Pick a card, any card

Thursday seems to be the blog day as of late.

There's a wonderful craft shop here that I go to at least once a month to buy a little hand-made trinket or a gift to send home. There are three reasons why I love this craft shop dearly: 1) the stock is mostly made up of the works created by local artisans from the Sfantu Gheorghe region, 2) the shopkeeper is just about the nicest little old lady I've ever met, and 3) it's magical. Yes, magical. From the moment I open the door and walk inside, Romanian suddenly decides to make sense and for some mystical reason, I can actually understand about 75% of what the sweet little shopkeeper says. And if that's not enough, I am miraculously able to say things (very simple things) in Romanian that are comprehensible, at least to my little older lady friend, even if it does sometimes take a couple of tries. I don't even know her name, or the name of the store for that matter, but she is one of those ladies and it is one of those places that I know will tug on the heart strings five years from now, even if I were to leave tomorrow. I know this because thinking about it right now, thinking about not having the option to go buy a scarf that was knitted by a little local bunica, or not being able to go practice my lousy Romanian with someone whose personality makes me smile for the rest of the day, already does tug on the heart strings. There's something she always says to me as I'm leaving the shop, which I never really understood until today. It means something along the lines of "thank you for supporting our community". Well, that's why I'm here, but I think the shop and its keeper do far more to support me than I do to support them. Buying stuff is easy, even on a volunteer's budget, but making an outsider feel welcome and comfortable? That takes far more skill. Maybe it even takes a little magic.

And all is good

I know my posts on here have been fairly down lately, and I apologize for that. I'm not providing a very accurate image of my life here right now because the majority of it is surprisingly nice, knock on wood. I think part of the sorrow that's been coming out is due to the fact that I only update at night, when I am feeling my lowest. During the day, I am as happy as a clam, but after about 8pm on evenings when not much is going on, I get down and all I want to do is type out my blues. I've actually been resisting the urge lately to jump on here every time I'm feeling down because I don't want to give everyone the impression that my life here is bleak and difficult, but I don't have many other means of relief. It's getting too cold to jog, I can't find a piano to play for the life of me, I'm tired of turning plastic bottles into flowers and spiders, I am unable for some reason to focus on any book, and I don't want to live a life of pestering people on gmail chat. So I type.

On Tuesday, I handed out the roles for the Christmas skit the drama club is going to put on. Last week I had only 11 people show up, this week I had 15...it's hard to prepare a play when the participants vary so much, but everyone who was there this Tuesday said they were dedicated, so we'll see. Actually, I need to write two more scenes so everyone will be able to have at least two parts. They're surprisingly, wonderfully into it and I bless the day that I mentioned my (minimal) drama experience to my tutor. This week was particularly fun when I put them into groups of 4, gave them each a line (four lines for the whole scene) and then asked them to perform the scene without actually saying the words, so they had to pantomime. It was great to see what they came up with, clever kids that they are.

Another fun moment happened when Dan, a very kind man at my agency who has been coming to the English hour, proudly held up his pencil and said "This is my chair!" after the this/that these/those lesson. He's never had English classes before, while most of the others have, and he's generally pretty quiet in class, but he tries. He was so proud and sure of himself, it broke my heart to tell him the truth. "Sorry, Dan. That is a pencil, not a chair. But it is yours." "Oh...this is my PENCIL!" he then points at his chair "this is my CHAIR!" he says with a smile as he lightly punches the air in victory. I love people.

just out of reach

I don't like my last post. It's a Debby of a downer, but that happens once in a while.

My tea arrives. Finally. Something to focus on. I pull it in towards me, scoop up some honey from the little pot, then watch it slowly swirl down into my drink, forming a little layer on the bottom of the mug. A treat for later. There are three other people at the table with me and they are deep in conversation. Their faces light up with humor at something said, they lean forward, backs stretching in towards the speaker as a confidential detail is quietly described. Hands fly through the air to provide additional explanation, air is sharply inhaled as they gasp at something too bizarre to believe. Laughter erupts and faces turn red as they try not to laugh too loud, suddenly embarrassed. A happy silence follows, with little sighs of comfort and memory. Everyone is reflecting on something, it seems. Something funny from the past, a funny person they once knew, an embarrassing night out on the town, perhaps, when a few too many tsuicas were consumed. I can only imagine. One of them glances at me and hesitates; I know what's coming. "Uh, it was a joke", he says in English and then proceeds to explain the joke to me, in English. It takes about twenty seconds to tell me the five minute ordeal I had just witnessed. The joke ends abruptly and the speaker looks at me expectantly, waiting for me to get it. It's not funny. To me, it's not funny, but I proceed to make the sounds and gestures that resemble laughter and everyone politely joins in. It goes on far too long, I think, this fake laughter, but we all fear what we know will follow. Slowly, silence ensues. It's not the satisfied silence from before, instead it's a silence endured with sideways glances, oddly stretched smiles, and tangible attempts at resuming some sort of conversation. I take a sip of tea, trying to maintain a smile. My hand shakes slightly, tea drips on my shirt, it’s not sweet enough. I take a napkin from the table and busily dab at the spot on my shirt and as I dab away for what feels like decades, someone discovers a suitable topic and gratefully breaks the tension. I resume my role of the clueless observer, wishing deeply that I could understand, and wishing that the honey was not now on the other end of the table, just out of reach.

Tomorrow

The future always appears brighter than the present (I seem to be stuck in the tenses lately, my apologies). It's a curse of optimism and an inability to accept the possibility that things could get worse. When looking at the future, you often assume that it will be better than today and you've been taught to think like this since elementary school. Teachers pep you up with phrases like "when you go to college", "when you get married", "when you have your own house", not with phrases like "when you're smoking a pack a day", "when you get divorced", "when you're staring at your reflection in disgust", giving you a false sense of future brightness and refusing to admit that parts of your life could potentially suck. You grow up envisioning your adult self as being shrouded in happiness, surrounded by opportunities, thinking things are going to be great. And then you get there and you realize, though it's not awful, life just isn't the shiny little nugget of wonderment they had made it out to be. It's disappointing. Life is disappointing.

Or is it me? Am I doing this right or am I failing at making this little nugget shine?

Tomorrow I'm going to wake up, turn on the computer, and check the results. But no matter how great either candidate may seem, I'm not going to expect much. I'm learning.

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.