Ramble with me

I have a very clear memory of being 15, standing in the locker room after PE class, and discussing the future with my friends. We were talking about when and how we thought we would die. One girl said forty-three from a car accident, the next girl said thirty-one due to a faulty parachute, and I said seventeen. I didn't know how I would die, but I was convinced that I would not live to see what life beyond seventeen years was like. It meant graduating. It meant college and the eventual "real life" and career. And I was incapable of fathoming that, of seeing beyond the high school walls, and I took my inability to envision as a sign that this world would soon reject me and end what had been a rather favorable childhood. I truly believed it. Then 17 came and went and nothing too horrible happened and I started making more and more complicated decisions - going to college, moving to Eugene, moving back, graduating, choosing a job, signing up for the peace corps, and setting foot on the plane that brought me to where I now sit. I've been thinking about the seventeen year old me alot lately. We have both been confronted with the most difficult adjustments in my life so far, and not much to picture as an outcome of our actions. I am yet again faced with the inability to see myself on the other side of something. Now instead of highschool, it's peace corps. It's tomorrow, it's next month, it's mid service training and close of service and my eventual return home. I just can't picture it. Six months ago, when our country director was telling us what to be doing before our In Service Training, I had a hard time listening because I couldn't picture me in Romania, let alone alive, for IST. Not that I saw myself dead, I just couldn't see me being a part of it. Being here has made me appreciate the passage of time and how eventual it is. Six months have gone by while at site. My tutor's baby waves and smiles at me now. My friend's pregnant stomach is tripled in size. The sheets I bought are fading and the plants my landlord gave me seem to have new blooms every day. And IST is over. Things that I couldn't remotely picture just 6 months ago are going by without hesitation and even though I'm an adult, I'm pretty sure I'm going through another stage of growing up. As a kid, Christmas would never come. Now I can't slow it down and can't decide if I'm happy or sad that it's going by so fast. I remember waiting for the day when applying to the peace corps wouldn't sound like a good idea, and on that day I would retract my application. When I think about how delicate my decision to join was, I'm surprised I'm here and surprised that the future is simply fabricated out of the little ideas that we have and decide to put energy into. But I'm even more surprised that I can't picture doing anything else right now. I'm set for the next 1.5 years, but beyond that, who the heck knows. Currently, I can't picture myself beyond the ripe old age of 29.

A little bit of nothing important

I bought an air sport gun today. I meant to purchase a cute little toy gun to go with my Halloween costume (one of the Charlie's Angels...not my idea, just going along with it), but for ten lei and a trip to the toy aisle, I accidentally ended up with the quasi-real thing and I'm quite repulsed with myself. I should have read the details more closely, I shouldn't have grabbed the first fake gun I saw, and I really shouldn't be supporting the toy gun industry. Have you ever had one of those moments where you immediately regret buying something as you're handing the money over? My hate of guns didn't occur to me today until the ten lei bill was out of my hand and the clerk was settling back into her soda and chips. Guns terrify me and I therefore hate them. I don't see how anything remotely good could come out of something that was created for one purpose: death. And we make toys out of them for children! And I bought one! And then I write about how annoyed I am that I bought one!

Stage fright

Darn my nerves! I'm holding the first drama club meeting in just over an hour and I'm more nervous for it than I was to present at the symposium. I guess that makes sense, though. I'm in charge of this, the one to be blamed if the kids find it horrible, where I was just a participant in the symposium and didn't really care if people were enthralled or bored to tears. I hope this works. Drama made high school semi-enjoyable for me...I have very few memories from that time of anything but.

So what's my plan for the meeting today? Here it is:
Introduction - introduce myself and what the heck I'm doing here. Discuss my experience with drama and what I hope the kids will get out of the club.
Interviews - students will pair up and take turns interviewing eachother with some predetermined questions and will then present that info to the group (I know, I hated this activity back then, but can now see the benefits...oh to be wise)
Two truths and a lie - first acting activity! Each person will come up with three statements about themselves - 2 will be true and one will be false. Each will present their three statements to the group and we will try to guess which is the lie. The goal is to trick the audience into guessing the wrong statement. I love this game and play it for fun with friends.
Wrap up.

The end! Whadya think? We'll see. I'll know more in two hours. Yipes!

Plus, I have a miserable headache of a cold. Bah.

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2 hours later:
Well that was fun! I had 22 attendees (more than I had expected) and they all seemed to enjoy the activities, especially the two truths and a lie game. I'm excited. This'll be a lot of fun if I do it right and keep the kids interested and engaged. For our next meeting, I asked them to be prepared to discuss who they think is a strong actor and why that person is good at what they do. I hope there aren't any "because she's pretty" reasons, but I'll figure out a good response for that. I'll be ready. That's the key, I think. Be ready. But still a little spontaneous. And not sick.

I'm on my 5th cup of tea for today. Tea tastes delightful when ill. Especially apple berry tea with a little sugar.

Today was the day

I finally saw one today. I've been wondering if I would see one here and was beginning to doubt it, but today was the day. Perhaps it's a good sign? Maybe this is the beginning of an onslaught that will lead to air that doesn't stink, eyes that don't itch, and throats that don't scratch. They're everywhere in the US, probably more so now than when I left, but seeing one today made me want to run up and give it a peck on the passenger window. I've missed seeing hybrids. Funny how you don't realize you miss something until you see it, in its sleek little nonpolluting silhouette with an exhaust that smells of only mildly tainted air. The sad thing, though? I saw my first (and undoubtedly not my last) Hummer H3 within a month of being in Romania. But I'll hold tight to my little hybrid memory and simply hope for more.

Feeling Indecisive

And a little bit out of it. Every now and then, while I'm going about my day, something relatively minor happens that reminds me of my foreignness. And it often comes almost as a surprise. Like oh, yeah! This isn't home, I almost forgot. A lady my age will stare fixedly at my shoes as she passes by; somebody on the street will ask me a question and I'll have to break my train of English thought to stammer out a likely unintelligible response; a sign will be posted on my apartment building that I can't decipher and two hours later the power's out and I don't know when it will return; a lady at the supermarket will get annoyed that I don't have exact change and give me a stick of chewing gum instead of 90 cents; a man will give me an odd, almost offended look as I open and hold the door for him. My shoes get stared at so much, with looks of true intrigue, that sometimes I want to stop and ask the person just WHAT is so curious about them. They're shoes! Not space-age foot rockets. Old brown lace-up shoes that I did not realize would stick out like sore toes here. It never crossed my mind that from the ankles down would be my biggest give-away. Also, as far as I know, I am the only person in Romania who is wearing a toe-ring and this fact, when combined with my odd looking chaco flip flops, leads to curious stares that can last the whole length of a street. I think people would recognize me more readily by my feet than my face.

I don't know why I started this entry. It went somewhere I hadn't planned. Towards my feet. Seems to be the norm. Oh well. I'm sleepy. Night.

A Recap

I kind of wanted to go with toamna colors here, but I'm not sure if it worked out. At least it's more Octoberish than all that green watery goo. October's one of my favorite months...the weather finally starts to get chilly, the leaves start to get rid of all that green sameness, the books I read get more engrossing, the hot chocolate tastes a little sweeter, and the cookies bake a little higher. Good news all around.

The past two weeks have been a bit busy. I had a site visit from my program manager and, although I feel pretty decent here at site, it was still something to stress out about. The visit went well and coincided nicely with the completion of the rough draft management plan for Reci, our nature reserve. I've also recently changed my schedule, so instead of working from 8 - 3 Monday through Friday, I'm going in on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which will allow me to pursue other projects on Tuesday and Thursday (other projects do include blogging it up, like right now...but only occasionally). I feel much more free now. I like the agency I'm working with, but a nearly 40 hour a week job behind a computer is not what I had in mind for my time here. At all.

Following the site visit, I had a good friend stay with me for a couple of days and, as much as I like visitors, I'm constantly worried that they're not having a good time and that I'm not being a good host. And I'm not a good host. I know it. I can't cook, I don't have a TV, all I have is floor space for extra sleepers, I only have two bowls and two plates, my shower leaks horribly, and the only thing in the fridge is some old cheese and a couple jars of jam...and some chocolate. But I don't tell them about the chocolate. Because I'm a bad host.

My unfortunate guest and I traveled together to a small city in the Transylvania region called Turda (pronounced "tourduh", but still mocked by many), where we were both scheduled to volunteer for a little somethin' called Turda Fest. Turda probably doesn't mean much to the average person, but it is now the home of the world's longest onion chain (check out the pictures on my flickr, if ya feel like it). Little did we know it when we arrived, but the main task of every volunteer was not only to set up, run, and tear down the festival, but also to prepare nearly 6 kilometers of onions for measuring. Not a small task. There were many moments during the weekend when we would all kinda stop for a second and think about what a stupid waste the whole ordeal was - there was no plan for what would happen to the onions after the festival, the work that went into it greatly overshadowed the enjoyment of the festival for anyone involved, and who really gives a darn about which city in the world has the longest onion chain, anyways? But, as we labored on with the assistance of the ladies who not only grew the onions, but braided them together, too, I sensed a bit of pride going through the group. It's amazing just how much work, no matter how trivial and meaningless, a few people can get done. And, at the end of the night, as the measuring wheel rounded the last corner that would make Turda's small fame official, we all cheered a little bit and I caught sight of some happy tears in the eyes of the ladies who had been with these onions since day one. Pride can come in strange forms, but as long as it's there, bringing a group of people something to smile about, who cares if it's comprised of onions instead of Olympic gold medals.

The day following Turda Fest, I was off to Covasna City for a two-day conference I helped (minimally) to organize. I gave a presentation on Desert Tortoise monitoring and tried not to smile too much at the snores coming from the back of the room. Mine was the last presentation of the whole conference and it was understandable, though a bit amusing. The people who were awake at least seemed interested. Now life's a bit calmer and I'm spending today not doing a whole lot. It feels nice.