Down by the river

One of the best things about my site is that it’s right on the river bordering Romania.

There are miles and miles of hiking/running paths to get lost in. Because it used to be the literal frontier between the Soviet countries and Eastern Europe there was a huge no-man’s land in between the town and the river filled with barbed wire and watchtowers.

Today, all that is gone and now this area has basically become open space (open space that rivals what I’m used to in my old home town). It’s lightly forested, but mostly it consists of large open fields that are occasionally flooded when the river gets too high.

Because it’s still an important border, the Moldovan border guards walk up and down the length of the river constantly making really nice trails that are perfect for running or single-track bikes.

During the summer you can always see sun bathers, volleyball players and picnickers sharing the space with goat and sheep herders and occupational fisherman.




Picture captions:
Top - A photo of the Prut river looking south. Moldova is on the left and Romania is on the right. Apparently this river valley floods two or three times a year.

2nd- A sunset over Romania. The sunsets here are amazing because everyone burns their trash. It's kind of a win/lose situation.

3rdA photo from the abandoned soviet-era brick factory. (story to come) This is looking west. The house in the foreground are in Moldova, but if you look closely (click on the photo) you can see a village on the far hillside in Romania (or as the locals joke "over there in Europe")



Bottom: One of the occupational fisherman. These guys fish all day long and catch small fish that aren't even big enough to de-bone. they just take 20 or so of these at the end of the day and eat them whole.

Back up and posting

Welcome to my new and improved blog. hope you found it OK.

After an extended period of self-imposed silence, I am back up and posting about my misadventures in the wonderful and not-so-wonderful country of Moldova.

I know many people have been wondering what I've been up to and why my blog's been so quiet for the past two months. Honestly, there's been a lot of times when I've wanted nothing more than to keep updating. But I've been hesitant because I've run into a little freedom-of-speech issue with the higher-ups.

I stoped posting in response to a threatening and mean-spirited haranguing from our Country Director, in which s/he said all PCVs are required to register our blogs with PC (including the address and overall substance of our postings) and gave us a laundry list of things we "can't" and "shouldn't" write. Our director made it very clear that s/he wouldn't not be checking on each on all the time. But the message that it gives was clear: "Watch what you write, or else..."

Don't get me wrong, I understand the need for tact and common sense when posting to a public Internet site, especially when the organization's and credibility and effectiveness incountry are at stake. I completely agree that we should not post the name or location of volunteer's locations; it makes sense. But I am upset that PC doesn't give us that trust to manage our own affairs and to know when and about what we should keep our mouths shut.

So I decided to take down my blog for a few months until I had time to think about options. I basically came to the conclusion I had three options: 1) I could register it with the CD and thereby subject the blog and the people reading it to the carbon-monoxide poisoning of prior restraint and bore everyone with endless variations of how great Moldova and it's people are. 2) I could climb up on the cross and take it down completely crying "censorship" and deny those interested from reading about my experience. 3) I could take a stand against something that I don't believe in, continue writing what I want and hope for the best.

After carefully considering my values and ethics as a journalist and weighing them against my fear of being found out, I soundly decided to go with the 3rd option. Let's hope it turns out.

If anyone's got advice or a better way of handling this, I'm open to suggestions.

With that said I ask that anyone posting a comment to this site refrain from naming my town or saying my name, and I apologize if I have had to delete one of your comments from before the switchover.

Wish me luck.

Debate club

As a secondary project, My partner teacher and I, along with the other PC Volunteer, started an english debate club for our school.

We had been planning since school started, but we had to wait a few weeks until the school schedule became finalized (In Moldova, that's some time during the first month). In telling the students about it, it was clear that many students would be interested, but when the day finally came we had no idea how popular it would be. On our first day (Wednesday) we had more than 20 kids show up. For a school of about 200, that is a significant amount.

For the first meeting, we ran a practice debate in Romanian so they could see how the rules work and to give them a chance to see if they like it. For their first topic, they chose to debate whether God exists, and debate they did. It was really interesting to see the kids get so involved. there were supposed to be only three people to a side, but by the end of the debate the specators couldn't restrain them selves and had to join into the discussion. By the end of the club, the kids wanted to keeping talking.

On an interesting side note, it was suprising to see how the kids decided to argue. In a typical American school, you'd expect to see most of the kids take the negative and debate that God doesn't exist. But here in Moldova, the Soviets did such a good job limiting religion that when they left, they country swung the other way. The progressives in the country embraced religion, while the more conservative types remained atheists. Likewise, most of the kids (being progressive) took the side that God exists and only two boys were willing to argue against.

I am really looking forward to the next debate, but I am not sure what to have them debate next.

any ideas?

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.

What I’ve been up to

As you can probably guess, a lot has happened to me since I stopped posting. I’m planning to do a more thorough retelling of all that’s been going on for me, but for now here’s a quick synopsis.

- I spent the last few weeks in my training site becoming great friends with my other site mates and various people in the community.

- August 16th - I made Mexican food for my host family (salsa, guacamole and burritos) as well as apple-cinnamon oatmeal pancakes.

- Spent several weekends wandering the random streets in Chisinau trying (successfully) to avoid coverless sewer holes.

- August - Completed a three-week “practice school” with local high-schoolers that was probably one of the most difficult and stressful times of my life.

- August 17th - Took an official language test and was labeled an “intermediate mid” speaker of Romanian, which means I came in just above the theoretical cutoff point to be sworn in as a volunteer.

- August 18th - Made apple crisp with the other volunteers to take to a party as a thank you for our host families.

- August 18th - Sang two Moldovan folk songs in front of about 300 people.

- August 19th - Said goodbye to my host family, though I promised I’d come back to visit periodically in the future.

- August 20th - Had a swearing-in ceremony at the American Ambassador’s house in Chisinau, where we had to sit outside in the blazing sun for three hours listening to about 30 speeches and pledge to defend the Constitution with our lives. But on the plus side we got to eat cake. Also there were about seven news crews there who were interviewing the volunteers. I wasn’t interviewed, but I showed up in a lot of the clips.

- August 20th - Moved to my new site where I’ll be living and working for the next two years and made friends with my new host family.

- Made friends with the other PC volunteer in town and met a lot of Moldovans who are about my age.

- Sept 1 - Gave a speech to 250 students in Romanian on the first day of school.

- Sept 2 - Started teaching English. I have seven classes, which equals out to about 18 hours per week.