A quick update

While I have had the intent to write many a times in the past few weeks, I have not had the time. Since school has started I have been pouring any, and all of my creative energy into the preparation of lesson plans. While I traditionally think of lesson planning as a neat activity that takes place at a desk, my process tends to involve all of my art supplies, cutting, gathering of objects that can be described by vocabulary words that I intend on introducing, coloring, and drawing. When all is completed my living room is generally covered in a fine blanket of shredded papers, pens, pencils paints, making it somewhat unrecognizable. In fact this description perfectly describes the state if affairs in my living room as we speak, but I decided to try to overlook that fact so that I ciould finally write this much overdue blog.

School: School started two weeks ago. It started slowly and lightly. My first week I mostly observed and was observed. After being introduced at the assembly on the first day and anonymity I had in town was officially gone, which is fine by me. I can't deny that I like the attention and popularity that accompanies being a foreigner in a small Romanian town. The second week I actually began teaching, although since my room wasn't ready I taught ended up with about half of what will be my normal 16 hour load. This week, my class should be ready, so Raluca and I will be splitting her classes. She meets with each class twice a week, meaning that if she has 30 students in a class I will take 15 of them one day a week and the other 15 the next time. I am looking foreward to having smaller classes, as it is hard to have comunicative based classes with such large numbers.

Projects: Before school started, Jenny, a peace corps volunteer from last years group, who also lives in Maramures, contacted me about getting involved in "Let's Do It Romania", a national campaign to clean up trash on the 25th of September. I started to look into it, but after hitting a few road blocks, such as, the fact that my counterpart wouldnt be in town the weekend of, the fact that i couldn't understand what the website was asking of me, and the fact that I was overwhelmed by the beggining of school, I dropped the ball, or so I thought. It turns out that instead of dropping the ball, I had actually just passed it on. A few weeks before the event I had mentioned that I had mentioned to the mayor that I wanted to organize a "Let's do it Romania" team in Maramures. He said okay and apparently meant it beacause during my last class on Friday I was informed that we would be meeting at 10am the next morning to pick up some trash. The event ended up being a success. Not only did about 30 kids and 20 adults come and clean up the town, but I also got a taste for how I will be able to organize events in the future.

So that does it for the basics. I promise to take some time to comment on some of the more colorful things I have been apart of, such as "cutting hens", and meeting an American in town, wow! But right now, I need to sleep.

As it turns out Spunta Maria is a two-part holiday. I spent Spunta Maria Mare (the death of the Virgin Mary) at a nearby monastery, dressing in white and participating in processions around the grounds. Spunta Maria Mica (the celebration of the birth of the virgin Mary) also involved dressing in traditional costume, however it was more low key, and conveniently took place in my town.

It was cool seeing how the town transformed to accommodate the festivities. The streets of my normally sleepy village were lined with busses venders selling toy guns along with other less popular toys, hoards of women in traditional dress, people turning their yards into impromptu restaurants to feed the hungry masses, and on a less positive note, the addition of beggars, some of which I recognized from the first Spunta Maria.

While all of this was a bit unexpected, I was most surprised to learn that wedding hall at our most happening hang out, turned into a disco that night, in honor of the holiday. My counterpart, (the English teacher I will be working with) had just arrived in town with her sister and her sister’s boyfriend, so we all went to check it out. The disco couldn’t compete with those I went to in Spain, but for a town of 3,000 people it was crazier than I expected. The music was a mixture of the standard club mix: Rihanna, Lady Gaga, ect, and traditional Romanian music. At the beginning of the evening people were only dancing to the traditional music. The traditional music of Maramures has grown on me, but I think that I still have a few months ahead of me before I will be able to consider myself a true a fan. I can, however, honestly say that I love dancing the Hora, which goes hand in hand with it, as it is both simple and inclusive. After we staked out a table my posse and I got up and joined a group of strangers, who gladly made room for us in the circle.

I don’t see the connection between religious celebration and discos, but I like it, and hope that I don’t have to wait another entire year for it to happen again.

Transylvanian excursion

Things don’t always go as planned. You may remember that I had planned to leave site on Sunday evening and to arrive at camp in Hargita county on Monday morning. I wish I could blame my abrupt change in plans on anything other than myself, like the bus breaking down, or not coming, but the fact is that I was on the wrong side of the road and the bus simply passed me by. Looking back it was probably a blessing in disguise, since the next day, when I was able to get a ride with host family to the train station, I realized that never in a thousand years would I have known where to get off the bus. I don’t remember seeing any indication that the particular obscure, unpaved road that jut off the main drag, led to the train station. Even if I had asked the bus driver and he had pointed me towards said road, I would have likely turned back, sure that this long steep road that the car could barely get up couldn’t possibly lead to anywhere, let alone a train station, but indeed it did.
My trip consisted of three colorful overnight train rides, which left me sleepless, but in Hargita County at 7 in the morning, where Eva greeted me. At the time all I knew about Eva was that she was the director of the camp where I would be volunteering. After our half an hour ride to the camp I was fairly well acquainted with her and her unique culture. Hargita County is interesting because central Transylvania is home to a Hungarian population. I was shocked by how different the culture is compared to Romanian Culture. The most obvious difference is the language. The people here speak a dialect of Hungarian. Another major difference is the Religion. While the vast majority of Romanians are Romanian Orthodox, this region boasts a majority Unitatian population. In fact the Unitarian church was started in this area in the sixteenth century. By the end of camp I had become familiar with the church in town since Eva is the minister’s wife and the camp is held in two of the buildings owned by the church.
Work started upon arrival. After throwing my stuff down in the girl’s room I headed downstairs where I led the first session of the day. Our second activity was supposed to be a follow up activity to the video “Peace One Day” that the campers had watched the day before. We divided the rowdy teenagers into three groups, each with a counselor to help facilitate. Of course, while the other groups developed countries based on ideals of peace my group invented “Boratstan” where the rivers flowed with Vodka. Great first impression I thought, but Boratstan, was appreciated by one and all. The students especially liked our national sport, cup ball, in which one stacks as many cups as they can and balances a soccer ball on the top.
The hardest part of the whole camp was remembering the names of the kids. I have become familiar with Romanian names, and in my town there is a preference for the names Maria, Iuana, Ion, and Vasile, which makes it rather easy to remember any outliers, however since Hargita county is one of the Hungarian regions all of the names were, well, foreign. By day five I finally had them all down, which was just in time for the end of camp.
The original plan was to leave camp a day early, and head to the music festival that was nearby, to meet some friends, but as it turns out camp actually lasted until Sunday, so I gladly stuck around. It would have been hard to leave Eva’s mom’s amazing Hungarian cooking any earlier than was necessary. In fact, once I found out that I could get a ride with Eva, to Cluj (which is on my way home) I decided to stay though Monday and help with the first day of camp for the younger kids. I talked Carly, the other peace corps volunteer at the camp, into taking a day or two off to accompany me on my adventures in Cluj.
I would love to say that when in Cluj I saw the famous church, went out to eat at the restaurant my friend had recommended before I came, and flat out enjoyed the sites of the city, but Instead Carly and I hit the mall. While it sounds less than interesting to someone who has been living in America, I hadn’t seen anything that reminded me so much of home in the three months and so I was perfectly happy to save the culture for my next visit and instead indulge in the food court Chinese food and two movies on the big screen. It was a good end to what ended up being a great trip, even if it did end up a bit different than I had originally planned.