Mayors and Road Works

It's mass mayoral election time. On June 5th, every township in the country will elect a new mayor. This has almost the same amount of coverage in the capital as a presidential race. Same poster expenditure. Same rhetoric. Except the Commy party has nicked off with an advertising scheme last used by one of the liberal parties in the last presidential race.

It's a brilliant scheme. Buy half the billboards and three months out, make statements like: "want better roads" or "we want more doing and less talking." Then, one month from election day, put up the answer to such demands: A headshot of the candidate saying "I'll make better roads" or "I do, I don't talk."

Brilliant. And thought of by a liberal. So, the communist party likes them enough to steal their ideas, and tact. I don't know enough about the new seeming approach though, to say whether or not this represents real change in the party (which is clearly disliked by a good deal of the voting public) or if it's just a glossy sheen to keep up with the competitors.

But that's the capital. Out here in the sticks we have a slightly more direct approach. There are 6 contenders for the seat of mayor here. One saw fit not to promise roads, but to buy enough tons of sandy gravel to fill in the pot holes of the 10 main offshoot roads from the one tarmac road in town. Out of his own pocket.

So, questions raised by me: Why now do we need to elect you? Mighty purse makes mighty right? Why don't we pay in-town road taxes? Will we now, to reimburse you be you elected? Why push this gravelly sand over the whole road--rises as well as troughs--and if you can afford this, could you possibly afford a heavy roller to pack it? I mean, the pot holes are already unfilling out again!

I took pictures. One day I'll do the right thing and attach pictures to blogs. Once I get a better thinking about it system in place in my head and my habits.

Sidenote: Habits are amazing things. My life in Moldova improved ten fold as soon as I consciously made up some habits. At least now one of them does not have to be clean shoes twice a day. Though, that may be half due to the gorgeous May weather we are experiencing as much as to the road works.

Bug PreEmptive

Honing killing skills. Buying killing stuffs.

First fly defeated for the season by thwacking it with a beougeois tea catalogue out of the air so hard that all the dust on my lamp was displaced into my hair and it pinged (literally made a ping sound) off Guitar’s G string! Yes. I still got it.

Also, squashed the season’s first termite. Haven’t heard too many munching. Maria says it’s because it hasn’t rained too much this year. I hope she’s right. It rained hard yesterday, and there is still no munching today. If they don’t audibly munch they don’t visually debut. So far so good.

Mica (Small) is sporting the latest in kitten fleas. No worms yet spotted on the cats though.

Found a weird scorpion like bug in the outhouse a couple days ago. It was tiny, singular and I’d never seen one before so I didn’t kill it. I did photograph it though, for anyone who knows about bugs. I’m just not savvy enough to stick up photos on this blog…

I’m not taking chances this summer though. I went today to buy some weapons of mass destruction. Fly paper to hang by my door way just above my bin. Ant retardant chalk (no roach motels for sale in Balatina). Anti Mosquito scent effuse plug in bulb thing. It’s in Russian and Chinese, so these titles are my own, but they are pretty descriptive.

In Chisinau this weekend I will hunt down roach motels and citronella candles for the balcony. We still have some knock off Raid from last summer. I am armed. Enter my citadel if ye dare.

Desire for two MAs: Public Policy and Philology

In my continuing goal to be a Renaissance Woman I have come up against some problems. First and foremost is my inability to do math. Ever. Even my basic grant writing addition needs proof reading. I don’t think teaching Vlada how to add counts. Do puns outweigh math?

However, I think Public Policy is sufficiently different from chalk pastel proficiency and cooking like jazz. It also seems like a genuinely useful thing. No matter how much I love art, I know I am not Oscar Wilde and I just don’t have the cohones to pull an all or nothing dive into becoming a professional writer without some sort of back up.

To boot, I am not, I have found, completely fulfilled by good artistic expression. It’s no bloody wonder kids like Van Gogh and Baudelaire were drunks. They were consumed by something not wholly respected, needed, wanted by humanity.

My sociology 101 professor said it best: “No one calls a sociologist at 2 in the morning with an emergency. No. You call your plumber.”

The fact that me mate n me got his number and called him with some drunken conundrum at 2 in the morning and he loved it—and will always love us for doing so—proves that soft sciences and arts just don’t fuel one of those Marxist Needs of Man. Creation, yes, it fulfills that one. But it does not give a person adequate reason for existing. At least, not if one thinks as much about these things as artists tend to.

So, I looked at my dad and sister and thought, I can be an engineer. Tried. That math thing though. It’ll kick your ass every time. I am a good leader of engineers, but to get to that point you really ought to have been an engineer at some point. Or, be a leader in some other field and shift in.

I’m already in a first hand experience with public policy of a sort. My mother, who, mentally I am more naturally like than Dad and Kelsie, is currently following an MA in Public Policy at American University. She gives me a text book or two every once in a while. She had me Skype into her classroom to meet some of her colleagues. It’s fascinating stuff and the people in it seemed genuinely likable and capable. Like a nice blend of politicians and social workers. A definite plus over my short lived forays into nursing and politics.

Would it be too much like a family legacy to follow so directly? Do I have to re-assess what I think of family businesses?

So, that’s one Masters degree I desire. Others I want are for poetry or something like it, but I have this stubborn scorn for MFA programs. If you are an artist you create art. If you need a teacher to spur you into it, you fail. The only MFA program I’d ever enter is at the New School in NY for the connections it would lend me. However, that is just not bloody likely.

What I could use though, is a Masters in Philology. This is a tool for poets, and would have far fewer smarmy arty types trying to posture as Hemingway or some Indie rocker and his limp dick guitar solos. Both sexy – right?

But I’ll get back to that once I’ve gotten to a certain level. I’m just getting to the mindset where I know I can conquer grad school. If I’d gone straight out of undergrad I’d have failed for sure. If I start now, I’ll fiscally fail for sure. Dreams, they are dreams, these educations. This is what Natalia said. Renata said: “Philology! That’s what my Master’s is in!!”

Computerlessness

Due to a final complication with some inexplicable thing within Alice the Netbook, I am now a lonely lady sans a limb.

Things I do on Computer:

Write to friends. Write for myself. Write for Hai Davai. Edit for Hai Davai. Edit for friends. Submit personal writing to magazines. Submit resumes to potential employers. Track places to entreat for employment. Reassure parents I’m happy and healthy. Be reassured family and friends are happy and healthy. Read poetry, essays, articles, news etc. Half of my reading comes from the web at this books-are-heavy-and-expensive point. Watch movies as I fall asleep (stemming much lonliness). Watch movies as I laminate things (necessary, but tedious and long process). Listen to music. Respond to official things like “Please put my readjustment allowance in my bank account” or “I’d like cash in lieu of a ticket because I will fly home from Athens and not Chisinau”. Order said tickets. Assure my bank I am me and I live in Europe. Look for MA programs.

Life without Computer results in a shuddering stop to all these things but the listening to music (ipod with wall adapting charger) and reading (which suddenly is all I do).

Things I do more without Computer:

Tan with Bunica. Read Faulkner. Obsessively clean my room and office at school. Laundry. Collage. Look for a store that sells ice cube trays (seriously hard). Text. Tan with Bunica.

Writing has all but disappeared from the daily regime. Some weird stream of consciousness drivel comes out in my big notepad, and some observational bullet points get jotted as per norm in my diary, but constructed, well thought out poems, chapters, essays et al. seem to be wholly adapted to the speed at which I type. Or I have adapted my brain to work at the speed of my fingers. I’m not the fastest or most accurate typist, but I am a damn site faster than everyone in my village, and I think average for a Millennial. I learned how to type not in school, but in ICQ at the age of 15. Like secretary boot camp that was. Seventeen conversations at a time… golly.

So, it is sad, but it is like losing a limb. Not like losing a friend. I stopped calling inanimate objects names when I realized it didn’t actually help me with anything. I do however, refer to them as animate objects, just with very Moldovanesque, utilitatian names (our cow is named Cow, our mom cat named Mama, our kitten named Small because she is small) like Computer, Printer, Bed, Guitar. These are extensions of my consciousness now. I believe this is not strange. I believe most people my age do this and don’t realize it. I believe people younger than me will never question this.

When I talk to Maria about it she says, “This is why Moldova will be the best country in the world when the electricity and energy fail.”

I’ll be tanner after the apocalypse at least.

Possible Uke-Guitar Duets

Fellow volunteer with love for pink stripped shirts and train rides had no hobbies outside reading and drinking with friends before coming here. Now she has those plus knitting, teaching and ukulele.

We are brainstorming songs for duets. She just started Uke. I suck at Guitar. We’re probably on a level. She’s going to organize a PC Open Mic.

Excitement.

Furthermore, my friend (and her boyfriend) has an old banjo at his homestead in the states. He says I may have it. My finger picking must be practiced more. I suppose it’s normal that the less I think about it while doing it, the better I am?

Now it’s warm I can play guitar outside. Woo.

Running Nearly Kills Me

In order not to embarrass myself in a bikini or at home when I live with Kelsie and she makes me run everyday, I thought, hm. Better start running again.

It got warm enough to do so. It’s 70 by mid day, but can still see my breath at 6 am. It’s light at 530, but only babas and vacas are on the road. Good times. I started.

I was doing really well too. I can run 3 kilometers in 20 minutes, which is the time I have if I hit tarmac at 6 am and still wanna stretch, do some anaerobic stuff and shower and be to school on time at 8 am. Sweet. Started with 2 little walks. Down to 1 and going further.

However, some things have hit back.

I started napping inexplicably in the afternoons.

I got bronchitis.

WTF.

I try getting healthy and my health fails. I need cough expectorants but can survive until my next trip to Chisinau 6 days from now on Dayquil and ventolin.

Senioritis

New things are supposed to happen to a person in the Peace Corps. That’s its number two schtick. Things about yourself you predict will change: You will become more patient, open minded, speak another language, flexible, world weary.

Under the heading “World Weary” is the sub-heading Senioritis.

Being a naturally buoyant person, with already a good deal of other world weary characteristics (zero patience for bigotry, zenocentrism etc), it actually never occurred to me to become tired of something you are doing at some point before finishing it. While being here I’ve heard the phrases “I’m done”, “I’m done with this”, “I just wanna be done”, “We have 467 days to go!” many times over by many people.

At first I was all “wow what a lame way to look at stuff!”

Then I was like “wow I wanna burrito with Dr. Pepper”

Now I’m all like “Get me the hell out of this school!”

I’m on the record. I am done with teaching. We have a week and a half left. The other teachers barely checked in in the first place. The kids checked out right before Easter. I survived until about a week ago… There is no point in going.

Then Renata stepped up her teaching game: “I need to be more disciplined with them. Just because I like them does not mean they should get all 10s.” Yes!! Yes! Yes!

And the girls came and we made paper crane mobiles (Jessie East, Faith Whitacre… You’d ooze joy)

He Who Is Most Hateful got himself into a Kiddo headlock courtesy of trying to run circles around the classroom yelling, and stepped up HIS game from “Miss Erika Miss Erika Miss Erika” with punches and thrown objects to “You Mother F****** B****” with weird belly dancing moves and even more disturbing chest flashings on his part… And we were doing so well in our personal Cold War.

And… senioritis. No amount of cute girls for an hour every day after school will make up for being sexually harassed by an 11 year old.

I guess there’s balance?

PS. I butt dialed another volunteer earlier this week… I got a response text message: “Your school sounds like a constant riot.”

COS Conference

Though many a comrade has been counting the days and hours to the time we head back to America, it didn’t really occur to me that I had another life looming until the week after Easter when I joined the 40 other kids who flew with me out of Philly two years ago at a uber cute camp ground north of Chisinau.

Close of Service is a big deal. There are, we learned, dozens of forms to sign. Insurance deals to extend. Tests to take. Interviews to have. Reports to write. Tubes in which to poo – yep. Even as we arrived and were bonded together as a cohesive traveling whole by new toilet experiences, so do we leave.

Three days we spent learning about these, and took one of the tests. Two nights we spent drinking a good deal of cheap beer, eating sunflower seeds and soaking up each other personalities, swapping stories of all the crazy things we’d seen, done and had done to us.

Also, it may be the most photographed three days of the whole two year span. Becca lent out her camera to me and Miranda and others to culminate in hundreds of random photos of people enjoying the shit out of some sunshine and trampoline.

I’ve spent most of my two years avoiding most of these people. I was forcibly a hermit, and was suddenly regretful of it. Then I realized, two years ago we were all different people. I didn’t like most of the people who entered with me. Half way through I started hating myself. Then I started liking myself again, and now I love them. I know I can rely on them, all of them, to respond to any phone call or emergency or email or inquiry. By waxing aşa I risk losing all the cynicism modern comedy and life demands, but I don’t care anymore.

Egg Competition and Project Planning Lessons

My school, even after Ren and I won the English Lab grant (Implementation updates as they occur. Installation process starts the second week of June, 2011), is rabid for more projects. Claudia has repeatedly entreated me for help in gaining funds from America once I install myself there. Apparently, Karen promised she would, and then has dropped all contact with Claudia. Seeing as Karen is currently raising a newborn and a full time social worker, I have no doubt she has little time to send money for a couple window treatments Claudia craves.

That said, continuing to replace the windows, doors, heat systems, toilets does seem like a worthy goal for LT Balatina. I won’t argue with that. Where I take issue with Claudia is in the empowerment category. Karen won a grant, Claudia won two grants, I have won a grant. Two of Four are from American money. Claudia’s are from, I believe, the primaria. It’s good, but the interest in the school itself is only from the point of view of showcasing. If, however, the children and other teachers start feeling they are making tangible impacts themselves, they may also take better care of the school.

It’s a special breed of psychotic who destroys the things he makes himself. I know of one here… I may have mentioned him. He-who-makes-Kiddo-think-equally-psychotic-things.

Point being: I thought of a way to kill two drunks with one stone.

The English as a Second Foreign Language classes have no curriculums and often no books. The point of the classes is just to make them learn basic conversational English that could be applicable. They have been learning French their whole lives, will not take national test for English, and tend to skip my class more than any other they have.

If I could work project planning into their daily lives just as we attempt to inject grammar… well, that would be pretty slick. The students want things. They are intelligent and capable when you give them a goal they deem worthy, and they complain about no one listening to their ideas, or they would if it ever occurred to them they are treated as second class citizens by virtue of having less than eighteen years of world experience.

Thus, I spent several free hours of my life designing a 10 Lesson Project Design and Management series that is a little easier to follow than the intensive three day one I helped facilitate in March.

They are eager enough at first, but then egging them on to actually do the things we planned…. They falter.

We have gotten as far as lessons 5 and 6: Fundraising Planning and Doing (remember we’re teaching in English here, the verbs gotta be basic). Actually, they liked the fundraiser idea I had, they just had some qualms about when to do it.

I thought: Family coming! They will help! Easter Egg Hunt for Easter.

Students said: no one will be here.

No one was.

Fail.

I thought: Ok! Lets go to the primary school teachers and plan with them a date! May!

Students said: Ok!

We went. We planned.

Easter happened. I missed a week of school due to a conference and various bank holiday Mondays.

Students have stopped coming to class.

Students said: It is May. We have exams. We have only 3 weeks left.

Students said: If you stay at school past third period you are not cool.

Epic Fail.

So, the Easter Egg Hunt is shelved. I refuse to do something else BY MY SELF because no one else wants to support the actual work. They are hard workers. I swear they are. But newness, no matter how unscary you make it, does not win followers. Grants are done by power people and Americans.

I am continuing to hone the curriculum though. There are new volunteers coming. They could use it. There are seminar givers among the 25s. There are kids who work with universities. There are Renata and Natalia who may just read it as an instruction manual. It is still useful.

Also, it may look good in a CV.

Dead People Easter

The next Sunday, was Memorial Easter. The day the whole country goes out to graves of loved ones to remember them and their lives. It’s a beautiful, and if not obsessed over, tradition. I spent it at Matt’s sight in Singerei, on my way back from flying into Chisinau to home. Matt’s host family had just been diagnosed with throat and lung cancer. The whole family, children, grandchildren, were huddled in the kitchen in vigil. They went to the graveyard early early and came back with coffee cups full of colored eggs, candy and little sfintul candles for us.

Bucharesti

The second leg of my Family Trip was at first in crisis planning mode due to an email miscommunication between mom and I. Therefore, a good 10 hours was spent with mom on Skype firmly coaxing someone into selling her (?!) tickets from Bucharesti to Dulles. Besides this though, it carried on in the same fun romping discourse of drink to drink and pretty thing to pretty thing. A dozen medieval painted churches were photographed. Vlad Tepes was properly introduced. Hookahs were smoked. Alleys were explored. Gypsies were met. Mamaliga was eaten. Waiters were flirted with. Ceausescu was derided. Crazy homeless men ranted at us.

It was nice to see Bucharesti out from under snow and ice for once!

Easter

Easter this year was very late. Like last year was pretty early. Easter, I will never understand the uber-pagan timing of it all. The third Sunday after the first full moon in Spring. Is the first day of spring the equinox? March 1^st, like it officially is here. Some 21^st of a spring-ish month? Who decided this? Where is the sense?

Point being, for some reason, despite the lateness in the season in 2011, the weather was still dictating two-arm load fires at Easter this year. It was cold. Thank our self-determination my family came. I’d have been very cold had two toasty 17 year olds not been squished onto my king size cupboard bed with me. Mom got to stay in the nice little winter room with the soba door, desk and comfy, double- mattressed, sprung bed. We were a merry company.

The family, these three women, had a beautiful Jane Austen experience here.

We spent two nights in Chisinau with my favorite apartment landlord, Lilia. Even though she thinks I’m named Jessica, and is chronically late for key exchange meetings, she is a darling who was quite charmed by my blonde cohort. During the day we lunched at an overly themed French café with a couple other volunteers with considerably more qualifications for professional life than me, ate delicious food, walked around, saw the dirty and the pretty parts of Chisinau and rented a car.

Driving home was exactly as confusing as you could imagine it, though Mom liked the communal use of the road, and even amused by the potholes.

Family meeting family at home here in Balatina was smooth and fun. We blondes moved as a unit until Mom met Bunica (and hit it off great) and the twins met the babies of the house—a couple dozen goslings and a 3 day old kitten. They learned about the outdoor toilet, and shoe etiquette. Mom, by virtue of being a learned linguist understood much conversation. Greta by virtue of having a natural ear for language instantly pronounced many words correctly. By the time they left they had good little 20 word Romanian vocabularies! Maria, Laurentiu, and the local babas were all very impressed.

They came to a day of school. Only half the school was there, but the half that was did little but stare at my blonde Amazonian family the whole time. I hear of little else from those who saw and met them since. “So beautiful!” “So like you!” “Your mother is like another sister!” etc.

Everyday we went to a different masa. Friday night: Renata. Saturday night: bar. Sunday: Home. Monday: Natalia. This is why dad urges us all to diet at home, so when vacations roll around , why, yes! You CAN sit and eat for 4 hours a day and comsume vast amounts of alcohol along the way.

I forget how shocking wine/beer/moonshine/vodka at every meal is for white-bread protestant Americans. Elise, it turns out, is the sweetest giggly drunk ever. Yep, corrupting the youth. Corrupting in the name of cultural integration. My students, with whom we hung out, were amazed the girls had never drunk beer before, or tasted rachiu/tuika.

We left the bar to go to church for an hour at midnight, to clean the air and bless the surroundings with some other of my students, then returned to the bar until I felt the twins had sufficiently integrated. As the bar was packed with no one but my older students, and some visiting who’d graduated last year, they accepted Elise and Greta immediately and absorbed them easily into all the hugging, hand shaking/kissing, joke cracking, seed eating, shot taking, hole peeing greatness that I love about them.

Sunday morning we helped Maria lay the table, played with the goslings and kitten, lounged, and then ate all afternoon.

Monday was much the same. Leaving the homestead was full of photos and Laurentiu produced various bottles of alcohol for Mom to smuggle back home for a taste of Moldova for Dad and Kelsie who were not here.

We returned to Chisinau that day by way of Nat’s family’s house in Glodeni. There, we got stuck in a funeral procession and talked to a shop keeper so heartily he gave us free plastic roses! Even though I felt more conspicuous than ever, and was on higher-than-average alert for scariness, their big blonde presence ended in more happy meetings than thievery.

Overall, it was a brilliant Easter.

When People Say They Are Busy

There are three sorts of people in the world in regards to busy-ness.

1. Those that are genuinely busy

2. Those that are genuinely not busy

3. Those who aren't and say they are

When we are busy, things like blogs suffer. Blogs, like breasts, are the first things to shrink in times of shortage.

So, too, are they not usually the first thing to catch windfall in times of plenty. However, I will try to keep this up to date for my few yet loyal-like-a-spaniel readers. I am writing all the blogs I meant to write in the last month since my sweet birthday bash--when life lifted itself out of it's ruts of village life and flew like a jet-set thing of importance.

So far I have, 10 separate entries I'm typing up. These will swell as I type and remember separate shoots of awesomeness.

This will, hopefully, prove I land in Type 1.