Peace Corps: July 2011

Starting last Monday, I began teaching students. During training all English Education volunteers participate in something called practice school. Basically, for the first half, we work with a resource teacher. The resource teachers are experienced Moldovan teachers who have worked with Americans before. For the past week, and until this Tuesday, I have been teaching 6th graders. My classes haven't been too large. Initially, I only had six students, but by Friday I had twelve. I'm not sure how many I will have on Monday and Tuesday. It was really nice to have a chance to get used to teaching a little with only a few students, but it is definitely more fun with more. Tomorrow I am giving the students a test. On Tuesday, they will get their results and I will ask for their feedback about how they think the class went.

On Wednesday, my future partner teacher will be coming to my village. We will be partner teaching a group of 10th graders. I don't know how many students I will have yet. Hopefully planning will go smoothly.

Yesterday, a group of Peace Corps volunteers put on a softball game. I was able to participate. It was at a field behind the school where I have been teaching. I got to play a couple of different positions and had a few chances to hit. My team lost, but I still had a really good time. After the game, I went to a Greek restaurant with some other trainees to celebrate someone's birthday. The food was really good, and added some nice variety to my diet.

Other than that, practice school has been keeping me pretty busy. I am really happy that it is going as well as it is though. I have managed, in general, to speak slow enough for my students. Tomorrow school begins again.

7/8/2011-7/10/2011:

Site Team Conference:

On Friday, all of the English Education trainees headed to Chisinau for our site team conference. There we met our future school directors or other representative from the school we will be teaching in. My school director was there. Communicating was interesting because she did not know English and my Russian/Romanian is still not very good. We at least managed to establish a time to meet the following day. Anyway, at the conference we also discussed differences in values between Moldovans and Americans. It seems like we value the same things, but to different extents. Both American groups valued individualism the most. We were asked to make lists of our values based on a list that they gave us. Both American groups put “individualism” at the top. The Moldovans approached the activity differently and listed things in terms of what is needed for a functional society or school rather than just abstractly.

Volunteers from previous years facilitated the conference. They would translate what they said into both Romanian and English. When either a school director or an American spoke, a Peace Corps volunteer would translate. I was really impressed at how strong the language skills of the current volunteers were. Hopefully I will be at the same place after living in Moldova for two years.

After the conference, some people went to their sites. Others went back to their training village. I was among the latter group. I headed to my permanent site at about 9:00 the following morning.

Site Visit:

Saturday

On Saturday morning my school director drove me to my permanent site, located in the northern part of Moldova. It took about 3 hours. We drove by some really beautiful countryside. In the center of Moldova, I saw a lot of grapes. In the north, I saw a lot more corn and sunflowers. There were fields after fields of both corn and sunflowers. Moldovans eat sunflower seeds and also use them to make oil.

We arrived in my village at around 12pm. When I got there, we went to the school where I will be working. There I met some of the director’s assistants. I couldn’t understand exactly what they did because the director described their role in Russian. At the school, I also met the mayor of my village and my partner teacher. We were in the director’s office and had some coffee, tea, chocolates, and cookies. It was nice when my partner teacher got there because she was able to translate what the other three were saying so that I could understand it. It was especially tricky for me to understand since they were speaking in Romanian (Moldovan).

After some refreshments, the director gave me a tour of the school. She showed me where the teacher’s lounge is and where the computer labs are. Apparently I can use internet there if I want to. The school is very nice. I didn’t take any pictures this time, but I will when I move there permanently.

After, my director and partner teacher took me to the house where I will be living. My host father wasn’t there when we arrived, so we sat outside on a bench for him to return. Apparently he was working at a mill in the town. When he got there, he showed me where my room and the bathroom are and then he returned to the mill. I relaxed for a couple of hours until he got back and took some pictures of the house.

When he returned we had some borsht and compot. Compot, if I haven’t mentioned already, is basically juice. It has whole pieces of fruit in it. When it is made, the fruit is boiled in water and then sugar is added. I have had compot made from raspberries and cherries. It is really tasty. After we ate we sat around for a little while. Then, he showed me around. In his garden he has raspberries, sour cherries, apricots, corn, lettuce, carrots, potatoes, garlic, onions, and some other things I can’t remember at the moment. He also has two pigs, some chickens, and some geese.

That took some time, but it was still pretty early, so we sat around inside the gate and outside for a while and talked. I understood some things and didn’t understand others. My host father seems like a really nice guy. My sense of things is that he lives alone a lot of the year while his wife works in Moscow (I think). Overall, it was a really nice day.

Sunday:

This morning I got up at 5:30 to catch the 6:30/7:00 bus. I basically got up, got dressed and had some compot. After that, I made my way to the bus stop which was only a few minutes from the house. There are two buses that head to Chisinau, and I got on the wrong one. The one I got on went all over the place and picked up people at a plethora of different villages. I got on that one because I was told that there was a 6:00 bus and a 7:00 bus. I was also told that the 7:00 bus leaves early some times. It was already 6:30, so I figured it must be the 7:00 bus. When it left early, I figured that was normal. It still got me to Chisinau, so it doesn’t really matter.

When I arrived in Chisinau, I hopped on a rutiera (think really crowded miniature bus) that took me to the central market. From there, I made my way to the McDonalds (kind of on purpose/ kind of by accident). After a long day of travelling, the cheeseburger was delicious. I also made use of the free WIFI. I ate and then made my way back to my current village.

This weekend has been interesting, but tomorrow my schedule returns to normal.

My Future Host Family:

On paper, there are three residents of my house, a mother, a father, and a grandfather. On Saturday, the only person I met was the father. He has two children. Both are married. One lives in Chisinau and one lives in Orhei (another town, kind of near the center of Moldova). The one living in Chisinau has a five year old daughter. I don’t know where the grandfather was/ if he exists.

My Future House:

My new home has two houses. There is a main house and a smaller one (Casa mica). In the main house there are several rooms, including my bedroom. The sink is outside. The compound also has a well. All the water in the house comes from it. There is a pipe that goes directly from the well into the the house. The toilet is outside near the pens where the geese, chickens and pigs are kept. The house also has a very large garden. Below are some pictures of the compound where I will be living.