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!!!