Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Laughing Out Loud
My landlord is a pretty funny lady, or so I've gathered by the amount she and the people around her laugh due to something she said. I typically understand about 75% of her conversations (in Romanian), but much much less when she goes into her entertaining I-want-to-tell-you-a-story-whether-you-understand-it-or-not mode and talks fluidly and quickly, brilliant hand gestures and dramatic pauses included. I've gotten used to just enjoying her presence during these tales and trying to understand as much as I can, but the most awkward part always comes at the end. That's when she reaches the punch line and leans back to let out a big laugh and puts her hand on my forearm, as if to balance herself from laughing so hard, and I'm left kicking myself for not understanding, not being able to truthfully join her in those pleasant belly laughs and the amusement she takes in her stories. Of course, I chime in and make myself laugh out of respect, but to me there's something sad and wrong in laughing when I don't really mean it. No matter how hard I listen nor how many stories she tells, I just don't get it and it's something that nags at me. The difference in humor and how difficult it is to understand in a foreign language. Yesterday, as we walked away from work together, my landlord dove into a brief recount of some mischief she witnessed over the weekend. I can't recall exactly what went down, but I got it. I got it. Her story was at long last funny to me and I started laughing before the punch line because I could see what was coming. She laughed more brightly than usual, too, probably because she could tell that I finally understood something. We continued to chortle for a good block or two and had to dab at our eyes a little bit before we went our separate ways. The humor from the joke had evaporated, but the silly outbursts that accompany joy were swift to replace it. Laughing with someone feels so much better than laughing for someone.
Monday, May 4, 2009
erin does romania
Sorry about the past month of vast nothingness on here. In all honesty, I feel a bit sheepish now because my blog has been picked up by this thing: http://www.peacecorpsjournals.com/?showcountry,ro@blog. My blog is no secret, I just don't want it attached to some other website without my knowing it, but whatev. I'll get over it.
Greece was great (see pictures found at the flickr link to the right). MST was ok (I got horribly ill one night and spewed my brains out, but I also got to see some good buddies). Now I'm back at site and startled by the fact that tomorrow is our official one year swear-in anniversary. All during PST and for a long time afterward, I told myself not to go nuts traveling all over the place because I'd have two whole years to see everything, but it's becoming painfully clear that two years is not nearly enough to both be a good volunteer by peace corps' definition and see as much of Romania as humanly possible. It occurred to me on the train yesterday as we wound along the snakey tracks from Drobeta Turnu Severin to Bucharest, passing a particularly pretty valley being overlooked by a tree specked mountain, that I will never be able to see as much of Romania as I would like. I wanted to see that valley, with all its vineyards and cows and leaning houses and hobbling, hardworking inhabitants, from the top of the mountain, but I never will. I will never see the vast majority of this place. Even in a life time, it wouldn't happen. I had this goal back home to walk the full length of every street in Reno, but after pulling up a detailed street map on google earth, the goal withered away into a silly idea, one that couldn't compete with the ever pressing need to work and produce things and participate in society. A wanderer internally battling it out with a workaholic, but losing more and more every day. Bit by bit.
I like to think of travel in terms of scale and if you zoom out far enough, say to 1:1,000,000, you're looking at the entire world. In those terms, I've seen Romania. Erin has been to Romania and can check that puppy off the list. As well as England, Germany, France, Greece, Ireland, Canada, the US. But if you zoom in more, to see Romania in its entirety, that solid field of "check" turns into a few simple lines showing the trains I've taken to the few cities I've wandered around in. Zoom in even more, over the north western corner of Romania, and I've seen nothing. I don't know what their traditions are, I don't know what their dialect is, I don't know how their food tastes or what their mountains smell like. It's a Romania I haven't been to and, for the most part, will never experience. It makes me sad to think how little we really get to see and do in the 80 odd years we're allotted, give or take a few.
Greece was great (see pictures found at the flickr link to the right). MST was ok (I got horribly ill one night and spewed my brains out, but I also got to see some good buddies). Now I'm back at site and startled by the fact that tomorrow is our official one year swear-in anniversary. All during PST and for a long time afterward, I told myself not to go nuts traveling all over the place because I'd have two whole years to see everything, but it's becoming painfully clear that two years is not nearly enough to both be a good volunteer by peace corps' definition and see as much of Romania as humanly possible. It occurred to me on the train yesterday as we wound along the snakey tracks from Drobeta Turnu Severin to Bucharest, passing a particularly pretty valley being overlooked by a tree specked mountain, that I will never be able to see as much of Romania as I would like. I wanted to see that valley, with all its vineyards and cows and leaning houses and hobbling, hardworking inhabitants, from the top of the mountain, but I never will. I will never see the vast majority of this place. Even in a life time, it wouldn't happen. I had this goal back home to walk the full length of every street in Reno, but after pulling up a detailed street map on google earth, the goal withered away into a silly idea, one that couldn't compete with the ever pressing need to work and produce things and participate in society. A wanderer internally battling it out with a workaholic, but losing more and more every day. Bit by bit.
I like to think of travel in terms of scale and if you zoom out far enough, say to 1:1,000,000, you're looking at the entire world. In those terms, I've seen Romania. Erin has been to Romania and can check that puppy off the list. As well as England, Germany, France, Greece, Ireland, Canada, the US. But if you zoom in more, to see Romania in its entirety, that solid field of "check" turns into a few simple lines showing the trains I've taken to the few cities I've wandered around in. Zoom in even more, over the north western corner of Romania, and I've seen nothing. I don't know what their traditions are, I don't know what their dialect is, I don't know how their food tastes or what their mountains smell like. It's a Romania I haven't been to and, for the most part, will never experience. It makes me sad to think how little we really get to see and do in the 80 odd years we're allotted, give or take a few.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Wassup
Kill a minute or ten.
For a few summers of my teenage years, my dad, sister and I would go with some family friends to Lake Powell to camp, boat, relax, swim, eat, etc. Looking back on those trips, I recall the steep, sandy red canyon walls that made winding rivers just wide enough to let a boast pass through and create some astounding echoes, the way the sun bounced off the little waves of water and reflected itself back out onto my face, burning even the underside of my chin, the feeling of sandy grit in my hair, on my teeth, coating my skin and never fully washing out and the wobbly woozy feeling of jumping from the boat to the shore after a few hours at-lake. I like those memories a whole lot and I often wish I could revisit them, not just in thought, but actually travel through my mind and go there and feel the grit covering my skin and see the vibrant red canyon walls and shout, in unison, "Bless you!" to a far off stranger's sneeze that echoed over and over and over. But I also know, while I was there, I counted down the days until the trip was over. It was the first thing I did every morning, as the people around me started unzipping their sleeping bags and stumbling about and murmuring, with the hazy gray of early morning starting to turn yellow, I would count. We got here 4 days ago and we'll be here for 15 days all together. That means I only need to go through 11 more days of this. "This" being much more difficult in my mind than it actually was. I have never been able to figure out why I don't enjoy things as they are happening and only when it's over do I look back and think "that was really cool". As you can probably guess, it's something that I think about here and tell myself to be cautious of. Don't focus on the things that seem unpleasant because they're meaningless, focus on what's making this worth it. Years after Lake Powell, I can hardly recall the foul taste of warm lake-water koolaid, our only beverage (other than wine), or the never ending itch of mosquitoes and wind-burned skin or the seriously queasy effect of choppy water or the annoyance of a sand filled sleeping bag. They are memories that surface when I dig deep enough, but when I think 'Lake Powell', I think of those towering red walls and never ending echoes and sneaky sun rays.
Wassup. Whenever I want to say "what's up", I think to myself "wassup", which was a logo printed across a girl's shirt at Lake Powell. She wore the shirt every day and one afternoon, one of the guys pointed at the emblem and shouted "WAY SOUP!". We were eating soup for lunch and the saying stuck in my brain. It's funny how one little incident can give words a new meaning that no one else would understand.
What's up: the immediate future.
I'm on quasi-vacation now. Almost officially. We're doing the first step in the frog study tomorrow night (listening for the frog calls at our study ponds so we'll know which side of the pond to check for egg clumps) and because I'll still be here, I told them I could help out. But the frogs are only active at night right now, so we'll be stumbling around the reserve, which confuses the heck out of me during the day, in the dark. With headlamps and Wellingtons. With 45 ponds to check in a 4 kilometer radius, it's going to be a long night. Unfortunately, I'm going to miss the rest of the study because of the below activities. But I helped them set everything up and prepare, so I feel ok with taking off.
On Monday I'll leave for our mid-service conference in Sinaia, which means I'm half way done with life as a PCV. Although I was talking earlier about counting down the days, I've stopped counting the number of months I've been here. I think that's a good thing.
The conference ends on Thursday and on Friday I leave for Greece, returning the following Thursday. While there, we'll spend a day in Athens, 2 days on the island Naxos and 2 days on the island Santorini. Pictures will abound, I assure you. The day we get back, I have my mid-service physical and dental check up in Bucharest. Woo. Then it's back to work on the 20th.
What's up: the recent past.
Yesterday, Friday April 3rd, all applications for SPA (Small Project Assistance) grants were due. At 5pm. I turned ours in at 3pm. Phew. I haven't said too much about it because I honestly wasn't sure if we'd get it done. The way things work around here is to wait until the last minute and then take care of everything. Luckily, I had finished nearly all of the writing, it was just scrambling around to get price quotes, donations and support statements from the project's participants, which was up to my colleague. I sincerely am impressed at the amount he was able to do in one week, on top of his normal job. We'll hear back from the SPA committee on the 17th. It's the main thing I've been working on for the past month and last night I slept soundly, which hasn't happened in a very long time.
A couple of weeks ago, the English teacher who occasionally helps me with the drama club asked if the club could do something for a conference that was coming up. I said yeah, as long as the students showed up regularly enough to put something together and they seemed into it. So we set to work on a couple of fairy tales - Little Red Riding Hood for one group of four and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs for the other group. The way it worked was as one person told the story, the other three members acted out the words with pantomime. At some point, the narrator would go off into a strange tangent or start telling a different fairy tale, and one of the other three would kick them out, take their place and continue the story. It turned out really well and little did I know that the conference, which was on Wednesday, was for all English teachers in Covasna County. After the students performed, several teachers came up and asked me for more information about incorporating drama into their class room, which is totally awesome. I'm going to send them the manual I've been working out of. I'm really proud of and impressed by the students. It was their day off from school, as a teacher conference day, but they were still excited and happy to show up and perform in front of dozens of teachers. I lucked out by having great students to work with and unexpectedly having access to every English teacher in Covasna County.
Funny how things work out sometimes.
What's up: right now.
It's sunny and warm outside and I already took a jog and a walk today. I think I'll read for a while and bake some cookies. Not to mention snack on some Mini Eggs. Which I received in a package. From my awesome mom and sister.
Lucky, lucky.
For a few summers of my teenage years, my dad, sister and I would go with some family friends to Lake Powell to camp, boat, relax, swim, eat, etc. Looking back on those trips, I recall the steep, sandy red canyon walls that made winding rivers just wide enough to let a boast pass through and create some astounding echoes, the way the sun bounced off the little waves of water and reflected itself back out onto my face, burning even the underside of my chin, the feeling of sandy grit in my hair, on my teeth, coating my skin and never fully washing out and the wobbly woozy feeling of jumping from the boat to the shore after a few hours at-lake. I like those memories a whole lot and I often wish I could revisit them, not just in thought, but actually travel through my mind and go there and feel the grit covering my skin and see the vibrant red canyon walls and shout, in unison, "Bless you!" to a far off stranger's sneeze that echoed over and over and over. But I also know, while I was there, I counted down the days until the trip was over. It was the first thing I did every morning, as the people around me started unzipping their sleeping bags and stumbling about and murmuring, with the hazy gray of early morning starting to turn yellow, I would count. We got here 4 days ago and we'll be here for 15 days all together. That means I only need to go through 11 more days of this. "This" being much more difficult in my mind than it actually was. I have never been able to figure out why I don't enjoy things as they are happening and only when it's over do I look back and think "that was really cool". As you can probably guess, it's something that I think about here and tell myself to be cautious of. Don't focus on the things that seem unpleasant because they're meaningless, focus on what's making this worth it. Years after Lake Powell, I can hardly recall the foul taste of warm lake-water koolaid, our only beverage (other than wine), or the never ending itch of mosquitoes and wind-burned skin or the seriously queasy effect of choppy water or the annoyance of a sand filled sleeping bag. They are memories that surface when I dig deep enough, but when I think 'Lake Powell', I think of those towering red walls and never ending echoes and sneaky sun rays.
Wassup. Whenever I want to say "what's up", I think to myself "wassup", which was a logo printed across a girl's shirt at Lake Powell. She wore the shirt every day and one afternoon, one of the guys pointed at the emblem and shouted "WAY SOUP!". We were eating soup for lunch and the saying stuck in my brain. It's funny how one little incident can give words a new meaning that no one else would understand.
What's up: the immediate future.
I'm on quasi-vacation now. Almost officially. We're doing the first step in the frog study tomorrow night (listening for the frog calls at our study ponds so we'll know which side of the pond to check for egg clumps) and because I'll still be here, I told them I could help out. But the frogs are only active at night right now, so we'll be stumbling around the reserve, which confuses the heck out of me during the day, in the dark. With headlamps and Wellingtons. With 45 ponds to check in a 4 kilometer radius, it's going to be a long night. Unfortunately, I'm going to miss the rest of the study because of the below activities. But I helped them set everything up and prepare, so I feel ok with taking off.
On Monday I'll leave for our mid-service conference in Sinaia, which means I'm half way done with life as a PCV. Although I was talking earlier about counting down the days, I've stopped counting the number of months I've been here. I think that's a good thing.
The conference ends on Thursday and on Friday I leave for Greece, returning the following Thursday. While there, we'll spend a day in Athens, 2 days on the island Naxos and 2 days on the island Santorini. Pictures will abound, I assure you. The day we get back, I have my mid-service physical and dental check up in Bucharest. Woo. Then it's back to work on the 20th.
What's up: the recent past.
Yesterday, Friday April 3rd, all applications for SPA (Small Project Assistance) grants were due. At 5pm. I turned ours in at 3pm. Phew. I haven't said too much about it because I honestly wasn't sure if we'd get it done. The way things work around here is to wait until the last minute and then take care of everything. Luckily, I had finished nearly all of the writing, it was just scrambling around to get price quotes, donations and support statements from the project's participants, which was up to my colleague. I sincerely am impressed at the amount he was able to do in one week, on top of his normal job. We'll hear back from the SPA committee on the 17th. It's the main thing I've been working on for the past month and last night I slept soundly, which hasn't happened in a very long time.
A couple of weeks ago, the English teacher who occasionally helps me with the drama club asked if the club could do something for a conference that was coming up. I said yeah, as long as the students showed up regularly enough to put something together and they seemed into it. So we set to work on a couple of fairy tales - Little Red Riding Hood for one group of four and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs for the other group. The way it worked was as one person told the story, the other three members acted out the words with pantomime. At some point, the narrator would go off into a strange tangent or start telling a different fairy tale, and one of the other three would kick them out, take their place and continue the story. It turned out really well and little did I know that the conference, which was on Wednesday, was for all English teachers in Covasna County. After the students performed, several teachers came up and asked me for more information about incorporating drama into their class room, which is totally awesome. I'm going to send them the manual I've been working out of. I'm really proud of and impressed by the students. It was their day off from school, as a teacher conference day, but they were still excited and happy to show up and perform in front of dozens of teachers. I lucked out by having great students to work with and unexpectedly having access to every English teacher in Covasna County.
Funny how things work out sometimes.
What's up: right now.
It's sunny and warm outside and I already took a jog and a walk today. I think I'll read for a while and bake some cookies. Not to mention snack on some Mini Eggs. Which I received in a package. From my awesome mom and sister.
Lucky, lucky.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Decisions
I have been thinking this entire time that I would be coming home for a visit around Easter to see friends and family and just take a break from this life. And stock up on Mini Eggs. I thought that way up until a few weeks ago, when the hour came to plan it and set the dates and buy the tickets. I realized that I felt no pressing need to go home and, actually, did not really want to. And when I say I did not want to, I mean that I did not want to say goodbye all over again. Once was tough enough. I'm doing ok here, I miss people but it's manageable and I'm used to it now, especially with these modern day contraptions of skype and web cams and blogs. If I come home, it might mess up this pattern of ok and make me realize just how badly I miss everyone and everything Nevada. Plus, it's stinking expensive and I would like to do a little bit of traveling around this region while I'm here. So, instead of coming home for a visit, I'm going to Greece. Greece! Wow. I balance out not experiencing the joy of seeing all my lovely friends and family and familiarity with seeing the cradle of modern civilization. A reasonable trade? We shall see.
In other news, I have quarantined myself to my site, Sfantu Gheorghe, for the past month and I actually have no plans of staying a night anywhere else until our mid-service training, which goes from April 6th-9th. The next day (the 10th) I will leave with my pals Susie and Megan for Greece. Greece! Wow. We shall return on the 16th. I decided to stay an entire month at site for a few reasons:
1. I wasn't getting enough rest on the weekends by traveling to see friends and not sleeping in my own bed and was turning into a creepy zombie lady who couldn't think or speak clearly (not that things have improved that much...)
2. By working all week, being busy in the evenings and spending the weekends in other cities, I wasn't making any good friendships. I don't think I'll ever feel as close to the locals as I do to some of the volunteers, but I should certainly give it a try. During this month of self-quarantine, my landlord invited me to an opera in Brasov, I've quasi-hosted a baby shower, a friend invited me to Saturday tea at her house, another friend is teaching me how to paint eggs and I was invited to attend a couple of church services. These were all just one day events and don't really add up to a whole lot, but if I hadn't been here on the weekends, they wouldn't have happened. On the other hand, I know I'm missing out on happy fun times with my volunteer friends, but I already feel like I have a good bond with them. It's time to focus on the local side of things.
3. Traveling is expensive.
4. Stuff has picked up a bit and I could easily work all weekend long on projects now (not that I do (at all)) and I feel like I need a bit more down time on the weekends, while I used to have more down time during the week. I really am a lazy person at heart.
I am both sad and relieved that I won't be home next month. Sad to not see everyone again and relieved to not have to go through the farewell process once more. I said this a long time ago, but it's still true. I miss you. Come visit.
In other news, I have quarantined myself to my site, Sfantu Gheorghe, for the past month and I actually have no plans of staying a night anywhere else until our mid-service training, which goes from April 6th-9th. The next day (the 10th) I will leave with my pals Susie and Megan for Greece. Greece! Wow. We shall return on the 16th. I decided to stay an entire month at site for a few reasons:
1. I wasn't getting enough rest on the weekends by traveling to see friends and not sleeping in my own bed and was turning into a creepy zombie lady who couldn't think or speak clearly (not that things have improved that much...)
2. By working all week, being busy in the evenings and spending the weekends in other cities, I wasn't making any good friendships. I don't think I'll ever feel as close to the locals as I do to some of the volunteers, but I should certainly give it a try. During this month of self-quarantine, my landlord invited me to an opera in Brasov, I've quasi-hosted a baby shower, a friend invited me to Saturday tea at her house, another friend is teaching me how to paint eggs and I was invited to attend a couple of church services. These were all just one day events and don't really add up to a whole lot, but if I hadn't been here on the weekends, they wouldn't have happened. On the other hand, I know I'm missing out on happy fun times with my volunteer friends, but I already feel like I have a good bond with them. It's time to focus on the local side of things.
3. Traveling is expensive.
4. Stuff has picked up a bit and I could easily work all weekend long on projects now (not that I do (at all)) and I feel like I need a bit more down time on the weekends, while I used to have more down time during the week. I really am a lazy person at heart.
I am both sad and relieved that I won't be home next month. Sad to not see everyone again and relieved to not have to go through the farewell process once more. I said this a long time ago, but it's still true. I miss you. Come visit.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
A quiet person's escape
I miss my car for three reasons.
1. Ease of travel
2. The ability to listen to loud music without headphones or pestering the neighbors
3. 80 miles an hour on the freeway, putting every ounce of extra energy into the loudest, widest scream possible and not a single person knows
relief.
1. Ease of travel
2. The ability to listen to loud music without headphones or pestering the neighbors
3. 80 miles an hour on the freeway, putting every ounce of extra energy into the loudest, widest scream possible and not a single person knows
relief.
Friday, March 6, 2009
The Driver and The Witness
I heard a man get run over by a van on Tuesday, after the drama club. I would have seen it if I hadn't been turned towards one of the drama kids, asking her some stupid question about the weekend, as she watched the old man in the cross walk fall beneath the tires. A dull thud-thud. Like speed bumps. As simple sounding as a car going over speed bumps. One thing I have not been able to get used to is the reckless way the majority here drives. I no longer mind if you don't smile at me on the street or make room for me to easily pass on the sidewalk. I don't care if you push in front of me in line or give me chewing gum instead of correct change. But, for the love of anything, slow down. After it happened, the man immediately started trying to get up, looking embarrassed and in the way. Like it was his fault. He rolled from left to right, trying to figure out which side he could easily get up on. A small crowd had formed, including the driver of the van, and within a few minutes the man was standing and, very very slowly, moving towards the sidewalk. His leg was obviously broken. One of the kids I was with had already dialed the police (112 here, not 911) and soon enough, sirens and swirling lights were flooding the area. Things were going to be ok. Now, a few days after it happened, I like to think of the old man sitting in a warm bed with a fresh cast around his shin and a relieved family doting over him. Vanilla ice cream speckling his smiling chin and his favorite movie playing in the background. At the same time, somewhere in the city, at least two people are hearing a thud-thud in their dreams, disturbing their sleep and disrupting their thoughts.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Searching...
Admittedly, being placed in a city where two languages are commonly spoken has had it's frustrating moments. I know I've talked about it before, but it's one of those things that comes up daily - the question of which language to address someone in, the panic of not understanding a word of what a stranger on the street is obviously addressing to me, the fear of disappointing colleagues for focusing on one language over another, and the sorrow of being surrounded by good friends who are deep in a conversation that I can not partake in nor remotely understand due to my Hungarian inadequacies. As time goes by, however, I'm discovering that the divide running through my city reaches much deeper than just language. It involves culture, history, religion, food, everything. Of course, growing up so close to each other, there are definite similarities between the ethnic Hungarians and the Romanians, but in so many ways the two groups lead separate lives filled with different truths and who is to know which truths are more accurate. While eating dinner with a Hungarian family, I am told stories about how this land was originally theirs, how Romanians were brought into the region during communism to dilute the Hungarian potency and their collective power. How the teachers they hired were forced to teach lies disguised as history, further decreasing the Hungarian legacy. The next day I have Romanian tutoring and am told about how the Hungarians who ended up here were merely passing through, hundreds of years ago, and a few groups decided to stay, claiming stake to a land they had no right to and no connection with, prying it from hardworking Romanian hands. I'm sure I could look up what is considered the real history in some book out there, but I've always been under the impression that the best way to learn history is to hear it from the people whose ancestors actually lived through it. Even if I read it in a book, it would be the author's version of history and no matter how unbiased a person tries to be when looking at a situation, there is no way to erase themselves completely from their research. Who knows how many different histories exist for this region, let alone Europe, let alone the world. When you really think about it, it's difficult to believe anything, and easier to believe everything. It all happened, according to someone, and when you're an outsider talking to that someone, just listen to them and agree. Take in all the different histories possible and maybe one day you'll be able to put some pieces together and make something of it.
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