Timpul Liber
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
10:15am
Susleni is sizzling right now. I have a lot of free time since I am out of school and I have only 1 friend in the village that is my age. She is getting married in September though so I might be hanging with the babas.
With my free time in the village, when I am not planning projects, I go for jogs and walks or study Romanian. The translating gig is out the window though I think. I have assimilated many hobbies since I am alone a lot and never allow myself to get bored. I like having more choices in what to do with my time (when avoiding work!) so it’s fun and I appreciate having this time for things outside of work. I know this time is definitely not going to last forever-especially when school starts back up on September 1.
I would really like to partake more in my favorite hobby, which is traveling, since I am in Europe and it’s cheaper to go places from here rather than when I will be back home, but finances are tight of course. I don’t know how the other volunteers do it, it really is amazing how much they travel now. Anyway, here are the hobbies: I practice yoga, harmonica, fire-twirling (I am still only practicing without fire) and learning from a Russian girl when I am in Chisinau, tae qwan do (although my teacher is in Spain for a month), and meditation. I know I should probably focus on one hobby, but there are so many great and free teachers here and I want to take advantage of my time with them.
To catch up on some previous events…
I had a hip hop dance camp for my village, one of the volunteers is a professionally trained dancer and I had her come teach my kids. THEY LOVED IT. This was about 3 weeks ago. Then a day later, I went to Kiev for a day to attend a lecture by Lama Ole. He is a very interesting man, traveling and teaching to a different country almost every day. He had a large lecture in Chisinau and then in the evening some of my friends and I hopped on the train with their traveling team and also attended the lecture in Kiev, Urkraine which is fairly close to us. Kiev was a beautiful city. I came back and rested for a day then headed up to another volunteer’s site to help her with a fitness camp. There were about 5 volunteers there and it was a lot of fun. I taught self-defense and the others taught volleyball, basketball, yoga, frisbee, and dance. The day after the camp finished was the Embassy 4th of July party. It was cool to see all the different Americans working in Moldova that have no affiliation with Peace Corps. There was a band playing American music with Russian accent and Americans. That was about as patriotic as it got surprisingly. But there was free food and booze and that was nice and I appreciated all of it, especially the excuse to get all dressed up. ;)
The next day, all of us volunteers got together for an ultimate frisbee game. It was HOT. Nice game until Adam made an amazing dive scoring us a much-needed point and landed on his head. He ended up with a mild concussion. I felt bad for him, but it was amusing when he rambled some nonsense words. I took care of him the best I could, but when there is puke involved my bed-side manner is embarrassingly poor. Anyway, he is fine now and was recovered enough to play a few days later at the 4th of July show we organized. It was great blues and American music. We had a hoolahoop contest and a watermelon for the winner. Mom, you would have torn the competition up.
I found some cheap fireworks in the market thankfully. As most of you know, the 4th is my fave. I have so many great memories from this holiday. Elgin sent me an email reminding me of throwing smoke bombs from the balcony of my old apartment. I especially enjoy going out to Dad’s, they really know how to celebrate in north Missouri. They all BBQ, eat homemade ice cream, and swim all day by their immaculate campers and then at night tie the boats together and watch the infamous Lake Viking firework display out on the water. It really is fun. I missed it dearly while lighting my lamo fountain in the Chisinau park. But I “oohed” and “ahhed” it just the same as any firework.
My Mom despises the holiday, since it is quite a waste of money and she doesn’t like her kids lighting things. But she usually takes my Granny and watches the KC City Market show. (My Mom and I are especially annoying with the oohing and ahhing at firework shows. It’s fabulous.)
Anyway, I had a good time and was pretty excited when I found the “foc artificial” (articial fire) in the piatsa market.
Now I am back at site and that’s about it. I will leave you with what I did a few days ago that gave me a few laughs.
My friend Alina invited me to a music festival in a nearby village. It was a great cultural experience THAT LASTED ALL DAY. I think there were more hours in this day that usual. I listened to my village Susleni sing with their group (they won 1st place out of like 20 groups). The songs were great, but honestly they all sound very similar. There was some dancing too and this was amusing. But anyway, they sang allllllll day. Then since my group won, the Moldova television station came out and they had to sing by the Nistru (big river). Since I am American they had me hold the mic while they interviewed the mayor. It looked like I was the reporter…it was funny and I will be on TV this Sunday. Anyway, so after they sang by the river..we had a masa (which is a table of bread, tomatoes, cheese in a fried bread called placinta, and house wine.) Then after they drank some wine…there was no stopping them and they SANG their hearts out again. These same songs they sang all day. Alina and I desperately tried hurding all my drunk co-teachers into the rutiera (bus) and WOW. That was the most intense rutiera ride. It was funny. AND LOUD. My club partner started changing her clothes while we were going all over these huge bumps and the whole rutiera was graced with the sight of her pubes. Do you think she was embarrassed???? No, you guessed it, they laughed and sang LOUDER. Later than sooner, we arrived in my village. My club partner insisted everyone come to her house to drink more wine and sing. Normally I would do participate, but besides the fact that these events REQUIRE a certain mood, I was also late to meet my host family…my host brother was in town with their newborn baby Veronica and I wanted to see them. After being physically pulled into the party, Alina and I snuck out when no one was looking and I went home.
Peace and quiet never sounded so good.
10:15am
Susleni is sizzling right now. I have a lot of free time since I am out of school and I have only 1 friend in the village that is my age. She is getting married in September though so I might be hanging with the babas.
With my free time in the village, when I am not planning projects, I go for jogs and walks or study Romanian. The translating gig is out the window though I think. I have assimilated many hobbies since I am alone a lot and never allow myself to get bored. I like having more choices in what to do with my time (when avoiding work!) so it’s fun and I appreciate having this time for things outside of work. I know this time is definitely not going to last forever-especially when school starts back up on September 1.
I would really like to partake more in my favorite hobby, which is traveling, since I am in Europe and it’s cheaper to go places from here rather than when I will be back home, but finances are tight of course. I don’t know how the other volunteers do it, it really is amazing how much they travel now. Anyway, here are the hobbies: I practice yoga, harmonica, fire-twirling (I am still only practicing without fire) and learning from a Russian girl when I am in Chisinau, tae qwan do (although my teacher is in Spain for a month), and meditation. I know I should probably focus on one hobby, but there are so many great and free teachers here and I want to take advantage of my time with them.
To catch up on some previous events…
I had a hip hop dance camp for my village, one of the volunteers is a professionally trained dancer and I had her come teach my kids. THEY LOVED IT. This was about 3 weeks ago. Then a day later, I went to Kiev for a day to attend a lecture by Lama Ole. He is a very interesting man, traveling and teaching to a different country almost every day. He had a large lecture in Chisinau and then in the evening some of my friends and I hopped on the train with their traveling team and also attended the lecture in Kiev, Urkraine which is fairly close to us. Kiev was a beautiful city. I came back and rested for a day then headed up to another volunteer’s site to help her with a fitness camp. There were about 5 volunteers there and it was a lot of fun. I taught self-defense and the others taught volleyball, basketball, yoga, frisbee, and dance. The day after the camp finished was the Embassy 4th of July party. It was cool to see all the different Americans working in Moldova that have no affiliation with Peace Corps. There was a band playing American music with Russian accent and Americans. That was about as patriotic as it got surprisingly. But there was free food and booze and that was nice and I appreciated all of it, especially the excuse to get all dressed up. ;)
The next day, all of us volunteers got together for an ultimate frisbee game. It was HOT. Nice game until Adam made an amazing dive scoring us a much-needed point and landed on his head. He ended up with a mild concussion. I felt bad for him, but it was amusing when he rambled some nonsense words. I took care of him the best I could, but when there is puke involved my bed-side manner is embarrassingly poor. Anyway, he is fine now and was recovered enough to play a few days later at the 4th of July show we organized. It was great blues and American music. We had a hoolahoop contest and a watermelon for the winner. Mom, you would have torn the competition up.
I found some cheap fireworks in the market thankfully. As most of you know, the 4th is my fave. I have so many great memories from this holiday. Elgin sent me an email reminding me of throwing smoke bombs from the balcony of my old apartment. I especially enjoy going out to Dad’s, they really know how to celebrate in north Missouri. They all BBQ, eat homemade ice cream, and swim all day by their immaculate campers and then at night tie the boats together and watch the infamous Lake Viking firework display out on the water. It really is fun. I missed it dearly while lighting my lamo fountain in the Chisinau park. But I “oohed” and “ahhed” it just the same as any firework.
My Mom despises the holiday, since it is quite a waste of money and she doesn’t like her kids lighting things. But she usually takes my Granny and watches the KC City Market show. (My Mom and I are especially annoying with the oohing and ahhing at firework shows. It’s fabulous.)
Anyway, I had a good time and was pretty excited when I found the “foc artificial” (articial fire) in the piatsa market.
Now I am back at site and that’s about it. I will leave you with what I did a few days ago that gave me a few laughs.
My friend Alina invited me to a music festival in a nearby village. It was a great cultural experience THAT LASTED ALL DAY. I think there were more hours in this day that usual. I listened to my village Susleni sing with their group (they won 1st place out of like 20 groups). The songs were great, but honestly they all sound very similar. There was some dancing too and this was amusing. But anyway, they sang allllllll day. Then since my group won, the Moldova television station came out and they had to sing by the Nistru (big river). Since I am American they had me hold the mic while they interviewed the mayor. It looked like I was the reporter…it was funny and I will be on TV this Sunday. Anyway, so after they sang by the river..we had a masa (which is a table of bread, tomatoes, cheese in a fried bread called placinta, and house wine.) Then after they drank some wine…there was no stopping them and they SANG their hearts out again. These same songs they sang all day. Alina and I desperately tried hurding all my drunk co-teachers into the rutiera (bus) and WOW. That was the most intense rutiera ride. It was funny. AND LOUD. My club partner started changing her clothes while we were going all over these huge bumps and the whole rutiera was graced with the sight of her pubes. Do you think she was embarrassed???? No, you guessed it, they laughed and sang LOUDER. Later than sooner, we arrived in my village. My club partner insisted everyone come to her house to drink more wine and sing. Normally I would do participate, but besides the fact that these events REQUIRE a certain mood, I was also late to meet my host family…my host brother was in town with their newborn baby Veronica and I wanted to see them. After being physically pulled into the party, Alina and I snuck out when no one was looking and I went home.
Peace and quiet never sounded so good.
posted by MissRy at 1:26 AM
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