Signs

The actual, current, for real time

So I'm sitting here, in the Peace Corps office, actually ON THE INTERNET. It's a fantastic feeling.

It's been over three weeks since I've read my emails. You may understand my pain, you may comprehend what I'm going through, but do you Recognize?

I'm supposed to be figuring out who I'm supposed to be living with, but I'm fairly sure I've done that already. I've seen the signs, and it's opened up my mind.

Usually, I don't believe in signs. But this is too good to be true.

I'm taking to the first family to meet them, and guess what trolleybus they live off of? The 22. That's right folks, the 22, the same number of bus that I have lived off of for, oh, seven years in my beloved Chicago? Hell, all I did was move up and down Clark Street. The family has had 4 volunteers before - it's a grandma, a mom and a 10 year old daughter who has had a volunteer in her house for pretty much her entire life. And, get this my friends, she's a Disney Princess girl. The second Sign. Because my sister's entire family is obsessed with Disney in the biggest of ways. He favorite princess is Jasmine, by the way.

They speak slowly, because they know I'm learning, they will let me use the internet, have visitors, and they're about five minutes from my work and ten minutes from everything else. Le Sigh. Right next to a 24 hour store, a Greek restaurant, a pizza bar. I'm in heaven. Delighted.

Even if it does look, oh so very slightly, like Cabrini.

Looks can be very deceiving here, oh yes they can. Everything is safe as can be, Peace Corps certified. But buildings are never what they seem on the outside.

Oh, guess what? I live right by this AMAZING outdoor botanical garden.

Can you tell I'm excited? Donna, the little girl, is the head of her class. And she likes the Wayan Brothers. We will get along just fine.

One thing: trolleybuses cost .10 cents per ride, and good god can they get crowded. I mean like, rush hour crowded all the time.

PT is really good where I live too, runs really late. And cabs are prolific - I can get anywhere in the city for a few dollars.

Love it.

I'm pretty happy to be a first city kind of girl. I think things are going to work out just fine.

A First City Second City Type of Girl

April 8th.

Remember back in the day when I said I was so a second city kind of girl?
Turns out I was so wrong.
I'm such a first city kind of girl.
Or at least Peace Corps thinks so.
Chişanău, the capital city, is where I'll be living for the next two years.

This is kind of a big deal. And it comes with a lot of responsibility. If I'm reading my Romanian correctly, I'm going to be working for an umbrella organization that introduces best practice methods and does trainings all around Moldova. Thus, I will see all of Moldova despite being in the capital.

Delightful.

Typing in Romanian

I know nothing about what is happening in the world. Nothing. And that, somewhat, drives me crazy.

You know, if google would just expand already, I could just text them for the news but no, Moldova isn't covered under their net.

Neither is, you know, Alaska, so I guess I shouldn't bitch.

Every once in awhile I'll see flashes from my Russian news of things from America - was that a tornado in Atlanta? A cyclone in Oregon?? A crystal meth fire in Pennsylvania? What the frack?

And yet I have no way of finding out these details because I am completely cut off from the world. Completely. I haven't been on the internet in almost three weeks. People who know me will recognize how drastic a seperation this is. I have anxiety.

I have, however, discovered how to change my computer to think it's a romanian computer, and thus, have romanian characters. Like Ó and ăand the all important ț

This, my friends, is a breakthrough. For serial. Particularly as I have to do things like, oh I don't know, translate my resume into romanian.

Fuarte dificil. Very difficult. For reals. I have actually stopped the process, as I have decided it makes no sense until I find out where I'm placed. Which is tomorrow, by the way. Which makes no difference to you because, hey, you won't read this until way after that fact. But whatevs. I am preparing myself for the worse. Because it happens.

Notas pe Zuia de Nastere (Notes on a Birthday)

2 April 2008 - 5 April 2008
Notes on a Birthday
(notas pe ziua de nastere)

I've been sick for the past, oh, seven days really?
It was a slow burn.

I'm sure walking home, in the rain (a 40 minute walk) when the temp had dropped a good 20 degrees didn't help me get over anything.

I really need to buy an umbrella. And perhaps reconcile myself to wearing a heavy coat thru the month of april.... just in case.

Crappy way to spend your birthday, sleeping in bed with the flu.

Although, I did get to watch half a season of House, the movie Pride and Prejudice and the BBC version of P&P (fast-forwarded to the good parts, obviously), so maybe all in all, it wasn't all that bad. I got to skip school. And contemplate a Jane Austen drinking game.

Plus, my host family bought me a lovely towel and lancome perfume. Perfume is what you get girls for their birthday, so it's appropriate.

I've been thinking about language lately; the funny aspects of it, how i'm pretty good at writing it, but can't understand a damn thing when people talk to me.

I've always had trouble hearing, so maybe this shouldn't be a surprise, but it's still pretty sucky.
But language can be pretty funny. I've already detailed the whole "crap" thing. But there's some other funny similarities in sounds that the audience at home might find amusing. De Example:

Eu Fac
pronounced "yo f*ck"
it actually means "I do" or "I make"

Super giggle worthy. And then there's:
betch
pronounced, obviously, "b*tch"

it means cellar. not so exciting there.

I think I've mentioned
hynie
it means clothes

and there is an
aşpronounced ass, but it comes with dori.

which means I wish.

And thus ends the similarities that I have found, thus far. Except it doesn't, it's just all the one's I can remember at the moment.

On my birthday I received about a million and a half text messages from those of you who took advantage of orange.md, and I just want to thank you. It made my sad day a whole lot better, and I so didn't mind getting woke up every few minutes for a new one. It made me miss all of you so much. I LOVE getting those messages, and it's totally free for me to get them so please, feel free to send me any old thing.

(As, per instance, wth happened in Pennsylvania and Oregon? Both places were on the news here, but I couldn't understand what was being said, but it looked pretty bad. Kind of like when Atlanta had a freaking tornado in the middle of the city, and it took me a week to find out.)

In about four weeks, I'm going to be shipped off to my actual site (announcement date: 8 April 2008) and if anybody is interested i'm seriously lacking in books and/or burned movies/tv shows. I have now read all the books I've brought with me (some twice - yes, I suck) and watched the Firefly series 2 times (hey, that's only 28 episodes, total, ok, because the show was cancelled after 14 episodes?).


Address on the side of the blog ------------------------>


I'll read whatever you send me. Christ, I'm seriously considering War and Peace because I heard it mentions Chisanau. And I'd probably tear through it in like, a minute and a half.
Today is the last day of that three day stretch, and at the moment, I'm looking at the final hour of the 5th. Happy Birthday Maggie.

Today was one of those good days. My fellow P-town folk took me out to dinner. To go to dinner, we had to hike to the restaurant outside of town. Which was, like, seriously out of town. About a kilometer out of town and thus, about a kilometer and a half away from my house (so about a mile maybe?). This was a "tres expensive" restaurant by Moldovan terms. Four bottles of wine and couple courses later, we all ended up pinching in about $25. Or, you know, I would have pitched in, had they let me. They were very adament about not letting me pay because it was my birthday. Four days ago. It was so sweet.

Curt ending here.

Yay Boys!

31 March 2008

The masculine plural form in Romanian is "ei" pronounced "yay." I had a hell of a time remembering how to pronounce this, before I finally made the connection:
Yay, Boys!

The girl form, in case you're curious, is ele, pronounced "yelley" which, for some reason, I remember because of Melleficent from Sleeping beauty. Don't ask.

My comments about our being told not to talk to "ei", to the boys, has provoked some interesting responses. The most common among them being:
are you living in a Muslim country?

The answer to that is decidedly no, and is a response I find pretty amusing. I live in an Eastern Orthodox country. The pregnant pauses I get from that, or the "so?" that I've gotten from that, are also pretty amusing. Maybe a little scary.

People who are of the Eastern Orthodox religion are christian. They encompass the greeks, russians, christians living in turkey...

The Great Schism (one of) occurred in the 11th Century, during the 4th Great Crusade (one in which the Western Christians kind of sacked their Eastern Christian Counterparts in the name of God - needless to say, relations suffered). Please understand that this is a *vast* understatement of the actuality.

Now, as to the looking at men question...

the way I look at it, looking at men in Moldova is a lot like eating the fish in Moldova. Or like eating Tuna in the states. You never know what you're going to get.

You could be ordering a nice piece of Carp, or Crap, as it is called here. Or you could be ordering a fine fillet of mercury-filled poisonous Crap. Who is to know?

With the men here, if you smile at them, look them in the eye, perhaps they could just smile back, say hi. Or perhaps, they could take the smile as an invitation and start to follow you, bug you, grab you, or just generally give you crap. There's always the slight possibility it could become more dangerous than that.

The thing of it, folks, this is a fairly generic thing, and it's certainly not a Moldovan thing. We in America are fairly unusual in that we're all smiley and look people in the eye and whatnot.

This is something that I have personally experienced in Mexico, Peru, France, Italy, Spain... a few times in England and if I'm honest, more than a few times in the States. Machismo is machismo everywhere, and I've made no secret of my ever-present intimidation of men in packs.

The fact that American girls, by virtue of our exported Britney Spears culture, are seen as easy (and I do mean easy) targets, doesn't help.

For those of you who haven't seen it, google "american girl in Italy." There's a photograph (hanging up in Calo's restaurant) that most of you will have seen before, but that I think might help give a visual example of what's going on.

Sorocca

Friday, 28 March 2008

I have a lot to write about.

Yes yes, I recognize that fact.

Gypsy Kings, Purim celebrations at 600 year old synagogues, etc.

I'm not going to lie to you folks, keeping up writing - this blog, emails, letters - is pretty hard. I think "oh, i so have to write about this" while things are happening, and then when I get home I fall asleep.

Last night I fell asleep at 8pm.

Granted, I did have a very big day today.

Today I had class a half hour early so that we could practice extra for our very first language assessment, and then promptly went to a meeting with the Mayor of Peresecina, then promptly went to a meeting with the PTA of the local kindergarten which, apparently, had been held the day before. They had moved the date without telling us.

Alas.

Ozi lung. That means long day.

Tomorrow, we have class bright and early, followed by a cross-cultural session. Then, I was hoping to have a little cross cultural session of my own - I wanted to go into Magdestesti and have a little karaoke bar time with my fellow PSTers. This would require, however, a probable stay over at a friend's house, something which I have just found out is forbidden, apparently, despite the fact that Magdestesti is less than 10 minutes away and I turn 28 years old in, oh, 5 days.

Grrr.

So, I guess that means the chances of me going out tomorrow night are slim, unless I break the rules, which admittedly I'm tempted to do, but which I probably won't do because, you know, there's a time and place for everything, and two weeks before placement is not the time to illustrate rebellious behavior.

Like I'd be rebellious.

The test went okay, in case anyone was wondering. I have issues with feminine/masculine agreements, which should shock no one, but my vocal rocks. I am a flashcard queen.

English, in many ways, rulez! The lack of assigned gender pronouns make it, in my really unimportant opinion, a superior language.

Some philosophical linguists think that it's best that english is becoming the dominant language on the planet because it lacks these gender assignments - that having masculine/feminine pronouns encourages a male dominant society.

As Kurt Vonnegut would say, "And so it goes."

Speaking of authors, I heard Arthur C Clark died... or rather, I've gathered that because I saw his name with a (date - 2008) underneath it. Tres sad. Or in Romaneste, Este triste.

Okay, so Soroca, last weekend....

As I mentioned, there's a citadel, very old. See pictures. Peter the Great visited quite a few times. The citadel lies on the banks of the Pruit river, across from Ukraine.

Moldova is alternately called a fault line, or a hinge, of Europe and Asia, and this was a truism back 1000 years ago as well, even in the days of Christopher Columbus who, in his quest for money to seek the Indies, asked the famed Moldovan King Stefan Cel Mare for funding. Stefan turned him down, no doubt for various and sundry reasons but also because he was busy defending his territory from the devils across the Pruit river.

The (current) Citadel of Soroca was built by Stefan's dad, and apparently was haute de riguer for fortifications at the time.

Also in Soroca? A river walk and a floating bridge that serves as customs between Moldova and Ukraine. And, in Soroca? The "Gypsy Hill."

The gypsies in Soroca are unique in Moldova in that the gypsies have settled down. And how.
They've taken over this hill, and it's become a competition amongst them to see who can build the biggest, coolest, most unique houses. Don't you worry, I will post pictures.

I have seen the palace of the Gypsy King, and danced with the Gypsy Prince.

And if I had more energy, perhaps I'd attempt to continue with the lyricism of the above statement. Alas.

In Soroca, two gypsy families made a decision that staying in one place rather than roaming was a better way to live. Other families followed, and now they have are a determined presence.
How unusual this is, I'm not really sure, but it seems to be highly unusual for Moldova.

Apparently Gypsies are highly undercounted in all EU countries (of which Moldova is not one) because places like Romania and Bulgaria didn't want to highlight their "problem" populations. Also, you know, hard to count people that roam as a lifestyle.

Soroca is very diverse - Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, Gypsies and Moldovans, as well as some others. We also got to see an extremely old synagogue, and learn something of the Jewish story in Moldova, which is, quite frankly, tragic.

I almost felt bad that, on Purim, a day of celebration, this community had to detail the horrors that their ancestors had suffered.

I say ancestors, but really, for some it was their grandparents, or parents.

And I say community, but there's only 50 native-born Jews in Soroca at this time, down from a community of tens of thousands.

Moldova had an extremely large community of Jews in general... but then the Russians came and took over in the early 20th century and pogroms became more and more common.

During WWII, Moldova was a battleground. Russia was driven out by the Romanian army, who was allied with Germany. The Moldavans welcomed the Romanians, because for decades Romania and Moldova were one nation. Alas, for the Jews, the coming of the Romanian army was for many a death sentence. They were marched across the country with no fixed destination because the death camps had yet to be built, and made to dig ditches that were to be the graves of anyone who fell as they went along.

When the Soviets swept back in and drove the Romanians out, the focus on Jews (and gypies, no doubt) was alleviated, but Stalin deported a mass of people from Moldova, anyone who a) had money b) had land c) or who might be a political problem.

Many people, including Jews, fell into this category.

The story of these deportations are pretty crazy, and I know they happened all over the USSR. I guess, on a cursory level I heard and read about them, but the stories are almost as bad or just as bad as many of the holocaust stories that you hear, but nowhere near as publicized.

So. Soroca. City of Sisters. Or maybe of the Sun. Nobody really knows, but I'm a big fan of this little city of 30,000 (20,000 more likely, when taking into consideration the extreme labor drain that Moldova experiences).

Eventually, eventually, I will post pictures. Including those of the gypsy hill, which were just freaking awesome.

Minor correction

Oh the stories I have to tell.

Today was a very cool day.

First though, I feel like I should clarify something. I've finally been able to talk to some people, and it seems that this blog has been slightly misrepresenting.

I'm not unhappy. I'm sorry if I made it seem that way. I'm pretty happy. Sometimes i'm not really sure that's the right word for it, though. Excited maybe.

I do, however, sometimes feel slightly bi-polar.

There are times when I feel really excited and contented and think things are going really well. And then the next moment I could be really upset because I've frozen up when someone has asked me the most basic of questions, and I've been in class for six days straight and I'm tired and really don't want to get up in the morning...

But more often than not, I feel excited. There's a lot of possibility at the moment, and I'm working really hard to make the most of it.

So.

I actually am not going to have time to tell the stories of the super cool day I had. I'm sorry, I'm such a tease. It had to do with a 600 year old fortress, 650 steps, 3 different moldovan dances and seeing Ukraine... and you'll just have to wait for it, because that's it for now....

But the above are pictures of said fortress, to get you excited about it.

Pictures!

The above is from Chisanau, the capital city of Moldova. The statue is of Stefan Cel Mare (Stephan the Large, or the Great) who is kind of the greatest hero of the country.

You can see the little Arc de Triumph.

The Church is probably the most famous site in the country.







The above pictures are of Peresecina, my village.

Peresecina means two things: it means dried pears in Romanian, because it has a great agricultural past.... and it means crossroads in the slavic tradition because its at the crossroads of many major roads. It has about 8,200 people.

Stream

Friday

There was a reason I thought I should write this blog post, but for the life of me, I can't remember what it is.

But updates are important right? So what, I wonder, should I write about?

Well, off the top of my head, I got a cell phone. My integration into Moldovan society is somewhat more complete, and hey, if anyone at home wants to call me, it's free for me! I would recommend buying a calling card or something, and then dialing the following number:

011 373 69 750462


I can get text messages, too! Directions for free web text:

Go to www.orange.md

click on the box on the right hand side with a picture of an envelope, that says Orange Text and „expediaza web sms” (send web sms)

It will take you to another web page that says Web SMS at the top. Follow the directions:

De la—type in your name instead of „websms”
Catre—leave the opening as +37369 and then type in 750462 (the rest of Rian’s number)
Mesajul—type your message
Introduceti—type the 5-digit code that you see in the blank box.
Click „trimite sms” to send your text.

It's free for me to send you texts, so if you remind me of your phone numbers, I will totally holler at you once in a while.

It would be great if you send me your phone number IN A TEXT MESSAGE, because you know how often it is that I get to the internet. I'm not saying, i'm just saying.



This Saturday it will be one month since I left home, and three weeks since I've been at my home stay, which means I am no longer on "lock down." This is very important, because it means that I am, basically, free to travel about the country. Which means I can go to Chisanau or wherever, whenever, and use the internet to my hearts content.

Le sigh.

Still, with the pace that we're at, don't expect that drastic of a change.

My phone, by the way, has a flashlight at the top. I would like to recognize Nokia for their brilliance in this design, because there's been a few people who have probably thought me intoxicated because I have trouble walking home on twisty, unpaved streets without the benefit of, oh, street lights or really, strong houselights of any kind.

The lack of light pollution does make the stars something else though. I can count on one hand the number of airplanes I've seen since I've been here, but I've seen numerous satellites flying across the sky. The closest thing I've seen to this was in... oh Attila, was it in Montana that we saw that falling star?

It is, by the way, 8pm here. Thus, 1pm central time. A 7 hour difference, in case anyone was wondering, or thinking of calling me.

I'm actually already in bed, if I want to be honest with everyone. I'm freaking tired, and I've memorized a craduca load of words in the past two hours.

My host dad calls me the computer.

I may not be able to speak the language, but I can sure point to things and say: porumb! That means corn. You pronounce the b, so it's fun to say.

Some of my friends are living in Porumbeni right now, which literally means Corntown. I wonder how old their town is, and how they got their name. Obviously, corn is a New World vegetable, but I suppose it could have immigrated here any time during the 1600s. After all, the tomato certainly did get co-opted by the Italians.

Did you know that many Early Americans considered tomatoes a dangerous fruit? Or vegetable, whatever you want to call it? They thought it drove people mad, or made them lovesick - which is kind of the same thing if you think about it.

There is someone in my Peace Corps training group who is driving me crazy, and I don't know what to do about it. We see each other waaaaay too often, and it's too early to be this annoyed with someone. I've been unable to figure how to peacefully resolve this potential conflict.

I think my language instructor is pregnant. I have no obvious reason for this suspicion, and I've told no one of my thoughts. But I want to make the claim in public, so in case I'm right I can point to it and go HA! I am psychic!

of course, in case I'm wrong, I can always edit this post. Ah, blogging.

Well now, I've just spent 20 minutes doing stream of consciousness thought, not sure how it will fly. I do have a lot on my mind . I've dreamt of kissing three different guys in the past few days, and I'm really curious as to what's going on with that. I also have visions of verb conjugations dancing in my head. I think I prefer the sugar plum fairies.

Speaking of the 5:07 club....

TUESDAY, LATER

(for those of you not "in the know," a few friends and I would meet up on Fridays after work at the marvelous and wondrous Konak's Bar in Andersonville, Chicago on Clark Street (hello, Ozgur!). It's called the 5:07 club because we would try to see who could get there as close to 5:07 pm as possible. I would often win because I worked at a Jewish social justice agency and thus, got off early on fridays, but most of the others worked in the Uptown Hood and got there fast as well. Mr Tom Walsh, the man who has taken my position as Advocacy Director at JCUA, is the convener of the 5:07 club).

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the EXTREME amount of organizing talk and training that's being thrown at me lately. Ah, SWOT analysis. Oh, participatory assessment. Of course, 1 on 1's and House meetings.

Shannon, my god, you would laugh silly at me.

These are tools utilized by the organizing community and apparently Peace Corps members.

Many aspects of this stuff I frankly .... well, I just.... I haven't been all that fond of, really. Sometimes I'd rather do it myself.

Oh, that is a huuuuuuuge no no here.

So Shannon, Tom, ONE people at large, it may amuse you to know that I am going to become a good organizer. Maybe, Possibly.

Maybe I'll like it more in Romanian?

One more thing - Ms. Shannon, the lovely and amazingly talented woman currently in school for interior design, etc., and I had a running debate on color schemes.

I believed that orange and purple were two colors that worked well together.

She strongly disagreed.

Moldovans... agree with me. It's a scheme I see used frequently. I open it up to the group for comment, and will try to take pictures to illustrate the frumousa (beauty).