Sunday, 29 June 2008
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Daily Life, Projects, Randomness
My doorbell just rang. My elderly neighbor just hobbled herself over to my front door, rang the doorbell and handed me a napkin with a Romanian dessert inside. She blew me a kiss, said “sa fii sanatoasa (to be healthy)” and walked away. I said “aww multumesc (aww, thanks)” and closed my door. When I opened up the napkin, I found a piece of Romanian pastry called “cozonac” and 2 pieces of chocolate formulated on the pastry to make it look like a smiley face. This is why I find myself on the verge of tears all the time now.
I just came from spending the afternoon with some friends. She used to work at the military high school but has been on maternity and baby leave (here you get 2 years off to take care of the kids), and he is working on getting his Masters. They have 2 kids – one baby and one child with autism. Unfortunately I haven’t been over their house as much as I would like, but this afternoon I just popped over there and together we went to the local fish farm (and when I say fish farm, I mean lakes, but also rabbits, horses, chickens, dogs..the whole works). I got to eat fresh trout and mamaliga (corn meal mush) and I really enjoyed playing with the kids and breathing even fresher air than I get from my own house.
Yesterday I spent the afternoon at the same elderly neighbor’s house. I didn’t understand exactly what the picnic/bbq was for, but it had something to do with celebrating an anniversary of someone that had died. I was offered all the regular Romanian dishes: borsch, vodka, wine, sarmale, bread, cozonac. We chatted about the english language, and I understood a lot of what was said. The neighbors pointed out that I’d been here 2 years and still was not fluent in Romanian. What to say? I tried. I try to pride myself on understanding what they were saying to me.
That’s how day to day life has been. In the midst of trying to get packed and to finish up last minute projects, I’m trying to savor the random moments of living in a different culture. It’s harder for me to think about leaving here than it was for me to leave America. I’ve always known that I’ll come back to America. I will try very hard to come back here, and I think I will at some point, but I know that life will have moved on for me when I do come back, and with the rate of change happening in Romania, life will certainly have changed here too when I return. It’s hard to say goodbye.
Oddly I find myself seeing a lot more negative things about living here as well. If I psycho-analyze myself, I’m convinced that I’m seeing things this way so that it’s easier for me to leave. There’s a restaurant worker here who constantly rips off foreigners. There’s a pack of dogs here that harasses everything that moves. I’ll stop now before I get on a roll. Every place has annoying things about it after all. I’m lucky in that despite these things, I’ve found people I care about here who also understand the annoyances.
A few weeks ago I went to a large university city with the hopes of trying to sell the extra horn I have here. Let me tell you, traveling across Romania with a large instrument is definitely material for a novel. Everywhere I went, I carried this large horn with me. Hitchhiking was completely awkward. I had to just push myself into a large car/van that took about 10 people, and ignored people who said the horn was too big to ride with me (I proved them wrong by setting it on my lap for the trip….it was still rather humorous for me however). It was exciting for me to meet other horn players in the university town. I soon discovered that I know almost no Romanian words for music terms, so conversation was difficult. The people I talked to were excited that I was from Indiana since good horns are made there. I also learned that they play the same repertoire here in Romania as I was brought up on in the states….Strauss, Mozart etc. It was really cool for me to be around musicians again, and it does make happy to go back to the States where I’ll hopefully have some more opportunities to play (although now I realize I really have to get back to practicing to get my lip back).
On my train ride to the university city, I shared a compartment with another musician, who, when he saw my horn, called it a trumpet and wanted me to immediately get it out of the case and play it. Unfortunately (or, actually, fortunately for me), I was only on the train during the night hours, so no such musical opportunity was available (I was secretly glad since the traditional music the brass players play here is fast and high …. And I gotta be honest, I’ve never attempted it before). The other musician did proceed to get his violin out at 430 in the morning and almost hit the conductor in the eye with his bow. The conductor however continued walking passed him until another rather uptight lady in my compartment stared the conductor down and silently convinced him to yell at the musician to stop playing.
The train ride back was just as entertaining, although for completely different reasons. A rather drunk man wearing a shirt with the American Navy emblem on it had a seat in my train compartment. The train was quite full so at least I had company with the man. Well, I have to say that I’m not proud of this, but I do have a habit of simply playing the “I don’t understand Romanian” card when I’m around someone that I don’t want to have to speak to or deal with. The man started to talk to, and I said in english that I was from America so I didn’t understand him. LOL…… little did I know that this man was one of the few people I know with a huge American spirit. He broke out every English phrase he knew and said things like “America good! Bush Good! Romania ::made a rather painful face::.” I laughed and tried to tell him that Romania was good as well, but to no avail. Later a woman came by selling beer and pretzels and he bought more beer and instructed the woman that he wanted “something to eat” as well. The woman sold him pretzels, but instead of eating them, handed them to me. I said I didn’t want to accept them, but he insisted, pointed to his open mouth, emphasizing that he only had 3 teeth and so therefore could not eat the pretzels. Fair enough. I took the pretzels.
He left the compartment for awhile, then came back, and handed me a 100 RON bill (about $25, but a lot of money for me). He said he wanted to donate it to America. I didn’t accept it, but was amused by his generosity. Later he said that he needed to call someone, but he didn’t have a phone. Well, given the fact that he’d been drunk this whole time and at least didn’t do anything inappropriate to me, and in fact was quite nice, I took him for at least being a descent guy and dialed the phone number for him. He starts speaking to a woman on the phone, and another woman in the compartment straightens up and says that she knows the man. Apparently she is a psychologist in one of the cities the train is going to and had the man as a patient. They’d both been sitting together the entire time, but she didn’t recognize him until he started talking to people on the phone. Romania is such a small small world.
A week after my cross-country attempt to sell a horn, I attended the wedding of my tutor and her now husband. Here are some pictures. Weddings here start at about 8 pm and continue until about 5 am in the morning. There were about 5 courses of food, lots of alcohol, lots of circle dancing, and I even danced with the local celebrity/DJ.
Circle Dancing for many hours!
Me and the local celebrity DJ
The person who taught me Romanian! Ce Frumoasa! (How Beautiful!)
The cake! (oooo sparklers!)
Many many many many courses of food!
Did I mention the food?
Ah yes, the most important ingredient. They literally just put all kinds of alcoholic beverages on each table and people just served themselves.
Thomas’ friend Katie was in town for these festivities as well. Together, Thomas, Katie (composers), Betsy (who recently acquired a talent for percussion out of household instruments), and I created our own band. Here’s a sample of Atari Safari. I’ve also attached “Demented Carousel” – but I’d recommended only listening to it in small doses. Note that Betsy and I switched places and she played horn and I took over on percussion and random squealing for that chart. An unforeseen quantity of alcohol may or may not have been imbibed during the production of these pieces.
Last weekend one of my friends came back into town and we completed our last team building in Romania together ::moment of silence::. I think that this was probably the best one yet. We looked at our strengths and interests and brainstormed about possible projects, played some great icebreakers, heard mental health users’ stories, played a rousing game of teambuilding jeopardy with fancy prizes, and learned about and practiced active listening skills. Not to mention enjoyed 2 BBQs, s’mores, and walks in the wilderness. Here are some pictures from the festivities.
Collage activity. I like this woman's collage -- she included a watch to emphasize that it's important to live "each and every minute".
No one had ever played the icebreaker where everyone has a famous person taped to their back and they have to find their partner. It was a huge hit!
Jeopardy and fantastic prizes. My vote was for my counterpart, also playing the role of host, to be called Alexa Trebescu (the Romanianized female version of Alex Trebeck. I was amused at my own joke, but no one else got it). (or...maybe more likely, other people got it, but didn't find it funny...). Note also the spectacular prizes.
Cool cartoon created by a group describing the services provided by Orizonturi.
Barbequing chicken and pork products -- the Romanian influence
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Taking time out for a photo opportunity.
Julia and I went for a walk and encountered our own teambuilding challenges along the way. Challenge number 1: cross a raging river by walking on 2 narrow planks.
Mission Accomplished!
Mission number 2: Take picture of us and a cow while making ridiculous cow moo-ing faces.
Attempt 1:
hmm.. 50%. Mooing faces, but the cow has disappeared.
Attempt 2:
Ah ha! Here is the cow...but where are we?
Attempt 3:
oops, I got distracted....I'm thinking...where'd the cow go again?
Attempt 4:
SUCCESS!
Following the teambuilding, Julia and I went on a pilgrimage to the see the grave site of the best Romanian ever to live – Stefan cel Mare (Stephen the Great). We had perfect weather and made it to Putna without a hitch (quite literally. The public transport options were quite nice). The museum was even open, even though it was a Monday and usually museums in Romania are closed on Mondays. We got to see nice Byzantine burial covers, a priest gave us a free book and icons, we attempted to get a ride on a horse drawn caruta (unfortunately we were offered one ride, but it was from 3 rather drunk men who were also offering to sit down with for a coffee – coffee doesn’t really mean coffee here when a male asks a female for such). We got to ride on a train that was only one wagon long. Here are some pictures.
The resting place of my hero - Stefan cel Mare.
The Putna monastery is much larger than any of the other painted monasteries in the region. The monastery has been destroyed and rebuilt several times. At one time it too was painted on the inside, and supposedly covered with gold on the outside, but because of all the destruction, right now they are in the middle of repainting it.
Legend has it that one time this bell was rung and it's chime was heard all the way in a city several hundred kilometers away.
On to the sights and sounds of the train we took:
Us with the book the priest gave us:
Short train
The city we were in is so far north and so small that they gave us the non-computerized train tickets.
ooo, train toilets....
We returned to my site and enjoyed our ciorba radautana – the best soup in the entire world. Think Creamy Garlic Chicken Vegetable soup. It’s basically amazing – no other word to describe it.
Finally, just yesterday I got word that the grant that the new volunteer, my counterpart, my coworker and I had all worked on about a month ago WON! We’ll receive about $4000 to start up a blogging club with mental health users. We’ll receive 2 years worth of internet, a computer, a webcam, and a digital camera; we’ll train mental health users in using the equipment and in writing about their daily lives. Following this they will report weekly to write a blog. I write “we”, but, I guess it’ll be my coworkers, the new volunteer, and my counterpart. Very strange for me, but so exciting and I’m really happy to be going out on an “up” note. Here's a link with the official announcement! http://globalvoicesonline.org/2008/06/28/public-health-projects-to-use-citizen-media-to-empower-community-voices/
Two more weekends left in my town. Still some adventures left here in Romania, and even more to come in Egypt, Paris, Rome, and Dublin. I’ll keep everyone posted.
Can’t wait to see you soon!
Roasting marshmallows/making s'mores -- the american influence -
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