Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Si apoi, ce?

What's next for me? I invite you all to read my new blog, The Trip: Rediscovering America by Car, as I document my long road trip across America.

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Tuesday, August 14, 2007

La revedere

Tonight, I'm closing out my blog. Not from Moldova, but from Lincoln, Nebraska.

A lot has happened since my last post: a four-day camp in my village put on by several volunteers, a handful of Moldovans and myself; a spectacular week at the Peace Corps' national English-language summer camp; finishing up my work in the school's computer lab; a week-long crash course for the functionaries in my village's primaria; a trip to Milestii Mici, a wine factory and underground cellar that has won a place in the Guiness Book of World Records for its 55 km of wine storage space; and a visit to Transnistria, the breakaway republic that claims the eastern portion of Moldova. I might return to the blog and fill in these stories when I have the time, but I want to talk about the most important part; saying goodbye.

The first big goodbye was to the cleaning ladies at my school. I invited them to a small masa at the school one night, and served them a simple fare of salami, bread and ketchup. Of course, I also included a lot of champagne and wine. This handful of women clean the halls and most of the school's classrooms, including my own, every day, and they are rarely appreciated, monetarily or otherwise. Each of them makes less than $40 a month, with which they have to support themselves and their families. I gave them a small present as we parted for the night, and exchanged kisses on the cheeks with each of them. One of them, Doichita, a large, boisterous and hilarious woman in her 40s, picked me up off the ground and kissed me on the lips.

I had decided to leave my village a full week before my flight to America, meaning that Saturday would be my last night in the village before leaving Sunday morning. During the day on Saturday, I visited and said goodbye to some of the teachers with whom I was close, and that night we had a big final masa at my house, which included my host family, my host dad's relatives in the village, a set of neighbors with whom I was close, and the school's principal and her family. All told, there were 18 of us at a table with barbecue pork, salads, and a load of other foods that I can't remember but ate a lot of.

The next morning, I ate my last meal with my host family, including Maria and Dumitru, my host parents; Diana, my host sister; Sergiu, my host brother; Olesea, Sergiu's wife; and Gabriel, their one-year-old son. Ever since he was born, I had spoken only English with Gabe. He understood some of what I was saying, but he had never said a word of English back. Then, at the last meal with the family, he pointed to the fruit pattern on the tablecloth and said, "apple". I pumped my fist in the air and declared my mission accomplished.

After breakfast, I finished packing and loaded my things into Sergiu's car; I was going to leave most of my bags at his house and stay there a couple nights during the week. Once the car was packed, the seven of us stood in front of the house and passed around a final glass of wine. I teared up just making toasts.

"I've seen you more in the last two years than I've seen my real parents in the last six," I told Maria and Dumitru. "I remember how I felt when I said goodbye to my family in America two years ago. It feels the same now here."

After two glasses of wine, it was time to really say goodbye. Sergiu drove out the gate, and we walked after him. I kissed Maria and Dumitru goodbye, and I'm not ashamed to say that all three of us were openly weeping. I got in the car, and soaked in every detail of what would be my final drive through the village for a long time.

I said lots of goodbyes to other Moldovans not from my village in the following week, but I don't think I need to document each one of them here. Suffice it to say that there were many people with whom I would have liked to spend more time, but my two years had run out, and it was time to move on.

My flight back to America was scheduled for 8:30 a.m. on Sunday, August 5, and I almost slept through it. I had been out drinking until 2 a.m. with some of the volunteers who had come in 2006 and still had another year of service, and I was sleeping alone in a hotel room. I had set my alarm for 5:15 so that I could wake up, get dressed and walk a mile to the Peace Corps office. There I would meet with Shawn, my friend who was flying home on the same day as me and was going with me to Frankfurt on the first leg of the trip. Our plan was to meet at the office at 6, take showers, and be in a cab to the airport by 6:30. I woke up at 6 when my phone rang. I didn't answer in time, but I saw that I had missed a call from the Peace Corps and realized I was running late. I got dressed, hustled downstairs, and hired a cab to take me to the office. I got there, took a shower, and we got in a cab at 7.

"Hey, 6:30, just like we planned," I said to Shawn.

The flight was uneventful; in fact, Shawn and I both fell asleep almost as soon as we were in the air. Our conversations before and after sleeping centered mostly on the phrase, "We did it."

Our flights to AmericaÑhim to New York, me to AtlantaÑleft from gates that were near one another, so Shawn and I were able to walk around together in the airport, although I had to hustle to make my connection. I took time, however, to notice a drinking fountain.

"Whoa, hold on there, Shawn," I said as we both stopped in our tracks. "I think we've got something here." He laughed as I bent down and used a drinking fountain for the first time in years.

After I finished, we continued walking. "You know, Pete," Shawn said. "When you said, 'I think we've got something here,' there was a girl in front of the water fountain, and she turned around and gave you the dirtiest look." I laughed; obviously, not everyone can share my joy in the simple things.

When we arrived at the final security checkpoint, a Delta representative hurried me through the line because my flight was leaving soon. I said a rushed goodbye to Shawn, and then walked quickly to my gate, where two other passengers and I were running late. One of them was a tall guy with an American flag on the back of his hat, who told the lady at the gate he was coming from Kuwait and responded to everyone with "Sir" or "Ma'am". He and I found out the same bad news at the same time; our flight had been overbooked, and Delta had to put us in first class. We walked down the jet-way with big smiles on our faces, and we briefly introduced ourselves; I was coming back from two years in the Peace Corps in Moldova, and he was coming back from his third eight-month stint in Iraq with the Army's Special Ops.

Minutes later, I was sitting in a seat that I would later find out cost everyone else around me Û5,000. Evidently, another passenger had noticed that something was wrong with the headrest on my chair, but when a mechanic came onboard, I told him he didn't need to delay the flight in order to fix it. "I've been living without running water for the last two years," I said. "I can deal with this."

Soon, I had a gin and tonic, a four-course meal complete with chocolate chip coookies, on-demand audio entertainment (the video portion was broken, which I'm sure I could have complained about and gotten a voucher or something, but I figured I had gotten a lot more than what I'd bargained for) and an electronically-controlled seat that reclined waay back. I thought about how quickly my idea of luxury had changed from a Chisinau restaurant where I spent $15 the night before to sitting in first-class on a trans-Atlantic flight.

When we landed, I started talking with the soldier a little more. "Boy, Uncle Sam sends us to some shit places," I said to him, "but they bring you back in style." He introduced himself as James, and we stuck together as we cleared customs (me without my bags, which I would later find out hadn't transferred in time in Frankfurt), then we headed to the airport T.G.I. Friday's for some beer and burgers.

On a side note, I hadn't noticed in Moldova that the beer bottles there are half a liter, as opposed to the 330 mL bottles in America. When I picked up my first Heineken at the bar in Atlanta, I thought it was some kind of special airport mini-beer.

James and I parted ways after our early dinner, and I made my way to my gate for my flight home to San Jose. I don't remember much about the flight, because I think I slept through most of it. I woke up for the descent, though, and for the final 20 minutes of the flight, I was slapping my thighs and literally bouncing up and down in my seat in anticipation to finally be home.

My parents met me just outside the gate, and we went to the baggage claim area, only to find out that my bags weren't there. No problem. We started to walk toward the car, which my parents told me was parked in a new area because of construction at the airport.

As we walked toward the new parking lot, I saw a taxi stand with about 10 cabs. Cabs are very rare in San Jose, and I expressed my surprise to my parents.

"There are cabs in San Jose? What happened while I was gone?" I joked. Then I saw a white stretch Hummer limo, the ultimate sign of American decadence. "See, that I expect to see here."

"Why?" my mom asked.

"Because it's so completely ridiculous," I said as we walked next to it and the chauffeur.

"This must be Peter," said the chauffeur.

"Yes it is," my mom said.

I have no idea what sound I made at that moment or what look I had on my face, but I'm sure it was pretty entertaining.

Willy, as the chauffeur introduced himself, snapped a Polaroid of me and my parents, and then opened the door for me. Inside were about 20 of my friends and some of their parents. One of my friends had set up the limo months earlier. I sat, sipped champagne and sang "Easy like Sunday Morning" with my family and friends, all the while in a complete state of disbelief as Willy took us all over to my house. People stayed at the house until nearly midnight, and I stayed up past 1 talking to my parents.

After two years in Moldova, I came home flying first class and riding in a limo. It was the most grandiose, shocking and ridiculous way to transition back to America, but how I got back didn't matter.

I was home.

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Monday, April 02, 2007

Pravda?

I don't have time to even start picking this article apart.

How about just a couple questions:

  1. Would the good Doctor Akleh care to provide a single source for his article?

  2. Who the hell is Dr. Elias Akleh? I Googled to find out, and you can see the other things he's written.

  3. Why does he "use" so many "quotation marks" in his writing?

  4. Why would a news service like Moldova.org print this along with other straight news articles? It should be clearly labeled as an opinion article.



Nothing like a little bit of anti-American disinformation to help me go to sleep a little easier tonight.

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Sunday, February 11, 2007

Razboiul Rece nu s-a terminat

The Cold War never ended. Just ask Vladimir Putin.

Putin has a couple valid points, especially regarding the illegitimacy of the Iraq war. To counter, though, here's John McCain, quoted in the New York Times:

“Will Russia’s autocratic turn become more pronounced, its foreign policy more opposed to the principles of the Western democracies and its energy policy used as a tool of intimidation?” he asked. “Moscow must understand that it cannot enjoy a genuine partnership with the West so long as its actions, at home and abroad, conflict fundamentally with the core values of the Euro-Atlantic democracies.”

But what really bothered me about the article, especially considering the quality of the Times, is this paragraph:

The United Nations is weighing a proposal that would put Kosovo on the path to independence from Serbia, which Russia opposes because it fears that such a move could upset its own turbulent relations with ethnic groups in the Caucasus. Russia has crushed one separatist-minded people within its own borders, in Chechnya, but supports two breakaway regions in Georgia: Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Excuse me, but Russia supports a third breakaway region, and it's in Moldova. Why does the Transnistria problem continue to get absolutely no acknowledgement in the Western media?

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Monday, January 15, 2007

Calatorie in America

I flew back from America two weeks ago, and boy are my wings tired. (Ba-dum, shish.)

When I joined the Peace Corps in June 2005, I told myself I wasn't going to return to America until my full two years of service were up. I had a lot of reasons: I wanted to vacation in this part of the world as much as possible, I didn't want to experience the comforts of America for a full two years, I was worried that I wouldn't want to return to Moldova if I visited America, and I wanted the first time I stepped back on American soil to be filled with a feeling of accomplishment. I wanted to earn my American life back with two full years in Moldova.

After a year and a half of service, I had changed my opinion. I was no longer attached to the idea of returning home "a conquering hero," mostly because it didn't make a difference in my friends' minds back home; they just wanted to see me. I also was no longer worried that I would want to quit my job when I saw America again; I've become far too busy and have too many responsibilities and unfinished business here, so there's no way I could possibly leave. I also wasn't worried about experiencing the comforts of America, because I had experienced them in England during my summer vacation and, honestly, hadn't found them that appealing.

The biggest reason, however, was that my other vacation ideas fell through. My possible trip to Pakistan fell through first, when my Pakistani friend from college said that her job would keep her from taking vacation during my break. Then other ideas, which included Spain and Morocco on one trip and Romania and Bulgaria on another trip fell through because I couldn't find people to go with. So in early December I called my parents and asked "if it would be okay" for me to come home for the holidays. Surprise, surprise; they bought my ticket within days.

Flying from Chisinau to Frankfurt to San Francisco didn't take too long, especially since I had something to look forward to on the other end. As we flew low enough over California to see the cities, I noticed how many football and baseball fields there are in America. In the Bay Area, at least, it looked like there was one every few blocks. By comparison, the one sports field within six kilometers of me in Moldova is a soccer field with no nets on the metal posts and grass trimmed by cows and goats.

I arrived in San Francisco and claimed my luggage, very happy that neither the two plastic bottles full of house wine nor the glass bottle of cognac had burst in my bag. (Another volunteer during Christmas vacation broke a bottle of Jim Beam in his bag during his return trip to Moldova, making all of his clothes reek of whiskey.) I exited customs and saw my dad.

A funny thing happened when I saw my dad for the first time in over nine months; it felt completely normal. It was not the momentous event that I thought it would be. In fact, nothing about the drive home, seeing my parents, meeting the new dog (and calling her by the old dog's name), seeing some of my friends for the first time in 18 months or seeing my sister for the first time in six months felt out of the ordinary. I was home. End of story. I did, however, get a little overeager sharing my house wine with family and friends that night; the alcohol and my jet lag exhaustion combined to make life very interesting when my dad and I went to the airport later that evening to pick up my sister from her flight.

I had already gotten my family some Moldovan knickknacks for Christmas, but I had to scramble on the 23rd to get them something a little bigger. I went to a Barnes and Noble bookstore and picked a few books for family members. A sales lady was helping me when I turned to my friend and said, "Maybe I should get my sister the new O.J. book."

"They're not publishing it," the sales lady said.

"No? Oh, that's good," I said.

"Yeah, they decided not to about a week ago," she said. "Don't you read the papers?"

"Well, no," I said with a smile. "I've been living in Eastern Europe for the past 18 months and I got home yesterday." I had been waiting to use that line.

Christmas went smoothly, and on the 26th, my family and I hosted a welcome home party. About 15 friends came, and everyone had a shot-glass full of my house wine as they entered the party, just like at any good Moldovan party. I played my friends music by Zdob si Zdub, Parazitii, Ian Raiburg and Cleopatra Stratan, while they showed me a particular present-related Saturday Night Live digital short.

Being with family and friends seemed perfectly normal. Driving seemed perfectly normal, too, although I was more likely to take a walk somewhere around town than I would have been two years ago. Some things, however, seemed strange:

  • When I went to the ATM, people in line stood nearly 10 feet behind me. In Moldova, I've come to expect nothing more than a three-foot bubble. Once, I even had to yell at two little girls to back off.

  • The Department of Motor Vehicles was actually a pleasurable experience. My paperwork for renewing my driver's license was processed quickly, and there was a computer-based queue that everyone respected. The woman at the desk greeted me and smiled. She was also the only clerk who had car registration stickers to put on license plates, so my process was constantly interrupted by people coming up and getting the proper stickers. In Moldova, I would be expected to accept this. At the DMV, the woman apologized and said she was sorry I had gotten stuck with her.

  • It took me a couple days for me to not automatically tune in to a conversation any time I heard someone speaking English. In Moldova, hearing English means you instantly have something in common with a person. In America, it means you've found one of the 300 million people in the country who speak English. Not quite as special.

  • When I went to Fry's Electronics, I heard conversations in all sorts of languages, including Spanish and several Asian languages. I had gotten used to listening for only Romanian and Russian.

  • My friend Ross and I went to a local burger joint and walked up to the outside ordering window. Another guy was waiting for his order, and he struck up a conversation with Ross about how much he had drank the night before and how much he needed the fast food to help his hangover. I couldn't believe how strange the guy was, just coming up and talking to us. After he left, I turned to Ross. "Do you know that guy?"
    "No," Ross said.
    "So why did you talk to him?" I asked, perplexed.
    "Because he started talking, and he seemed like a nice guy."
    I had forgotten that I had been like that two years ago, too. So open. So friendly. Not so much anymore.

  • I had forgotten what it was like to be carded while buying alcohol. Just for fun, I attempted to use my Moldovan green card as identification nearly everywhere I bought alcohol. It worked in four of the five establishments where I used it. It was only rejected at the San Jose Arena during a hockey game. When I bought some beer (imported Baltica, of course) from a liquor store, the girl at the counter didn't even blink at it. After I had paid, I said, "That ID is actually a green card from an Eastern European country."
    "I know," she said. "I'm a security officer at my other job, so I know what these look like."
    "I'm impressed," I said. "So are these easy to counterfeit?"
    "OH yeah," she said with a bit of a laugh. "But I know all seven places to check it to make sure it's real."
    Молодеца девушка.


After a great New Year's party at which both of my hip-hop alter-egos, MO$' BLING and MC Saracie, performed, I got back on the plane on January 2nd. Little did I know that a huge storm had hit Moldova, knocking out power and phone lines to most of southern Moldova (including my village) and complicating landing procedures at the Chisinau airport. During my flight from Frankfurt to Chisinau, a stewardess announced only that there was "bad weather in Chisinau" and that we were landing in Bucharest. After she offered no other details, I raised my hand and asked her what we would do after landing in Bucharest. Were we going to sit on the runway? Were we going to get on a 12-hour bus ride to Chisinau? Were we going to stay the night in a hotel? The flight attendant told me that I shouldn't ask questions and in the course of our ensuing discussion, she told me that I had been poorly raised ("Nu aveti sapte ani de acasa," for you Romanian speakers). Even though we still had six hours of sitting on the Bucharest runway ahead of us, I knew then and there that I had arrived back "home" in Moldova.

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O imigranta din Moldova

One of the best things about this blog is getting e-mails from Moldovans who read it. Here is a slightly edited combination of two e-mails from a conversation with Victoria, a Moldovan immigrant to America.

Peter,

A friend of mine forwarded me your blog's address and I have enjoyed very much reading about your experiences in Moldova. Thank you for posting your thoughts and your realizations as you live the quotidian Moldovan life. So many people don't even know Moldova is a country, so many people don't even know about its harsh realities.

I was born and raised in Moldova and then moved to the United States about 4 years ago. Reading your blog takes me back there, seeing Moldova not through my Moldovan eyes anymore, but through the eyes of a Moldovan-American.

I was born in Chisinau and lived there for 16 years (in the suburban region Buiucanii Vechi). When I was 12, both my mother left for Greece and my father to Italy in search for jobs. I moved in with my grandmother and my aunt's family. While being abroad, my parents divorced and my mother met her second husband in Greece. It so happened that this man was Greek, but also a naturalized American citizen. He lived in America, but spent summers in Greece, where he met and married my mother. They moved to America and then they brought me here as well. I have lived in South Carolina since then. [I]t is my 4th year that I live in the US, and I haven't been back to MD yet.

I was 16 when I came here, and it was such a culture shock. Coming from a background of raising goats, planting our own food in the garden, not having running water, and having an outhouse instead of a toilet—America seemed to be a wonderland.

The first thing that I said when getting off the plane in America was: "Wow, the roads are so straight and shiny!" :)

There are so many differences [between] MD and USA. People here consume so much, because there are so many products available (any shape, color, smell, composition, etc). Everyone buys. Everyone lists "shopping" as a favorite activity. In Moldova I had 1 pair of shoes that I wore all year round. I have 12 pairs of shoes now.

This makes Americans take many things for granted. People don't enjoy the little things in life anymore, they all seem to want the large-screen TV, and the biggest SUVs.

What I love about America is that it pardons mistakes and [applauds] successes. American children are always encouraged to succeed and to do their best. In Moldova, more energy is geared towards punishing failures than towards rewarding successes.

Another major difference: in an American school, the student is encouraged to think instead of memorize; to think critically, instead of accepting what one is told; to earn the grades through knowledge, and not through a bribe. My academic experiences in Moldova were limited to memorizing, regurgitating, and bringing "cadouri" [presents] for the professors.

Another major difference is the open-mindedness and the lack of it in Moldova. I can talk with my physics professor about menstruation or with my female boss about sex , I can blame the government for everything, and I can ask for fashion advice from the many openly gay classmates that I have. In Moldova, no one in my family/friends circle ever talked about such things. As for the gay community in Moldova, there probably won't be one for a long time, because the society is not ready yet.

I wish I could write a bit more. But I must run.

Numai bine,
Victoria

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Thursday, October 05, 2006

Drum fara sfarsit

Recently I had to take my Apple PowerBook to a repair shop in Bucharest (no one knows how to repair them in Moldova) and also take four students on a field trip, all in the same extended weekend. Here's how the schedule went:

Friday:
3 p.m. I finish lunch in my village and hitchhike to Chisinau. 45 minutes of travel.
7 p.m. I depart by bus for Bucharest. The bus is packed, allowing me to sleep very little. A Russian translation of The Nutty Professor, starring Eddie Murphy, is playing on the bus TV.
10 p.m. In the bathroom at the border, a Portuguese man is trying to talk to a Moldovan. I ask him if he speaks English. He does, and we talk during our time at the border and at a later rest stop.

Saturday:
5:25 a.m. We arrive at the bus station in Bucharest after nearly 10 and a half hours on the bus. The sun hasn't risen yet. I look for a bathroom at the bus station, and sneak into one that may or may not be reserved for the shopkeepers next door. I use the bathroom, brush my teeth and take some pills, then open the door. I'm greeted by a middle-aged female shopkeeper, already yelling at me for using the bathroom. I apologize. She demands 5,000 Romanian lei, the equivalent of about 15 cents. I hand it to her. She continues to yell at me. The other shopkeeper starts yelling at me, too. Then a man who evidently also works at the shop yells at me for standing at the wrong entrance. I tell the first woman that I've given her her money and that she should shut up (using the polite form, of course), then walk away, yelling in Romanian to the sky, "I love you, Bucharest!"
6 a.m. The sun has risen, so I begin to make my way into the city. I have no idea where I am, so I start asking people how to get to the center of the city. My inability to understand the Bucharest accent and my inability to remember spoken directions in any language complicate things. After a couple of kilometers of walking and two bus rides, I arrive at Piata Unirii.
8 a.m. I get some money from an ATM and walk into a McDonald's. I buy a quarter-pounder with cheese and a cup of coffee; I only drink coffee about five times a year, but I'm pretty sure I need it right now.
8:20 a.m. Having finished my burger and coffee (what a disgusting-sounding combination), I stare vacantly at the flat-screen TV at the McDonald's, then go to the bathroom to change clothes and wash my face. I'm impressed and pleased that McDonald's offers such clean facilities, and I marvel for a few seconds that life has brought me to stand naked in a McDonald's bathroom in the capital of Romania.
8:40 a.m. The computer repair guys have asked me not to call them until 10 a.m., so I have some time to kill. I buy some credits for my Romanian cell phone account, then go to a MediaGalaxy electronics store. I spend about 30 minutes looking at nothing in particular, then look at my watch and realize that I have even more time before 10 a.m. So I spend a little more time browsing.
10 a.m. I call Tudor at NouMax and arrange for him to pick me up in his car at 11:15. I walk to the nearby park, sit on a bench, and take a nap.
11:10 a.m. Tudor picks me up in his car and takes me to the NouMax office, a small, cluttered apartment with five rooms and dozens of computers and pieces of gear around. Tudor agrees with my diagnosis of the laptop; a jammed CD/DVD drive and a power supply fried by a surge. We discuss Moldova, Romania and America, all in English.
12:30 p.m. Tudor drives me to the Peace Corps Romania office and they allow me in. There are no volunteers there, even though it's a Saturday; Romanian volunteers don't need or want to come into the capital as much as Moldovan volunteers, of whom there are usually 20 in Chisinau on a given weekend. I talk with one of the security guards for about an hour, then ask for directions to the metro system.
3 p.m. After eating shaorma and drinking a beer for lunch, navigating through the subway system to the Bucharest Mall and buying a donut, I buy my ticket for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest at the mall's movie theater. I doze off during the first 20 minutes, but wake up quickly enough to understand the movie and watch all the cool fights.
6 p.m. I arrive at the Bucharest train station and buy my ticket back to Chisinau. I have some time before the train leaves at 7:45, so I buy a hot dog and some snacks to eat on the train.
7:50 p.m. My train pulls out of the station.
7:51 p.m. Adrian, another NouMax employee, calls me on my cell phone and tells me that the replacement drive I need won't be ready for at least three weeks, so if I haven't left the city yet, I might want to come pick up my computer before getting on the train. Too late for that.
7:53 p.m. After I finish talking with Adrian, the man sharing a sleeper room in the car with me tells me in English that I speak English very well. "I hope so," I say. "I'm American." We talk for several hours before going to sleep.

Sunday:
8:20 a.m. My train arrives in Chisinau after more than 12 hours, and I head to the Peace Corps office to take a shower. I watch some TV and eat breakfast.
2 p.m. I take a bus back to Mereseni.
3 p.m. I arrive at my house, unpack my backpack and pack another bag, because my traveling isn't even close to finished.
4 p.m. I meet up with four of my ninth grade students, whom I am taking to the southern city of Cahul so they can take the FLEX entrance exam. FLEX is a U.S. State Department program that allows hundreds of high schoolers in former Soviet countries to attend high school in America for a year for free. The most convenient test location from our village is nearly three hours away by bus, so we are going down a day early and staying with Krista, another volunteer who has her own house.
4:45 p.m. The bus stops at our village and the students and I board.
6:45 p.m. I send Krista the following text message: "We just entered Cahul raion. We should be at the station pretty soon. It's a good thing, since my kids are getting a little antsy; one of them is giving the finger to caruta drivers we pass." A caruta, for the uninitiated, is a horse-drawn carriage.
7:05 p.m. We arrive in Cahul. Krista greets us and takes us to her house. We go out to a pizza parlor for dinner, where Krista shocks my kids and me by telling them that they need to speak English around her. After dinner we stop by an outdoor gathering, where hundreds of teenagers and young adults are dancing the hora to live traditional music. By the time I study the local steps, which are different from and more complicated than the standard Mereseni steps, and am confident enough to try, the music stops and the event ends.
9 p.m. We come back to Krista's house and the kids watch a Russian bootleg of Bridgett Jones 2 on Krista's laptop with Russian dubbing and English sub-titles. Krista and I hang out in the kitchen. Denis, one of the students, takes an immense liking to Krista's cat and calls it with the same high-pitched voice and baby-talk that Krista does.
11 p.m. Krista and I begin to enforce the kids' 11 p.m. bed-time, which is a welcome relief for me, not having slept much in the previous two nights. Diana, the only girl in the group, sleeps in Krista's bed and Krista takes the floor. The boys' room is a little more crowded; Denis and Victor share a double bed, Eugen has a sleeping bag and a thin mat on the ground, and I sleep on the floor between two blankets. This is the third night in a row that I've slept with a Moldovan within a meter of me. I'm going to enjoy my sleeping space when this trip is over.
11:15 p.m. The boys have gotten into bed, and Victor and Denis have begun to fight for space, wrestling and punching each other in the bed. Moldovan boys tend not to wear pajamas in early October, so the two boys are pushing each other around while wearing nothing but briefs. Every once in a while, their fighting is punctuated by either Victor falling out of the bed and landing within a foot of mine and Eugen's heads or Denis saying, "Hey, where are you putting your hand?!" I don't tell them to stop, partly because they'll settle down naturally and partly because it's really funny.
11:30 p.m. The boys finally quiet down and everyone is asleep within five minutes.

Monday:
7 a.m. The alarm clock on my cell phone goes off, and it's as if the boys had been waiting for the starter's pistol. They immediately get up, wash their faces and get dressed. Krista and I force them to eat something for breakfast, and I make scrambled eggs. It's the first meal I've ever cooked in Moldova. Krista leaves for school, and the kids and I play frisbee outside until Samantha, another volunteer in Cahul, picks us up and takes us to a different school for the FLEX test.
9 a.m. FLEX registration begins. Since I'm American, people automatically assume I know what's going on. I find the American, Dan, and the Moldovan, Gabriela, who are actually in charge, and they put me to work. The biggest challenge in my job is cutting applicants' photos to the proper size and gluing the pictures onto their application form. Actually, that's my entire job. Other than that, I spend my time talking to any kids who want to hang out with a native speaker. Some of the kids are really impressive, and I begin to realize how outclassed my kids probably are in this competition.
12:30 p.m. My students' turn comes, and they have 30 minutes to take the 20-question test. They finish the test and come out saying that they hadn't realized there was a second side of the test until it was too late. My guess, which is confirmed a week later, is that the students were told about the second part in English, but not every student's English level was high enough to understand.
1 p.m. My students and I meet Sam again and get some lunch. Since results won't be posted until 3 p.m., the kids ask me if they can go off exploring Cahul on their own. Diana wants to stay with some girls that she met, and the boys want to use the internet. In America, I would never allow the kids out of my sight in a city they'd never visited before. But for some reason it seems okay in Moldova. I tell them to meet me at the school at 3, and Sam and I get some ice cream.
3 p.m. I meet my students at the school as they're walking away. None of them passed the first stage. I have done a good job of prepping them for something like this, and they already know before I open my mouth what I'm going to say; "At least you tried, there's always next year, and hey, at least you got to see a new part of Moldova you'd never seen before." Diana, the student who had the highest hopes for herself, says that she'll try again at the more difficult Chisinau test center a month later, and says to the boys, "Did you see some of the English fanatics that were here today?" I realize only then that this trip has served another purpose; my students have seen how seriously some students at other schools take English.
4 p.m. We board the bus home. The kids and I are much more tired than we were on the way down, and all of us nap at some point during the ride home.
6:45 p.m. The bus drops us off in Mereseni, and I say goodbye to the kids.
7 p.m. I arrive back home, this time for good. I make some calculations. In the past 76 hours, I have traveled in a inter-city train or bus for 29.5 hours. That means that 38.8 percent of my previous three days were spent in some form of mass transit, not including private cars, subways systems or rutieras inside cities. I eat dinner and go to sleep early.

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