Freaking Amazing & Bootylicious!

We Are RAM
(Roy, Adriana, Miranda)

I have internet, but for some reason my internet hates Blogger and Facebook. When I get these pages to work, they load very slowly and I don't have the time for it!

I've been super busy in my first month of school. I'm teaching 20 hours a week, having Romanian tutoring sessions Monday through Thursdays, and I'm tutoring a couple girls Tuesdays and Thursdays for 2 hours each time. Tomorrow I'm supposedly meeting with a nun who speaks English but wants to learn how to speak better. That should be interesting.

I went to a wedding of an Irish guy I met. I was out with Roy and Adriana at a bar, and as I'm coming back from the bathroom, this eldery guy stops me. (oooh blogger just died on me, but luckily it saves periodically! I told you my internet hates Blogger!) So he stops me and starts talking English to me. Roy and Adriana come over, and after a few rounds we discover he and his fiance, Ludmila, met online. He's from Ireland, and she's from here. She speaks Russian and Romanian; he doesn't speak either of these. So, her son is translating. I can't imagine the kinds of things he must have to translate between them... Eventually we part ways with him inviting us to his wedding. So last week, Roy and I went to the wedding (unfortunately Adriana couldn't come) and we ate and drank all night long.

Today I went to a birthday with my host family. We ate a bunch of food: fried meats and pancake things. I was full when to my surprise they brought out 2 chickens. So, I ate some chicken. I was super full and ready to be done, when they brought out sarmale. I LOVE sarmale, but I just couldn't do it. I was beyond full. Sarmale is a rice, carrot, and meat mixture in either cabbage or grape leaves. I love them. After that, they brought out 2 different kinds of cake. Keep in mind, this is a Moldovan celebration, so of course we were having quite a few shots during this whole thing, too.

Last Friday was "Day of European Languages" at my school. I had to give a presentation about English in English. About 5 people in the room of about 60 understood the presentation, so that's fun. It was for the 7th and 8th graders. I put a few facts about English on the slides with pictures of "English" stuff. They were especially excited about the slide with the English Football Club logos. That got some hollars and a round of applause. Oh how they love their football (soccer) here.

Finally watched Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Not nearly as awesome as I anticipated.

Going to Romania on November 20th to see the second Twilight movie, New Moon, with some other girls. Oh man I'm excited. I'm a dork, but how I love Edward Cullen :)

Planning a trip to Bucahrest, Romania, Sofia, Bulgaria, and Skopje, Macedonia for Christmas. Going with Adriana and another girl. Originally planned on going to Egypt, but it ended up being far more expensive than I anticipated. This should be a fun trip anyway!

Bought some mascara from a Russian company. The mascara is called "Freaking Amazing Mascara." Also in the catlogue were "Bootylicious Lip Gloss" and "I'm Naughty Mascara." The girl who sells for the company had no idea what these meant so I had to explain Freaking Amazing and Bootylicious...

Woo I'm a Real Volunteer!

Swearing In Ceremony in Chisinau on August 18th. Now we're officially volunteers. The Health group and English Education (which I am) swore in together. After the ceremony, we each loaded up our suitcases and headed off to our permanent sites.

Going for picnics in forests is a common hobby here in Moldova, especially in the northern part. My family has gone several times. This time we climbed a nearby mountain/hill. It was pretty fun, and I saw a crazy little lizard while climbing.

This is my current host family. We are at a cumatria, which is a celebration for a baby's baptism. We got together with a bunch of people at a fancy restaurant, ate a bunch of food and drank lots of cognac, beer, and vodka, and ended up dancing until 3:30 in the morning. We danced the Hora, a traditional Moldovan dance, and I got a bunch of blisters on my toes. But it was definitely worth the blisters!

This is with my extended host family at my host grandparents' house.We stayed for a night. This was day 2. We ate rabbit, which was surprisingly not bad, chicken, potatoes, and of course cucumbers and tomatoes. My host mom's second cousin was there. She makes her own cognac and vodka, and she made sure I sampled each of them several times.

School is going really well. I am teaching 2nd through 9th grades, and I have 19 hours of work each week. I am team-teaching all the classes except one group of 6th graders I teach by myself. Here, I am with a Russian 8th grade class. They had a big birthday party for all the summer birthdays in their class. We ate lots of treats and danced to English music. It was quite fun!

Dancing and Singing in Romanian!

Host sister Eugenia and our dog Tom.

This is the Primarie in town. It's the mayor's office.

The famous OK Pizza. We hang out here all the time. It has one of the only indoor toilets in Costesti!

Tata gazda Gheorghe and me after our performance. I tried to make him smile with teeth; he wouldn't :(

Mama gazda Alexandra. She wouldn't show her teeth either :(

A delicious meal of chicken, potatoes, salad, and of course house wine.

Today was our performance for our host families. Each group (healthies and English Education) performed songs, dances, and speeches. My group danced and sang a song. I was quite impressed with how awesomely well all the groups did!
After the performance, which lasted about an hour, we ate food with our families that we prepared. The dishes were supposed to be "American" foods. My group made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and cookies. Other groups made macaroni and cheese (which was shipped specially from the US!) cucumber sandwiches, banana bread, deviled eggs, egg salad, salsa, and quesodillas. Quite tasty indeed. However, the American volunteers ended up eating most of the American food.
Tomorrow I'm heading to Chisinau with my mom and sister to do some back to school shopping. I'll probably pick up some gifts for my next host family while we're there.
Huge language assessment on Monday. This one's a "real" one, as opposed to the others being practice.
Tuesday we swear in and become official volunteers. After the swearing in, we are picked up by our future school directors and brought to our permanent sites. Super scary.

I Want Free Ice Water

In 8 days, I will be leaving my village for my permanent site. I will be at that site for the next 2 years of my life. Needless to say, I'm a bit nervous. However, I cannot begin to describe how excited I am to almost be done with PST (Pre-Service Training). It has been a hectic past 8 (or is it 9?) weeks, and I'm ready to head to my permanent site.
On Saturday, all of us EE kids and the Healthies will be getting together to have a big bash for our families. We are going to be performing dances, songs, skits, and speeches, and we are going to make American food. My group is making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (very simple and very American!) and I think the other EE group is making macaronie and cheese.
Monday we have a huge language assessment, and then on Tuesday we swear in. Yes, that's right! I will finally be an official Peace Corps Volunteer, not just a trainee! After swearing in, I head to my next site.
I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed with how quickly things have gone. Although there have been times when I've hated PST and wanted it to be over NOW, it has gone surprisingly fast.

I really miss ice. Ice water, ice in pop, ice, ice, ice.
I also really miss getting a free glass of water at restaurants. It was something I completely took advantage of in America. Here in Moldova, you don't get a free glass of water. You have to buy a bottle. I didn't realize that would be something I would miss.

What Does TDY Stand For? Not sure...

I'm currently sitting at the Peace Corps office in TDY. I'm not sure what TDY means, temporary duty something. I think it's a military term.
Saturday night I woke up at least 15 times with the worst stomach ache intestine thing going on. It continued through Sunday and Monday. Monday afternoon I came to Peace Corps where I was told I have food poisoning and given some medicine. I was sent home to rest.
Tuesday morning it wasn't better, so my language instructor made me call Peace Corps again. I was picked up and brought back to Chisinau and put into TDY. I got here yesterday around 10 in the morning. I slept most of the day.
Now it's Wednesday morning, and I'm still here. I'm supposed to stay another night, which is ok with me because they have toilets and showers and tv in English! Hey, it's ok to be spoiled when you're sick.
My stomach is better, but it's still cramping up every so often. I'm on a bread and rice diet, although I've been eating only crackers instead. I don't know how to make rice tasty with just rice. If I could add some soy sauce and vegetables, then we'd be in business!
*Side note: Have lost about 15 pounds so far! Or at least that's what the scale in my family's garage told me!

Practice School - The Busiest Week of My Life

Practice school started on Monday. Practice school is basically student-teaching in a nutshell. I am teaching a 5th grade class with a different number of students every day. The first day was 21 students, then it gradually grew as we gained students each day. Most of the students in my class are going into 6th grade when the school year, but I also had a few girls who are going into 5th grade.

As I teach, my resource teacher (who has been teaching in Moldova for 30 years) sits in the back and takes notes on everything I do.

My days this week have consisted of: language class in the morning for 2 hours followed by a half hour break, then teaching starts at 11:00 to 11:45 with another 15 minute break, then more teaching until 12:45. After that I have an hour lunch break, then I meet with my resource teacher to discuss the lesson and plan for the next day. After a couple hours of that, I head home to write my plan for the next day and make materials.

As you can see, this week and the next two to come are the craziest weeks ever.

On Monday I'm giving my class a test, and then I have tech sessions until Thursday. Thursday I start team teaching 8th grade.

I'm an early childhood major teaching 5th and 8th graders. I am freaking out.

Cookin' with the 90's

Yesterday I was making placenta with my host mom. Placenta (while spelled the same as certain female parts but really sounds like pla-chen-ta) is a very popular food here in Moldova. I think I've had it at just about every celebration and at every masa. It's quite tasty! Placenta is different depending on who makes it, but generally it is a doughy outside with some sort of filling on the inside, usually fried or baked. The most common thing to put inside placenta is brinza. Brinza is a type of cheese. There are 2 types of cheese in Moldova: Cascaval which is processed cheese you can buy in a store, and Brinza which is homemade. Brinza has a stronger flavor and usually comes from either a cow or goat. Mama gazda taught me how to make placenta the other day, so now I've been making it like a maniac. We cut the pre-made dough into smaller pieces, spread margarine onto the dough, put a brinza/egg mixture onto it, roll it up, and "paint" it in an egg wash. Then we bake it for a while. Not sure how long; it's different everytime. Last night I made some with brinza, some with potatoes, and one with helva (smashed up sunflower seeds and oil) because I was being experimental. The Helva Placenta was surprisingly awesome!
My family has realized that I love to sing and dance, so an English radio station is always on in the kitchen when we are there. I think they think I'm a musical genious because I know every single American song that comes on including all the words and who sings it. However, musical genious I am not. It's that every song is from the 90's! Many of them are Madonna songs. So I get my groove on while cooking/eating/hanging in the kitchen, and hopefully they have just learned to accept it. :)