Looking for Course Materials...

So, I thought it would be a good idea to use a song to demonstrate types of characterization to my Literary Analysis class. I thought it would be fairly easy to find such a song, but in fact it is quite difficult! It seems that very few songwriters these days actually write songs about people! Here are some potential choices and why they got shot down...

"Kate" by Ben Folds Five: While this song is awesome, there are just too many confusing references (Bhagavad Gita?). Also, I'm not sure if the class will understand why the narrator loves a girl who smokes pot and wears the same clothes every day...

"Cath..." by Death Cab for Cutie: Just too depressing. I don't really want to have an in-depth discussion about Cath settling for an unsatisfying marriage at 8:00 AM.

"Lua" by Bright Eyes: See above. While this song is brilliant, I feel like the bulimia and drug issues might be a bit much to explain.

"Heroin Girl," "Amphetamine" by Everclear: I'm seeing that drug themes are a definite problem for basically every song I can find. I don't know how much I want to rock Comrat's world here. Plus, am I allowed to drop the f-bomb in a college classroom? Even if no one knows what it means?

"Jeremy," "Off He Goes," "Better Man," "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter In a Small Town" by Pearl Jam: Once again, too depressing! Teenage murder is another topic I don't want to discuss in-depth. "Off He Goes" seems too subtle, although I actually think it would be awesome in a native English speaker class. "Better Man" is basically a proto-version of "Cath..." so I'm going to nix that one. Plus, Eddie Vedder just doesn't enunciate enough. "Elderly Woman" actually is a really cool song and I think people would relate to it, but I think it doesn't actually give enough examples of characterization to use in the class.

And the winner is..."Candle in the Wind" by Elton John!

While this song is actually very depressing and also has drug themes, I think the fact that it is (1) famous and (2) about Marilyn Monroe will be interesting for the class.

If anyone has any suggestions for songs that display characterization in its many forms (direct, indirect, etc.) I would gladly consider them! Remember that songs have to be fairly comprehensible for people who don't speak colloquial English.

PS: This is rather unrelated, but did anyone know that Simon and Garfunkle did a take on "Richard Cory"? Would definitely be interesting to use in an American literature class.

Adventures in Feminism

September 27th, 2009

Things have cooled down a bit here, which is pleasant. I have turned in the final versions of two scholarship applications, so I have been relaxing and enjoying Tolstoy and lesson-planning. My chili turned out pretty well, by the way. I didn't have any cumin and the grass-fed meat had a different taste, but it tasted fairly authentic. I found spicy chilis at the market (although not Homer's special chilis, unfortunately), so all was well.

When not working or cooking or reading, I have had some run-ins with women’s issues so far and I thought I would share.

Part I: The World of Women

The main problem in rural Moldova is that you just can’t make a living. A very good salary here is $500 a month, and a teacher’s salary is much less than that. Food is very cheap, but utilities, rent, and clothes are not. Even if you have two incomes coming in, it’s hard to buy more than the basics with your paycheck, especially if you have kids. So, in a phenomenon you can observe throughout the rural periphery of the former USSR, many of the men who should be living here are working somewhere in Russia. The result is a sort of feminized countryside. (I should note that some women do work abroad, particularly in care-taking professions, but they are not the norm.) At the university, all of my colleagues are women. There are a few men who work at the university, but they are few and far between. We have a couple of guys in our classes, but what’s the point of learning English if you’re going to be working on a construction site in Russia in five years? So, most of the people I come into contact with on a daily basis are women.

I’ve yet to make any solid determinations on the impact of this migration on the role of women, but logically it would seem that women here are forced to be more self-sufficient and independent than many women elsewhere.

Part II: Patriarchy?

Russian morning television is pretty entertaining, as a rule. When I have the time, I like to watch this pseudo-Today Show that has both serious and light news programs. Last week there was a program on--gasp!--women paying for dates! This is still a pretty up-in-the-air issue in the United States for a lot of people, but I thought it was funny that there was actually a news story on this. I guess it must be breaking news? There was supposed to be some kind of discussion after the news story, but it seemed fairly one-sided. This lady kept saying that feminism had killed humor. I was like, um, what does that have to do with the topic of paying for dinner? Like, maybe this would be relevant if women were refusing to go on dates to comedy clubs because of feminism.

In a related note, Sofia, my host mom, told me her story of trying to buck the system and keep her own name when she got married. Her husband’s side of the family got too upset, so she caved. I explained to her that in U.S. people tend to freak out about this as well, as I’m sure Nicole and Chris Person-Rennell can attest to!

Part III: Women’s Organizations

I had the happy opportunity to meet up with Christine, a Peace Corps Volunteer here in Comrat. She is currently working with two organizations, a youth volunteer league and a women’s rights organization, to help them build capacity and apply for grants. They are currently working on getting a grant from UNIFEM to strengthen the inadequate enforcement of women’s rights laws currently on the books in Moldova. They would like to start up a business center and microloan program to empower women entrepreneurs in the south of Moldova with the UNIFEM money. I hope they get the grant, because it sounds like a very worthy program.

They do a lot of active, hands-on trainings to teach people about domestic violence issues and human trafficking. Human trafficking is especially a big problem in Transnistria, so they train people to recognize behaviors that could make a woman an easy target for traffickers. They did a small summer camp for kids to teach them about equality in the home and techniques for conflict resolution in relationships. It even got a positive write-up in the local paper!

Part IV: Avon, the Company for Women

Every time I travel to the former USSR, I always find another surprising example of globalization. This time around, it was Avon ladies. We always have an Avon catalogue floating around our office, which I use as a resource to learn the Russian names for things like nail clippers and conditioner. I randomly got pushed into going to a big Avon meeting yesterday, which ended up being a rather interesting cultural experience.

I have mixed feelings about Avon in general. On the one hand, it empowers women to make money through social networking, which seems like a very positive thing. On the other hand, the company does this through convincing women they need cosmetics that they probably don’t have the money to buy (at least not in Moldova).

The meeting was held in the “House of Culture.” I went with Tatiana, a German professor, and Lyudmila, our secretary. Lyudmila’s five-year-old daughter provided comic relief. We waited a good hour before things actually got underway. Annoyingly (and somewhat illogically), the majority of the presentation was in Moldovan, so I didn’t understand much. But it seemed pretty standard. There were dancers. We all got free “Curlacious” mascara. We watched videos on new products like Patrick Dempsey’s cologne “Unscripted.” (Ugh. What hath Grey’s Anatomy wrought?) Avon representatives who sold over a certain amount of Avon products got flowers. After that, there was a pretty cool concert with a Moldovan folk singer. Overall, I would have to say that it was pretty entertaining, and I won’t look a free mascara gift horse in the mouth. I’m still not sure whether Avon is good or evil, but I think that their marketing department is very smart.

I have killed the most magnificent centipede

There was a gross centipede haunting my room and I have conquered him.

Or rather, Sofia has killed him with a towel.

Thrice, I have fought the dread centipede.

Twice, it evaded me. But not this time.

I have to say it was the most attractive centipede I have ever seen. It was golden-colored, with thin, long, multicolored legs. But still, gross.

Like, Beowulf, we have slayed a monster. Huzzah!

Chili

My goal for tomorrow is to make chili. I am without my beloved crock pot, so I'm going to have to improvise. I have found a fairly simple recipe from the Food Network website, which I am going to snazz up by adding more vegetables to.

I have translated tricky words of ingredients into Russian. Today, I'm going to see if I can buy the dry ingredients at Fourchette, our grocery store.

Tomorrow: the markets. Wish me luck!

Admiring the stack of Russian books on my coffee table

This blog entry may only be interesting to my language-learning friends, but considering how many of them I know, I don’t think it will be a bad thing!

Last night, I told Sofia that I like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and she was like, “I have a whole library in the back! I have 20 volumes of Tolstoy!” And then she proceded to bring me every single volume of Tolstoy, as well as two volumes of Dostoevsky, and some Bulgakov to boot. To make a long story short, I now have about seven volumes of Russian classics in my room, and Sofia is expecting me to read them!

I took a crack at War and Peace last night and it turned out better than I expected. The first paragraph is still hilarious. (I remember getting a Quiz Bowl question about famous first lines—I nailed the War and Peace one: “Eh bien, mon prince, Gênes et Lucques ne sont plus que des apanages, de поместья de la famille Buonaparte...”) Having read it twice, I can follow what’s going on without too much difficulty. (The fact that about 20% of the first few chapters is in French helps, too!) I made it through two chapters, right up to the point where Pierre shows up at the party and starts making everyone uncomfortable. Excellent.

One of the main reasons I was excited to come to Moldova was the chance to polish up my Russian. Those of you who studied at the Critical Languages Institute may remember the discussion of the “Terminal 2’s” among Russian language learners. Namely: People who study Russian at the college level seem to all graduate at an intermediate level. They can get along fine in Russophone environments, but they can’t speak Russian at a professional level. So, my language goal here is to boost from intermediate to professional in nine months. Seems doable.

I should also add here a brief note about the linguistic situation in Moldova. Basically, the national language is Moldovan/Romanian (the name of the language is a very political question...must tread lightly here). However, as many people have noted to me, you are better off using Russian if you don’t know the person you are conversing with. You are much more likely to run into a Moldovan citizen who doesn’t speak Moldovan than a Moldovan citizen who doesn’t speak Russian.

Furthermore, the region of Gagauzia is primarily Russophone. Most of the Gagauz here speak Russian as their language of daily communication, although older generations tend to speak Gagauz more often. (Thanks to my Friday class for explaining this to me!) This tendency is made stronger by the fact that there are many Bulgarians, Russians, and Ukrainians who live here, so they use Russian as a means of communicating with the Gagauz. This is a pretty standard pattern among minority communities in the former USSR. (Case-in-point: Russophone Armenian ethnic communities in Tbilisi, Georgia.)

So, I was overall incredibly lucky to come to a region in the former USSR where I could really develop my Russian skills!

Sofia, the woman I live with, speaks to me almost entirely in Russian. (She is working on her English, but is still in the beginning stages!) She is a German professor at the university, and she also speaks Gagauz. At home, we watch Russian television almost exclusively, which is fun! We have GTV, which is Gagauzian. The broadcast news in Moldovan, Gagauz, and Russian. (They also play Turkish music videos constantly, leading Sofia to jokingly call it “TTV” instead of GTV.) I feel much more connected to what is going on when I can watch news reports of events in Comrat in Russian! We also get “Rossiya,” which is the main Russian state channel. There are also some Moldovan channels that broadcast in Russian. It’s a good mix of shows.

The other professors in the kafedra (I guess this would be translated “department”) speak Russian basically all the time. They like the practice their English with me, but the German teachers generally don’t speak English, so they usually speak in Russian in order to be polite to them. Right now, I can understand what they are saying to me and follow conversations, but I tend to miss a lot of what they are saying to each other. I think quick conversations are one of the hardest things to follow, as a rule. Sometimes it gets depressing, but I am comforted by the fact that Feruz, our Fulbrighter from Uzbekistan at ASU, improved his English immensely while he was living in America. If Feruz can do it, so can I!

I had the chance to interview Olga Kagan, a pretty awesome Russian scholar at UCLA, and she told me the best way to improve my Russian is to get a big fat novel and read every day. I’ve taken her to heart! As far as reading practice goes, I’m still working away at Harry Potter. I finished 1-3 over the last school year, so I’m tackling the challenge of Book 5 right now. Let me tell you, Book 5 is no joke. I think it takes me 4-5 minutes a page. It’s a lot of fun, however, and the entertaining story keeps my attention. I think I’m going to have to split my time between War and Peace and Harry Potter, though. Prince Andrei is about to show up in the book. There’s nothing to keep you plugging through those Russian sentences like Prince Andrei. For those of you who haven’t read War and Peace, I just have to say that you are missing out.

So, my Russian study plan seems to be going fairly well. I’m hoping to start meeting with a Russian tutor. Christine, a Peace Corps volunteer here, told me there was a really good one in Hincesti, which is about 30 minutes away by bus, so it might be worth it.

Any other language acquisition suggestions?

Can We PLEASE Talk About Grendel Now?

September 17, 2009

Today was quite the day. Frankly, by the end of it, I needed a beer.

I had surprising success in my American Folklore and Myth class today. We read a Native American creation myth and discussed it. Well, I guess I can’t really say that we discussed it, but I had a lot of success with getting the students to apply the grammatical structures from the text into everyday, conversational English. Getting most of them to talk is like pulling teeth, but I felt proud that by the end, at least everyone could use the preposition “beside” more or less correctly.

Mariana, one of the girls who attended the conversational club meeting I had yesterday, showed up for the class and sat in on the whole lesson! I took it as a big compliment that she actually wanted to take a class she wasn’t signed up for.

The second class, British Literature, was much more draining. This is one of the classes I have with the Turkish students. We were talking about Beowulf and reading parts of the text (in translation from Old English, of course). The texts were rather hard for the class, and even the best student exclaimed that Beowulf was making her feel stupid. To boot, we kept getting derailed by Turkish nationalism.

The two best English speakers in the class were in a very heated argument (in Turkish) and so I asked them to at least argue in English. So, they were discussing whether Turkey was the best country in the world. Inevitably, I got asked to weigh in. This was awkward. One student was arguing, “Every country thinks they are the best, so you can’t simply say that mine is the best, end of story.” The other student’s perspective was basically, “Well, they can all think that, but Turkey is still the best.”

Thanks a lot, Ataturk. You’re ruining my class.

I tried to be diplomatic, siding with the student who (most rationally) argued that the whole question was relative. This response did not go over well with Ataturk Jr. Sigh. And then the genocide got brought up. AWESOME. That’s what I want to do during my British Literature class...talk about the Armenian genocide.

I restrained myself from making any comment, although I couldn’t stop myself from raising a skeptical eyebrow when he made the claim that no American had been an eyewitness to the events in 1915. Yeah, no. The American ambassador, Henry Morgenthau, was alerted to the events in eastern Anatolia when he received several American missionaries who broke down in tears in his office trying to explain what had happened. He wrote a BOOK (Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story) about it, for crying out loud. So, yeah. My eyebrow went up.

At any rate, I realized my facial expressions were throwing gasoline on the fire and brought things back to Beowulf rather ungracefully. And the rest of the class went fine, although I’m going to have to figure out a better way to present difficult material to the class. I’m just trying to teach without alienating any of the students. Sigh. I am only slightly comforted by the fact that there are certainly many American students who would have a hard time accepting the fact that not everyone in the world loves their country as much as they do. Actually, Ataturk Jr. told me later that I should join the Turkish students sometime at the disco here (after Ramadan). So perhaps things will be okay. Although this better not be some sort of effort to bait me into another Armenian genocide discussion!

After that stressful class, we had a departmental meeting, much of which went over my head. There was all this heated debate going on about student attendance, much of which I couldn’t quite catch. Then came time for class hours and paycheck amounts to become official, which resulted in more than a few raised voices. More stress!!! Ah! I really would have appreciated some alcoholic refreshment, but I felt drinking alone was too depressing. Actually, I went home and watched a local program about chess and ate some soup, which was pretty soothing.

I got in touch with one of the Peace Corps volunteers this evening, which was nice. Hopefully, we will be able to meet and share experiences soon. In the meantime, I am relaxing by listening to new Regina Spektor and some Armenian Navy Band...

Prepping for Classes!

This weekend, Stephanie, the other English Teaching Assistant in Moldova, and I went on a crazy adventure involving motorcycles, famish marches through the Moldovan countryside, and some extremely cramped minibuses. But! That will have to wait for a time when I have the energy to tell the whole saga. For now, I'm just going to make a few notes about classes.

Today, I had some small but significant victories. The white board in my room was completely covered in marker and thus unusable. Writing on it was more like etching. This was a source of major frustration for me. How can you have a language class without a board! After some Google searching, I discovered that you can use either alcohol or baby wipes to clean white boards. I did some price comparisons at Fourchette (the big, nice grocery store here) and discovered that baby wipes cost about half the price of the cheapest bottle of vodka, so I went with the baby wipes for a cool $2. Lo and behold, Google was right. I now have a functioning white board! Hurrah!

I feel the white board situation shows the importance of having appropriate technology. Both the American Center and the British Center at the university have white boards instead of chalk boards. Big surprise, nobody knows how to really clean the white boards so they become unusable. Meanwhile, the good old chalkboards are completely functional. Lesson learned here: if you're going to donate something, donate something that can be maintained!

My second victory was my triumph over the television and DVD player. Lying out on the shelves in the American Center was a broken DVD/karaoke machine (?) and a video player. But when I looked in the drawers, I found another DVD player which actually works! Pretty awesome. I can now show movies in class without students having to peer at my tiny little laptop screen. It does, however, lack a remote, so at this point I can only push play and let the thing run. (In my rummaging through the drawers, I also discovered a great book on phrasal verbs. Language nerd heaven!)

On top of my two victories, I had the added fun of designing lessons. I'm crossing my fingers that everything goes well tomorrow. I am teaching U.S. demographics in my Culture and Civilization class this week. We are going to watch "Island of Hope, Island of Tears," which is a documentary about Ellis Island. Should be cool. I spent this evening preparing for my British literature class. Who'da thunk that it would be in Moldova that I'd get reacquainted with Beowulf?

Today I was watching the news and I discovered that Vladimir Putin actually has a very pleasant voice when he speaks Russian. He sounds very calm. I would have expected him to be more strident.

On the utilities front, the water and gas have finally both come online. Unfortunately, we discovered today that the water heater doesn't actually heat water (it just makes the room hot), so I'm still bathing Little House on the Prairie style. We boil a bucket of water on the stove and then mix that with regular water. It's actually not too bad!

First Week at Comrat State

September 14, 2009

Now that I’m starting on my second week of teaching, I think it will be a good idea to recap the first week.

The first couple of days at the university were somewhat frustrating because my schedule still hadn’t been determined. In the former Soviet Union, classes technically start on September 1st, but in reality the first week or two is a staging process where all the logistics get worked out. Students here learn in groups. For example, all students with a concentration in Moldovan language and English language who entered the university in 2007 study together. They have basically every class together for their entire university career. Students don’t really get to choose their classes: each year they follow the course schedule laid down by the university. Each group has a unique schedule. At the beginning of the year, the university administration (in our case, our intrepid secretary Lyudmila) puts together a schedule for every group--without the help of a computer to coordinate all the different schedules. It is really a gargantuan task.

So, I spent the first couple of days sitting around the university and getting acquainted with the other professors and the American Center. There is a very nice room with several full bookshelves, a giant American flag, posters, maps, and a television. (Tragically, the DVD player doesn’t work, so the TV is useless to me.) Quite a few of the resources have been donated by the U.S. Embassy and USAID. Others are from book donation programs. I was excited to see so many great resources. Once I got my temporary schedule, I spent many hours pouring through the books to see what resources I can pull together for each class.

Here’s my schedule:

Wednesday

1st and 2nd period: American Culture and Civilization

3rd period: American Children’s Literature

Thursday

3rd period: American Folklore and Mythology

4th period: British Literature

Friday

2nd period: Literary Text Analysis

3rd period: Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing

Each period is an hour and twenty minutes long. As you can see, they actually have me teaching content-based English instead of the usual grammar and conversation classes. In some cases this is quite interesting, in other cases, I have to scrounge around for material. My overall problem is how to use the subject material as a vehicle for the development of better English skills.

Another issue: here, they organize all classes in a lecture-seminar format, which I don’t like at all. First of all, this is the humanities, not science or math! Secondly, the whole idea of having a language class where students simply listen to a lecture goes against the entirety of modern language pedagogy. Thankfully, I’ve been given a tacit go-ahead to eschew this format when it doesn’t work for me.

Wednesday’s classes were fairly interesting. I had a basic getting-to-know-you routine for each class this week. We took attendance (and explained what the word attendance means) and read the syllabus. Teachers here don’t give out syllabi, so I had to explain to students that, yes, they can actually keep it. Next, I had the students introduce each other, a tip I got from Natalia, another English professor here. Finally, I played a game where I introduced myself without actually having to talk very much. I had students write four or five questions they’d like to ask me. Then I had them go in pairs and ask the questions. The catch: they had to ask them to each other. One student would ask a question like “Where is our teacher from?” and the other would have to guess where I am from! I found it on an ESL website and it worked very well. The best part is that it gets students laughing and talking, instead of listening to me. The goal of the lessons was to set an active tone for the students and to get a bead on how well each group spoke English.

For Wednesday, I also prepared a lecture and activity combination on American geography and regions. The students listened to me talk, but they also did a map activity in groups and looked at pictures of America. To conclude, we watched a video of “This Land is Your Land” from YouTube with subtitles and cheesy pictures of America. It was entertaining for me, at the very least!

The range of the students is very wide. I have two groups of local students who are in their fifth and final year at the university. Both groups are active and fun and speak English well. They simply need more practice speaking. American Culture and Civ and Literary Text Analysis are the classes I have with the older groups.

I have two groups who are in their first or second year of learning English. These groups are a big challenge. They are still shaky on the basics of English and I am supposed to be teaching them content! It is a bit frustrating because no matter how much I slow down, the students don’t seem to understand me that well. Plus, they are more shy and hesitant to speak in class, which can make speaking activities like pulling teeth. When asked to speak in front of the class, a particularly shy girl actually crossed herself! These two classes are American Folklore and Mythology and Critical Thinking, Reading and Writing.

Finally, I have two groups of students from Turkey who come here specifically to study at this university. The language here, Gagauzian, is on the same branch of Turkic languages as Turkish and Azeri. Students can get by here when they arrive, and then they study English and Russian. These students have absolutely no problem with participating in class. The main struggle I have here is the fact that although they have great conversational English, they spend half the lesson talking to each other in Turkish. At this level, the class should really be English-only. The other issue is that they are all the same age as me or older, so I have to remember to be authoritative! These two classes are American Children’s Literature and British Literature.

Well, these are the main groups that I am working with. I’m also starting an English Conversational Club this week, so we’ll see how that goes. I’d like to watch movies and TV shows and practice discussing all sorts of topics. I think this could be the most fun of all!

Sorry for the rather dry entry, but I figured it was best to explain everything I was doing here so that future entries make sense. I promise I have many anecdotes to tell in the future!

No water, no gas = camping indoors

September 8, 2009

The past few days have been an adventure in the breakdown of public services.

First...the water.

I woke up yesterday and went to wash my face. When I turned on the tap I heard the characteristic burble that caused a Pavlovian wince. No! I thought I left this all behind in Armenia! My host didn’t know why the water turned off, but luckily we had some saved. I should have seen this coming. Having random water containers in the bathroom are a dead giveaway for sporadic water service.

Apparently, this big truck somehow drove over a weak patch of asphalt and fell in, severing a water pipe. We’re still waiting for it to be fixed. In the meantime, Sofia’s son brought over a big jug of water from their house

So I mentioned previously the water containers in the bathroom. Well, there was a mysterious bucket that I was instructed not to drink from. Last night I was washing my face and I saw...A TINY WORM. It was a little itty bitty red thread thing less than an inch long and WRIGGLING. I resolved to purchase water the next day in case this was considered “normal” water in Comrat. Then I saw another one of these little tapeworms-in-training this morning. Eeek!

(Sofia explained to me today that the water in the bucket is from some outside source and should under no condition be drunk...thank God.)

Next...the gas.

I woke up this morning to the lovely news that we would have no gas for four days. That leaves us with one major service left: electricity. Since the stove is gas, that means we can’t actually cook. That also means that we won’t have hot water, but because we don’t have water, that’s sort of irrelevant. Even if we get water back, it won’t be hot.

Once I went to the university, I found out that everyone in their city will have the gas cut off for the next four days. I think if this happened in America, there would be a riot!

So, for dinner we used the electric tea kettle to get boiling water with which we cooked ramen and sausages. Sofia and I resolved that if this continues for another day, we’re going to a cafeteria for dinner. Yay! I feel like I can handle one service going out at a time, but not two. Hopefully the water will be fixed tomorrow.

In other news, my classes start tomorrow. I am teaching six classes (!) and they are very random subjects:

British literature

American Culture and Civilization

American Children’s Literature

Critical Thinking/Reading and Writing

Literary Text Analysis

American Folklore and Myth

I still don’t know the level the students will be at, so I only have a tentative plan for each class. Thankfully, each class is basically like a 1.5 credit class in the U.S. I am teaching 15 Moldovan-style credits (40 minutes), which means 10 real hours of teaching per week. This seems reasonable, although having 6 preps is hardcore.

It’s taken a while, but I think I’ve gotten the system somewhat worked out. One of the professors from my department speaks really good English and she helped me out. Basically, all classes are divided into lectures and seminars, even humanities classes. I’m trying to figure out a way to work with this system without having actually ever taken a math or science class that was divided into that structure.

Well, I have class at 8:00 tomorrow morning, so I’m going to try and turn in early. My classes for tomorrow are all planned and syllabi photocopied (on my own dime...thankfully, it was $3). Teaching is scary! I hope everything goes well tomorrow. I already have my outfit picked out...I guess that’s a good start.

The Local Food Movement, Moldovan Style

After a few days in Comrat, I’m starting to think that town life is the way to go. I have only ever lived in big cities in Eastern Europe, and I used to think that rural life was totally backwards and boring. This is a lie that city dwellers tell themselves to feel better. Living in a small town here is great!

First of all, we actually have decent living space. No хрусчевки for us! (For you non-Cyrillic readers, I was referring to the

tiny little apartments that Khrushchev built in a hurry in order to accommodate the rapid urbanization in the USSR.) I am living in an actual house with five rooms, instead of the standard three in a city apartment. You can actually stretch out without bumping into someone. Additionally, we have a nice big backyard with a kitchen garden (огород) and a chicken coop! Chickens! So exciting!

This brings me to the second reason the countryside is best: food. Every time I turn around, someone is offering me something homemade (домашный) to eat. First of all, we have the freshest, reddest tomatoes imaginable. I have literally never seen

tomatoes this red in my life. They are fire-truck red all the way through and they taste great. I’ve never been a big tomato person and now I eat at least one per day.

Yesterday, we also had homemade eggs. Right from the chicken’s butt! That’s about as local as you can get. Michael Pollan has this whole discourse on egg yolks in Omnivore’s Dilemma where he talks about the wan color of egg yolks produced through the industrial food system, and it is definitely true that the egg yolk yesterday was quite a robust orange color. Apparently this has something to do with protein? At any rate it was quite tasty.

Everything here seems to be homemade, including the hooch. I heard that Moldova has one of the lowest rates of wine purchasing in the world. This doesn’t seem to make sense until you realize that they all drink homemade wine. In this regard, I think Moldova is pretty similar to Armenia. I’ve drank a few glasses made from the grapes in the backyard and the flavor is interesting. It’s obviously not aged as long, so it’s more fresh tasting and less “wine-y.” I also had a homemade cherry vodka liqueur beverage with lunch, and it was pretty tasty.

So, basically, I think that the only option for people who are interested in local food is to move to the Eastern European countryside and insinuate themselves with a local family. Last year I read Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and it seems that she’s right. You can’t really have good, fresh, local food unless you’re willing to move to a more rural place or install a big garden in your backyard. I’ve tried doing the whole farmers’ market thing and the problem is that they’re usually so far away and at such an inconvenient time that it doesn’t really work. Alas!

One of the things I like the most about the f

ormer USSR is its old-school qualities. I feel like I’m in a Jane Austen novel every time I’m at a party and someone starts playing on the piano. Last night I went with Sofia and her husband Nikolai to visit their friends. We had a big tasty dinner with lots of vodka and then we sat around looking at photo albums. Someone sat down at the piano and started playing some old Russian songs. I’m always very thankful at these times that I took Dr. Croft’s Basic Conversational Russian classes. “Калинка”, “Подмосковние вечера,” “Катюша”...I’ve gotten a lot of milage out of those songs.

So far I feel like I’m adjusting pretty well. (I’m currently lounging in an easy chair and eating grapes from the backyard.) It’s not always easy to adjust to living with people you don’t know, but I’m already used to the food and a lot of the traditions, so I don’t feel too out of place. I’m still totally perplexed as to what I’m supposed to do with my lessons, however. I suppose that will have to wait for the next post!

The Road to Comrat

September 4, 2009

Today was definitely intense. I woke up at the hostel in Chisinau, re-packed everything into my bags, and had breakfast with Stephanie, the other Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Moldova. I nearly died trying to get my bags down a tiny spiral staircase, but luckily escaped with spine and neck intact. After breakfast, the staff from the embassy (including the Public Affairs Officer!) picked us up and drove us to our respective cities. On the way, we got a fairly gorgeous tour through the Moldovan countryside, which is filled with vineyards and fields of wheat and withered sunflowers. We passed many small villages on the way. The villages were fairly standard post-Soviet villages with wooden or brick houses and big gardens enclosed in rusting metal gates. All the walls were overgrown with grape vines--very romantic. The villages we passed seemed relatively prosperous; quite a few houses looked newly remodeled. It was pretty pleasant to watch it all slide by my window as I gazed in a jet lag-induced stupor.

After an hour or so of driving, we passed a sign informing us that we had entered the autonomous region of Gagauzia. Gagauzia is almost analogous to an Indian reservation, in that it has autonomous status in areas of domestic policy, but falls under the umbrella of the Moldovan government in foreign affairs. The signs switched from Romanian and Russian to Gagauzian and Russian (but mostly Russian). We entered the capital city of Comrat, which is a bustling little town of 25,000. People were milling about and dozens of white vans stood waiting by the side of the road to ferry people from Comrat to other, smaller Gagauzian towns. Comrat is by no means a big town, but there seemed to be plenty of stores and markets.

After some winding about, we found the major street (named after Lenin and featuring a statue of him boldly stepping into the future) and then the university. There are two university buildings, one old and one new. Natalia, a Moldovan who works at the embassy, and the PAO took us to the office of the rector (aka the Michael Crow of Comrat State University). We spoke with him, the vice rector, and a few teachers from the Department of National Cultures. I felt like I was back in Model UN as everyone took turns thanking each other for mutual cooperation and talking about the importance of cultural exchange. It was pretty entertaining to watch everyone be so official, but I really appreciated the support of the embassy and I thought it set a good tone for the day. I had to bust out some Russian which was slightly nervewracking after a summer of Russian silence, but I managed to not totally embarrass myself.

After our meeting, we visited the Department of National Cultures and visited their American Center and main office (kafedra). The buildings are all relatively new and clean and things look cared for. It’s definitely more swanky than previous post-Soviet universities I have studied at, although I think to American eyes it would look more austere than swanky. I met a bunch of different teachers--practically everyone on the faculty is in their twenties except for the German teachers, who are both older. This is usually the case in the former USSR because German was emphasized during World War II, but lost much of its status to English during the Cold War.

Then Sofia Konstantinova, the head of the department, took my to my new home, which is actually a room in her house. I would be fairly concerned by this, but the room is actually pretty baller. I have a computer, couches, and easy chair, a DSL hookup (!!!) and a TV. Plus, the room is set off from the rest of the house, so you don’t feel like you are all up in someone else’s place. The driver unloaded my suitcases and then the Stephanie and the embassy contingent drove away. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed at this point, what the jet lag and basically everyone I had met so far in Moldova waving good-bye at me. However, Sofia seems pretty nice and we had some lunch before heading over to the department again.

At the department, I met more professors and had the chance to chat with everyone. I didn’t really have that much to do, so I bummed around the American Center with a couple of the younger professors. They were all quite nice and willing to practice English with me, which was a nice break from all the Russian that was flying at me from Sofia. I hung out and talked with Anna, the professor who runs the American Center, for probably two hours because I had nothing to do. No one came in the entire time we were there except for the weird chicken lady.

So this lady comes in and plops two naked, plucked, and gutted chickens in front of me. She starts going off about the chickens as I stare at her with a completely confused look on my face. As I look up a chicken’s butt, I wonder if such aggressive chicken sales are the norm in Moldova. Finally both Anna and the chicken lady realize that I have no idea what is going on and they figure out that someone else from the Math department ordered the chickens, and not me. You would think this would have been obvious from the beginning (what would I need two raw chickens for?), but hey.

Around five o’clock, I have a frankly terrifying meeting with Sofia and a few other professors about the classes I am supposed to teach. First, they presented to me, in no particular order, about ten different classes they expect me to teach, some first semester and some second semester. This was all in half-Russian half-English, which made things even more confusing. Also, Moldova doesn’t have the U.S. credit system, so they kept throwing around hours of classes that had absolutely no meaning to me. Then they told me I’d be teaching eighteen hours, which seemed like an incredible amount right out the gate. To add to the confusion, my classes also had somewhat ambiguous titles like “Means of Mass Communication” and “Critical Text Analysis.” I was starting to feel more and more like I’d been hit by the crazy truck, but thankfully the meeting ended and I began sorting out in my brain all the info I had received. I was, however, confused by the fact that I had no idea when classes were actually starting and when I would be teaching said classes.

Once I got out a piece of paper and started charting my schedule and hours, I realized that things weren’t as insane as I thought. First of all, one “hour” of class is only 40 minutes, so that’s not as bad as I originally thought. My class topics are still pretty strange, but I think I can manage. I’m going to be teaching an entire class on “American Folklore and Mythology.” This makes me think I’m going to be talking about Paul Bunyan...a lot. First semester, I’m also teaching a class on U.S. culture and civ and a class on American children’s literature, as well as some of those ambiguous text analysis courses. I’m sure I can handle the subjects, it’s simply a matter of making them interesting instead of dry and irrelevant. I think the subject matter is more of a means to encourage communication, so that’s what I’m going to do. Most classes are only meeting once or twice a week, so I think I will be ok. Unfortunately, I don’t have the same access to materials as I would in the States, so I’m going to have to improvise quite a bit. Somewhat amusingly, Fulbright is expecting us to co-teach most of our classes, and I don’t think I’m co-teaching a single one. Hmm.

I hung out in my room, waiting for dinner and getting settled in. I’m not sure exactly how much they want me to pay for the room per month, so I pondered how to bring up that issue. I assume they expect me to pay? But then why wouldn’t they mention rent? Perplexing. I used the glorious internet and talked to family on Skype while I got increasingly hungry. Sofia’s husband Nikolai was late, and we didn’t sit down to dinner until practically nine. Thankfully, it was worth the wait. The tomatoes in the salad were the reddest tomatoes I have ever seen, the roasted chicken was delicious, and the mashed potatoes nice and creamy. We did a fair bit of toasting with homemade wine and chatted in Russian. After dinner we had watermelon. I then took a hot bath and started writing this. Overall, it was an extremely pleasant way to end a long and eventful day. I’m going to attempt to go to sleep, but those circadian rhythms are threatening to keep me up all night again. Curse you, jet lag!!!

Where is Moldova, You Ask?

Moldova is located between Ukraine and Romania, just north of the Black Sea. Chisinau is smack dab in the middle. You can see Comrat down there in the south. Even further south is Cahul, where Stephanie, the other Fulbright English Teaching Assistant, is living.

Who, What, When, Where, Why

If you're reading this, you probably already know that I'm Erin and I'm in Moldova. But in case you're curious how exactly I got here...

I applied for a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant position in Poland last fall. I was pretty bummed when I found out in April that I was an alternate and pretty much forgot all about it during the ensuing months. I had just gotten off work at MariSol Federal Credit Union one day in late June when I checked my cellphone and saw a mysterious area code. I decided to actually check my messages and was pretty thrilled when I found out that one of them was from Fulbright. I called bright and early the next morning. Rachel from Fulbright asked me if I was interested in teaching in...Moldova.

Now, up until this point, Moldova was to me the one former Soviet Socialist Republic that I always forgot when I was trying to remember all the Soviet Socialist Republics. (As the proud bearer of a Russian and East European Studies Certificate, this is something I do fairly often.) So, I asked her if I could give her a call back after thinking about it. I promptly did some Googling and dug out Mary Beth's copy of Lonely Planet Romania & Moldova. After discovering that Moldova was one of the world's largest wine exporters, I was in. I called Rachel back after an hour and told her that I was ready to go to Moldova.

At the time, I assumed that I would be heading for the capital of Moldova, Chisinau, but the U.S. government had other plans. Apparently, someone in USG has heard of Rawlsian justice, because their policy is to send English teachers to the places that historically have the lowest English teaching capacity—the provinces. Rachel told me that I would be going to Comrat, which is the capital of the autonomous region of Gagauzia in the south of Moldova.

Fast forward to September 1st, when I got on a plane at Sky Harbor. After 17 hours of travel time, I arrived at the airport in Chisinau (Kish-i-NOW) on September 2nd. And thus began my "Adventures in Bessarabia." (Like how I tied that in there?)