So they all got up and surrounded me and we were looking through the pictures. Then, not a minute after they’d all gotten up, one of the old, crappy light fixtures from the lights in the ceiling crashed down, making a gigantic BANG and hit directly where two of my students would have been sitting is we were not all looking at pictures.

I asked the kids if that happened often and told them I was sorry their classroom was so old and falling apart. The two girls who would have been struck by the light fixture, however, were standing right next to me and said, “Miss Lindsay, we have to thank you. Your lesson has saved our lives.”

I guess even if they don’t learn to wash their hands properly I saved at least 2 lives in some way

Noapte Buna!

For Christmas break this year I went to Istanbul for 6 days. Istanbul is an ancient city and has been run throughout the centuries by the Byzantines, the Romans, the Ottomans, and the Turks, which means it’s super rich in history. It’s also the second largest city in the world, so naturally we were excited to try out the variety of cuisine that a city that large has to offer. Frankly, we were probably the easiest to impress of all the travelers that were moving through Istanbul that week because we were sated with anything that wasn’t Moldovan food. Breaks are nice J

There were a bunch of volunteers there and we were mostly all together for New Years Eve to rain in 2012. Beyond that, we met up with different combinations of people the whole time, mixed and matched groups and ended up having a blast.

Like last year, I’m going to include my highlights with pictures to keep things simple rather than giving you a play-by-play. Enjoy and Happy New Year!

1)     Marveling at Aya Sofia, one of the oldest churches in the world. It was constructed originally in the 300’s by the Roman emperor Constantine but subsequently burned down (shocking. Not.). The current building was reconstructed in 532 by the Roman emperor Justinian. When the Ottomans came they liked it so much that they just pulled all the Christian stuff down and made it a mosque. Now it’s a museum and they are working to try and restore as much of the holy writings and paintings of both faiths as possible. Pictured from the outside is actually the Blue Mosque but same idea. The light was better

2)     Walking through the old Roman cistern under the old town. This is where the ancient Romans stored their water supply in case they were attacked by an outside power and had to hole up in the city for months. The water was trucked in via aqueduct. Two of the columns are held up by Medusa heads, placed upside down and no one knows why. Creepy….

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3)     Going apeshit at the spice bazaar and buying about a kilogram of fresh loose tea. The kinds I got range from pomegranate, apple, cinnamon, “Love Tea,” jasmine (with a real flower that opens in the hot water) rose hip, mint, Turkish black, white, orange, and lemon. The bazaars are bustling places and while the grand bazaar was a little touristy, the spice bazaar was heavily populated by locals as well as tourists, as evidenced by the leeches they were selling for medicinal purposes outside….

4)     Turkish Coffee. Chocolate Baklava. Oh. My. God.

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5)     Heading down to the pier where the Bosphorus Straight meets the Golden Horn river and the Sea of Marmar. Under the Galata Bridge down there are shops, restaurants, hookah bars, and places selling tasty fish sandwiches with lemon juice and vinegar, fresh caught and most assuredly not Moldovan. We sampled some while taking in the long line of fishermen that come every day to throw their lines over the railings of the bridge to catch small, hand-sized silver fish from the river.

Overall, a wonderful trip!

When you are heating buildings made of concrete or brick with only wood or coal fires, they get very warm and retain the heat surprisingly well. But if you don’t heat them for a few weeks, they get REALLY cold and then it takes days and days to warm them back up.

I was on vacation for 2 weeks and when I came back my room was freezing. I was expecting this. But what I wasn’t expecting was that even though I made a bigger fire than usual, a few hours later it was barely warmer than it had been when I got there. I don’t know the physics behind this phenomenon, only that it seems like you have to de-thaw the concrete walls before they’ll keep a room warm for you.

I thought I might have just screwed up my fire, but then when I got to school the next day – the first day back after the 2 week vacation, the school was freezing. All the sobas (wood burning stoves) were lit in every classroom but it was still freezing and like standing in a cold hole outside. All the teachers assured me that it’s always like this the first day back after vacation and that it will take a few days to warm up and retain the warmth like normal. There is always something new here.

Fortunately, I discovered through this that, as I have long suspected but never confirmed, my sleeping bag plus my blankets is more than enough heat to sustain me though the night in an essentially unheated room, even when it is about negative 5 degrees outside. Don’t get me wrong – I have to stay the hell under those blankets. But (knock on wood) I don’t think I will be in any danger of freezing to death in the night, even if I somehow fail to make a good fire one night. A margin of error can be a very comforting thing.

Noape Buna!

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 7,600 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

I was surprised – given then they do the hora (traditional circle dance) at every celebration, I imagined they would like line dancing since it’s basically the hora only not in a circle. But it weirded them out.

Then as a last resort (I really wanted them to have a good time since the whole idea was that it was a reward for them) I pulled up the Macarena. And everyone lost their minds.

Moldovan kids love the Macarena. I guess it makes sense since it’s so easy and they can’t understand the words to the song anyway. I was lucky I even had it on my iTunes since I haven’t listened to it since I was about in 4^th grade.

Anyway, I will be giving another class the same reward soon and am hoping to get them trained well enough to maybe film it. Fingers crossed. Noapte Buna!

One of the most important things about life in Moldova is keeping up appearances. That means that it’s not actually important what your everyday practices are. What’s important is what the ministry sees when they come. Also important is that your school acts as a good host for the people from the ministry. That means that you should throw a masa (big feast for lunch) and encourage them to drink a lot of wine before they do their job.

This is probably not the case in all schools in Moldova, but it certainly is the case in mine. Starting a few days before the ministry arrives, the kids start getting coached. They know that their good behavior is of the utmost importance, and they will possibly be murdered by their homeroom teacher after the visit if they don’t make the school look good. The teachers want the ministry to think that their students are learning well and are super smart (smarter than all the OTHER schools) so they meet with a classes that the ministry plans to observe and goes through the lesson they will get and gives them all the answers. That way the kids know exactly what to expect and what to say when the ministry is watching. The kids are also made to wear their best outfits when the ministry visits so they are also the most attractive students the ministry has seen that week.  Never underestimate the importance of being attractive in Moldova.

On the day that the ministry visits, leading up to the moment they get there, my experience has often been that one or both my partners will tell me that I have to teach our classes alone that day because they will be in the school kitchen preparing a masa. I sometimes notice other teachers doing the same thing, although for these teachers there is no American who will babysit their classes. They just give the kids something to read and leave them alone.

The teachers then always want to re-arrange all the furniture to make it more frumos (pretty) for the ministry visit, and consequently, if you are working on lesson plans in the teachers’ lounge (like SOME American blog writers I could mention…) you will get yelled at to stop working because the ministry is coming and you need to be helping with all the preparation. They once made me stop working so I could sit at the table with all the food, along with all the other teachers, so that when the ministry walked in we would all be sitting at the table smiling at them like trained dogs. I asked them, “Don’t you think it will look better if the ministry walks in and we are all working hard on lesson planning?” But they just stared at me.

We just has one of these visits this week and I’m hoping it’s the last one this year since it really disrupts things. The thing is, you can’t blame the teachers too much because if the ministry doesn’t like what it sees the school get s a bunch of crap and can also be shut down or lose funding. And the ministry dictates what they want to see, so if they wanted to tell the schools they want to stop seeing obviously fabricated lessons and having a bug feast instead of talking about work, they could. But they don’t. So we continue with the system we have, just trying to keep our soviet-trained heads down and do the best we can with what we’ve got.

Noapte Buna!

Kids: How old are you?

Me: 25

Kids: Where are you from in America?

Me: The state of Washington

Kids: DO YOU KNOW BARAK OBAMA????

Me: No. And I live in the STATE of Washington. There is the capital, and that is a city. I live in the state. It’s on the opposite side of the country by the Pacific Ocean.

Kids: Have you seen Miley Cyrus?

Me: No.

Kids: Have you seen Michael Jackson?

Me. No. You know he’s dead, right?

Kids: WHAT????

Me: Yeah he died like 3 years ago.

Kids: Did you know him?

Me: NO.

Kids: Have you seen Justin Beiber?

Me: No.

Kids: If you haven’t seen any of the famous people then what have you been doing your whole life in America?

Me:….I don’t know how to answer that.

(At this point my partner, speaking to some girl in the front row about something, muttered, “Something, something, something, Celine Dion, something.”)

Me: THERE! CELINE DION! I HAVE SEEN CELINE DION!

Kids: Who is that?

Me: (In English) Dammit….

Noapte Buna!

But now, all the fresh veggies have disappeared. Moldovans eat canned goods all winter, along with potatoes and parsnips, which will keep in the basement for months. Most of what’s in the cans is tomatoes and parsley and onion mixes, along with pickled cucumbers and watermelons. I had a lot of this last summer, and I relished every time a can came up from the basement because (and I want to make this very clear) there are NO vitamins available in winter food in Moldova unless you are bringing food in from the city or eating things you canned.  A common experience for volunteers is for our hair to start falling out in small clumps in the middle of winter due to vitamin deficiency. Before my grandmother calls me freaking out, I do want to add that this does not have long term health effects after only two winters, so I’m not to concerned.

The larger issue for me is just WHAT to eat. I’ve been bringing canned fruit and things like that in from the city whenever I’m there. They do have hot house veggies available in supermarkets in the city, like tomatoes and broccoli, and I like to pick those up as well. But sometimes I don’t get in to the city for a few weeks, and when that happens, my challenge is trying to make something tasty using only food I can get in the village. Grilled cheese is a new favorite, along with pasta with sour cream on it, which is a Moldovan specialty and has really grown on me. But these don’t have any nutritional value since they’re just fat and carbs.

The other day I found some big round black dirt balls in the veggie section which I THOUGHT were red beets. Red beets are tasty and full of vitamins so I picked them up hoping to make some borscht (Russian beet stew). But when I got them home and was preparing them to be thrown into a pot of water with some carrots, potatoes, parsnips and onions, I discovered that they are (I think) white beets, which, after a quick check on the internet, I discovered also have no nutritional value. So basically I ate what I like to call “root soup.” With some pepper an Italian seasonings. I actually thought it was okay, but it is definitely not a burrito or eggplant parmesan.

So, it seems that, with the exception of occasional dried and canned fruit, I will likely be losing a little bit of hair this winter.  But I’m sure by the end of it I will be able to make a mean root soup.

 Noapte Buna!

Step 1) Get your materials. You need a small armload of thin pieces of dry wood, a small armload of dried cornstalks and dried corncobs to use as tinder, a bit of paper to get things going, matches, and a bucket of fresh coal, plus an empty bucket and shovel for the old coal.

Step 2) Clean up the last fire. If you made a fire the day before, there is used coal and ash still in the soba so you have to clean it out. You shovel it out with the little metal shovel, drop it into the bucket, then I deposit it behind the house by the chicken coop. If you’re my host family you wash it off so you can use it a second time, but they insisted that I shouldn’t try to learn to do that, so I just leave it for them to pick up when they want to.

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Step 3) Tinder. Once the small space in the soba is cleaned out, it’s ready for a fresh fire. I start by crumpling up paper and ripped pieces of cardboard and putting it in there. Then you light it. Paper starts burning fast so then you have to load the dried corn stalks and cobs into the soba fast so they get a chance to start burning before the paper burns itself out. After you get all the corn stalks in there, you add a few small pieces of wood to it. The nice thing about a soba is that it is almost impossible to smother the fire because the fire is actually being made on a grate, and if you have the smaller lower door open underneath the fire, then oxygen is being sucked in from below and prevents the fire from going out.

Step 4) Add more wood from up top. Once the fire is going nicely, you shut the upper door, being sure to keep the lower door open to prevent all the heat from getting sucked up the chimney. Then you use a can opener (or a knife or whatever is lying around) to pry the burner off of the top of the soba. This is where, just maybe 25-30 years ago, people made food in the evening, and there Moldovans still leave soups and other things to stay warm. From here, you add the larger pieces of wood. You can just throw them in on top of everything and the fire won’t smother as long as the small lower door is open on the front of the soba.

Step 5) Once you’ve got all your wood in there and the flames are going nicely, you dump the bucket of coal in onto the fire. It starts heating up immediately and you can just put the burner back in place on the soba top. Then you’re done.

After about a half hour or so the coals reach their maximum burning rate and the soba starts radiating heat like nobody’s business. It can keep a small room like mine super warm all night. After the coals stop glowing orange you can shut the lower door to keep extra head in. The bricks of the soba, once heated, continue to radiate heat for several hours and if you keep all the doors and windows shut the heat will be contained in the room all night. It’s pretty cozy and gives you a great sense of accomplishment. The only bummer about this method of heating is that by morning it’s pretty much freezing again and that isn’t too much fun once January roles around. But that’s what long underwear is for!

Noapte Buna!

So I have been living in the new place for a month or so now. It is a partition of my host family’s largest house and I moved into it for the winter because the soba (wood burning stove) works better in here than the one in the casa mica where I was all summer. It is a bedroom with a small entryway/hallway outside of it leading to the door to the outside. It is maybe half the total size of the casa mica where I was living all summer. I sleep, cook, and do laundry all in the same room because there is still no running water so I haul it in from the well. This has actually been really nice because the house, while still about 20 or 30 years old, is much, much newer and in better shape than the over 100 year old casa mica where I was all summer.

That all being said, though, the house has its structural faults. Moldovans tend to build the houses in the villages themselves and I have never seen nor heard from any other volunteer about any Moldovan ever building a “real” foundation to their house. They just kind of build the houses on the ground. Consequently, after only a few years, the houses start to shift on the uneven ground and end up with cracks in the walls, holes in every corner leading directly under the house and, most telling, doors that won’t close properly. I swear, it seems like no doors in Moldovan villages close all the way or will lock properly because the slight shifting of the houses warps the doorframes and makes it impossible to close them after only a year or two.

So despite the new house being newer, all these structural idiosyncrasies are in play. There are cracks in some of the walls, a few in the floorboards behind my cupboards, and the door doesn’t close all the way. As you may have guessed from the title of this post, this naturally means that I have furry little visitors now and then.

In the old house, the kitchen was a separate room closed off by a door that actually latched shut, so I did not get too many mice in the room where I slept because there was nothing for them to do there and it wasn’t any warmer there than it was outside in the summer. Now, though, all my stored food is in the same room with me in cupboards and no matter how well you clean up after cooking, they can somehow smell is and want in. In addition, it is chilly here now and I make fires at night, meaning that it is infinitely warmer in here than it is outside, giving them further reason to want to come in.

So I hear a lot of scuttling around at night. Which, honestly, does not bother me too much. Spiders are my big fear, and I had hamsters as pets when I was a kid, so rodents don’t really bother me. The only time I care that they are in the room is when they are loud while I’m trying to sleep.

So one night, about a week ago, I laid down to go to sleep and proceeded to lay wide awake for at least an hour listening to a bunch of super loud rustling around going on right near my head. I was thinking about it and finally determined that it was coming from the cupboards where I store bread, potatoes and onions. So finally, I got up, turned on the light, took a deep breath and threw open the cupboard door.

At first I saw nothing, just the food there. I felt sure that something had been in there, though, so I poked a few bags, moved an onion or two around to see behind them, and found nothing. Then, all of a sudden I saw him. This little brown mouse was clinging like a mountain climber to the stack of clean towels I keep in the cupboard, looking at me like a deer in the headlights but keeping perfectly still. I almost didn’t see him.

At this point, I should say, I was really irritated because I just wanted to sleep and dealing with vermin in your house at midnight is not my idea of a nice night. And the second I saw him, I couldn’t help but think of all those old movies where women scream and freak out at the sight of a mouse and don’t know what to do. My reaction was a little different.

I almost died because he was so cute. I started laughing and that made him run behind the towels squeaking, which I thought was even cuter. Knowing that I should be trying to find a way to kill him, I instead started looking for a way to trap him so I could look at him some more. I managed to shoo him into a Tupperware container and get the lit on it. I then proceeded to giggle at how cute he was, running around in the Tupperware trying to figure out what was going on. I realize the ridiculousness of the situation. But seriously, you guys. He was SO cute!

Finally, after I’d jostled him enough, I took him outside and released him, squeaking, into the frigid night. Then I went back to bed in peace. The sad thing, though, is while I don’t necessarily like the idea of mice running around in my house, there is a part of me that really wants him to come back.

Noapte Buna!