Oops.

It just hit me that I've been lying to people. Every person who has asked me how old I am in the past few months has been told utter nonsense, though unintentionally. And I realized my inaccuracies by looking at my profile on here, just now, and was shocked to discover that I'm 28. Not 27. I do indeed remember that I turned 28, I even wrote a stinking post about it, but somehow forgot that the day even occurred. Is this when things start going downhill?

What it is.

It isn't the work nor the hours spent in the office. It's not the teaching, the explaining, the advising nor the assisting. It's not the projects and it's certainly not the progress. It's not what you were thinking it would be.

It's the first roasted marshmallows and the shared peanut butter M&M's. It's the preciously rare smile from a stranger and the curious, jaw dropped stare of a toddler. It's the little girl who eagerly lets you practice your lousy Romanian with her and holds your hand while doing so. It's that one woman in the piatza who tosses in an extra tomato and a comforting wink for free. It's the homemade zacusca and the hand delivered blueberries and the watermelon break during tutoring and the gift of freshly baked nutty cozonac. Cheers of tsuica, sips of afinata, saluts of polinca. It's the drama kids saying hello to you on the street and the office ladies who always smile when they see you. And if you can train your eye to look at it the right way, it could be beautiful.

The Romanian BBQ

One thing that people nation-wide seem to enjoy here is a warm Saturday afternoon spent grilling and picnicking in the forest. It's called gritar, which I'm guessing translates to grill. Although many aspects of the average gritar remind me of the typical American BBQ, there are subtle differences that took me by surprise at first. Because I like lists, here's a list of differences.

1. One of the first things that struck me last year was the sheer number of people who do this on the warm weekends. As you drive along any forest-lined stretch of road, every few meters there's a car parked with a family out with their gritar smoking and their beer pouring. Everybody does this at the very least once a summer. At least around here.

2. What they're grilling. Pork is by far the most popular meat here and it's what's for dinner when you go to a gritar, instead of the typical hamburger/hotdog American fare. Mici is also common...little tasty sausages of cholesterol doom. Delicious sauces are often prepared on the spot to accompany the meat.

3. The equipment. Gritars seem to happen with a minimalistic approach - people tend to bring only the meat, the beverages, a few plates and a wire wrack for a grill with them, everything else they collect from the forest. The wood for the fire and the stones to build up the grill and make the circle are gathered. No fancy shmancy outdoor cookers here. I kinda like that.

4. Attire. When it's sunny and warm, people strip down to the bare minimum. Yes, speedos do exist in abundance. As well as thongs.

5. Duration. If it's a nice day out, chances are you'll be there all day, so just relax and enjoy it.

6. Alternative activities. Before or after the main activity of grilling, in addition to taking walks or just sitting around and chatting, people will fill the time by hunting down edible fruits, nuts, mushrooms and herbs from the forest. I love how much the average person here knows about the edible bits of wilderness. Makes me wish I knew more.

7. Clean up. Unfortunately, many people leave their trash behind. Some people are kind enough to pile it into the fire pit, but many just leave it scattered around. It's definitely an eye sore in an otherwise beautiful forest, but I sense that things are changing. The last two groups I went with did a thorough clean up and I enthusiastically helped out.

Last weekend I went to a gritar with my new landlord and her family and I had an excellent time sharing the joy of roasting marshmallows with them. You can't find marshmallows here, so it kinda blew me away that I had to show the adults how to pick out a good stick, sharpen the end, jab it through the marshmallow and get that just-right crispy brown exterior with the gooey white interior. Surprisingly rewarding. I did, however, leave the bar of Hershey's chocolate at home...to be devoured at a later date and time.

Down Times and the Thought Process

Just about every volunteer I have talked to has said that the second year is by far better and easier than the first. This makes sense to me. You are integrated into your community, you're more comfortable with the language, you've figured out how things like train and bus schedules work and you've most likely made some progress work-wise and have a clearer idea of what you'll be doing for the remainder of your service. You're on the downside of the big two-year mountain. That all makes perfect sense to me. So I am left wondering why, a quarter into my second year, my experience is turning out to be the exception. This second year has been nothing but disappointing in regards to integration and work so far. Yes, I've done a multitude of summer camps and traveling over the past three months, which I've thoroughly enjoyed, but that has little to do with what I feel like I should be doing. But it does makes sense to me as to why I'm so disappointed and frustrated with myself and my placement right now. I've moved. I love my new apartment, but I didn't really think about how a new location would require another mini-integration. The friendly fruit-and-veggie-stand guy is now out of my way to visit. The little old lady on the second floor is probably still wandering around the hall all day, but I wouldn't know because I no longer climb those stairs. The kind lady with the sweet little dog is not my neighbor anymore. I almost never see people in this new building and there are just so many...I rarely see the same face twice. Even if I did, I feel like I've lost that fresh PCV motivation to try and talk to everyone I bump in to. My new apartment is bigger and nicer and requires climbing seven flights of stairs to get to, so convincing myself to stay inside is that much easier. So I'm back at square one, minus the motivation. Bad combo. As for work, our frog study didn't happen because there wasn't enough gas money to pay for our visits to the nature reserve. So no population density study. We received the funding for the SPA grant I applied for, but because the agency is a governmental one, there are all these extra steps that need to be taken before we are able to use the money. Currently the project is waiting to be approved by the Prime Minister or something. It has been waiting there for three months now and has no sign of moving. For 1,500 dollars. The project should be wrapping up right now, but hasn't even started. So the two main projects I've tried to do with the agency have essentially failed. Plus, we recently got a new director and things just feel different there. Less stuff seems to be going on, especially with money being so tight due to the economy. So...motivation? Rock bottom. If I were to go home right now, I'd feel like I'd done my best and it's the first time I've thought seriously about how I'm spending my time here while I'm missing my family so much, especially after my mom's lovely visit. It was wonderful to wake up in the morning, knowing that she was just a few meters away. This is the first time I've really realized that going home IS an option.

No. Stop. Refocus. Things will get better. This has been a long, three month stretch of down, but when school starts back up and I have the drama club and American corners to reign in my satisfaction, things will feel better. I'm going to continue the English classes with the EPA in September and will consider that my main contribution to my assigned agency. I'm going to call up the local friends I've been neglecting and go out for tea or possibly a hike. And maybe I'll even say hello to the people in my new building. I'm going to focus more on my volunteer friends who are still here and not feel so sad about the ones who've left. Time to pull on the maturity cap and do my best to follow through with the trend and make the second year better.

Starting tomorrow.

What To Do.

Back to the wondering. I never really left it, I suppose, but I'm definitely at it in full force again. Back to questioning what my life will look like at this time next year. It's always a delightfully scary treat to think about the future and feel so many possibilities flood through the brain. Any suggestions for my future endeavors? Cause I currently don't got a clue.

Calling All Brain Studiers

I'm starting to get a little worried. I've talked to a few other people about something I've been experiencing here, and no one else has experienced it, which worries me, despite my enjoyment of feeling unique. I frequently doze off while traveling on trains, buses and maxi taxis - not enough to be considered asleep, but enough to do the head-jerk thing every few seconds. When this happens, every conversation I hear is in English, even the conversations of my Romanian or Hungarian compartment-mates. As I start to doze off, the foreign language conversation will morph into English, but an unintelligible English. An example: Person 1 "The cat's bread went for hair but did it go under something yesterday?" Person 2 "Well I don't swim and there people break into holes and turkeys. Do ladders make songs with sidewalks taking pictures." and so on. It's very confusing. So confusing, and a bit startling, that I'll snap out of it and try to figure out what they're talking about. But, the moment I start paying attention and open my eyes, poof! Back to Romanian or Hungarian. The conversation's too hard to follow, so I drift back into doze mode and the weird English returns. "Becky's car split but your mom's drinking the lamps. They said wait without holding a note and I can buy the whole blue for reason." Stuff like that. Nothing that makes sense. I think it might be similar to how I saw people I knew in the faces of strangers when I first arrived. English is so imprinted on my brain that it takes the first opportunity to turn everything into something somewhat computable. Maybe my brain misses English, though I do hear it fairly regularly. Maybe it can't handle learning a foreign language. I'm jealous of all those volunteers gushing about the dreams they're now having in Romanian or Hungarian, or those who are speaking it in their sleep. I can't even hear Romanian when I'm asleep. What's wrong with my brain?

Behind Door Number 1

I spent last week sleeping in a tent, barely showering in a wooden box with unheated water and contorting my body to find an un-lumpy patch of earth to curl up on. Despite the discomforts, I've never felt so ok with camping. As mentioned in previous posts, I often count down the days until such events are over, but this time around, I somehow managed to simply enjoy the newness and slight adventure of it. Maybe some things do change.

One of last week's tasks included making a map of all the traditional homes in the village Grosii Tiblesului (don't ask me how to pronounce it) and I, being of the map-making type and feeling a bit unenthusiastic about the remaining scrub-the-dust-off-the-house task, jumped at the opportunity. It took me and my two friends two days to walk down every street, determine the traditional-ness of every single house, take a picture of those deemed most traditional and briefly chat with whomever happened by. In all, we recorded 296 houses. Just as we finished up our final street and started heading back to the museum, a man approached and asked us to come with him to his house. There had been a tv newscast the night before about what our group was doing and he had heard about the project and wanted us to see something, but I couldn't understand what. Now, I try not to be a judgmental person, but when a man with red eyes, sour looking clothes and alcohol on his breath starts pulling on my arm rather forcefully and telling me that I have to go with him, I get unhappy. We all said that we were tired and we needed to get back to the museum because our friends were waiting for us and we couldn't go with him, but he wouldn't have it and his grip on my arm tightened as his persistence increased. Reluctantly, we let ourselves be led away from the trail towards home and into a strange man's yard. He led us past the house and to a small, padlocked shed in the back. With slightly shaky hands, he undid the lock and opened the door and, as he fumbled for the light switch, gestured for us to step inside. Still feeling uneasy, but knowing that, with the help of my two companions, I could easily kick this guys butt, we stepped inside the little, plain shed. If you have read the Harry Potter series, you are familiar with the magical tents they use for camping, the ones that look simple and small on the outside, but are vastly ornate mansions on the inside. This felt a little reminiscent of those. Though the shed did not increase in size once inside, its beauty was the utter opposite of the plain, white outside walls. The man is a wood carver and stores his crafts in this shed. Intricately carved wooden chairs, tables, cabinets, frames, spoons, plates, coat racks, toys, etc covered every square inch of wall space and as much floor space as possible. In an instance, my unease sheepishly fizzled away and was replaced with awe. He's hoping to turn his little shed into a museum and bring tourists in to see his work, which I think is a great idea. He'll just have to work on his greeting and tourist hook a little. No arm-pulling allowed.