For the most part American and Moldovans have similar actions, movements and gestures while communicating however, there are a few differences that are difficult to adjust to.
The main one is smiling. As an American, and especially as a Montanan, I smile all the time. I smile when I greet people in the morning, when I say goodbye, when I pass people on the street, when I get on a bus, when I'm running frantically to the bathroom, all the time. Moldovans do not smile much. This doesn't mean they aren't happy or funny, they just see smiling as little gifts you save for special times. One of the first things I heard in this country from a Moldovan was "smiling is expensive." Of course, this Moldovan and I and the rest of our PST group made a big joke of this but in reality the saying holds truth. When you pass Moldovans on the street and smile or get on a bus smiling you automatically are labeled as a foreigner, and based on the looks I've received after trying to start a smiling trend, a buffoon of a foreigner. I imagine it is the same look I would have if I walked into a party and was greeted with the host telling me the evening would consist of us learning the art of miming.
The other that I noticed and confused me to no end was eye contact. In general, when talking with someone Americans and Moldovans both look the person in the eye, but while I was talking to my LTIs a few weeks ago I realized that they were looking anywhere but my eyes. I shouldn't say, I simply realized this, it was more of a minor freak out because I thought that I had something on my face and neck-because that's where they were looking while I was talking. I pretty much stopped mid story and said "what!? what's on me?!" while they laughed and said nothing that they were just looking at me. It was later explained that eye contact when you're in close proximity to another person is too intimate so you look elsewhere. If you ever want to mess with someone try looking at their forehead or neck while they talk. Good times.
Americans and Moldovans also have very different ideas about personal space. Coming from our individualist society our personal bubbles are pretty big in general. For instance, if you're out to lunch with a friend and they sit on the same side of the booth as you with your legs touching, it gets weird really quick. It isn't weird with Moldovans. It doesn't matter if it is 104 degrees out and you are sweating from every pore in your body, if you are friends then your bodies are touching while sitting. Granted this is not the case with all relationships in Moldova, just the special ones. The friendships that mean a lot. It's actually pretty sweet how much touching happens. Mothers and children and girl friends hold hands or link arms while they walk and men always shake hands on greeting. Kisses are also given out freely. I'm still getting used to this as my thing is hugs and always expect a hug to follow a cheek kiss- it does not and my attempts to embrace usually end with a super uncomfortable shoulder hug. I also have trouble aiming the cheek kisses and have ended up making a puckering noise in several peoples ears. I'll get it one day.
Saturday, August 18, 2012
New Look Same Info
As you can see I changed the way the blog looks. This feels cleaner. My address (which is the same as before and won't change for the next two years) can now be found in the "Contact Me" tab at the top of the page. I also made a list of things I want from the states but of course an email, letter or postcard are more than sufficient!
Friday, August 17, 2012
I'm Officially Official
I don't think I've written in four weeks - a lot has happened in that time, obviously, here are the highs and lows:
I taught my first class in Romanian - wooo! I felt great after this and pretty much said to myself, "Teaching in a foreign language - no big deal! I got this." However, I would like to point out some reasons why this went so smoothly. One, I planned and taught the lesson with my American friend who, oddly enough, speaks English which was the language we planned and wrote the lesson in initially. Two, our lesson was only 20 minutes long. Three, our "students" were our American buddies who had been prepped on what to say during the lesson and who were overwhelmingly supportive of us because they had to teach that day too. Still, it felt like a big accomplishment to teach a lesson on "The Influence of Mass Media" in Romanian.
Following the week of this first lesson we spent the next week preparing ourselves for what I like to call The Sanity Breaker, officially called practice school. Practice school lasted for two weeks; the last two weeks of PST. The first week we taught four classes (35 minutes each) in Romanian with our future Moldovan partners to real live Moldovan youth. This doesn't sound so bad right? In reality it wasn't...for me, as I had a FANTASTIC partner. The other trainees were not so lucky. There were tears, lots of tears, from the stress of this week. Imagine meeting your new partner that you'll spend two years working with, who you can't understand either in vocal or body language. This partner has been thrown into the world of PC HE procedures and requirements and is just as anxious about the coming years as the Americans. Now add a dash of time crunch, the panic of having to write three different lesson plans in broken Romanian with this stressed out partner in less than 24 hours and you get a big sticky mess of emotions. As I've said in previous posts, Peace Corps Moldova is a well oiled machine and especially in the Health Education program everything we go through in PST has been tried, tested and tweaked until the outcome is the best for the trainees - even if we can't see it at the time. This first week of practice school was well, horribly rough, but in the end we all have a sense of the challenges we are going to face (interpersonal relationships, communication barriers, creating a curriculum with little pre-existing structure, finding a happy balance between the Soviet era teaching style and our vision for an open, creative class room) as well as the benefits (interpersonal relationships, the rewards of working with youth, thinking outside of the box and developing a kick-ass, interactive and engaging lesson that sneakily teaching kids about a healthier life).
Last week was our second week of practice school. This time with a new partner and instead of teaching three separate classes we taught the same class all week in the format of Health Club. In the HE program we teach normal classes for 8 hours a week and have at least 1 hour of club each week. This doesn't sound like much but when there is no curriculum and you have to write long term plans and lesson plans for each class, the work piles up. Eventually, when we get used to the teaching work, we are expected to branch out and work with community organizations as well as. Club week was funny because we were all kind of dreading another week of practice school and were incredibly nervous about the "surprises" that would cause mental collapses. However, out of all the challenges I could think of that would pop up during this week it never occurred to me that a communication breakdown between two Moldovans would happen. Club week was different than lesson week because we had three teams teaching the same club, just rotating hours. This meant that there were three Americans and three Moldovans all trying to plan lessons together. Our club happened to have one partner who had difficulty with communication and resulted in my partner (who is as outstanding as my other partner- I totally won the teaching partner lottery) playing mediator for the whole week. It was ridiculous. We made it through though and our club's project (a giant children's book about the cold and flu that they presented to the younger classes) turned out great. One of the other trainees caught their presentation on video so I'll post that when I can get a copy.
What does this all mean in the end? PST is over and on Wednesday I took the same oath the President takes and was sworn in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer! Yay!!! Now when people send me things you can write PCV instead of PCT this is very exciting for me, honestly. It feels bitter sweet that PST is over because I'm going to miss my little family of 8 trainees, two amazing language instructors and host family very very much but I'm excited to get down to business.
As always, feel free to post questions in the comment section. I'll be able to post at least once a week now and hopefully, more frequently when I get internet at my new site. Next week I plan on flooding you with pictures, get ready.
Officially yours,
PCV Kindle
I taught my first class in Romanian - wooo! I felt great after this and pretty much said to myself, "Teaching in a foreign language - no big deal! I got this." However, I would like to point out some reasons why this went so smoothly. One, I planned and taught the lesson with my American friend who, oddly enough, speaks English which was the language we planned and wrote the lesson in initially. Two, our lesson was only 20 minutes long. Three, our "students" were our American buddies who had been prepped on what to say during the lesson and who were overwhelmingly supportive of us because they had to teach that day too. Still, it felt like a big accomplishment to teach a lesson on "The Influence of Mass Media" in Romanian.
Following the week of this first lesson we spent the next week preparing ourselves for what I like to call The Sanity Breaker, officially called practice school. Practice school lasted for two weeks; the last two weeks of PST. The first week we taught four classes (35 minutes each) in Romanian with our future Moldovan partners to real live Moldovan youth. This doesn't sound so bad right? In reality it wasn't...for me, as I had a FANTASTIC partner. The other trainees were not so lucky. There were tears, lots of tears, from the stress of this week. Imagine meeting your new partner that you'll spend two years working with, who you can't understand either in vocal or body language. This partner has been thrown into the world of PC HE procedures and requirements and is just as anxious about the coming years as the Americans. Now add a dash of time crunch, the panic of having to write three different lesson plans in broken Romanian with this stressed out partner in less than 24 hours and you get a big sticky mess of emotions. As I've said in previous posts, Peace Corps Moldova is a well oiled machine and especially in the Health Education program everything we go through in PST has been tried, tested and tweaked until the outcome is the best for the trainees - even if we can't see it at the time. This first week of practice school was well, horribly rough, but in the end we all have a sense of the challenges we are going to face (interpersonal relationships, communication barriers, creating a curriculum with little pre-existing structure, finding a happy balance between the Soviet era teaching style and our vision for an open, creative class room) as well as the benefits (interpersonal relationships, the rewards of working with youth, thinking outside of the box and developing a kick-ass, interactive and engaging lesson that sneakily teaching kids about a healthier life).
Last week was our second week of practice school. This time with a new partner and instead of teaching three separate classes we taught the same class all week in the format of Health Club. In the HE program we teach normal classes for 8 hours a week and have at least 1 hour of club each week. This doesn't sound like much but when there is no curriculum and you have to write long term plans and lesson plans for each class, the work piles up. Eventually, when we get used to the teaching work, we are expected to branch out and work with community organizations as well as. Club week was funny because we were all kind of dreading another week of practice school and were incredibly nervous about the "surprises" that would cause mental collapses. However, out of all the challenges I could think of that would pop up during this week it never occurred to me that a communication breakdown between two Moldovans would happen. Club week was different than lesson week because we had three teams teaching the same club, just rotating hours. This meant that there were three Americans and three Moldovans all trying to plan lessons together. Our club happened to have one partner who had difficulty with communication and resulted in my partner (who is as outstanding as my other partner- I totally won the teaching partner lottery) playing mediator for the whole week. It was ridiculous. We made it through though and our club's project (a giant children's book about the cold and flu that they presented to the younger classes) turned out great. One of the other trainees caught their presentation on video so I'll post that when I can get a copy.
What does this all mean in the end? PST is over and on Wednesday I took the same oath the President takes and was sworn in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer! Yay!!! Now when people send me things you can write PCV instead of PCT this is very exciting for me, honestly. It feels bitter sweet that PST is over because I'm going to miss my little family of 8 trainees, two amazing language instructors and host family very very much but I'm excited to get down to business.
As always, feel free to post questions in the comment section. I'll be able to post at least once a week now and hopefully, more frequently when I get internet at my new site. Next week I plan on flooding you with pictures, get ready.
Officially yours,
PCV Kindle
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