head scarves

Ciprian, the man of my host family, sings at one of the orthodox churches in my village for a job.  On Sunday mornings and other times (like Thursday nights and Friday mornings) he dresses up and hops on his old-style german bicycle and pedals to the church.  

A couple weeks ago I told him I wanted to hear him sing and he told me the best time to come would be Friday morning, between 8 and 10.  I asked, "Why do you have slujba (service/work) on Friday morning?"  

He told me, "The other church in the village started having slujba on Friday morning, so our priest decided to start doing it."  

"Oh." I nod my head.

Ciprian explained that on Friday  mornings, only a few bunicas (grandmothers) come to slujba and I wouldn't have to do anything, just observe.  

So I walked to the Biserica (church) at around 9:30 and I knew slujba was still going on because there are speakers outside letting all the passers-by know that they are missing a slujba.  

I opened the door and snuck into the church.  Orthodox bisericas do not have pews, just a large room with carpets on the floor and icons painted on all the walls and high ceilings.  There are a few high-backed wooden chairs lining the room.  I stood indecisively at the doorway, trying to find an inconspicuous place in the back of the room.  My uncertainty caused the 4 bunicas that were knealing on the rug to beckon me over to them.  Now that they had noticed me I couldn't ignore them, so I tiptoed over and kneeled next to their kneeling, bent bodies.  One of them told me something I couldn't understand, but as I was looking at her, I noticed that her and all the 3 other church goers were wearing head coverings.  I immediately scrambled in my bag to pull out a scarf and throw it over my head.  The bunicas went back to crossing themselves and accompanying Ciprian's singing under their breath.  

After a few minutes, the bunicas stood up and the entire kindergarten class of my village came through the door!  Even they knew enough to have their heads covered.  So much for friday morning being a slujba with only a few bunicas.  

The priest walked out of his area in the front of the room with an incense burner and swung it towards the children on one side of the room and me and the bunicas on the other side.  The sweet, pungent smell filled the room.  

Suddenly all the children and the bunicas, who had taken it upon themselves to teach the children proper church etiquette, walked toward the front of the room and knelt for the priest to bless them with what looked to me like a golden lamp.  After standing indecisively for a few seconds I also walked towards the front of the room and knelt with the flock.  When the priest got to me, he looked at me and said, "Sunteti nu din biserica noi!" (you are not from our church), I looked over at Ciprian who was also kneeling and the priest seemed like he was going to pass up blessing me.  But then he leaned over and touched my scarf-covered head with the bottom of the lamp.  After everyone had been blessed, the bunicas started standing, so I also stood and walked as quietly as I could out of the building.

So much for observing unobservedly.  I'm sure Ciprian will have some explaining to do to his priest about my ignorance.  Being a foreigner forgives me for so many things.  

Romanian 6th graders

6th graders are the same everywhere. A couple of my students don't seem aware they are in school. I imagine that in their minds they are floating along, doing their thing and every once in a while some adult figure disrupts their oblivion by taking away their mp3 player or making them sit closer to the front of the room.
Today I split the 6th grade class into two teams. This takes longer than you would think because only two students in the class trust their minds enough to understand my half english half hand motion instructions. After I say something in English, these students translate my instructions into Romanian. I listen to the Romanian to make sure they are saying the right thing. Also, I'm not sure they play many "games" in class.
But we played a game today and the class was split. I allowed the students to pick the names of their teams.
The two teams decided on 50-cent and Snoop Dog as their team names.
So I rest my case, 6th graders are the same everywhere.

I wake up to lots of sun shining through the window

and I have a map on my wall with a dotted line to indicate where I've been in Romania

and I use internet sporadically.

and I went on a camping trip with some students last week and they wore bandannas around their necks

and responded to the whistle

and caught tiny minnows in the stream.

and tomorrow, Monday the 15th, is my first day of school.  officially.  

wood

I will be heating my house this winter with a soba.
There are sobas in most houses here, although there is a gradual switch to central heating.
But since I opted to not move into the centrally heated main house in the winter, I will be using a soba. My host family looked at me incredulously when I said I wanted to use the soba.
"Why?" my counterpart asked. "They are much more work and the wood is expensive!"
"Independence is important to me," I tried to explain. The independence to be able to leave my host families house at night and make noise without everyone knowing what I am doing, the independence to come and go without waking up the baby accidentally, the independence to have my own space for two years and not move into another space every few months, depending on the weather... The price of wood and time spent stoking the fire every few hours during the night seemed minuscule to me compared to the beauty of privacy and independence.
So, in order for the wood to be dry in time for the cold months, I needed to buy it this month, which I did a few days ago - three horse carts of wood. But the sobas have little doors, so the wood has to be cut up into relatively little wedges.
That is what we are doing right now. Ciprian expertly hacks at the wood with a giant ax while I cart away the wood wedges to the shed with an ancient, bent-up cart, and stack them.
Ciprian does not wear shoes or eye glasses for protection, which is a staple for American wood-cutting, in my past experiences.
When we get tired, we stop and eat apples from the trees in their yard and yell nice things across the road to the neighbors, who are also getting their wood ready for winter.

A day in the life of my August

August is vacation month for Romania.
Where I live is where some people go for vacation because it is in the mountains and cool in the summer, and because it is quaint and rustic.
Every day is different and I never know what I will be doing when I wake up in the morning.
My window faces the east, so I am learning how to sleep with covers over my head. After laying around for a bit, I climb out of my enormous bed and make my way down the deep stairs that keep old women and dogs from climbing up to my apartment and would be appropriate only for the Easterlund house. I shuffle around making tea and buttering bread for breakfast before I head outside to walk the 20 minutes to school with my laptop.
The first part of the walk is down a dusty road where I will probably have to stand aside for a horse cart or a BMW driving past and a Bunica (old woman/grandmother) will probably start walking with me and asking me if I'm a tourist. After the dirt road, I turn onto the only cemented highway in town and walk down it, past stray dogs and multiple little stores that sell the same thing. It's etiquette here to say "Buna Ziua" (hello, good day), so I exchange "buna ziuas" with the women out shopping and the men watching the cars drive by from inside their fences.
When I get to the school, I hook up my laptop to the internet and spend several hours doing the internet thing before I head back home. This time I normally stop by a store and pick up some tasty pretzels with sesame seeds or strawberry wafers, my current favorites.
When I get home, the Stefan, the baby, is up and the grandma is taking care of him, so I talk to them while I heat up my lunch. After lunch there seems to be an understood siesta time, so I read for a while before I go back down the deep stairs. Yesterday I learned how to do laundry in their washing machine and then Cipri, my host families son who is eleven, asked me if I wanted to go to the river with him. So he showed me where the swimming hole at the river was and we picked up another family member on the way. When I came back, it was time to hang my clothes outside to dry and then go back to the magazine to buy some chicken and potatoes for dinner.
Everything takes longer because I walk everywhere and I am trying to figure out how things work. Gabi, whose kitchen I use, helps me make dinner. For now, we are eating dinner together and I make meals every third day. While we're waiting for the chicken to finish, mama-itza the bunica who lives next door, comes over with a cake for me and we talk about her pension and how village people are nicer than city people. She doesn't wear her teeth very often and it takes me a couple sentences to figure out what she is talking about, but she always greets me with a smile and calls me beautiful miss.
They showed me how to use the well yesterday and while we were there another neighbor came by, "you will find a rich romanian boy, yes?"
Then he pointed at Gabi holding her baby, Stefan, and said, "That will be you in the future."
For the older generation, it seems that the only plausible reason for a single woman to move to a different country is to be looking for a rich man.
My tata, Gabi's dad, laughingly told me, "Romanians are rich and Americans are poor, that's why you are here to find a rich man."
By then, dinner is ready and Ciprian, Gabi, Cipri and I sit down to eat. Over dinner we talk about corrupt mayors and lack of money for projects. After a bit Ciprian brings out a watermelon and it isn't ripe yet, so I learn the Romanian word for ripe. By now it's eleven o'clock and I head off to bed, for another day of who knows what.

people might be basically good...

I left Ploiesti for good on the Sunday night train.
I had bought my ticket earlier in the bed and the type of bed that I had requested on the train was not available so I said "whatever" and assumed they would give me a seat and not a bed. My gazda mom helped me drag my 7 bags to the train station, repeating "sapte bagaj" to me in consternation and concern that all 7 would be stolen from me during the night.
I ungracefully got on the train and found a mostly empty compartment to settle into. Twenty minutes later the conductor came in to check tickets and told me that I actually had a bed, but I pointed to my luggage and said I couldn't carry it all to the next car. I think he told me to wait and left the compartment. So I sat there and waited for I didn't know what. Would the conductor come back? Would he help me move my bags? Would I just be waiting the whole night for the conductor?
A couple stops later the conductor returned and the poor man asked for my heaviest bag and then told me to follow him with the rest of the bags, which I did, right off the train. Was he dumping me off in who-knows where? No, he was still talking to me, so I followed him a couple cars forward were he passed my heaviest bag onto another conductor and said goodnight. I began to follow the other conductor who passed me a bag of sheets, showed me my bed and put my heaviest bag in the conductors compartment for safekeeping or for them to go through on their free time. Either way, I didn't want to sleep with that bag, so I left it there, made my bed and snuggled in with my other bags, including a hard, awkward water filter.
The train was supposed to arrive at Vama at 5 in the morning, so I set my alarm for 4:50 and slept fitfully in fear of missing my stop. By 4:55 I was in the hall waiting to get off and the conductor looked at me, laughed a little and said the train was running late and we wouldn't get there for another 30 minutes. So I stood in the hall with my head out the window watching the first light of dawn and getting ready at each station the train stopped at, only to be told that I wasn't there yet.
When the train did reach Vama my gazda man, Ciprian, and and old blue van with stumps of wood in the back were waiting for me. Home sweet home.
My porch.

where I will live

Today, I learned where I will be living for the next two years. From the result of interviews with schools who have applied for a TEFL volunteer, as well as interviews with each of the peace corps members in my group, “they” have decided where we will be living for the next two years.

My town is in the North-Eastern section of Romania, surrounded by the Carpathian Mountains in an area called Moldova. My town is Vama, in Suceava county.

My counterpart, the teacher I will be working with at the middle school, sent me pictures of my town, which is known for its beauty, although the guidebooks, if they even mention Vama, say there is nothing there. My counterpart sent me a letter of introduction to the town and it is basically all I know about it right now:

“It looks like a small town; it has lots of facilities including running water, internet, mobile phones, railway stations where fast trains stop, bus stop, post office, a stadium and a not very glorious local football team, a dispensary where there work 3 doctors, 1 dentist and nurses, 2 pharmacies, restaurants, a factory which processes wood, a dairy, 3 Orthodox churches, 1 Catholic church, 2 school buildings, 1 police stations, many shops […]

“The mountains around are either covered by thick pine-tree forests or deforested – anyway in the winter you can go sledging and partially skiing, while in summer you can pick mushrooms and wild berries, blueberries, raspberries, etc.; the village is crossed by 2 rivers – you can bathe there in the summer.

“Inhabitants: around 7000: they work in schools, in factories (small private factories which process the wood) in local tourism; many of them work on their small farms raising animals (cattle, sheep horses, poultry) and growing potatoes, maize or vegetables; some of them (maybe 30 families) provide food and accommodation for Romanian and foreign tourists who come here to visit the famous medieval monasteries situated at rather small distances from the village.”