the good, the bad, and the dirty

While I was working at the G-Lab, I had a colleague from India and occasionally I'd hear Indian coming from his office as he spoke with his wife or family on the phone, but I never really thought too much about how he could also speak English. I never really thought about how cool it was that a person from a foreign country could speak my language and how much work must have gone into learning it and how difficult it is, even when you've got the basics down, to really understand a language that is not your original. Nearly nobody in America gets excited when a foreigner can speak English. It's almost expected of them and, if anything, they're looked down upon if they can't communicate well.

Now I work in a biodiversity department with people who communicate with me in English, but when I do try to speak in Romanian (or Hungarian), they are overjoyed. They find it simply amazing that I'm trying to learn Romanian and it makes me sad that if they were to visit America, rarely a second thought would go towards the fact that they can speak English fluently, and yet they discuss and congratulate me on my vocabulary that any 2 year old could beat.


About a month before I moved out of my apartment in Reno, my kitchen sink would backup and overflow every time the upstairs neighbors ran their dishwasher. After this happened 10 or so times (I'm always hopeful that plumbing problems will just magically dissolve), I called my landlord and the next day a plumber showed up. He spent about two hours there setting up his equipment, tinkering with the sink, running up and down the stairs because it involved both my apartment and the apartment above, and cleaning up after his work. When he left, not only did the sink drain properly, but it had been cleaned of all the gunk that had accumulated from the neighbors' previous dishwashing session. Plus, he smiled, shook my hand and said thank you when he left.

Two days ago, as I was getting ready to leave my apartment for an English club meeting, a man knocked on my door and, from what I understood (I understand so little), told me that he was going to cover my door so he could paint around it. That's fine, I said, I'm leaving in five minutes. Two minutes later there was another knock on the door and a different man told me, in English, that I needed to cover my door so they could paint around it. I need to cover it? I said. But I don't have anything to cover it with. Well, he said, neither do we. And that was that. They both went back to painting around the already covered doors upstairs and I left for the English club feeling surprisingly frustrated. I need to cover it? I don't even want them to paint it and I need to cover it and I have nothing, no plastic sheeting, no old sheets, nothing to cover it with. I asked the people at the club where I could buy something that would do the trick and one of them suggested newspaper. That's a great idea, I said, remembering the stack of 5 or so newspapers my tutor gave me sitting under the sink. After returning home at 10pm, I spent the next hour covering my door with Romanian newspapers and I haven't seen the painters or a drop of paint since.

Now that I think about it, when the first man was telling me, in Romanian, that I needed to cover the door, I didn't really listen to what he was saying, I just assumed that he would cover it. Growing up in the birthplace of friendly and thorough customer service has not helped me much here and I still find it disconcerting to walk into an adorable touristy boutique, of the likes you'd find in San Francisco, and be greeted by an annoyed "Spuneti" or "Tesik", which basically means "What do you want?", followed by a never ending stare of impatience as you wander around the store, feeling more and more nervous and finding the store less and less appealing. Oddly enough, I've found that the crummiest looking places generally house the most pleasant clerks, and the more chic and fashionable shops have the rudest. Maybe it's hip to be unpleasant. I guess that could be said about many stores in the US, too. Remember my "SEVEN bags" incident a while back? No? I sure do.


Speaking of bags, in the fall of last year, I participated in a Truckee River clean-up event where we walked along 4 kilometers of the Truckee and picked up every little bit of trash that we could find. There were about 7 of us and we collected 11 bags of trash. As we searched, the main items retrieved were little gum wrappers, cigarette butts, an occasional beer can, and a very rare glass or plastic bottle. The bottles almost felt like a lucky find, like something to be proud of. There were maybe 9 or 10 of those.

I spent the first part of today participating in an Olt river clean up event that was hosted by a couple of environmental NGOs from Bucharest. They arranged the supplies, the logistics, the 20 students who helped out, and the food that was donated. They even gave us free t-shirts and hats. We walked about 5 kilometers of the river and collected close to 50 bags, which were filled mainly with glass and plastic bottles. And dirty diapers. The gum wrappers and cigarette butts were overlooked. Actually, I picked up a few still burning butts that a couple of volunteers threw on the ground. With time. It'll change with time and the cigarette butts will become the hunted while the bottles become the lucky finds, the rare little trophies of a job well done.

The efficiency and effectiveness of today's clean up was quite impressive and it's great that Romania is able to clean itself up. Again, why am I here?

ps - The backpacking/eco-center rebuild trip has been just about my favorite event of the summer so far. We spent three days hiking and relaxing and three days working hard and building. And by building, I mean moving very large and very heavy lincoln logs from one side of the river and up the hill to the other side of the river and down the hill. The logs magically fit together to make a house, but we didn't get to see the finished product because we had to leave before the roof or floor were completed. Oh well, maybe next time. Pictures from the week will probably be posted some time in the next two weeks, if I post at my current picture posting pace. There are new ones up, by the way. From a coupla months ago. Tomorrow morning I am meeting with someone who runs a local craft work shop. I might get to take some classes and learn something traditional, which'd be cool. Maybe that's why I'm here.