Silly Memories

If I had to select the day that was the most terrifying of all my days in the peace corps so far, it would be this day one year ago. In fact, I'll tell you the exact moment. I am standing on a curb with my new gazda mother, waiting for our taxi to arrive. A few straggling trainees are shoving their over-sized bags into the trunks of family cars, cramming themselves into tiny spots in the back seats, and one by one are being swept away to new destinations while I watch their faces disappear out of the back windows. My brand new safety net of friends is dissolving and disintegrating all around me and I'm still standing on the corner with a complete stranger, no taxi in sight. Minutes pass and the visible level of exasperation on my gazda's face increases, though her words make absolutely no sense. Just keep smiling and shrugging. Smiling and shrugging. Finally, the last car load of familiarity goes by. The staff car. The people who are supposed to wait around until everyone is taken care of has given up and is driving back to Bucharest. The guy in the passenger seat waves at me as they go by, with a look of "It'll be ok, just keep smiling" on his face. I feel my eye lids swell with tears as their tail lights disappear and the car is put into motion, heading away from where I am standing, diluting the comforting wave and the friendly look. I am standing alone with a stranger on a busy corner, every possession I brought from the states is somehow attached to me, like ridiculous, poorly planned and painful appendages, barely keeping balance and now choking back unwanted tears while the gravity of what I have done begins to sink in. I am terrified.

A few hours later, after the taxi finally arrived and my gazda mom picked up my heaviest bag on her own and hoisted it into the trunk, after I took off my shoes and put on my first pair of papuci, after we reeled all my luggage into my room and I unpacked and she gave me a tour of the house, after she took out pictures of her granddaughter and pulled down her English dictionaries and showed me the mementos of her dead husband, after her face lit up with delight as I gave her a hand made sock puppy from Reno and a deck of playing cards from Tahoe, after all that, we sat down at the kitchen table to share a plate of cakes and some coffee and the terror of two hours ago was nothing but a silly memory.

Zooooom

A very common topic for discussion amongst volunteers in Romania is "why are we here?" I'm sure I've already touched on this before, but with our washers, our internet connections, our TVs, our European Union funds, our fast food, our electronic billboards, our flushing toilets and our lofty offices with ArcGIS, it's tough to say "I'm a Peace Corps Volunteer", and really feel it. Feel like you belong to that community which, two years ago, sounded so hard core and selfless and true. But you take what you get and you make something out of it. So what if my projects don't involve building latrines in my neighborhood? Or educating mothers about AIDs? Or establishing the first library in my village? If I was in a place that needed it, I'd like to think that I'd be working on it. But it's difficult to say to the volunteers who did those things, "I teach English to adults at the Environmental Protection Agency and hold a drama club with teenagers", and feel like you've been involved in the same Peace Corps or have had any sort of comparable impact. Every assignment is different, no doubt about that. And every volunteer would handle each assignment differently. That's the beauty and the pain in Peace Corps. It's an experience that leaves me constantly questioning everything about it. What if I had gone to Africa instead? Would I be feeling more fulfilled or would I have already ET'd? What if I was placed in that tiny village up north? Would I be speaking fluently and eating dinner with a little old bunica each night and really feeling it? Feeling like a PCV? Who the hell knows. These are questions I am sick of asking myself and the answers are impossible to know and pointless to fathom. Romania and peace corps still see a need for us to be here, so I'm here to help and that's all there is to it, babies saved and libraries built or not.

Well, mini rant over. I just wanted to post a link to this story cause I thought it was interesting: http://www.thirdgoal.com/ottojones/2005/12/12/posh-corps/

Been a year since I saw Reno. I was in a plane preparing to land in Philadelphia at this exact moment. One year ago.

Word of the day

If I could select a word to describe my emotions lately, it would be volatile. Easily changed. Unsteady and unpredictable. One moment I feel just fine with what I am doing here, what I have done, and what I hope to do, and five minutes later, I want to smack myself for thinking I've actually done anything of use or have any good ideas. My balance between alone time and time with my Romanian friends felt perfect yesterday, while today it's clear that I'm nothing but an anti-social non-integrator. I feel satisfied with my decision to focus on Romanian instead of Hungarian, then I feel like a stubborn dimwit for not trying to learn both. This morning I woke up thinking about how quickly the past year has gone and now as I get ready for bed I question whether this month will ever end. A story I told yesterday sounded witty while today it sounds along the lines of spoken cow manure. I was looking at some pictures of me sledding with friends recently and started to laugh, but my eyes filled up with tears and suddenly I wasn't sure if I was laughing or crying. I couldn't tell and went through a strange, confused moment where I felt both very happy and very sad, which has never happened before over such a simple thing like a picture. I could not decide which of two fairly opposite and strong emotions I was feeling. Why would a picture of me sledding make me cry? Maybe because I look so happy in those pictures and wish I could hold onto that happiness for more than just a few minutes before I'm yet again mentally socking myself in the eye.

LOD

Today I learned that the kids in school think that everyone goes on vacation when they do. This became apparent after every kid in the drama club individually asked me how my vacation went. It was nice that they inquired, but it also made me realize how little they know about what I'm doing here. When I told them it wasn't much of a vacation for me because I had to work all week, they said "Really?" and gave me a bit of a blank stare. As much as I love the drama club, it has unfortunately become a small part of my life and I get the feeling that they think I spend all of my time preparing for the once a week, 1.5 hour session. So when they had their end-of-semester vacation last week, I had my 1.5 hour vacation (plus, it was nice to not have to prepare). I spent my vacation at a former EPA employee's house in a nearby village playing with year old twins.

Twin 1 (Zsofi or Janka):


Twin 2 (Janka or Zsofi):


So I did have a nice vacation pushing tots in swings and watching them eat apple sauce at the same time. It was interesting. The mother had a very good system down for feeding them and keeping one entertained while the other one took a messy bite. Gemeni means twins in Romanian, like the zodiac sign. I can't believe all these twins that are popping up. My good friend back home had twins, I'm playing with twins here, and a lady at the agency is going to the US in May to visit her daughter who is pregnant with, yep, twins. What's going on? Is it the weather? Does climate change also mean fertility change?

Anyways, lessons of the day: when you're a kid in school, it's hard to imagine life as anything else. Twins are a zodiac sign, cute and caused by climate change.

Good night.

Another Language

I recently discovered that not only the people in Romania speak a different language, but the animals do, too. My tutor gave me a lesson last week on the language of the animals here and I found out that the dog does not go "woof, woof", he goes "ham, ham". Birds do not tweet, they "cipcirip" (cheepchereep). When a pig wants to say something, he does not go oink! He goes guitz! Instead of quacking, ducks go macmac-ing and a horse never says "neigh", she says "nihaha". There's this CD that my tutor has been playing over the past 6 months in the background for her son while she's tutoring me and after this lesson, I realized that the CD is loaded with people making animal sounds, which kinda made my day. I think each animal has its own song. I'm going to ask her if I can have a copy of the CD so I can work on my animal communication skills. We shall see.

Here's my list thus far:
dog (câine) = ham ham
cat (pisică) = meow
bird (pasăre) = cipcirip
horse (cal) = nihaha
cow (vacă) = muu
pig (porc) = guitz
sheep (oaie) = meeehehe (mayheyhey)
goose (gâscă) = gagaga
duck (raţă) = macmac
frog (broasca) = oac oac
bear (urs) = mormor
mouse (şoarece) = chitz chitz
snake (şarpe) = ssssss
goat (capră) = beeehehe (bayheyhey)
chicken (pui) = piu piu piu
rooster (cocoş) = cucurigu
hen (găină) = cotcodac
donkey (măgar) = iah iah iah
owl (bufnita) = buhuhu (boohoohoo)

Got any to add?

I have this new loose goal of posting something I learn each day here (loose, loose goal...maybe every other day...to once a week).

Drama!

Ok, I've created a blog for the drama club. I have no idea how it will go, but I'm hoping it will prove useful. Find it here: http://sgtheaterclub.blogspot.com/.

Tomorrow and Friday I'll be at a waste management conference in Covasna city, which I'm looking forward to, but also wish I could use that time to write lesson plans for the environmental education committee and research ways to establish animal shelters and write the spa grant for Reci and prepare lesson plans for english class and put together a presentation for the American corners and visit my older lady friend at the craft shop and test out the pond-route for our moor frog study and give that new cookie recipe a whirl and plan for the next drama club. And update this a bit more intelligently and give my flickr some love and clean the apartment for my wonderful friends who will be staying here this weekend. But I can't! Gotta go sleep so I can get up at 6 tomorrow! The month of February is officially the month of panicky stress accompanied by frequent headaches and tired eyes.



Aaaahhhhhhhhhhh!

Almost a year. Aaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

I am having a good time, though, just in case you were wondering.