Ziua mea, un seminar si o frizerita

On May 12th, I celebrated my 24th birthday. Unlike last year, I didn't want to do a big feast in my village with my teachers and my host family, nor did I want to gather a bunch of volunteers to invade a Chisinau restaurant like I did a week after my birthday last year. Instead, I spent my birthday weekend in Cahul, a major southern city, with a handful of other volunteers and over a dozen English-speaking students from the local university.

Sam Parkes, a volunteer in Cahul University's English department, is helping her colleagues and students start the first university alumni association in Moldova, and she had asked me to conduct a seminar about how to create an alumni magazine. So on Friday afternoon, I flagged down the Cahul bus that passes through my village and started the trip.

At first, I had to stand on the bus. This is normal if you pick up a bus in a village; you just wait until other people get off at their villages, and then you can have a seat. An aisle seat freed up once we got to the next village, and I sat down next to an attractive girl in her early 20s.

The girl was playing with her cell phone, and I had a book to read, so I didn't rush a conversation. After all, female volunteers often complain to me about men hitting on them on public transport, so I didn't want to be "that guy" for some girl who was just trying to visit her parents over the weekend. Plus we would be sitting next to one another for another two hours, so I could take my time. Instead, I took a few nonchalant glances out the window, supposedly looking past her but making full use of my peripheral vision.

After about an hour of sitting next to one another, the girl started dozing off. Comfort is hard to come by while sleeping on a bus, and her head was bouncing with every bump in the road. Several times, her head would rest on my shoulder for a few seconds, but then she would raise it back up in semi-conscious self-consciousness. The third time it happened, I said, "If it's more comfortable, you can use my shoulder."

"Thanks," she said, and put her head back without hesitation and slept for another half-hour. Warm fuzzy feelings filled my heart, and I knew we had gotten off to a good start.

When she woke up just outside the Cahul city limits, we chatted about Moldova and America. She told me she was a hairdresser in Chisinau who was originally from Cahul, and she was coming home for the weekend to visit her family. The bus stopped in the center, and even though I could have gotten to Sam's house faster by staying on the bus until the last stop, I got off and walked with her a little more.

As we parted ways a few minutes later, we got each other's names; Oxana for her, Petru for me. She said she'd like to talk to me more this weekend, so I gave her my phone number and told her to call me. I had two reasons for giving my number instead of taking hers. First, as I said earlier, I didn't want to be seen as a creep trying to pick her up on the bus. Second, Moldovan women in general are much more passive than American women, so asking her to call me was a test.

I continued walking to Sam's house, where I finished planning the seminar and she baked some cupcakes and cookies for the next day. Sam shared my excitement about the possibility of Oxana calling, and we were both thrilled when a missed call showed up on my phone. I called the number back, ready to invite her to my birthday dinner the next night. Instead, I got Dumitru Minzarari, a Moldovan whose English-language article I have been proofreading. Dumitru's a great guy and all, but I would have much rather gotten a call from a cute girl in her early 20s than a male Columbia-educated former Moldovan military officer. Sam and I continued to hope for a call from Oxana, but didn't receive one that night. No problem; that night I slept in a double bed for the first time since I was home for Christmas, so I was content enough.

The next day, the seminar went well. The students and professors that I met were all really good English speakers, and I repeatedly praised them during the six-hour seminar for the fact that they were working to improve the situation at their university and in their country.

Four more volunteers came to Cahul during the day, and in the evening we went out for my birthday dinner, a relaxed affair at a Moldovan restaurant, eating mamaliga and barbecue and washing it down with a beer or two. When we returned to Sam's house, we continued with a little more beer; Scott, Sam's boyfriend and my cohort in running the basketball league, got tipsy enough with me to start talking about classic cable advertisements. Scott would randomly shout, "Look! It's Eagle Man!" and we sang, "588-2300, Empire!" together in both English and Romanian. I soloed a New England classic, singing, "1-800-54-GIANT," for Giant Glass. Oxana still didn't call, which at that point in the evening was probably a good thing.

The next day, I took the bus back up north with Meg, another English teacher from my group. The trip included several highlights. One was a frumpy middle-aged woman standing in the aisle who would reach inside her skirt and then rest her guilty hand dangerously close to Meg's head. Another highlight was when a woman got on the bus with her two-year-old grandson, who was gripping her leg and crying as she tried to make her way down the aisle; a man loudly called out, "Do you see what happens when you have a child that you don't want?" The final highlight was when a woman started complaining to the driver from her seat that he was stopping too often to pick up passengers. Rather than respond, the driver simply turned up the music in the bus, which caused the woman to start screaming and the rest of us to start laughing.

I much preferred the casual approach to my birthday this year, and so far I've had a good time being 24. My only regret is giving Oxana my number instead of getting hers. It's been more than a week, and she hasn't called. Sure, I can say that I was testing her and that she failed the test. But honestly, if a cute girl puts her head on your shoulder, that's no time to test her. It's the last mistake I'll ever make as a 23 year old.

Bagaje in rutiera

Rutieras suck. They're cramped. They're either too hot or too cold. And most of the time when I'm on one, I have one or two bags with me. So here's the dilemma: where do I put my bags?

It's simple enough when I have a seat and only one bag. Sometimes on an inter-city rutiera, there's even room on the seat next to me for a second bag. More often than not, though, I have to put my second bag in the front of the van, next to the driver. In a crowded rutiera, I have almost no ability to keep visual contact with my bag, so I merely have to trust that the driver knows it's mine, that everyone on the rutiera is either a good person or afraid of getting caught, and that no one on the rutiera realizes that it's an American's bag. Sometimes the bag I leave in front has my clothes and medications. Sometimes it has my iPod. Sometimes it has my laptop. Sometimes it has my camcorder. The only way for me to check that no one is walking away with $2,000 worth of gear is by sitting on the right side of the rutiera and looking out the window at people as they get out of the van.

After living more than a year in Moldova, I don't even think twice about it. Even when I have something expensive, who among the strangers on the rutiera with me know what's in the bag? I make it a point not to show any signs of wealth (like listening to an iPod or speaking English) while traveling, so why would they think I had anything other than clothes?

I still remember the first public bus ride I took in Moldova, traveling about 10 km from Ialoveni to Costesti. I was returning to Costesti, my training village in summer 2005, with several volunteers and some of our host mothers, and had gotten on a bus with no more seats left. We crammed ourselves in, and I took off my backpack in order both to make room for other people and to make sure no one would steal from me. It was then that I heard my name. Gheorghe, a teenage neighbor of mine with whom I had only talked once before, was sitting in a seat near me, and he offered to hold my bag. I was hesitant to give my backpack to a boy whom I barely knew in a country whose customs I was just starting to learn. Would he expect some money for holding my bag? Would he maybe not give it back at all? Despite my reluctance, I handed the bag to Gheorghe, smiled, and thanked him. I told another volunteer standing next to me to keep an eye on Gheorghe, and he too was worried that I had given my bag to a practical stranger a little too quickly. Ten minutes later, the ride was over, and Gheorghe gave me back my bag, leaving me to feel stupid for not having trusted him.

I had no reason not to trust Gheorghe, and I have since trusted a handful of other Moldovans, perfect strangers, who have offered to hold my bag when I'm standing. Rutieras in Moldova, after all, are improvised communities in which people help each other. Passengers lucky enough to have seats often offer not only to hold standing passengers' bags, but even their children. I can't imagine getting in a van and standing while my two-year-old child sat on a stranger's lap, but I can't count the number of times I've seen trusting Moldovan mothers pass their children to anyone sitting in the first two rows.

It's refreshing to see an environment where trust, rather than the typical American suspicion, is the first instinct. And while I won't leave any future children of mine with a perfect stranger, I have no problem with having those same strangers hold a bag full of my most expensive possessions.

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.