could only imagine what they would do if they knew me in high school when I really had an acne problem.
Going to try to skip around here and wrap up this entry. I can’t really remember anything that happened last week all that well but that only means it was just normal days flowing entirely to fast for my liking. This last weekend I was in Chisinau and played baseball. We got destroyed by a local team here. We were playing actually baseball like I did in high school. Fast pitch full 90 ft plate distances and everything! It was really great. I caught the first 3 innings before my body just couldn’t take it anymore. My back acted up towards the end. I felt like it was just yesterday I was playing ball in high school sitting behind the plate there catching. I threw a guy out at second but made my share of over throws to first and third in attempt to catching overzealous base runner leadoffs. I even hit a line drive down third base and stole a couple bases. It was a good time.
I also got to visit the old host family and hang out with a couple of the new volunteers. Phil came down with me along with Darren and angela and johann (who are all in my group) we had a masa at my old house and just shared stories and laughed. Awww good times.
That’s all I have.
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