27 Luni

Early in the morning on November 5^th the day after my daylong Wine, Museum, and Church extravaganza, I received an expected text message from our Peace Corps Romania Safety and Security Coordinator.  The message was a call to action to initiate a simulation of our countrywide evacuation plan.  Our mission was a simple one: get to your assigned consolidation point by noon that day.  Otherwise the Black Hawks are leaving without you.

Since this was simply a simulation we were given advanced warning so as to not unnecessarily ruin otherwise well placed plans with our Counterparts and Community Members.  Fortunately for me, the commute from my village outside of Ploiești to București is an easy one, a trip that I have made several times and actually rather enjoy.  My typical route involves the following:

1. Picking up a Maxi-Taxi from Valea Călugărească to Ploiești:  With a little luck the Maxi-Taxi for 2.50 RON will take me all the way to Gara de Sud, the train station on the south side of Ploiești.  From here I can grab either a train or bus to Buc.  If the Maxi-Taxi doesn’t go to the train station, it will let off at Bucov Barieră.  From there I can either cab it for 5 RON and 5 minutes or walk for 30 minutes through the city and some really nice parks.  Time and weather permitting, I prefer the latter.
2. Bus from Ploiești to București:  Although I used to take the train when making this trip I now opt for the bus.  Generally I prefer to travel by train in Romania, but the bus on this particular leg is easier.  The price of 14 RON on the bus is the same all the time because there basically isn’t a difference in class and the schedule, with a few exceptions, essentially has the bus leaving every thirty minutes.  Plus, the ticket buying process is easier and you can hop on the bus and relax a lot longer before departure than you can with the train.
3. Gara de Nord to the Peace Corps Headquarters:  The bus from Ploiești lets off just a block from the main train station in București, Gara de Nord.  The metro picks up on the same block as the bus lets off and is only 4 RON for a round trip card.  With a metro card in hand, I take two tracks the M1 Yellow to the M2 Blue, for a total of three stops.  Or it’s about a forty-five-minute walk through the city.
4. Hoof it to the office: Once off the Metro it’s a five-minute walk through the twists and turns of the București back streets.

All in all, from door to door, the trip takes about an hour and thirty minutes, including waiting time for Maxi-Taxis, Metros etc and the roundtrip only costs about thirty-seven RON or eleven dollars.  I consider this lucky because for other volunteers it can take upwards of fifteen hours to reach HQ.  Having said that, it is important to point out that each group of volunteers has their own consolidation point for evacuation, simulated or real.  In other words, for safety reasons, all volunteers are placed within a reasonable distance to an extraction point.

Once in București, we hung out waiting for other volunteers to finish their respective journeys.  At around noon, two designated “Wardens” held a training seminar on safe travel through Romania.  We discussed what to look out for and what to do in a situation where you find yourself stranded.  In one exercise we were required to come up with alternative routes from our sites to the consolidation point.  In a worst-case scenario I could technically ride my bike.  Kind of a joke and kind of not; if there was no other option at least I know I can make it out on my own power, although I probably wouldn’t be able to walk the following week.  Heck, according to Google Maps, I could walk it in 14 hours.  One of our wardens actually related a story to us from a former Peace Corps post on the other side of the Black Sea.  Some unexpected unrest had kicked in and Peace Corps made the call to evacuate its staff and volunteers.  The US Government went to great lengths to ensure the safe extraction of everyone, including the use of Marine Black Hawk helicopters.

Following the consolidation point exercise, many of us in București went for a victory lunch of Mexican food.  Pricey as all get out, but the food was actually pretty good.  At the end of the day, I was left with a very full belly and the confidence that if the government ever collapsed and chaos ensued, I would know how to make it out safely.

Yesterday I learned that the Peace Corps community lost a couple of great volunteers.  My thoughts are with the families of Alden and Lena.

In the summer of 2010, one of the English teachers that I regularly work with married the Religious Studies teacher who also works at my high school.  He and I happen to share classroom walls on the first floor of our school building.  This is great for me because if I ever need anything he is happy to help.  Though on the flip side this is probably bad for him because my students tend to get rowdy during our English activities and are not exactly quiet.  As a result of my close working relationship with his wife and my close working proximity to him they have taking a liking to me and invited me to spend a day with them at church and touring around their family’s village.

Last summer my Religious Studies comrade became a Priest and was assigned to a church in the nearby community of Sălciile.  Things work a little differently in the Eastern Orthodox faith than the main religions I am used to in the United States.  For example, Priests are allowed to marry, provided they have made the decision to do so before being ordained.  Since I had yet to witness a church ceremony in Romania, I jumped on the opportunity when they invited me.

It was no easy task getting up at six in the morning on a Sunday, nor was it easy hailing down a maxi-taxi shortly thereafter.  The worst part however was the cold; the mercury had dipped below freezing that night and I was on the road well before the sun had crested to warm me up.  With several long waits in the cold morning air, even my long underwear was no match.  All of this probably wouldn’t have been so bad, but the small church in which my colleague serves is not heated either.  Did I mention the service was three hours?

Despite my cold bones the slujbă (service) was remarkable.  Besides the length of the service, there were a few differences that stood out right away.  First, the decorations of the church are more elaborate than those I have seen in the US, not to mention that the church was probably much older.  There are scenes from the bible painted all around, on every inch of visible surface available.  In visiting a few churches since arriving here, I would say that the scenes depicted are largely consistent from one church to another.  The only pictorial that I have seen several times but know nothing about is always at the back of the church and must be representative of Mother Mary’s death in the New Testament, but don’t quote me on that.  Second, the “pulpit” that I am used to is typically just a raised platform for which the Priest can lay his notes, the bible or whatever on top of and preach from behind.  Here the pulpit is a whole other room at the front of the church in which the Priest performs much of the service hidden from view.  There are two swinging doors on either side of a curtained opening in the middle; everything is elaborately decorated.  Even the Priest’s robe is exquisitely done.  Thirdly, I was impressed with the singing or chanting that takes place during the service.  Often times this is the Priest, but there are also others that have been clearly dedicated to the task but are not dressed in any particular church uniform.   This reminds me of the Latin chants that can be heard in come religious ceremonies.  Additionally, there is female/male segregation, loosely enforced, where men are expected to sit on the right side and women on the left.  Also there were no pews or church benches to sit on, only modular stools and tall chairs mounted against the wall.

As an added bonus, I was present to witness a botez (baptism) that took place immediately following the church worship.  A whole other blog post in and of itself, I will sum it up quickly here.  As you might imagine the whole family was in attendance, with the Naș (Godparents) taking the primary role.  The Priest read several passages from the bible, proceeded with more chanting and …. passionately dunked the young child into a huge caldron of blessed warm water.  Afterwards, Grandma handed out small pastries to everyone and the Mother pinned a ribbon to each witness (including me), symbol of health and long life.

Afterwards, my friends invited me to stop by several of their family’s houses in town.  In each, we were welcomed with bright smiles and full sipping glasses of țuica.  One such visit was that of a house belonging to friends of my colleagues who had just had a wedding the night before.  Even though the wedding celebration had gone well into the night before, they were back to celebrating by early afternoon.  Note the photograph of the person in a wheelbarrow; apparently a custom where one family member has to wheel an in-law out of the house’s garden.

The day ended at my English teacher colleague’s father’s house on the hill overlooking Valea Călugărească.  A full meal was prepared and the homemade wine was brought out.  The discussion was lively around the dinner table; thankfully I had my counterpart there to translate her father’s rapid-fire questions about American politics and decisions regarding our involvement in recent wars.  Being that his house is somewhat remote without mass transportation between the two of us, I will have to wait until spring before biking back up the hill for another debate, but can’t wait.

From early in the morning to late into the night there was plenty of Peace Corps goals one and two being accomplished with tons of cultural exchange.  Some new allies were made in the community from which new project ideas are starting to develop.  Another sign that things are going well for me in Peace Corps Romania.

Back on the second to last Thursday of October 2011, I was randomly and without much notice invited to tag along on a school fieldtrip to Bucharest to visit something called “ROMEXPO”.  Up until the time of departure, and really until after we had arrived at the event, I had little idea about what was actually about to take place.  In hurried English, my counterpart had explained that it was an “Agricultural Show.”  I of course had no idea what that meant, but was game for the adventure anyway.  My counterpart made the necessary arrangements to cover my classes for the day and I met the group at 8am the next morning.

The lot of us piled onto a huge decked out charter bus for the sixty-minute ride, with the exact destination still somewhat of a mystery.  Our group consisted of mostly 11^th and 12^th graders from different divisions within the school, though being that our high school is dedicated to agriculture, all participants related in someway to the impending event.  To serve as chaperones, several teachers and our school’s director also came along and were unexpectedly humming with an elevated level of excitement.  It’s still unclear to me exactly why they were so giddy, though as unlikely as it seems, I think they were genuinely interested in the agriculturally educational aspect of this trip.  The investment for this little adventure was only 20 RON or about $6; even with all of the participants we had I still can’t manage to figure out how this paid for the gas let alone the driver’s time or our entrance fees.  The trip to Bucharest was colorfully highlighted by the collective singing of my students, mostly out of key, to their favorite Romanian pop songs.

Regardless, we arrived at our destination on the north side of the city, more or less on time (by local standards).  Being that up until now I had only heard the name of the venue and not actually seen it; everything began to come together when I saw the giant letters on top of the ROMEXPO convention center.  As I soon discovered, dozens of companies and organizations related to agriculture had rented out the multi-building space to have a full-scale convention about agriculture.  Immediately upon walking through the rear gates I was shocked to see gigantic farm equipment, with tires alone bigger than any car I have ever owned.  They were all bright and glossy red or green and featured price tags in the six figure Euros.

In addition to the monstrous trackers, there was anything you could imagine relating to the earth and growing vegetables or raising livestock; not limited to even livestock itself, a topic that we will get to shortly.  The first building that we entered was secondary to the main exhibition hall but featured row upon row of kiosks educating attendees on the finer points of irrigation or pest control.  There were stalls where one could buy seeds, bulbs or sapling trees, right next to stalls selling mousetraps.  Want to restock your tool shed?  You could do that here too, with everything from the latest hedge trimmers, shovels and pruners.

What really struck me was the level of professionalism on display.  I fully expected life-warn old men in overalls chewing on the stems of hay, but mostly what I saw were young men and women in business suits, the same attire you would see at any convention in the US.  Not only was everyone well dressed but also the kiosks themselves reflected a high level of sophistication with advanced graphics, lighting schemes and inventive demonstrations.  This same theme was reflected throughout all of the convention center’s buildings….save one.

Early on during my exploration I teamed up with my 11^th graders with whom I am working with in preparation for the European Wine Championship next April.  We have a good rapport and had a lot of fun wondering around.  As we went from exhibit to exhibit and building to building seeing similar displays about innovative ecology products and brand-name fertilizers, imagine my surprise when we opened the door of an isolated building and I was bowled over by a waft of foul air.  We had entered the part of the convention exhibiting live animals; mostly different types of fowl but also the biggest rabbits you’d ever see and even a mean old looking beaver.  Cages were stacked four and five high and two deep as onlookers wondered around in awe of the spectacle.  On sale were baby chickens, exotic parrots and everything in-between.  A flutter of feathers floated through the atmosphere on the barely breathable stench of farm animals.  At first this whole calamity shocked me, but as I thought more about it, I figured that we must have this type of event in the United States too, though I would reckon that ventilation standards are stricter.

Escaping into the clean cold air outside we took several deep breaths and made our way over to the main exhibition hall; a large, round, multi-story building, seemingly gaining it’s architectural inspiration from UFOs.  Inside, the building features a hollow center from floor to ceiling which is surrounded by several balconies on the outside wall that were lined with more displays.  This building seemed to be dedicated to the end of the agricultural cycle, food processing.  Here there were processed meats, cookies, cakes, ice creams, and even a shinny covrigi warmer that was dispensing samples of the aforementioned Romanian pretzel.  Like any baked goods, these things can be generally horrible, but if you find one that is fresh and warm then you are in for a real treat.

This day of mystery turned out to be quite fun and educational.  The students benefited from the practical experience of seeing all of the latest offerings on the market in their respective fields and I was exposed to a completely new experience and learned about a new venue.  The return trip was much less eventful as most of my students fell asleep, exhausted from the day.

Looking back on my childhood, I remember the endless summers that would suddenly give way to shivering waits at the bus stop and while watching my breath dissipate into the cold atmosphere my friends and I would reminisce about the warmer days gone by.   This summer is definitely over as the days are quickly getting colder and shorter; both of which seem to happen more quickly every year.  This past week marks my seventh full week as an English teacher here in Romania and though things are not as smooth as I envisioned them being in the United States, they have gone remarkably well.

In the initial weeks of this semester it took some time for the school to iron out the details of my schedule.  Since I have been assigned to split classes with three Romanian English teachers the Program Manager must be certain that there are no overlaps.  Since the computer program the school uses won’t allow for any classes of students to overlap, they were unable to input me into the system as an individual teacher because, inherently, all of my classes overlap with a counterpart.  After about three weeks the final schedule was printed, set in stone, and revealed that I did in fact have four different hours that took place at the same time as my other assigned classes.  Since I can’t be in more than one place at a time my first couple of weeks were lighter than would ultimately be the case, this allowed me more time to plan and helped me get up to speed in an easier fashion.  The downside of course was that I wasn’t able to meet the Peace Corps requirement of 16 hours of class per week, let alone the dozens of students that were not benefiting from my lessons.  Since the master schedule impacted so many teachers and about 800 students it clearly could not be changed; thus the easiest solution was to adjust which classes I taught.

The shuffle resulted in a number of students being disappointed but an equal number of students being elated to get time with the new American teacher.  So the end result is that I have four 9^th grade classes, two 11^th grade classes and two 12^th grade classes; once split this totals 16 hours.  The English level of my students varies greatly but fundamentally the vast majority of students are of a beginner low rating.  I find this to make for easy lesson planning as I don’t have to worry about whether or not a lesson will be too easy for them; we could spend an entire week just working on the alphabet and there would still be students struggling by the end.  Alas, the Alphabet is simply and understandably not enough for the Romanian Department of Education.  A full curriculum has been handed down from upon high that outlines what topics are to be covered each and every week of the year.  The benefit of such a curriculum is that it helps me to focus my ideas and streamlines the lesson planning process.  Rather than have to come up with a topic and a corresponding lesson I simply have to create a lesson that matches the predetermined topic.  Furthermore, I really only need two or three lesson plans per week since my ninth graders are all covering the same material and my 11^th and 12^th graders are also on the same basic page.  One difference is that my 12^th graders are preparing for the Bacalaureat exam that takes place immediately before their graduation; as such my 12^th grade classes have requested additional reading comprehension work.  Again this makes my job easy as the guesswork is removed.  Additionally, my three counterpart teachers are quite flexible with me.  They do not require that I work from the class workbook (in fact I do not even have a copy) so long as I stick to the general curriculum.  This is good news, as many other volunteers have reported that the workbook is not particularly up-to-date, and is centered on the United Kingdom; somewhat ironic for Americans to be teaching from British workbooks.  No they are not “trainers” they are sneakers or tennis shoes and no Iron Maiden is not particularly relevant to today’s music scene.

Beyond the students themselves, the most exciting aspect of teaching here is my classroom.  From what I am told it is quite rare for a Volunteer to have his or her own classroom.  Most volunteers share space with their counterpart teachers or are annexed to a library or otherwise multipurpose room.  Furthermore, in most Romanian schools the teachers move from class to class not the students.  In other words the students stay in the same room for their entire day and the teachers run frantically between them.  Fortunately, my school is the opposite, so I am able to prepare my room ahead of each class and wait patiently as they file in, usually late.  Admittedly school funds are still quite low, so I have had to invest in my own materials for improving the room.  Though a chalkboard was already in place, I decided to invest in a large erasable and magnetic whiteboard.  Being that I will be here for two years the investment seems well worth it and is already paying off.  The trusty HP multifunction printer I ordered has also been quite the lifesaver with printing colorful flashcards, games, the weekly quizzes that I hand out and making on-the-fly copies.  And since I invested in a wireless router for my classroom I can print to my HP from anywhere in the world over the Internet.  Which of course for practical purposes really just means my house.  Luckily there is a Romanian company that provides most of the classroom materials that I have wanted thus far and they quickly deliver for a modest fee.  The only part that could get really expensive in the long run is printer ink; at 100 RON for a black cartridge it’s quite the hefty fine.  Many teachers purchase their own paint for the walls, and I even know of teachers that are saving every penny so they can replace their rotten floors.  This being the case, we are lucky in that the electricity for the lighting works and that the water radiators keep our rooms warm with little effort from us.

Having my own room has also provided me with the flexibility to coordinate some additional classes.  My head counterpart would like for our school to participate in next April’s 7^th Europea Wine Championship.  She has selected eight students and asked me to work with them three days a week in preparation for the competition.  Our initial couple of months will focus exclusively on conversational English and the later months will focus on viticulture education.  Thankfully, my friend Jackson was able and willing to sift through my father’s attic for my old notebook from the Society of Wine Educators and send it to me here in Romania.  The culmination of this coursework will result in the selection of two students to travel to Italy and represent our school if not Romania as a whole.  Provided there are no major schedule conflicts and that I can raise the funds, I should be able to tag along for the adventure.  As if regular classes and preparing the Wine Championship Team were not enough, I have also elected to offer an hour of tutoring for those students so inclined to attend and I will be providing an hour per week of English instruction to the general community of Valea.

Despite the fact that my students are of a low English level and that many of them, especially my ninth graders, are nothing short of crazy, I still enjoy the role quite a lot.  There are certainly times when things get tense and I have to take a deep breath rather than throw a kid’s cell phone out the window, but even with unruly students the message is still getting through to some.  In the end I can’t assume that I will reach each and every student but if I get through to a few and have positive impacts in other parts of my Peace Corps life, this mission will be a success.

Stay tuned for future developments; here are a few things on my plate in the coming months:

• Consolidation Training, in which we practice our evacuation plan.
• Weekend Wine Tasting Trip to Timișoara.
• Romanian Inspectorate driven presentation on Modern Testing Methodologies.
• Thanksgiving Dinner with the United States Ambassador.
• Volunteer Advisory Committee Meetings and Involvement.
• Language Refresher Weekend here in Valea Călugărească.
• In-Service Training with my main Counterpart in Sinaia.
• Traditional Christmas Pig Killing x 2.
• Winter Trip to Paris.
• Potential April Trip to Italy.