Thursday, November 5, 2009

Swine Flu

Apparently, the flu epidemic warranted closing all the schools in Moldova for the next week, giving me a whole week off! I am planning on going to a random place in Romania.

Seriously, I wish they'd just be honest and say, "We're not closing the schools because of swine flu. We're closing the schools because we're too cheap to heat them." I guess in theory this makes sense. If you're not going to heat kindergarten classrooms, at least don't make kids go there and then get sick from constantly fighting the cold.

People here seem to be concerned about swine flu. I am also concerned about swine flu, but my response is to wash my hands more often, not close all of the schools. I feel like all these international organizations think they are doing something by putting up H1N1 posters. Why don't you buy our department a bottle of hand sanitizer? 1) We have no running water in our department so you can't wash your hands the normal way. 2) Washing your hands is a better way of protecting yourself than simply not going to work. 3) Hand sanitizer is totally unknown here so you would be introducing a nice, useful product that could compensate for poor utilities. Sigh.

Well, I can't really complain too much, because it did get me a week without work. How I will finish teaching all the hours I'm required to teach, I have no idea, but I'm getting ready for Romania!

In other random news, my homestay mom and I hosted a Peace Corps Volunteer who got stuck in Comrat when the last bus out of town was full. The expatriot connection network strikes again!

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for a tour of the 'hood Erin! Can't wait to see your postings from Romania!!

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