Resting Up

I missed my maxi-taxi to the big city tonight, and instead of trying to forge a less traveled path through Maramures, I decided to take a hint from fate and have a night in. It is probably for the best anyways, as this week has been a bit taxing.

After two-weeks of awesome behavior,my third graders turned into the savage kindergartners from the cartoon, "Recess" and proceeded to run around the room hitting and screaming at eachother as I helplessly yelled, "stati jos" (sit down). I probably had it coming, considering how smug I had been about how good they were for me, while the religion teacher had previously had so much trouble with them that the police had been called in to scare them. Oh, and yes, they do teach religion in public schools in Romania. Additionally, just yesterday I a visit from my boss, or bosses actually, which was really great, since I had not yet had any guests, but still taxing. They sat in one of my classes.

This week has been my first week splitting classes with Raluca since I now have my own classroom. I have found having my own room to be very beneficial despite the fact that it is oddly long and skinny. First off, it means I don't have to remember where all the classes are, as in the Romanian systen the teachers move from class to class, and secondly I feel like I have more control, since now the kids come to my turf instead of me being on theirs.

So tonight I have been catching up on old "Weeds" episodes, and tomorrow I will try my luck once again at the whole Romanian transportation game. If it is anything as cold as it was today, I will actually succeed at buying winter clothes, which would be nice, since the drop in temperature is surely a sign that I am not far away from the reality of an Eastern European winter. Yikes!

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.

The last two weeks at site I have milked two cows, worked in the field (not very hard mind you, I mainly just ate home made bread with home made jam and napped all day), Went to the pool, went to the river, went to the salty springs, participated in a 24 hour religious ceremony in full traditional dress, ridden in a karuta, again, Eaten some amazing food that others made for me, and some ok food that I made for myself, sewed clothes for my neighbor’s Barbie, went to the merry cemetery (as pictured above), done some running (not as much as I said I would, of course), and eaten some ice cream (much more than I said I would). I feel like the seed of community integration has been planted, and that it is time to do some exploring before the real work begins. Tomorrow I am headed to the Hungarian region in the center of the country, to help with a camp for older kids that will focus on Peace and Environmental issues, details are pretty much non-existent. I am anticipating a bunch of really confusing trains and busses, and likely no sleep, but right now, with the trip a safe 18 hours away, I am confident that I can handle it, lets hope this confidence sticks around at least until Monday morning when I arrive. After 4 or five days at the camp I will turn 24 and then I will go celebrate that fact with some friends at a music festival, before finally returning to site. I will keep you posted.

My greatest fear about my first few weeks at site was that I would be lonely and bored. This all seems silly now as my greatest problem, if you can even call it that, is that I have barely been able to find a minute to myself. My new neighbors have kept my busy with lots of swimming, card playing, and best of all, cultural activities.

Last Sunday was Sapunta Maria, a Christian Orthodox holiday celebrating The Virgin Mary. I went to a nearby monastery with one of my future 10th grade students. We tagged along with the procession of one of the neighboring towns, since her dad was chauffeuring them in his bus. At 1:00 on Saturday, we boarded the bus dressed in my town’s traditional white shirt and skirt, both embellished with delicate hand embroidery. The others on the bus had a similar shirt, but their skirts were green and had a flowered pattern, as every town has their own costume.

The bus ride there was filled with song. I became so familiar with these songs over the 24 hours that I now can’t seem to get them out of my head. The singing was put on pause when the bus stopped. We unloaded, with all of our stuff and made a trek up the hill to the Monastery. Once the Monastery was in sight we lined up with the smaller children in front carrying banners and a picture of The Virgin, followed by me and my friend Anuta, on either side of the priest, followed then by the others, who carried large images of Mary which hung on sticks. We joined a number of other groups who were circling the monastery singing songs that I at the time hardly understood. When we finished the rounds we went over to the large open-air area where we would be sleeping. We searched for a open area on the wood chips where our group could fit our blankets in amongst the hundreds of other people who had already claimed their real-estate.

When hunger stuck we made a trip down to the town, where a carnival type scene had emerged. We ate some mici and headed back up for our second tour of the church, this time I had become familiar enough with the songs, so I was able to contribute, rather than lip-sync, like I had the first time.

That night I actually slept pretty well, which is impressive considering that there were sermons and singing most of the night. I may have been one of the few. When I asked one of the 60ish year old women, the following morning, how she slept and she said she didn’t I felt a little bit wimpy. But I had no time to nurse my bruised ego, as I had to get dressed up for our last procession around the church. Afterwards we went down the hill to get coffee. Everybody insisted that I stay dressed up which scared me considering coffee is black, my borrowed costume was white, and my reputation for being a little on the clumsy side. Some how I managed to make it back up the hill, stain free, just in time for the final sermon.

My wondering why we remained in traditional dress for our trek down the hill back to the bus, was put to rest when we finally stopped outside of the town lined up for the final mile or so trek to the church in the center of the town that the procession was from. I guess it was our way of brining the trip full circle; a pilgrimage of sorts. According to some, people used to, and do now, only less frequently, make the trek to the monastery on foot. I can’t see how anyone would be able to do that in the heat that we have been experiencing, with no sleep. I could barely hack armed with both sleep and the assistance of a bus. I guess this just goes to show the power of faith. Anyways, finally, 28 hours after we had left I made it back to my bed, both tired and cultured, thankful to already be experiencing so much culture so soon into my stay at site.

First day at site

I have finally made it home, to the small village where I will be living for the next two years. I end my first full day at site salty and smelling of cow, both of which I have my ten year old neighbor to thank. You may remember her from my entry about site visit, when she helped get me a ride on both a karuta and with a cart and bull. So far she hasn’t let me down. Even if we don’t have a chance to do the things planned, she fits in something different and equally amusing into the day.

Today our sites were set on the salty springs that are a town or two away. I have no idea if it is possible to hop a maxi-taxi to there, but being able to go by car was a treat in itself, if for nothing else because I could fully enjoy the beauty of the rolling hills and picturesque villages without fear of being crowded, and in this case, in the comfort of air-conditioning, a luxury which has proven to be rare.

The salt springs themselves consisted of three large pools. They were surrounded by tree, and quaint chalet type pensions, which bared a vague resemblance to the type one might find around Lake Tahoe. The pools were the perfect temperature, but upon entry I immediately became fully salient of the location of every mosquito bite I have itched and the popped blister on my feet. Those I came with told me, that the salt water has healing powers. While this may be true, I think the immediate pain that one feels upon entry into the salty water, is a bit hard to see past. However, there was one major advantage that I noticed right away; since we could float without effort I didn’t have to spend my time keeping my eye on the over ambitious Iza, who likes to jump in the deep end of the pool despite the fact that she can’t swim all that well.

After about three hours there, I went home fully satisfied with my first day, unaware that it could get any better. After dinner I got a knock on my door, “Vrei sa mulci vaca” (want to milk the cow?) Iza asked. My reply was an enthusiastic “DAAAAAAAAAAA”. So we walked about 30 feet to her uncle’s where I got to milk a cow, not for very long, mind you, as it is extremely difficult, but I plan on putting “can milk a cow” on my resume when I get back to the States, so this surely won’t be the last time.