I miss cereal.
Where to begin? I couldn’t believe it when I looked at the last post, and saw the date on it. Time passes ridiculously fast here—my heart is still in August.
Except for the fact that Winter came on October 1st. It warmed up a bit, so my complaining shouldn’t provoke the sympathy I was originally hoping for, but let me tell you, it is going to be a cold winter. In the beginning of October I was wearing the coat I wear all winter in NY, with a full set of thermals, a set of clothes on top of the thermals, two scarves, and a hat. And I was still cold. One night I laid awake and cried, my frozen blood prohibiting sleep. And it was October. What, my dears, I ask you, will January be like?
So we’ll start with some stories.
The other day I was at my partner teacher’s house, planning a lesson, on a Sunday night. It was time to get the cows from the field, so I accompanied her son there…to help? Not sure why they wanted me to go.
So we get the cows. We led them with chain leashes, attached to metal collars around their necks. One of them is a baby, but large, and thick. I was holding him—Igor. As Igor is about to be herded into the gate, the chain around his neck breaks, and he gets loose. Tatiana, my partner teacher, and Nico, her son, who had incidentally been hitting on me during the entire fetching of the cows, stared blankly at me. The cow is running faster than I ever imagined a cow could run, down the dirt road into the forest. They both look at me, and in their Moldovan fierceness of tongue, yell for me to RUN. I hear Tatiana—you’re the one who runs everyday, RUN.
Of course that’s what I should do. So I’m running after this baby cow. The two of them are running after me, as if it’s the first time they’ve run in their entire lives. I’m imagining the cow’s thoughts—all the fun things he’ll eat in the forest, the other animals he’ll be allowed to mingle with, life without metal restrictions. I don’t want to run, but I do it anyway—I’m more scared of my partner teacher than a cow anyway.
So I run, faster, and faster, until I reach the cow. I had followed directions, ran after the cow, and now we were together again. The problem was—what in the hell was a city girl going to do WITH the cow once she’d approached it. I hadn’t a clue. I kept calling it dude, and asking it in Romanian to come back, pretty please, I begged. We got the cow home, with a whole lot of coercing, and the moral of the story was surely that knowing how to run fast, and the wisdom needed to tame a cow, do not go hand in hand.
Last week, after washing my clothes in my host family’s bucket, my host mother told me that I should buy my own bucket—we shouldn’t be using the same one. As a health teacher, she preached, surely, I should know that this is not hygienic. I argued—soap is soap, if there’s soap in the bucket, it won’t allow our germs to mix—there couldn’t possibly be anything unclean about it, it’s soap. I got my answer early this morning, when I saw Tudorita, my 3 year old host sister, peeing in the bucket in the middle of the kitchen. Once again, peeing in a bucket, is not an original idea. Today I’ll be buying a new one for myself.
I also need to post about Christmas break. I won’t be coming home, and I apologize to everyone who up until this point thought I was. I decided to travel with some other volunteers. Remember, as of January there won’t be a visa policy for Americans entering Moldova. Buy your tickets now. Give me enough notice and I’ll have a bucket waiting for you.
So I guess you all want to know about teaching? It’s challenging, in many, many ways. Mostly because the Moldovan education system is set up in such a way that leaves a gaping hole in health education. My fifth graders had their first health class last year, so they know more then my 12th graders, who have never heard the word ‘health’ used outside of the context of a toast before a vodka shot. In my 12th grade class I can actually ask them—what do we do every day to be healthy, and receive nothing but palpable silence in return. It’s also challenging because I’m trying t break my partner teacher of a lot of bad habits—the second half of my job. A major teaching technique here is, after asking a question that no one can answer, to say half of the word, and let the class finish it. And they really believe this is teaching. An example:
Doamna Tatiana: So today we learned about emotions. If someone has something, and you want it really badly, we would call this…
< >
Doamna Tatiana: Jealous…
Class: Sy
I am not exaggerating this point for comic effect. This happens, on a daily basis. But we have to work in very small steps, so this is something we’ve barely even talked about. For now our battle is making her understand that there is little merit in having the students write definitions for the duration of the class. The next class, she will ask what this or that means, and the ‘smartest kid in the class’ will recite a definition. I’ll ask him/her to say it in other words, to give an example, talk about how it pertains to them: silence. They can’t think that far. Soviet teaching methods have teachers saying halves of words, and students memorizing definitions, without being able to think about what the words even mean.
And then, ya know, there’s the fact that our principle smokes in the school, offers me a shot of vodka every single morning that I’ve been there, and doesn’t know how to speak to his colleagues in any kind of way. At staff meetings after every single sentence he literally screams: You All Understand or NO???
I started doing yoga with the kids at school. This is probably my favorite thing I’ve done so far—there’s something magical in the sound of OM as it resonates from the sacrums of 25 Moldovan boys and girls.
The first time I did yoga I posted a sign on the door of the school. A group of 12th grade boys took a lighter to the sign, and burned off an edge. Later that day, the group of boys was waiting outside the principal’s office, after they refused to give the name of the person who actually did the burning. I saw them enter his office, the door slam shut, and I could hear the lock as it rotated to the left. After that, I kid you all not, there was a rotation of sounds: A loud crash, followed by an even louder scream, with a short pause, another crash, and then a difference voice’s louder scream. This went on for twenty minutes, as I sat outside promising myself I’d never hang up another sign in the school.
For all the worriers out there, rest assured. If bird flu travels to Moldova I’m safe. We were all given Tamiflu, to keep in our homes. You’d think restricting our chicken intake would be the first step? Nope. Peace Corps has pleased some drug company.
I’m realizing now I haven’t really talked about the fact that I moved. Yes, I moved host families. It’s pretty complicated, and feels like a year ago, but in short: When I went on my site visit, I chose to live with the 26 year old woman and her two kids, as I posted. Two days before the big move I was told she’d be leaving to meet her husband in Italy in the next few months, so I’d have to live with a different family, the husband and wife of which, I hadn’t met. After living with them it became clear that my host mother didn’t really want me there—it was her husband who wanted the American, but he doesn’t live in the house—he works hours and hours down south. So it wasn’t too pleasant. Then I found out Viorica, the woman I originally wanted to live with, wouldn’t be leaving until May, and she said I could move in if I wanted. Next my host mother at the time said she’d be moving to Moscow, so I’d have to move anyway. So now I live with Viorica, and have recently found out she’ll be leaving in January for Italy, months earlier than expected. I’m trying to be flexible…
Have I talked about the concept of ‘beautiful’ in Moldova? ‘Frumos’ is the Romanian word. It’s a complicated concept for us to understand, but basically, every aspect of life can be enhanced if we use our intuition to make it beautiful. We can walk more beautifully, eat beautifully and surely we can dress more beautifully. And there are stranger ones—like making beautiful decisions, or completing a task like washing our face in a beautiful manner. But yesterday, yesterday I found out that we can cough beautifully. Tudorita coughed at the table, and after being reprimanded for coughing in the first place (Moldovans take offense to a cough—did they do something wrong? What did the person who coughed to do provoke it?)—she was yelled at to cough frumos. I never realized a cough could be beautiful or ugly. But then again, everything I do here is ‘ugly,’ by frumos standards—wearing a backpack: hardly frumos. Deciding to move host families—I was told that wasn’t frumos. Running is about the farthest thing from a frumos activity for a woman—and let me tell you, I know nothing about making a bed frumosly. (leaving socks on the floor—definitely not frumos.)
What else? This is a long one, hope it satisfies the two month void I’d left.
I’ll give you all one last note about Moldovan culture. In Moldova, they celebrate ‘hram,’ which is essentially a celebration for the birthday of every village. There are hundreds of villages in Moldova, which means hundreds of hrams. School is canceled the day of hram, and is usually a complete waste of time the day before, and after. For hram in your village, you are expected to cook all day, and have relatives visiting and eating, eating and visiting. For other people’s hrams, you go, visit and eat. It’s a pretty fun season—most of Moldova is drunk for about two and a half months.
Ok. How are you all? Some health volunteers organized a Health Expo this weekend, so I’ll be in Chisinau, with access to internet from today, until November 5th-ish. Feel free to email and expect a timely response.
Love to all.
Except for the fact that Winter came on October 1st. It warmed up a bit, so my complaining shouldn’t provoke the sympathy I was originally hoping for, but let me tell you, it is going to be a cold winter. In the beginning of October I was wearing the coat I wear all winter in NY, with a full set of thermals, a set of clothes on top of the thermals, two scarves, and a hat. And I was still cold. One night I laid awake and cried, my frozen blood prohibiting sleep. And it was October. What, my dears, I ask you, will January be like?
So we’ll start with some stories.
The other day I was at my partner teacher’s house, planning a lesson, on a Sunday night. It was time to get the cows from the field, so I accompanied her son there…to help? Not sure why they wanted me to go.
So we get the cows. We led them with chain leashes, attached to metal collars around their necks. One of them is a baby, but large, and thick. I was holding him—Igor. As Igor is about to be herded into the gate, the chain around his neck breaks, and he gets loose. Tatiana, my partner teacher, and Nico, her son, who had incidentally been hitting on me during the entire fetching of the cows, stared blankly at me. The cow is running faster than I ever imagined a cow could run, down the dirt road into the forest. They both look at me, and in their Moldovan fierceness of tongue, yell for me to RUN. I hear Tatiana—you’re the one who runs everyday, RUN.
Of course that’s what I should do. So I’m running after this baby cow. The two of them are running after me, as if it’s the first time they’ve run in their entire lives. I’m imagining the cow’s thoughts—all the fun things he’ll eat in the forest, the other animals he’ll be allowed to mingle with, life without metal restrictions. I don’t want to run, but I do it anyway—I’m more scared of my partner teacher than a cow anyway.
So I run, faster, and faster, until I reach the cow. I had followed directions, ran after the cow, and now we were together again. The problem was—what in the hell was a city girl going to do WITH the cow once she’d approached it. I hadn’t a clue. I kept calling it dude, and asking it in Romanian to come back, pretty please, I begged. We got the cow home, with a whole lot of coercing, and the moral of the story was surely that knowing how to run fast, and the wisdom needed to tame a cow, do not go hand in hand.
Last week, after washing my clothes in my host family’s bucket, my host mother told me that I should buy my own bucket—we shouldn’t be using the same one. As a health teacher, she preached, surely, I should know that this is not hygienic. I argued—soap is soap, if there’s soap in the bucket, it won’t allow our germs to mix—there couldn’t possibly be anything unclean about it, it’s soap. I got my answer early this morning, when I saw Tudorita, my 3 year old host sister, peeing in the bucket in the middle of the kitchen. Once again, peeing in a bucket, is not an original idea. Today I’ll be buying a new one for myself.
I also need to post about Christmas break. I won’t be coming home, and I apologize to everyone who up until this point thought I was. I decided to travel with some other volunteers. Remember, as of January there won’t be a visa policy for Americans entering Moldova. Buy your tickets now. Give me enough notice and I’ll have a bucket waiting for you.
So I guess you all want to know about teaching? It’s challenging, in many, many ways. Mostly because the Moldovan education system is set up in such a way that leaves a gaping hole in health education. My fifth graders had their first health class last year, so they know more then my 12th graders, who have never heard the word ‘health’ used outside of the context of a toast before a vodka shot. In my 12th grade class I can actually ask them—what do we do every day to be healthy, and receive nothing but palpable silence in return. It’s also challenging because I’m trying t break my partner teacher of a lot of bad habits—the second half of my job. A major teaching technique here is, after asking a question that no one can answer, to say half of the word, and let the class finish it. And they really believe this is teaching. An example:
Doamna Tatiana: So today we learned about emotions. If someone has something, and you want it really badly, we would call this…
Doamna Tatiana: Jealous…
Class: Sy
I am not exaggerating this point for comic effect. This happens, on a daily basis. But we have to work in very small steps, so this is something we’ve barely even talked about. For now our battle is making her understand that there is little merit in having the students write definitions for the duration of the class. The next class, she will ask what this or that means, and the ‘smartest kid in the class’ will recite a definition. I’ll ask him/her to say it in other words, to give an example, talk about how it pertains to them: silence. They can’t think that far. Soviet teaching methods have teachers saying halves of words, and students memorizing definitions, without being able to think about what the words even mean.
And then, ya know, there’s the fact that our principle smokes in the school, offers me a shot of vodka every single morning that I’ve been there, and doesn’t know how to speak to his colleagues in any kind of way. At staff meetings after every single sentence he literally screams: You All Understand or NO???
I started doing yoga with the kids at school. This is probably my favorite thing I’ve done so far—there’s something magical in the sound of OM as it resonates from the sacrums of 25 Moldovan boys and girls.
The first time I did yoga I posted a sign on the door of the school. A group of 12th grade boys took a lighter to the sign, and burned off an edge. Later that day, the group of boys was waiting outside the principal’s office, after they refused to give the name of the person who actually did the burning. I saw them enter his office, the door slam shut, and I could hear the lock as it rotated to the left. After that, I kid you all not, there was a rotation of sounds: A loud crash, followed by an even louder scream, with a short pause, another crash, and then a difference voice’s louder scream. This went on for twenty minutes, as I sat outside promising myself I’d never hang up another sign in the school.
For all the worriers out there, rest assured. If bird flu travels to Moldova I’m safe. We were all given Tamiflu, to keep in our homes. You’d think restricting our chicken intake would be the first step? Nope. Peace Corps has pleased some drug company.
I’m realizing now I haven’t really talked about the fact that I moved. Yes, I moved host families. It’s pretty complicated, and feels like a year ago, but in short: When I went on my site visit, I chose to live with the 26 year old woman and her two kids, as I posted. Two days before the big move I was told she’d be leaving to meet her husband in Italy in the next few months, so I’d have to live with a different family, the husband and wife of which, I hadn’t met. After living with them it became clear that my host mother didn’t really want me there—it was her husband who wanted the American, but he doesn’t live in the house—he works hours and hours down south. So it wasn’t too pleasant. Then I found out Viorica, the woman I originally wanted to live with, wouldn’t be leaving until May, and she said I could move in if I wanted. Next my host mother at the time said she’d be moving to Moscow, so I’d have to move anyway. So now I live with Viorica, and have recently found out she’ll be leaving in January for Italy, months earlier than expected. I’m trying to be flexible…
Have I talked about the concept of ‘beautiful’ in Moldova? ‘Frumos’ is the Romanian word. It’s a complicated concept for us to understand, but basically, every aspect of life can be enhanced if we use our intuition to make it beautiful. We can walk more beautifully, eat beautifully and surely we can dress more beautifully. And there are stranger ones—like making beautiful decisions, or completing a task like washing our face in a beautiful manner. But yesterday, yesterday I found out that we can cough beautifully. Tudorita coughed at the table, and after being reprimanded for coughing in the first place (Moldovans take offense to a cough—did they do something wrong? What did the person who coughed to do provoke it?)—she was yelled at to cough frumos. I never realized a cough could be beautiful or ugly. But then again, everything I do here is ‘ugly,’ by frumos standards—wearing a backpack: hardly frumos. Deciding to move host families—I was told that wasn’t frumos. Running is about the farthest thing from a frumos activity for a woman—and let me tell you, I know nothing about making a bed frumosly. (leaving socks on the floor—definitely not frumos.)
What else? This is a long one, hope it satisfies the two month void I’d left.
I’ll give you all one last note about Moldovan culture. In Moldova, they celebrate ‘hram,’ which is essentially a celebration for the birthday of every village. There are hundreds of villages in Moldova, which means hundreds of hrams. School is canceled the day of hram, and is usually a complete waste of time the day before, and after. For hram in your village, you are expected to cook all day, and have relatives visiting and eating, eating and visiting. For other people’s hrams, you go, visit and eat. It’s a pretty fun season—most of Moldova is drunk for about two and a half months.
Ok. How are you all? Some health volunteers organized a Health Expo this weekend, so I’ll be in Chisinau, with access to internet from today, until November 5th-ish. Feel free to email and expect a timely response.
Love to all.
posted by NikkiD | 12:05 AM
