I woke up 5 am to Skype into my cousin’s wedding. Unfortunately it happened to be dinnertime there, (my second favorite wedding activity) so I went back to sleep and woke up again at 7 am. It was 9pm there and time for dancing (my number 1 favorite wedding activity), so it was a bittersweet because I knew when people said goodbye to me they were headed to the dance floor without me. It was, however great to see everyone, I even met a few new people, including Rae (I think) who is six and Rosemary who looked about four, and eager to tell me that it is gross to eat raisins after you stick them up your nose, advice that I promise to take to heart in the future. They were kind enough to tackle William, who was shy, and hold him down long enough so I could meet him. All of the family with whom I spoke confirmed that they were, or would be reading my blog in the future, so now I have some real pressure to come up with something better than bathroom humor.

I would like to assure you that while I was not present at the wedding my Saturday too was filled with merrymaking. I went to 2 barbeques and ate my weight in cake since I knew I would have to watch people eating wedding cake on the internet and I didn’t want to feel left out. I am still so full, that I really am considering a day of fasting, with coffee of course. Now that my addiction is full fledged I don’t want to know what would happen if I went a day without it. Scary!

My day began with a brisk walk to Kaufland. On my way there a man, who I had never seen before, looked me in the eye, smiled, and said hello, he too was obviously American. “Oh no, how did he know?” I thought. “Was it because I was walking fast?” I was rather disheartened that after living here for 5 weeks I could be so easily pegged as am American. When I got to Kaufland I shared this story with some fellow PC trainees who I was meeting there. They, being much more in the know than I am, informed me that it was likely David from PC Romania group 26 (last years group), and he had probably recognized my picture from facebook. After hearing this I was my mind was put at rest and I was able to focus on the next task at hand, buying phone credit, which still makes little to no sense to me. The man at the Orange store asked me if I was a Peace Corps Volunteer. Some people in town do know who we are because there have been things on the news, and in the newspaper about us, but his use of the name Peace Corps took me back a bit. As it turned out he had been David’s host brother last year when he was a trainee. “Oh, I just met him, kind of,” I replied. I decided after that that this town of 80,000 people is already getting very small. It feels already feels a bit like home, and I imagine it will be hard to leave when the time comes.

After I had spent all the money I had brought on phone credit I helped with the serious task of shopping for the American BBQ. After going to three butchers we finally found meat that somewhat resembled ground beef we headed to Aaron’s Mansion. Before coming to Romania Aaron lived in an apartment, but now that he is a Peace Corps volunteer he lives in a beautiful mansion outside of town. I find this rather Ironic. Apparently, the weekend before a bunch of trainees had gone over there to plan lessons and Aarons host family had made them a giant Romanian BBQ, so it was the Americans turn to return the favor, and thankfully I was invited along for the ride. Not only was it excellent, but also I have been trying to think of something to make my gazda (host) family and somehow had never thought about making American hamburgers.

After eating 2 hamburgers, and some Romanian BBQ, that Aaron’s host family had stuck on the grill. I headed off to a BBQ in honor of my host brothers friends party part two. There we ate mici, and some sort of mini hotdog type thing, the name of which I forget, followed by chicken and more mici.

Having been to about 7 BBQ’s now I feel that I can somewhat safely say that mici is a Romanian BBQ essential. Mici is spiced ground meat, which is formed into small sausage like shapes. I am probably not the world’s best food critic since I am not all that discerning, but I think it is excellent. I do however think, that like hotdogs, mici is better enjoyed if you don’t pry too much into the actual ingredients.

Pr(ahhhhhhhhh)cticum

This week has been in a word, crazy. On Monday my fellow PCV’s and I started practicum, which consists of two weeks of practice teaching classes and is advertised to the Romanian children as free English classes. While the volunteers who trained last year spoke of having 15 students in their classes, the situation this year was slightly more insane. Apparently word had gotten around this year, and not only that, the Romanian teachers had told many of their students to come without actually registering them. So, on Monday morning we found hundreds more students than we had been expecting. I had some mothers sitting in chairs in my class, with the intent of saving their children seats, and other mothers trying to force extra students into our classes long after we were supposed to have started. I of course was a bit of a sucker, so we had kids sharing desks, seats, and even sitting on the floor, until someone brought some extra chairs for us. Our classroom was equip to accommodate 27 but after the mothers had gotten to me we had well over 34.

We finally began teaching about a half an hour after we had planed. The surprises didn’t end after class began. I had planned for Monday under the false impression that all 6th graders in town would be as fluent as my 13-year-old host sister. While there were some very smart students who knew what I was talking about, Including my host sister Andy, who I had forced into one of the seats in order to ensure that she wasn’t turned away, It was clear that the majority of the kids didn’t know what I was talking about. Thanks to my experience teaching English to lower level children in Spain I quickly realized how I needed to adjust my verbal communication and rely heavily on writing in order to make myself more easily comprehended. Once we had that figured out the remainder of the three hours flew by. Me and the two other trainees, who I have been sharing my class with this week co-taught the entire first day, which served as nice training wheels. It was a really nice way to warm up to this rather draining experience, but it made what lay ahead even more intimidating.

On Tuesday we divided the three hours amongst ourselves and observed the other teachers while we waited our turn. During my hour, of course, one of the Peace Corps Volunteer Leaders decided to come and observe me (all of us get observed at one time or another during the week). I was freaked out since it has been so long since I have been in front of a class, and now, on my first spin by myself in Romania, I would have expert eyes on me. This of course was ridiculous on my part since the PCV’s are there to be helpful, not rather than malicious, but I, the overachiever that I am, have a hard time wrapping my head around this concept. Thankfully my “Marilyn Monroe/ adjective” lesson flowed excellently, much better than you would think it would based upon the name I have given it. Since then I have been really confident in my teaching and have had a lot of fun in the classroom. It would be hard not to; these kids treat us like movie stars. During every break I have to pose for at least 3 minutes while they take pictures with their camera phones. It is fun to be famous! So yeah, I have only gotten to Tuesday, and I haven’t even touched the afternoon portion of my days, but that is just going to have to wait until I learn genitive in Romanian. Study time!

I have now made it through the first month and I feel like we are really in the thick of training. Last Saturday through Tuesday we got the opportunity to get out of town for a little bit. It was a nice break since we have not yet been allowed to leave the county. I along with my language group, and one other headed towards the region of Moldova to visit with Liz, a volunteer there who is nearing the end of her service. She was awesome and did everything she could to help us and show us how she has been living and working in a this city of 50,000, a larger city than what most of us trainees are expecting. Besides eating really good food, and watching the world cup we managed to find the time to get to know Liz’s’ school, counterpart (the teacher she has been working with most closely during her service), and we got to see the children’s center at which she has been working as a secondary project.

Both days we took a group of kids from the center to the park. The first day we took the bale bodied kids. We picked five girls up from an apartment where they live with a teacher and met another five who live at the center, in the park. To my amazement some of them were fluent in Spanish, which they learned strictly from watching telanovelas. Speaking Spanish with Romanians is something I have come across more often than I could have imagined before arriving here. Many Romanians go to Spain and Italy to work and live, so it isn’t too hard to find someone with whom I can speak Spanish. I have found speaking Spanish with Romanians to be the most confusing and tiring activities that my brain has ever been encountered. Some words that used to be natural part of my Spanish vocabulary have been replaced with the Romanian word. Without thinking I mix the languages saying “da” where I once said “si”, and so on. At one point when I was chatting with the girls over ice cream, about something that they had heard in English, my friend Brad came over and let m know that we were having a conversation in three languages. I hadn’t even noticed.

The second day we took a group of children with severe mental and physical disabilities to the park and swung with them and interacted with them. I will never forget the excitement of the boy that I took to the park. Even the mere action of being pushed in a wheel chair elicited happy screams and bouts of enthusiastic clapping. It was nice to be able to do this for the kids. They have wonderful people at the center who do work that breaks my heart, but they are understaffed, due to lack of funding, and cannot always give the kids as much individual attention as would be ideal.

After two busy, eye opening days we came back “home”. We were all a little annoyed to have to leave by 6:40, but it turned out to be a small price to pay in order to avoid the later part of the day. As the day drug on, the maxi taxi that we were on got progressively hotter and more crowded. On the positive side, the ride was filled with amazing pine forests, mountains, and ideal villages tucked in at the bottom and it made me very excited that come week seven we will be allowed to leave the training city and explore some more of this beautiful country.

Being back has been equally as busy. We received our placement questionnaires, and so I have been spending a lot of time thinking about the kind of community I would like to live in, the age I would like to teach, and the kinds of activities and projects I would like to be involved in outside of school. I am going to try to keep an open mind and expect that everything will work out for the best because not having expectations has worked well for me so far, and when it comes down to it, this experience isn’t so much about me as it is about being in a situation in which I can be help. Next week we will have our sight-matching interview, along with our first week of practicum. For the next two weeks, the four hours in which, until now have been filled with lectures and such, will now be filled with teaching. My fellow trainees and I will be teaching a total of 800 junior high and high school students in order to get a feel for the age groups we like and practice teaching. Next week I will be sharing a sixth grade class with two other trainees. We will take turns, each teaching an hour a day. Since I am a California girl and one of the other girls in my group is from LA we thought it would be appropriate to do a Movie theme. Planning has gone really well so far, but I really have no idea what it will look like in practice. My home-stay sister who is a 6^th grader has perfect English, but there is no telling what level the kids in class will be at.

That was all pretty technical, so just to liven things up a bit I will leave you with an anecdote, which demonstrates the chaos that is my life. This morning I was leaving to go to school to print out a few things for Monday’s classes when I ran into one of my neighbors in the entrance to my building. He was excited because he had just bought a car. I went over to check it out and as I stepped down from the sidewalk I noticed a flash of orange. Turns out I had left my house in my slippers. Whoops!

Background. check!

I fear that I may have gotten a little ahead of myself, so before I pick up where I left off in my adventure here is a little bit of the back story for those who don’t know. My name is Sara, I am a 23 year old Californian and recent college graduate. I have come to Romania as a Peace Corps volunteer. Peace Corps, for those who do not know, is an agency of the American government that was created by John F. Kennedy, in 1960. The mission of Peace Corps is to:
-Help the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
-Help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
-Help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.
http://www.peacecorps.gov/
Three goals that reflect many of my values and that I think are necessary in order to promote peace in the face of globalization.

I applied about a year ago, and after a large application, a few letters of recommendation, and interview, and 12 months of waiting not always that patiently, I have found myself in Romania. I am now in an eleven-week training that focuses on giving us the tools to teach English, create other development projects, and gain the cultural and language skills necessary to live integrate into Romanian culture. For the training I am with 44 or so volunteers in a moderately sized city. After the 11 weeks of training we will be placed in rural communities throughout Romania, where we will live and work as TEFL plus volunteers for 2 years, or more if we chose to extend (don’t worry family, I have no plans of this…yet).

So far I am very satisfied with my experience. While I found my Peace Corps to be rather distant and disorganized during my year of waiting, my experience in country has been quite the opposite. Peace Corps Romania is blessed with a great staff, and I truly feel that they have, so far, given me more everything and more than I could possibly ask for in the way of support and training.

Disclaimer: this blog does not reflects my personal views, and not those of the Peace Corps, the Peace Corps Romania program or the United States government.

This is by no means my first attempt at starting my Romanian blog, but hopefully this one will actually make it to the Internet. If you are reading this you can thank both my friend Laura, who told me that I should write a blog because “people will read it”, and my mother, who keeps threatening to get a facebook account if I don’t keep her up to date with my adventures. So here you go. I am now a little more than two weeks into my Romanian life. The experience in many ways reminds me of being a child, in that there is so much I don’t know, and in that I am learning at such a fast rate.
So far most of the things l have learned are very basic, such as where the woman’s bathroom is at my school (as opposed to the men’s), a lesson I learned after using the wrong one for about a week and a half, at the expense of one very surprised Romanian boy.
The bathroom education continued today as I learned that when the city has turned off the water for the day, the water that you will find on the bathroom floor is likely bleach. My tom’s shoes will carry the evidence of this for years to come.
On a more serious note, in the last 14 days I have learned an insane amount of Romanian. That being said, I am only now becoming capable of putting together short sentences and only understand 1/16th of the Romanian spoken in my Gazda (host family), but compared to where I started this is nothing short of miraculous.
I have also become very comfortable in my surrounding and routine. I am living on the ninth floor of a block building with a Romanian man and woman, and occasionally her 22-year-old son and his 13-year-old daughter. They love rock music and dark chocolate, two things I can appreciate. They have all been so welcoming and inclusive that my transition has been fun and easy. I really couldn’t ask for anything better. Even, Their cat, who, at first, made his distaste for me known through a series of displays of rather violent behavior, seems to have finally put down his claws, which I greatly appreciate.
My schedule too is becoming second nature. A regular week day consists of waking up and having awesomely strong Romanian coffee and some breakfast, then out the door by eight with my gazda made sack lunch in hand. My walk to school takes about 30 minutes, a feeble attempt to “keep my figure” but at least it is something. The first four hours of class are made up of language class. The classes are very interactive, and there are only six students in my class so we get a lot of practice. The second part of the day consists of lectures and discussions ranging anywhere from the Romanian economic situation, to English teaching theory, to what to do if bitten by a stray dog (more likely than one may think, as one of my fellow trainees already knows too well). All of that is broken up by lunch and the occasional frisbee or volleyball break. At 5pm it is either time to go home to study and socialize with the Gazda, or out to socialize with fellow PC trainees.
This here, is a hardly adequate description of my day, and more importantly my experience in Romania in general, but it is a start. I will do my best to better fill in the picture for you in the weeks to come, and remember, friends and family, I want to know how you are doing too, so don’t be strangers!