Music: My Escape.

As most of you know I love music. I love listening to it, I love playing it, and I love creating it. While here in Romania, I knew I would eventually buy a guitar here instead of bringing one just to save on the amount of bags I was bringing one. My first couple months in the country were hell because I couldn't leave Târgoviste to go and buy one because of Peace Corps policies for trainees. Then came the first weekend we could leave Jd. Dumbavița and the first place I went was a music shop in the neighboring county. I was recommended to the store by a language teacher and as it turned, I got to wait another couple weeks until I could have my own guitar again since you only order from the store, then once it arrives you pick it up. Oh well, at least I would have a guitar soon enough.

While I was away visiting my site, I got a phone call while out with some teachers enjoying a summer meal of grilled mici. My guitar had arrived and I could go and pick it up when I was ready. That weekend I came back, I went to Ploiești and got my guitar. Having that guitar brought me back to my original self. So much of the daily stress I had was taken away by being able to play my guitar once again. It was even commented by another volunteer that once I got my guitar, my language learning improved as well. I guess we all learn our specific ways.

Once I arrived at site, I was invited to a guitar class which was held at the clubul eleviilor (student's club). It was the cantece de munte (mountain songs) and they have a rich musical culture where I am. Quickly I was drawn into the simple, yet beautiful music about love, nature, and the mountains, most of which is all connected in the songs. Gabi, who had invited me to the class, was going to be leaving soon to work in Spain, and Piti the other teacher would be taking over as the main instructor. Not soon later, I was asked if I would teach along with Piti, especially if he is gone. I was elated. Not only would I be learning an amazing part of culture, I would also be teaching it.

Every week I am going twice to the club and playing and teaching with the students. There is something peaceful about a room of music, no matter how loud it can get. Around Christmas I was playing along their traditional carols while playing some English carols as well. I went caroling with the group and had an amazing time. Now with the weather becoming warmer, we will start spending weekends in the mountains, eating, drinking, and playing surrounded by the very things which have inspired these songs.

Below are three videos of the class, along with Piti and I, playing some of these songs. Enjoy.

This first song is called Mare Neagra (Black Sea). It is about the Black Sea and how important of a symbol it is to Romania and the power it has.

Ninge Astazi Pentru Tine (It's Snowing Today for You) as you can guess by the title is a love song.

Noapte la Mare, Noapte la Munte (Goodnight to the Sea, Goodnight to the Mountain).

While the music is simple, it still holds a strong meaning to me. Being surrounded by a beautiful landscape, its understandable that so many songs would be written about it. These classes and these songs have been my escape from whatever stresses I may have while being away. My home is truly wherever music is being loved, and this has been the thing which has made Victoria feel so much like home these past months.

One semester down!

So as I look back on last semester, I cannot help but see how much I have grown not only as an educator, but also as a person. I have really seen the difference in educational culture between the US and Romania, but also how I have adapted to that change in the way I teach. But enough of that, here's what I did on my break.

So I ended school on Thursday and made my way to Babeni to hang out with Tara for a couple days before we headed out. We decided to hitchhike across Romania to where we would be picking up the train to Serbia. After a fairly uneventful ride from Babeni to Sibiu, we were picked up by a really nice truck driver who was able to take us about halfway to Deva. Not only was he a really nice guy, he had a really nice truck too. We had the chance to talk to him and share somethings between our cultures (mainly food). Once in Deva, we got some dinner really quick at the American Embassy (McDonald's) and went back out to the road. The next guy to pick us up was younger and was heading halfway from Deva to Timisoara and was a great guy as well. He even took us to the spot in Jugoj to where we would hitch from. And low and behold, in 30 seconds we had our final ride into Timisoara. After talking to the guy who was taking us for a short while, we told him we were from the US and he then wanted us to start speaking English with him so he could practice him English. When we arrived in Timisoara, he came with us to have a beer while we waited until 5:50 in the morning to leave. Glad to know I have a new friend in Timisoara.

It was another really cold night in Romania so we were hopping to places where it would be warm until the train left. The train was a fairly short ride and we came into a freezing cold Serbian morning. We spent the morning hopping from site to cafe, to site, to bar, etc to keep warm while we wandered the city. We were staying with a younger couple who lived in the city in their flat and they were amazing hosts. Telling us where to go, what to see, etc. We saw most of the sites around the city minus most of the museums, but we did go to the ethnographic museum which was very interesting since we were able to see the various costumes and lifestyles of traditional Serbia.

The next day we left for Bosnia. The bus ride wasn't too long, but was through some of the more scenic areas I've seen in a while. We arrived in Sarajevo around 7:30 at night and took a taxi to our Hostel. We were greeted by Jasmina, our hostel owner, and she was an amazing host. The next morning we woke up and went out for coffee with her and afterwards went and toured the Peace Tunnel. This was a 800m tunnel built during the Siege of Sarajevo in 1992 and today serves as a museum to what was happeningduring this period. Jasmina told us her personal stories of the siege and what her life was like while that was happening. It added a new element to seeing all of the buildings with bullet holes from that time.

Later that day, we wandered around the old city center and bazaar. Sarajevo is over 50% Muslim so it has a very different feel to it as a city than any other I have been to yet since coming here. Being surrounded by coffee houses, hearing the calls to prayer, and wandering past handcrafted goods really took me away from my everyday life in Romania. we also managed to stumble upon the Sarajevska Brewery and we enjoyed some of their fine makes. That night we met up with Ryan and Sara, both PC volunteers in Romania, and had dinner, drank rachiya, and went out later. It was good to see friendly faces there as well.

The next day we visited a few mosques in the city, and then we were back on our way to Serbia for one final night. We arrived fairly late and had trouble finding the hostel so we just called it a night there. We walked around the city that last day only to come across a massive anti-government protest. We wandered past just to see what was going on and soon met up with Ryan and Sara to head back home to Romania.

While on the train, there was a moment where I felt back at home. When the customs agents came on the train from Romania and were speaking Romanian, I felt an extreme comfort I hadn't felt in a while. Who knows what I will feel when I get back to the US. We spent the night in Recas with Sara before heading back out on the road. Overall it was a fairly uneventful ride, but one that had a little more character. our 2nd ride was an overpacked Dacia from the early 90's so we were squeezed in tight, then our next ride from Deva to Sibiu had to be one of the craziest Turkish truck drivers ever, but a cool guy none the less. We were trying to get into Sibiu in time for Tara to take her bus back to Rm. Valcea which we eventually made it into the bus stop with about a minute to spare thanks to a guy who picked us up on the outside of the city and drove us there. I hitched my way back to Victoria and got to work for the next day of school.

Overall a long trip, but a good one. It felt good to leave the country but nothing is ever as good as coming home. Its odd to think that coming back to Romania for me is coming home now, but it truly has become that for me. Now with a year and a half to go, who knows what my mind will be thinking when it comes time to go back to the United States.

Catching up

It's been way too long since I've posted in here. Sorry. Since the last time I've posted there has been quite a bit going on for me. Hopefully I can catch the main points so you can know what has been going on with me and that I am still alive and well.

After my birthday (told you it's been a while), I had my first serious moment of "what the hell am I doing here?". The students were beginning to get on my nerves in terms of behavior (which to me at the time were seeming like open disrespect towards me as a teacher) and the idea that Victoria was going to be my home for the next two years was beginning to seem all too real. For about a week I was always contemplating in my head what would happen if I ended up going home. I was even having dreams about going back to the states. I would have my friends and family happy I was home, but there was guilt on my part as to leaving. It was an odd feeling to have that.

But all of that turned around in the middle of the month. I went to another volunteer's apartment who was having a Halloween party and being around those people who are family to me now, helped me in more ways than I could imagine. Not only were we able to have our venting sessions, I was able to just get away from everything and have some fun. The next dream I remembered having was a natural disaster happening in Romania and me and a few other volunteers refusing to leave. It was a good feeling to have my subconscious back on my side as towards my being here.

Back to life at school. The students had usually been good. I understood there would be a period where they would try and test my limits to see how far they could go to get away with things. I only thought it would have ended sooner. One day sticks out for me as the turning point with one group of students. The teacher I work with in this class was not going to be there so I told her that I would take the whole class and work with them. Normally the classes are split so we have smaller groups (15 or so students), but this time it was the full group of 32. I broke up 3 fights and was constantly being interrupted by student outbursts. I stopped teaching and asked the students," Do you really want me here?" They got the picture right away. They were able to see that I was becoming frustrated to the point of giving up on them. After class I spoke with a couple students who have always been on my good side about the class. We were able to come up with some concrete ways of trying to work with the class so everyone can actually try and learn. And it has worked so far. Students are much better behaved and like Pavlovian Dogs, as soon as I put my hand up they get quiet. Ah, the joys of psychology.

Outside of school there are a couple things which have happened to me in town which have helped me feel more welcome here in town and a much more happy volunteer. Every Monday night, I go to the town's gymnasium and play basketball with a group of adults and high school students. It's great to be able to stay active (especially in the winter) and I have been meeting some great guys in town as well as getting to know some students even better. I'm clearly no LeBron James but luckily I'm starting to get back whatever skills I used to have in playing the game.

The other thing which has helped me in feeling more happy as a volunteer is my guitar. I know most of you know how important music is to me, as it is my release for stress and just a way I express myself. Well here in Victoria there is a guitar class for students at the schools to attend and I was invited to come to one of the classes. I joined in with the playing and learning of songs which was amazing. I was learning Romanian Christmas carols as well as some of the mountain carols which are extremely popular in this region. Gabi, who was also the school's music teacher, was actually leaving the next week for Spain where he was hoping to find more work, a common thing here in Romania. Piti who was the other teacher would be taking over as the main teacher and after the first class, Gabi asked me if I would be interested in helping out with teaching guitar to the students. I jumped at that right away.

While I may not know a lot of the songs, I am helping the students with technique and things like that which definitely helps them regardless of what they play. I've been going to the class every Tuesday and Thursday which has once again opened the door for me with not only the student's club here in town, but also in getting to know the creative side of many students of mine that I did not know existed before.

While all of these things have been going on here in my town, I have had some time to get out and see Romania. In early December, I went with some other volunteers to visit Scott at his site (which is only 23 kms away from me) to see their caroling tradition. We followed along with the group as they did their carols, dances, as well as traditions in choosing the roles of the group for the coming year. Afterwards we had a large meal with plenty of beer, wine, and țuica which always makes for a good time.

With Christmas coming I knew it would be a tough time for me since Christmas was and always will be my favorite holiday. Luckily I was invited with another volunteer to come with her to her host family from the summer to celebrate. I was able to see the traditional killing of the pig, eating all of the traditional foods for Christmas, as well as going to an Orthodox Christmas service (at 5am mind you). If the fact that I went to church doesn't constitute a Christmas miracle, the fact I did it at 5 in the morning surely does.

After Christmas, we went up to Maramureș in the north and we managed to see many of the historical sites in the area. We went to Săpânsă where they have a cemetery called the Merry Cemetery. It is full of grave markers with limericks about the persons life, some involving the guy who loved to drink too much as well as the mother in law that if she didn't die the son in law would have been in the grave himself. It was a very interesting thing to see. The area is known for its wooden churches so we were able to see those as well as touring the monastary in Bârsană. It was built after communism so it's not very old, but still impressive.

Mănăstirea Bârsana

We celebrated New Years in Brașov which was great sicne there were a good amount of volunteers celebrating there as well. After the break, it was back at school for another few weeks until the end of the semester, which leads to a new realm of Romanian schools I would have to get used to, grading. Grading here is a stressful thing, not only for students but also teachers. Grades are written down in the catalog which is a massive gradebook that is THE official be all end all of grading. It's a dated system in my opinion, but it works for them. It is a grading system of 1-10 (really 4-10 since a 4 and anything else lower is not passing, so giving a 3 or less is really making a statement to the student about something).

So when it came to telling the students about their grades, I think they finally got the point that I am a real teacher, who is really grading them. The shocked look on so many faces led the students to shaping up right away in terms of behavior. With the students they learned that I don't "give" grades but that they actually earn them throughout the semester. When I had a student today as me "Can I get a 10 this semester?" I told him it was only up to him in order to get that as their grade. I had nothing to do with it other than writing down their grade which they got themselves. Hopefully as the next semester comes, students will continue this shaped up behavior as they want their grades to be higher.

Now I'm caught up with everything in terms of what has happened over the past few months. Now it will be easier to keep up since I finally have a schedule that I know. More to come soon since we will be going to Belgrade and Sarajevo for our semester break. It will be good to finally get out of the country and have a good time elsewhere.

Surprise! Time to Teach!

So school has officially started. Teachers have been back for a few weeks and I am one week down in teaching. I cannot explain how happy I am to be finally be doing something. Not only just in terms of the Peace Corps, but I absolutely love to teach, and being in front of a classroom is one place where I am in my comfort zone.

So September 1st was the first day of school for teachers. I arrived at the school at 9 o'clock, welcomed with a cup of coffee and talked with teachers for a couple of hours and went home. Ok, maybe tomorrow we'll do something. Arrive in the morning, get my cup of coffee (which mind you here is strong like espresso), talk with some teachers, and the last half hour of the day we're told what classes each teacher will be teaching, and go home. Ok, somewhat more productive. That would be about as productive as the next week would get. So come Friday, the final Friday before students come along, and I finally find out what each grade is supposed to learn this year. Better than never.

So comes Monday. School is officially starting and I feel like its my first day of student teaching. Basically asking myself, "What the hell did you get yourself into?" But, once again, like the previous 8 days or so of being at school, it lasted for about 2 hours and was extremely informal. Except for one point. So what seemed like half the town in the school yard, the directors begin by welcoming everyone, the local priests bless the school and pray for a good year, and then its time for introductions. Not just any introduction, MY introduction. Now I know what Hester Prynne felt like (Google that if you have to). So I get brought up in front of everyone, and like I said, seemed like half the town, and introduced as the "new American" to the school. Awkward? A little bit.

So Tuesday comes along and I was hoping to just kind of sit back and see how things work every day for each class. NOPE! Class split right away and guess who was teaching. Luckily I have my usual first day planned out, so I did that and it worked out quite well. But, I wasn't expecting in 7th grade to be showing off to the students that I know Romanian. Once I got over the initial shock of teaching unexpectedly, I was good for the rest of the week. Now I'm pretty well set. I'm teaching from this point on, and I have a general idea of what to be teaching. Bring it.

"Throughout my life I've had teachers and professors who have made me change the way I view the world. I was tired of having it changed so much I finally figured out what MY view of the world was. Time to go have students get sick of having their views changed and make up their own minds"

Living at Site

So for the past month or so I have been getting used to living at my site. From trips to the piața, hanging out at the town pool, I've been keeping myself busy in adjusting to my new home. A lot has happened since I moved here so I need to recap, since its been nearly 6 weeks (oops) since my last post.

My first weekend at site was the "Welcome to Transylvania" party being held by another volunteer. I was excited to get out and visit with other volunteers, enjoy some good food, and just relax for a little. While on my way there, I had a good conversation with an older man who was going to the same place as me on the train. Many past volunteers say to sit next to an old bunică on the train and avoid the drunk guys, but sometimes, the old drunk guys are just more fun. Also at the train station I ended up running into another Peace Corps volunteer who had just ended his service in the Republic of Moldova. We chatted for a little while and ended with a little trading of our respective country's swagger.

The next weekend was one which I don't think I will forget in a long time. I decided to meet up with Scott in Fagaraș for their Medieval festival which was being held at the castle. We caught up (even though it had only been 2 weeks since PST ended) over some beers and went walking around the fest. Once it got dark, we decided to go up to one of the castles bastions where they had beer stands and sat over a castle drinking a cold beer. I don't know if I ever would have expected to be doing that in in my life, but it is definitely something I need to do again. I stayed at Scott's place for the night and the next morning go the grand tour of his village.

Next weekend, was Spuneți (Spoo-nets). Spuneți is a quarterly magazine that Peace Corps Romania puts out and talks about whats going on in PCRO. Articles are submitted by volunteers and we put it together. I applied to be an editor and obviously by what I just said, was accepted to be the new editor from our group. we traveled to another volunteer's site, Courtney, as she was our first guest editor. It was a blast putting it together with Mat, Adam, and Courtney and I can tell working with Mat and Adam for the next year will be great. I spent nearly all day (and night) on Photoshop, eventually leading to a kitten falling asleep on my shoulder as I typed away. There's a picture out there somewhere.

I decided to spend the next weekends at home, just getting settled before school starts. Teachers report the 1st and students start on the 13th. More to come soon.

"Sometimes we find ourselves in moments in time where we have no clue how we got here, but we did, and its a matter of enjoying every second of it because it may never happen again."

Finally a Volunteer!

Has much happened since over a month ago? Maybe. Not only had I since found out where I would be going for over two years, but I also visited said place, met with my counterpart who I will be working with for the next two years, finished with my training for the Peace Corps, been sworn in as a Peace Corps volunteer by Ambassador Gittenstein at his residence in Bucharest, and now moved into my apartment at site. Sound like a lot of stuff happened? Yeah, a lot did. But did it seem like much as the final month flew by, heck no.

So yes, I finally have a place where I will be for the next two years. I will be living in the southwest of Județul Brașov right at the base of the Fagaraș Mountains. I will be teaching 5-12th grades (minus 10th, don't know why) so I think I'll have a pretty diverse load of teaching which will only make me better I feel. My apartment is pretty nice with pretty much everything I would need for the next two years, except for two things which one is trivial but to me the other is more important. So I'll be hand washing my clothes for the next two years since I don't have a washing machine, but mă rog (whatever). The one thing I do not have which I wish I did, is an oven/stove. Who has two thumbs and will be cooking on a hot plate and using a microwave for the next 2 years? This guy! I'm thinking I might buy an electric grill at one of the local stores so I can at least have that so I can have some variety in my diet.

I also finally got my guitar. I had to wait a while until we were able to leave Târgoviște so I could actually buy a guitar someplace since there was a time restriction where we could leave the training site. After I got it, I had to laugh when one of my friends during a language class said, "Has anyone else noticed that as soon as he got his guitar, his Romanian has gotten better?"

The day before we had our swearing in I took my host family out to Toscany which is a pretty good restaurant in Târgoviște as a way of saying thank you for the past 11 weeks. The next morning we boarded the bus to Bucarești on the way to the ambassador's residence. We had the swear in ceremony, which the oath is the same as the military, kind of weird for the PEACE corps, but hey, why not?


The next day I was off to site. Along with a few other volunteers, we took the bus to Brașov which was an adventure in itself. The night before around Sinaia there had been torrential rains which caused landslides along the road. The river which flows along the ride which normally has a trickle of water on a good day was in full blown rapids mode. We also went past the town which was used in Borat to represent Kazakhstan. It's a small town which is mainly populated by Rroma people which is one of the more poor areas in the country. When I first heard about the town suing him back in the day, I didn't really have an opinion, but now I certainly do. I honestly do believe that he exploited the way in which they live for his own comedic gains. They succeeded in suing him which because of that they have paved roads and a few services available to them now. I did not want to watch that movie before coming here because I knew in terms of how E. Europe was portrayed would only make me angry and now after passing through that town there's no way I can have any respect for what he did there.

Anywho, things have finally gotten real. I've done my first grocery shopping along with a trip to the piața (market) to buy some fresh vegetables. I also met some of my students who live in the same block as me. Now comes the fun part where I have to start doing some paper work for the Peace Corps in terms of safety and security. I need to finish un packing a little bit as well as needing to do some laundry. Tomorrow I should finally get internet, at least I'll be telling the company I want it, so hopefully I'll be back online soon.

*From the time I wrote this to when I finally got an internet connection was 2 weeks. So I guess in terms of cross-culture, Romanian cable and internet companies work faster than the US.

Back to routines but also back to teaching (June 16-25)

So we returned from our trip exhausted from all of the travelling and eating ridiculous amounts of food. The routine began again of going to language class, followed by more and more sessions in the afternoon after they have already managed to systematically destroy our brain abilities through teaching us Romanian. However, next week begins our practicum where we will test out our abilities to teach English to students.

We have picked our groups for teaching and begun planning, now comes the real deal where we actually try to teach English. Day 1 was obviously our first day of experimenting, not only with our level of teaching, but with where the students are in terms of English. We are teaching 7th grade which should be fun because the students have begun to have a speaking proficiency yet they can use some fine tuning as we educate them through English.

Day 2 was a lesson completely on music. We were using K'naan's "Waving Flag" as the central piece to teach around. Begin the World Cup's them song this year, we felt it would be accessible to the students since you hear it so much on TV. First Chelsea taught them the song by using different games which required listening and comprehension of the song. I went second and we had a discussion about what the song was about. It went amazingly well as the students were latching onto the ideas of peace and poverty which as extremely prevalent in the song. Kyle finished it up by having the students read an article about another famous musician, Elvis Presley, who also grew up in a tough childhood to have an impact on the musical world, which is obvious.

Day 3 we did a movie themed lesson. Students learned vocabulary about going to a movie theater, they practiced dialogues of buying tickets and snacks, including the wonderful world of upsizing where we then asked them to buy larger because of free refills, etc. Kyle had the students brainstorm different words to describe different types of movies and then had them make movie posters using those words. I was going to close it up by showing movie clips of different movies and seeing if they could describe the dialogue that was taking place as well as describing the scene. It failed miserably at first because they couldn't hear the clips because they were playing on laptops in different stations. So I scrapped it and we decided to make our own scenes. Students volunteered to be our actors while the rest of the class came up with the ideas for the different scenes. It was great because not only were they hilarious, the students had to improvise using a foreign language which is not an easy thing to do, but they handled it quite well.

Day 4 we talked about America. I did a quick history of the founding of America as well as how the government is set up and compared it to Romania. Kyle did a geography lesson about the different regions and cities and how they are different from each other. Chelsea talked about schools in America and how they are organized and the students had to compare them to schools in Romania.

Day 5 was a fun day for the kids. Kyle opened up talking about music again but more on the genres of music. He played different songs and asked the students what genre they thought each song was. They had a blast with it, as well as seeing Kyle dance like Michael Jackson as well as dancing to "I Feel Good". Chelsea talked about Martin Luther King and had a discussion about discrimination and brought it back to Romania and the students even talked about how the Rroma people are discriminated against in Romania. I did team building exercises where the students were not allowed to talk and when we were done we discussed why communication is important. It went nearly as planned, except for the kids who tried to talk, which only made them have to start over.

The whole experience was very reassuring in terms of why I came to Romania in the first place. So far it has basically been us learning and doing very little until now and I cannot wait to get to it at site.

"There is nothing better than having students coming up to you and thanking you for what you have done for them. Any teacher will tell you that most of the time you have to find your own satisfaction in your work, but when students share that with you, it makes everything you have done worthwhile. "