The End of the Beginning...

Finally, after many trials and tribulations, I am officially a Peace Corps Volunteer. The ceremony, which lasted from 10:30 to 12:00 was the normal sort of things that you would expect but there was a photo sideshow of all of our doings which was pretty cool. So now we just have hours left until our Band of Brothers/Sisters will depart for our divers sites and there are many that I will miss a alot. Indeed, the worst time for newly minted PCVs is the first three months, when we lose the support of our fellow comrades and really have to start adapting to the culture. Here's to surviving that part!

Tonight we have a little something goin' on; we rented the second floor of a restaurant and we will this evening commence to "have a good time". Luckily I will not have to leave until late the next day, so there is plenty of time to recover and pack.

This is the last time I will be able to use my computer to post to the blog for a while. I won't have internet access in my 2nd gazdas house but there is an internet cafe in the town so I will, at least, be able to connect with the wider world. I am hoping I will be able to get cable internet.

One of the first things that I am going to do on site is buy a fan. It has been extremely hot, especially considering my pale Scottish skin and my love for all things cold, and having a fan will go a long way in alleviating my suffering. I will be glad when it cools down to even 27 C (81 F).

Ok, talk to you from Ciacova some time next week.

Ciao ciao!

Less Than A Week to Go...

As the heading says, my time here in Ploieşti is just about up. I have had a good time here, learned a good amount of limba romana, and made some great friends that will last the rest of my life but in many ways, I am glad it is time to move on. While life in Ciacova will be much, much slower than many of my peers in larger towns, I am looking forward to trying to integrate into the community and meeting all kinds of new people.

On Monday, we all start taking a test that allows the PC to gauge our retention of Romanian. It is basically a conversation with someone who is trained to make this judge about many normal things; like our favorite movie and what it is about, what is our daily routine, et cetera. We had a trial run at this last week and I scored Intermediate Low, which isn't all that bad considering I have been here for just over two months but I think I could move up to Intermediate High. We will see.

And last but not least, on Friday, we all have our Swearing-In. All of our gazda families are coming and then after that, we all have rented out the 2nd floor of a local restaurant that we have just found and party it up. The next day, we all have to be packed and hit the open road or in my case, the train to Timişoara and then the school car to Ciacova.

Ok. As soon as I get my new address and the school's address in Ciacova, I will be sure to let you all know so that you can all send me the glories to the great West.

For now, ciao!

Two Months

I just thought you would like to know that I have been gone from home exactly two months today. Mom and Bailey saw me off on May 15th. It has been a whirlwind two months since I have came to Romania and the volunteer part of my Peace Corps experience is yet to happen. Some times I miss home but I have experience in being homesick so I will be fine. I will depend on you at home to send me packages of books and mis. stuff to keep me from going crazy in the winter.

That is all I have to say

Ciao

things on my mind

Well, I am back from Ciacova. It is a nice town and I think I will be happy there when I get settled in. I spent three days there. The train ride from Ploieşti was uneventful since it was a night train and I slept most of the way. We were picked up in Timişoara by the school car and after taking a short nap, some of the students that I will have (12th grade) gave the short tour of the town. It is a small, small town and they took their time showing the things there since there isn't a lot to show. My 2nd gazda family there is really nice, they grilled some chicken and mici that night and kept pouring beer into my cup. The next day, my couterpart and I went to the school to check it out and meet another teacher that I will be working on projects with. Not much to talk about that day. The last day I was there, my counterpart, gazda mom, and I took the bus to Timişoara. Before I go on, I have a funny story to tell. While waiting on the bus to a arrive, I noticed a truck go by with the Confederate battle flag in his window go by. I think I laughed out loud for 10 mins. Anyways, Timişoara is great. The parks are green and there is very little trash on the streets. I have a feeling I will be going there often. On the last day, I had to get up at 4:30 so that I could be taken to the train station before the train left at 6 AM. The train didn't reach Buchareşti until 2:30 so you can imagine how sleepy I was and I still had to take another train to Ploieşti.

Overall, while my site isn't a big or nice as most of the other volunteers site, I think that I will be happy where I am at. There are a lot of travel opportunities that I can take advantage of and being in a small town will allow me to develop my Romanian skills. I left my camera at my site so I don't have any pics to show you but when I go back there after the 28th, I will be sure to post many pics of where I will be living at the town around it.

Ok, ciao ciao

Ciacova

After many trials and tribulations, I have finally found out where in Romania I am to be placed. I will be in the sleepy village of Ciacova. It is located in the most westerly portion of Romania, an area called Banat. Ciacova has a population of 5000 ppl and one high school, which I will be teaching at. At first, I was kinda stunned because I wanted to be in a place that gets cooler weather and some kind of mountains but that was not to be. Ciacova is in the Hungarian Plain and that means it is flat as a pancake. Oh well. Luckily, just to the north of Ciacova lies the city of Timişoara. I hear it is a great city to go to and there is a ton to do there. I am glad that I know how to handle small town life because I have a feeling I will have a lot of free time there. There isn't a Wikipedia article, yet, about Ciacova so I can't give you a link on there to learn about my future home but there is a link on there about the county I will in. Judeţ Timiş One other good thing is that since I will be living in a small town, my Romanian language skills will be forced to improve. Also, I am really near the capitals of Serbia and Hungary so I am definitely going take advantage of that.

Ok that is all for today. Tomorrow we start our Counterpart Conference where we will meet the person that we will have the most dealings with over the next couple of years. In the case of TEFL, my counterpart will be the other English teacher in the school. I am jealous of many of the other volunteers that got great places but my place might turn out to be pretty cool.

Te pup bitches

Lord Bennett

Johnny Pumpkinseed and How I Got Sunburnt

So sorry about the delay. I went to Braşov the weekend before last but that will be the subject of a future blog post. So this weekend, a bunch of use went to a city called Piteşti to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity. So a bunch of us got together after the last day of my teaching practicum to go on the train there. We thought we asked for the fast train to there but oh no, that was not in the cards. Instead they sold us a ticket to Piteşti on the tren personal. That meant that instead of taking a fast train to Buchareşti and then on to Piteşti, we took a very slow train. The ride to Buchareşti was uneventful except for the fact that we ended up at the podunk train station so we had to walk a ways to a Carrefour where there was a McDonald's. Haha! After spending time at the station we finally got on the train to Piteşti. There were already people on the train so we didn't have a place to sit but hey, it is the Peace Corps so I am not one to complain. So in the middle of nowhere on the way there, a hundred people got on the train where there was room for maybe 30. Needless to say, we were absolutely squeezed. So about Johnny Pumpkinseed. My friend Mark was standing at the window with no room to breathe when this random Romanian man tapped him on the shoulder and offered him some pumpkin seeds. Mark didn't want any but the guy didn't want to hear that and he repeating kept trying to stick the seeds into his mouth until Molly, another friends with us, told the guy that he was allergic to pumpkins and he left him alone. We laughed our asses off. In the mean time, we didn't have room to breathe and people kept trying to walk down the little hallway on the train. I was glad when in another stop in the middle of nowhere, almost everyone on the train got off. After that, we all had a train compartment to sit in and laugh at each other in. After getting there, we walked to the hotel and past out.
The next day. We all had to be up and ready at 8 AM when the bus would come and take up to the work site. After a complimentary breakfast, we got on and went to a place in the middle of the countryside. There, we broke into three groups. One would work on demolishing a wall in a building, The rest of us would work on ditches on the outside. One group had to extend the ditch that a previous Peace Corps had dug the weekend before. The rest of us had to dig through a small rise so that the water would flow into a drainage ditch beyond that. All of this would be filled in with a pipe but we were free labor. After a while, all of us guys said fuck it and took off our shirts because we were sweaty and it was the manly thing to do. :) Unfortunately there were two things wrong with the ground. One, over the past decades, people living at the site had buried their trash in this area so we found tons and tons of trash and had to deal with getting that out. The other problem was the the little hill has mostly clay so we had to deal with that. That meant that one person would take a pick-axe to the ground and then the rest would come at it with shovels. Now this is tiring work, so we took turns doing all of that until we got the depth of the trench to the liking of the foreman and broke the wall that was holding water from the rains of the night before and it all flowed out. We were all excited that was we done was worth something in the end.

After that, we all went back to the hotel and I took a nap. When I woke up, my shoulders hurt like shit from the redness that I had on them from not having a shirt on, even on a cloudy day. I am still hurting from that. That evening we had real Italian food for the first time since being in Romania and it was SO GOOD. We went out that night and then sometime that night, I passed out. The next day, a bunch of us rented a maxi-taxi (small private van for rent) to take us to Ploieşti. I was wore out and after lunch, I passed out.

That is all the stories I have of Romania at the moment. On Wednesday, July 5th, we finally find out our permanent site and I will be sure to let you all know about where I am to spend the next two years of my life and how you can send me plenty of mail and packages.

Ok with that,

Pe curând