General Updates and Fall Changes!

School has started again, the leaves are about to change, and every Moldovan family is harvesting their corn and making wine. I love the season change from Summer to Fall, and in Moldova, unlike Seattle, I am guaranteed a colorful show as the leaves change.

It’s an amazing change from last Fall, when I started working in my village. I can now understand everything that is said to me, and a majority of conversations that aren’t directed at me but take place around me. This means I’m dramatically better informed about everything in the village than I was when I arrived, and this helps a huge amount for planning lessons and being prepared for things.

I have begun health classes with all the same kids as last year with a few exceptions. My oldest two classes, now the 9th graders, escaped me (or maybe I escaped THEM) because they have to prepare for heavy duty exams to finish their education past 9th grade this year, which means they do not have time to take any optional classes, of which health is one in Moldova. This is fine with me since they were the only kids last year that I really had behavior problems with. I replaced them with two new 4th grade classes. Little kids are pretty much always fun and well behaved. High energy, yes, but disrespectful or with bad attitudes, never.

I did just find out last week, however, that apparently due to weird convoluted reasons, one of my new 4th grade classes will not be able to get Health into their schedule this year. This means I have to replace them with someone, but the 9th graders are busy and the 1st through 3rd graders also do not have space. I am hoping to solve this by adding at least one hour of weekly work at the preschool in the village. I’m a little nervous because teaching kids that young is something I have not even thought about doing before, but I’m hoping that I can make up little songs on my ukulele and we can have sing alongs about washing our hands or something. We will see what comes of that.

In addition to that, I am having at least 2 English clubs again this year for kids who want to learn a little English. I am also going to visit a center in the raion center (like the county seat, about 20 minutes away by bus) once a month to talk to those kids about health. The center there is for kids from “vulnerable families,” i.e., families that are less wealthy and or have social problems. Most of the kids there are in 1st to third grade, so that will be more new experiences with little kids. I’m looking forward to it as a new challenge and something different to try.

 I also moved again – not too far, though. As I explained before, I was living in a casa mica (small house) of a family who have 3 houses on their property and really only use one. They let me know a few months ago that the soba (woodstove) in the small house where I lived really does not heat very well and that they suggested I move into a small room in their larger house for the 6 months of winter weather coming up. Do not ask me why they didn’t tell me this before I moved in to the casa mica. I think maybe they thought they were going to repair the soba but then never got around to it.

So I moved my things into a small room in their large house. The section of the house I am in can be closed off from the rest of the house so it’s kind of like living in a studio apartment in New York City. Except it’s not New York City. Still no running water, but I’m used to that by now. I moved my refrigerator right outside my door so I still have that plus a little freezer space. The room is definitely newer (I think they said that the large house was built in the 80’s, which makes it about a quarter as old as the small house). It does still have a few cracks in the floor here and there, so I may have insect or tiny mammalian visitors this winter, but so far it’s been pretty quiet. And at a minimum, there is no grain in this ceiling so the all-night scurry and scratch fests that used to take place about 6 inches above my face should subside now.

That’s about it – just thought I should give a basic update of where things are. At this rate, things seem pretty common place to me, living here, so I sometimes struggle to think of things to blog about. I would like to take this opportunity to ask if anyone has any questions or topics they are curious about or interested in about Moldova and Peace Corps? If so, I would be glad to fill you in

Love you all! Noapte Buna!