A day in the life

I usually get up at around 6:45 wishing I could sleep for another hour, but kicking myself because I didn’t get up earlier to take advantage of the nice fall weather and go running.

After a simple breakfast of bread, cheese and coffee I usually get dressed, shave and walk the 15 minutes to work. School starts at 8, and I usually get there at 7:50. During the week I have anywhere from one to seven classes. Mondays and Tuesdays I have full days of classes whereas my Thursdays and Fridays are pretty open.

In Moldovan schools, there is no lunch break so the last class ends at 2:00. The last class is usually “dirginte” (homeroom), which I don’t have so I am pretty much always done 1:00.

After school I walk home to get lunch, although sometimes I walk through the local market or piata (pronounced pee-yat-zah). It’s basically the equivalent of a flea market, except you can buy anything here and it’s where everyone comes to shop. In the morning it’s a great place to come people watch.

After lunch, I am free to do whatever I want. I usually celebrate this right by taking a nap. Well, only sometimes. Mostly I read or listen to music for an hour.

Two days a week I have Romanian lessons with a tutor for two hours. I really look forward to the lessons because it gives me a chance to speak Romanian for an extended period of time where I can relax and not worry about sounding like an uneducated 6-year-old.

On days when I’m don’t have tutoring, I’ll meet up with one of my partner teachers to make lesson plans for the upcoming classes. And when I’m not doing that, I’m usually exploring the miles of forest and open space that borders the river either alone or with my site mate. As school continues though, I know I’ll be helping out with more clubs and extra-curricular activities and I’ll have less free time. On weekends, I usually try to get up early and get some lesson planning done before the day gets started.

If I compared my life now to my life before PC, I would say that I am usually less busy, but if you take into account that everyday I have five or six new names to remember and that most of my interactions are in a foreign language, I would have to say that I am, by far, much more busier than I was back home.