Site Visit

The moment that I laid eyes upon the place that I will call home for the next two years, I was reminded of a conversation that I had on a date that I went on months earlier. I had told said boy about the Peace Corps and the very real possibility that I would soon be in Eastern Europe for two years. His response was something like, “Wow, Eastern Europe, that is great, while most people in Peace Corps go to rural parts of Africa you will partying for the next two years.” Now, months later, I was finally seeing the reality of my future Peace Corps experience. As I peered out the window of the maxi-taxi at the small Transylvanian town that will be my home for the next two years, I couldn’t help but laugh to myself. Oh, how wrong he was! He was right about one thing, the most important thing, which is that it is great, however this will not be the party experience that we speculated about that night. In contrast to the disco lined streets filled with high heel bearing women that occupied my imagination long ago, the reality that lays ahead is that of a small traditional town with a single paved road, surrounded by rolling green hills, and dotted with hay stacks. I had the opportunity to party in college, but this kind of rural country experience that is sure to be something truly unique.

Seconds later, Raluca, my counterpart, interrupted my silent dialogue, asking the maxi-taxi to stop. Oh my goodness, I am finally here! We got out right in front of my soon to be home, the mayor’s house. We were immediately greeted by the mayors wife, Elena, and Mrs.Marza, the vice principal of the school where I will be teaching. I introduced myself in Romanian. They were surprised, “Vorbeste Romaneste!?!?!?!?!?!” (she speaks Romanian!?!?!?!). I got used to this reaction after my three days at site, as it isn’t common for foreigners to speak any Romanian. I was happy to surprise everyone, but it was bit intimidating to listen to people talking about me, rather than to me.

After some coffee, a tour of the town, and a tour of the school, Raluca went to her house for a nap. She had lost three nights of sleep thanks to two weddings at her hotel during the conference, and our one night in a sleeper train. To top it all off she had presented her master’s thesis an hour and a half after we got off the train the day prior, so she was understandably tired. I went back to my place and tried to sleep, I don’t think I rested long before I awoke in a panic: “Oh my god, nobody will look at me, this is terrifying!” My first thought was to just stay in the safety of my cute apartment forever. That thought lasted for about two seconds and then my training from the last nine weeks kicked in.

One of the good things about the monotony of pre-service training is that when you hear things over and over again it is difficult to forget them, even when you aren’t thinking clearly. Mantras such as “go outside and take a walk because exercise can work wonders, your site is what you make of it, and you are responsible for the relationships that you will have in your community” were playing over and over in my head. So it was decided, first things first, I will force myself out the door and take a walk. I know this sounds a little ridiculous since there are only 3,000 people in my town, and one main road, but just putting my foot out the door was a bit of a battle. Once out the door things seemed a bit more manageable. I walked around for about 30 minutes and returned back to my apartment with a clear head, ready for the next step of integration. I figured the only way to get people used to me was to be seen, so I took my book out into the garden and read at a table. I sat there for about 10 minutes until my 10-year-old neighbor, who had been peeking out at me from behind the door all day, finally came and sat down across from me. A friend! I jumped on this opportunity somewhat over anxiously. I figured that since she was ten she wouldn’t be put off by a little social awkwardness. “I have a small present for you”, I said in Romanian. I ran upstairs and grabbed some American flag stickers and my deck of cards. We played war, then she taught me a Romanian card game and I taught her “Speed”, which I renamed “Repede,” the Romanian word for fast.

By the time I met up with Raluca at 6 pm that night I had fully recovered from my mild freak-out and was ready for whatever lay ahead. Thankfully, that which lay ahead was cheese pie at the vice-principals house (my favorite) and some Twika, Palinka, or Horinka. I’m not sure which I had, as they are all variations of Romanian liquor. It is most commonly made out of plumes and usually home made, like nearly everything in the Romanian countryside. The thing that differentiates the three is how many times they are distilled. My host father described their differences a bit more colorfully: “Twika is strong, Palinka is much stronger, it has bubbles and is bluish in clolor, and Horinka, well Horinka starts fires.” My theory is that they further North you go in Romania, the colder it is, so the stronger the alcohol has to be. My theory holds up in Maramures county, (the far North West), where I will be living. Here, the most common form of this traditional liquor is the potent Horinka.

From this point on out I was at home. I met a lot of great people including future students, I went swimming at one of the pensiones in town, I made plans to partake in many cultural happenings come August (milking cows, going to church, cutting grass with a scythe, dressing in the national costume, hiking), and I even got a ride on both a cart with bulls and a caruta (horse drawn cart) thanks to my precautious 10 year old neighbor.

Come Friday morning, I was sad to leave. Now, however, I am torn, knowing that in order to start the next great thing, I have to leave the town that has become home and the people who have become family. So for the moment I am enjoying the present and hoping that when the time comes I will some how figure out how to fit all of my new Peace Corps paraphernalia into my bags, so that I can make the 18-hour journey to site. More on that later, I’m sure…

Counterpart conference

I am in the middle of what has proven to be the never ending week, or really 2 weeks without a break. What would normally be called last week, was pretty much normal, in that we had training, training, training, and training, followed by a day of preparation before the beginning of our counterpart conference.

Saturday the conference began. I met my counterpart; the Romanian, English teacher who I will be working closely with for the next two years. Some of my fellow trainees had organized a ice breaker/greeting in which we had to find our counterparts and socialize with them. We were all armed with a list of cheesy questions to ask in case the conversation got awkward, but thankfully they were unnecessary. Raluca, my counterpart is everything I could hope for. She is young, has a sense of humor, and from what I can tell she has a lot of fun in class, has a great relationship with her students, and has some good ideas for projects that we can work on together. I was also really happy to find out that she has volunteered with the Red Cross for years, and has even taught her students some first aid. This is something somewhat special considering that I have been told numerous times, that the word volunteer still has a somewhat negative connotation in Romania, due to the fact that it was used during communism to describe forced labor, and is therefore not quite as common as it is in America.

The conference itself, while tiring, has been a good way for us to adress how we want to work together, and how we can avoid problems ,that are common in any cross-cultural relationship, before they arise. Also, my fellow trainess and I have had opportunity to share some of our experiences in Romania with the group through presentations and skits. I personally spoke about my experience teaching 6th graders during practicum, which included an introduction in Romanian. I ended up pretty much just reading this part, but at least I lived to tell the tale.

This brings me to now. Right now I am blogging, but more importantly I am not packing for my 14 hour train ride tomorrow. For some reason I thought that procrastination would end after I graduated from college, but it seems as if I am getting even better at it with age. I better get it together soon because tomorrow Raluca and I are leaving straight from the conference, a little early even, in order to catch a train and then another train so that she can get home in time to present her masters thesis on Tuesday morning. It will be both of our first times riding in a cuseta (Romanian sleeping compartment) so hopefully she will be able to get some rest before this extremely important event.

After that we will contine on to my future home and I will spend the rest of the week getting to know the people, the lay of the land, and hopefully even see the house in which I will be living for the next two years. I can't believe this is finally hapening. I am soooooooo excited and can't wait to tell whoever is reading this all about it!

Too tired to write, but here is this: http://s934.photobucket.com/albums/ad186/saraannepcv/Bucharest/

This weekend marked the first, since arriving in country, that we were allowed to venture outside of county lines (with the exception of our field visit a few weeks ago). As natural born travelers, most of the 44 people in my training group made the most of this opportunity to explore, venturing to some of the best known tourist cities, on hikes, camping, or to Bucharest. I was one of the few who stuck around town on Saturday. Don’t get me wrong, I experience the travel bug like street dogs experience fleas (ferociously and all the time), but it was my Gazda mother’s birthday and I wanted to be part of the festivities.

We celebrated with Whisky, a cigar, and some tiramisu, a winning combination that together made it feel like a special occasion. Later in the afternoon I went just outside the city with my host brother, Octav, and his girlfriend, Andrea, to see his grandmother in the country and to go swimming in the river. As you have probably heard if you are European, and probably haven’t heard if you are American, the Moldavian part of Romania is currently experiencing devastating floods. We are fine, but being that we are down steam from this area the river, unlike the shallow Russian river that I am accustomed to, was actually rushing and probably dirtier than usual. We went in anyways. It was a bit as I imagine those swimming machines to be, where you can swim forever in the same spot, so it wasn’t long before I got tired and retired to shore.

On the walk back to his grandmother’s house Octav stopped to shake nearly every hand that we passed. The small communities here are so friendly that it makes me look forward to going to my future home in Maramures and experiencing some of this sense of community for myself.

When we got back to the city in the evening I made American hamburgers. I am glad that I have found such an easy way to share American culture, although I don’t think I have thrown anybody off of the fact that I am not much of a cook.

Sunday, it was time venture to Bucharest. My friends, Brad and Becca, were nice enough to supervise me in the big city. I being highly map and public transportation illiterate happily handed them the reigns and enjoyed the sights as I followed them through the city. The day consisted of aimless wandering although we did throw in some lunch at the much suggested Caru Cu Berem After lunch we met up with our friend Marta and continued the adventure with a trip to the National Art Museum where we saw some really great Romanian art. This was followed by a bit more wandering, and a lot more getting lost, as we attempted to find the Peace Corps office; a mission that we accomplished only after a phone call to the higher powers. Finally we met up with one of my friends, a Bucharest Native, who helped straighten our meandering path and took us to a bar on the top of the national theatre to get a beer. It is a good thing he came and showed us the way because not only was it awesome, but more importantly, the entrance looked so shady we would have surely turned around before making it to the top. Once at the top we found a concrete setting with lean-tos filled with beanbags and a wall covered in art. It was the type of space that is truly unique to a hipster crowd only cool enough to live in Eastern Europe. After this it was time to go. We walked so far to my friends car, that I am pretty sure we could have made it to the bus station in about half the time, but regardless of the fact that I gave him a rather difficult time about this, it was nice to see some more of the city, including the Romanian Parliament, which is, from what my friend tells me, the second largest building in the world, following the Pentagon. In conclusion, Bucharest is cool. I still have much to see, and when I go back I hope my tour guide doesn’t have to spend all day with his family at his brothers wedding, like he did this time.

Today we had an hour and a half session about one of the most complex issues in Romania, the Rroma (more politically correct term), more widely known as gypsy (Tiganii) population. The session reaffirmed the complexity of the issue. We had three speakers who each painted completely different pictures about Rroma in Romania. The first lady who spoke was a Romanian woman who works with the Rroma population, the second an former Peace Corps Romania volunteer and also Ethan Hawks mother (not related to the topic at all, but interesting) who has co-founded an NGO that works to help Rroma children with education, and a current PC volunteer who has dedicated much of his service to working with the Rroma population at this site. Although their topic was similar their experiences and opinions were rather different from one to the next. I left this meeting, still thoroughly confused on this issue. I think it just goes to show that learning culture, like language, takes time, and while you can spend as long as you like in a classroom it is most efficiently accomplished through experience.

And the site goes to...

Yesterday was even more special than I expected. The language teachers put a lot of work into trying to make this a fun event for us. They decorated the courtyard outside of our school like an awards show, complete with a red carpet. The sites were divided into categories based upon their common characteristics, such as agriculture, or the black sea. Each was accompanied by a cute description, PowerPoint, and its own mood music.

For each site they would announce the name of the site and a number of nominees. For instance the nominees for my site included Sarah Jessica Parker, and the great monsoon, to name a few. The last name in the series (in this case my name) was of course, always the actual recipient of the site, which is good because I don’t think Sarah Jessica Parker’s Manolo Blahniks would hold up in the rural part of Romania where I am headed, and as it turns out, monsoons are rather partial to the tropics (bad joke alert).

The cherry on top of the ceremony was that the American Ambassador attended and opened the ceremony with a few words of support for the work we are doing and an invitation to Thanksgiving dinner at his house, which will be a 15 hour train ride away from where I will be living at the time.

I really wish I could remember the exact words used to describe the category of sites of which mine was a part, but all I can remember was that there was some mention of small hats. For those of you are not experts on the different regions of Romania, and need me to be a little more specific than “small hats”, I am going to a small tourist town in Maramures, the North Western part of Romania. The small hat comment is a reference to the fact that this region is known for having well preserved traditions, including traditional clothing.

As far as location goes I am not too far from Ukraine and Hungary. I am, however, going to be quite a ways away from most of Romania group 27, and again, a 15-hour ride away from Bucharest and the Peace Corps office. Having never been there I cannot attest for the magnitude of this areas awesomeness, but all of the Romanians who I have told seem pretty enthusiastic about it, but you should go ahead and give it a google and see for yourself, or better yet, come visit me.

At this point all the site really is to me is a piece of paper, I am guessing I would have been happy with anything, but from what I have read it seems as if the site matching coordinator drove up to Transylvania built this town to my exact specifications.

As you may remember the other day I posted a link to a Transylvania tourism website because I am interested in how Romania can build tourism that will benefit both the environment, and economy without destroying the heart of the place. I also am drawn to tourism in Romania because I think it can be a great way to empower the woman in communities throughout Romania, since it allows them to support themselves by doing something that they would be doing anyways, being world renowned hosts.

As it turns out, the people at my site specifically asked for someone who has experience in tourism, and would be able to help them further develop the industry. I don’t know if growing up in Sonoma County and working briefly in the wine industry makes me a qualified candidate, but I am looking really looking forward to getting involved.

Another thing that I had requested was to teach a mixed level, because I like variety, and sure enough I will be teaching 3rd through high school.

The only thing that differed from my initial preferences was the size. The town where I will be living is slightly smaller than what I thought would be ideal, but has always been important to me to be in a community that is small enough so that I can easily get to know the most important influential people in the community so that I can be effective in my development projects, such as the mayor, and since it sounds like I will likely be living in a guest house outside of his residence I think that should be fairly easy, which is great.

So In conclusions I am very happy, and looking forward to the next big step in the process which will be the next weekend, when our counterparts will come to meet us, and the week after that when we will go back to our site, with our counterpart to see our communities for the first time!

I really would like to write something interesting, as there is much to say, but at the moment I feel a bit like a goldfish in a bowl. Every ten seconds my thought pattern is interrupted by the realization that tomorrow is site announcement day. In a short number of hours I will know where I will be living for the next 2 years! So for now I will leave you with this: www.savortransylvania.com, A travel website created by a past PCV who is now living here with her husband, also a past PCV. He started a fabulously successful non-profit that I want to write about at a later date. Anyways, I haven't had an opportunity to give it the thorough once over it deserves, but hopefully if you have been at all inspired by my blog, you this will give you the tools you need to come over and check it out for yourself, not to mention pay me a visit.

Practicum is officially over. We wrapped things up today with my 11th grade class with an egg drop. I tried to make it somewhat academic by having a discussion and adapting spoken stories about skydiving. After that I told them that they were in a plane that was about to explode with 2 garbage cans (plastic cups), 4 blankets (napkins), some rope (string), and some rubber bands, and they had to make a make-shift parachute for themselves (the egg). It probably would have been good to explain the full metaphor because about 5 minutes into it, when they were still complaining that it was going to be impossible, I realized they may have really thought that we were going to be dropping them out of an airplane, instead of out the window of the second story of the school. I explained that when I went to Interex (the grocery store) they were fresh out of planes, so the second floor would have to do. Four of our five eggs didn’t survive the fall and the fifth had, what we decided, was the equivalent of a broken arm.
I really liked the 11th graders because their high level of English meant that we could do anything they and I wanted, as long as they were speaking English while doing it. Not to toot my own horn, but from the feedback I have gotten from the people observing us and from the reaction from the kids I am a pretty damn good teacher, which is great considering it is going to be my job for the next 2 years.
Speaking of good feedback, we had language station tests on Monday in which we had to act six scenarios out with our language teachers for five minutes each. I was pretty convinced I was going to get a straight B average, and was pleasantly surprised when I opened my report card to find B+’s and A-‘s with only one B. They wrote that my most winning accomplishments in language include my great attitude, and my listening abilities, which I have probably gathered from ease dropping on the conversations of my gazda parents, gazda brother and his friends.
It is encouraging to know that they think I am doing okay, but my real sense of accomplishment in regards to language came on Tuesday, when one of my gazda’s friends came to stay with me for a night, since they went on vacation for the week. We went for a walk around town and I was able to get to know her using mostly Romanian. Now however, my Romanian is super rusty since my family is still gone, and the past two days, Romanian lessons have been replaced by medical, security, and history lectures. Thankfully I am, as we speak, awaiting the company of two Romanians (host brother and his friend) so hopefully they will exchange language practice for the American hamburgers that I am prepared to make them.
Anyways, I am really looking forward to this weekend when we will be having our forth of July party, and next Wednesday, when I find out where I will be living for the next two years!