I know, deep down, that getting one's hopes up can be trouble, especially in the Peace Corps Moldova where unpredictability is as certain as sunflowers in the summer and snow in the winter (which I hear is even more certain than the sunflowers). Still, I can't help but sometimes have a mental picture of what life in this country is supposed to be. I'm trying to get past the part of this tendency where I'm sometimes disappointed when life's not what I'm expecting, but that doesn't mean I ought not be excited when it is...
Yesterday, I went with my family back into the village. Cutting down cornstalks last weekend was great, but this weekend was grape picking, and it was even better. I've eaten plenty of grapes in my life, but I won't deny for a second that fresh off the vine, they're better. They certainly aren't the same as the seedless variety you can find at an American grocery store, in fact, they're not even quite like the seeded ones there. The skin is thick, so they snap between your teeth when you bite in. The juice is bright purple, so they stain your fingertips. The inside is a little tougher than what I'm used to, so if you don't want to eat them seeds and all, you roll them around in your mouth, wiggling the seeds out. Oh, and the taste. They're perfect. They're tart, and fresh, and I suppose subconsciously, there's a certain something added just by the novelty of picking it straight from the vine and throwing it in your mouth.
Peace Corps's medical office would be devastated by the amount of unwashed fruit I ate Sunday. Positively devastated. If the ask, neither the grapes nor the pears ever happened, got it?
We picked grapes at five different homes. One of them was explained to me to be a relative's, but I didn't catch whose. One was a neighbor's, and I didn't know the person, and after those, I pretty well gave up trying to figure out where I was until we'd returned to my host grandparents' house, where we stripped the grapevines beside and behind their home, too. Away from home we dumped our buckets of grapes into plastic lined sacks about 4 feet long and 2 wide, we lugged those home, and there we just dumped our buckets straight into the crusher.
I won't deny I was a tiny bit disappointed that there was no mention of tugging off our shoes and stomping around in a tub of grapes. I think there was a time the grossness of such a thing would have appalled me, but really, it would have been no less sanitary than the mechanism we used. Ever read one of those articles online that tells you how your candy bar probably contains such-and-such a percentage of bugs, because they don't pick them out of the cocoa beans. Well, I can tell you with a fair degree of confidence, now, that you've had some bugs in your wine, too, and that it's fine.
So, our wine making involved a big hand cranked crushing mechanism perched atop a huge plastic barrel. We filled the barrel twice with juice and emptied it into huge plastic jugs, probably 6 gallons each, to ferment. Well, most of it went into those. We sampled some of the fresh juice, too. I never thought I was a huge fan of grape juice, but that was before having tried real grape juice. It's wonderful. It reminded me more of wine than Welch's, to tell the truth. Needless to say, I've got no complaints about that variation from the expected!
Grape-picking and mashing was, of course, followed by a tremendous homemade meal, courtesy of my host grandma. Not all of the PCVs I've talked to are crazy about traditional Moldovan food (which makes up about 95% of what we consume here) but I'm a big fan. I'm an even bigger fan of her Moldovan food in particular, and the company that comes along with a masa (literally "table," but it's used to mean feast) there, whole family joking and smiling and telling stories-- well, it can't be beat.
It was a great end to the weekend, and today was a great start to the week. Because the teachers at the school where I was originally placed in Edinet expressed that they didn't have the time to work with a PCV-- planning lessons (which Moldovan teachers don't typically do), making materials (also an oddity), and the like-- our English Education Program Manager decided that it would be for the best for me to work in one of the other schools in the area. Last week was my first full week at the new school, and one of my two partners was out for the whole week with a cold, so I worked with just one.
The experience, let it suffice to say, made me a bit apprehensive about whether there's going to be anywhere I can happily and comfortably work in the Moldovan educational system. This first partner and I, I think, will have a lot of work to do together before we find common ground in terms of our teaching. She quite literally shouts until she's hoarse through the course of each lesson.
The yelling is among a few practices I'd never employ for myself in a classroom, but it's surely what bothered me the most. Granted, I don't think it's a real reflection of her character-- it's pretty typical classroom management here, as I understand. Moldovan teachers aren't especially familiar with the idea of positive reinforcement, and Moldovan students aren't used to being held accountable for their actions, so their behavior can get quite out of hand. It's not easy for me to remember but my partner's use of the approach is characteristic of the educational system that she knows, and neither she nor the students regard it as being nearly as aggressive as it seems to me. Shouting isn't uncommon in classrooms here, because, though very temporarily and for all the wrong reasons, it does usually settle the children down a bit.
As anyone who has seen me work with kids may guess, it makes my more than a tad uneasy to listen to.
It wasn't a great week, and I would be lying if I didn't say that when I woke up this morning, I wholly considered using the cold I've had for a month as justification for a week off of my own. Really, though, I want to be at school! I want to teach. It's what I do, and it's what I came here to do. Today was planned to be my first day with the partner who had been absent for my first week at this school, and I decided to extricate myself from under my very cozy down-stuffed quilt and get to school.
I mostly observed the classes my second partner taught, today, helping only a bit with one of the lessons, but it was a very encouraging experience all around. I have determined that while there's still a different kind of relationship and regard between Moldovan teachers and their pupils than I've seen between teachers and students in America, there can still be respect, and a generally pleasant tone to the lessons that take place here. The yelling isn't a necessity, it isn't the only this students respond to, and while it isn't uncommon, it's not a constant. That's a huge deal-- I'm way too big a baby to cope with constant yelling, or anything near it. This partner speaks calmly to the students, and she's got a handle on some teaching practices that aren't especially common in Moldovan classrooms (ideas gleaned, partially, I imagine, from her work with the last volunteer at the school) and that I wholeheartedly approve of.
The students were out of their seats in one class for an interactive game to identify the tenses of verbs, they were asked to work in groups, and they were praised for correct answers. The teacher spoke more English in her explanations of material and instructions than Romanian. Time was given to working with the students who struggle, as well as those who are more advanced. As one may guess (because a class generally stays with the same teacher for each subject for a few years, at least, and were this teacher's class last year) these classes were much more advanced in their use of English than the ones that I saw last week.
Also, no surprise, I felt exponentially more comfortable and confident today in school. So much so, that I think I'm ready to go back tomorrow for a day of lessons entirely with my first partner, and I may even see if I can work up the nerve to politely suggest that perhaps we give a try at a little mellower an approach to classroom management for a while, just to see what happens.
Today was the kind of school experience I have been hoping for.
Maybe tomorrow will be the kind of school experience that it's even more important that I be here for.
I and hopeful that if I keep on showing up, keep on praising right answers and correcting problematic behavior calmly, and generally just keep trying, the kids will pick up on my expectations. Maybe, then, just maybe, if they respond well, my partner will see that there are ways of teaching that she hasn't considered before, and that they do, indeed work.
I won't say I'm not still a little anxious, but I'm feeling more encouraged, and I'm going to keep trying and hoping.
I suppose I wouldn't be much of a Peace Corps Volunteer if I wasn't willing to devote plenty of my energy just to trying and hoping.
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