Ziua de Sfântul Nicolae (St. Nicholas' Day) 6 decembrie

Yesterday i celebrated Ziua de Sfântul Nicolae with my host family. Since i didn't know what exactly that meant, i looked it up and this is what i found:

http://www.stnicholascenter.org/pages/who-is-st-nicholas/



I'm gald i looked it up because it really made me WANNA celebrate it! St. Nicholas was a cool dude and he's where Santa Claus is derived from! 

We had a masă (party/feast) with LOTS of food, of course. 

In Moldova there's ALWAYS a reason to celebrate:
- birthdays, which are always celebrated on the actual days themselves...no need to wait until weekends to get drunk
- "leftover" masă's from the day before - one time i went to school and during one of the 10 minute breaks a whole masă was prepared in the conference room, which was leftover from the previous day's masă, including meat, mayo, cheese, and other foods left out for over 24 hours unrefrigerated...o ya, and the shots of whiskey...all during the "10 minute" (which ended up being about 30 minutes) break inbetween classes...ALL the staff was there while unsupervised children were left to their own devices in their classrooms...interesant!
- somebody's cousin's baby's birthday (without the birthday person actually being present)
- and the always fun (and confusing) double holidays - 2 Christmas's, 2 New Year's, 2 Easters, 1 national Independence Day, but several "Hram's" (individual village "birthdays").

And since we're in the Christmas season, i'll explain a little about the 2 Christmas's (of which Ziua de Sfântul Nicolae is not included...so it's kinda like a 3rd Christmas). "1st Christmas", or "New Christmas" is on December 25th. And "2nd Christmas" or "Old Christmas" is on January 7th. 

When Moldova was occupied by Russia, Russia didn't allow the celebration of religious holidays, so they tried to downplay Christmas on December 25th by making New Year's (January 14th because they followed the Julian Calendar) more of a national celebration. So, the religious people of Moldova (98% of Moldovans are Christian Orthodox) went along with the January celebrations of "New Year's" but secretly celebrated Christmas instead. Since Moldova became independent in the 1990's, Western influence has intertwined with their culture and December 25th once again became Christmas, or as they call it here, "1st" or "New" Christmas. But, the Eastern culture is alive and well here too, so "2nd" or "Old" Christmas is also celebrated on January 7th! It depends on the family and /or village which one or both are celebrated. Mama-G told me we celebrate "Old" Christmas on January 7th, so that's when I'll be celebrating with my host family :o]

Got trash?

If you are reading this in America right now, go out and hug your garbage bins for me. Because I miss them.

Here in the village there is no public waste management. So basically, you have two options for your trash: you burn it or you throw it on the ground. Or if you are a PCV, maybe a third option as well-- throwing it down the chim. None of these options really appeal to me, so I've been putting off dealing with it, but after three months I had a fair amount of trash and it was time to do something about it. (Interestingly, the amount of trash I collected in three months is about what I disposed of each week in America).

So I waited until the wind was calm and burned up my trash today.

And... it was oddly satisfying. Paper makes great kindling, so I got a pretty good blaze going. It wasn't too smoky, and the plastic didn't smell bad. Best of all, no more trash!

But I'm an environmentally-conscious person, and a firm believer in the 3 Rs-- Reduce-Reuse-Recycle. So they are the foundation of my trash management plan. Burning is more a last resort.

Reduce

I am trying to buy less packaged goods, but I really don't buy much besides food and cleaning supplies, which are both pretty important. Even if you buy produce though, the vendors put it in the ubiquitous blue jumbo (bag) and knot it before selling it to you. I have a pretty good collection of these now.

Reuse

I have found some cool uses for some of my paper, cardboard and plastic trash. I use the backs of old note pages to write my shopping lists on; I use the cardboard packaging that came with my sheets as a dustpan; my old peanut butter jars have been cleaned and are now used to store salt, sugar and dried fruit; also, the plastic trays from biscuit packages make great soap dishes and sponge holders. And I keep a stack of those blue jumbos to reuse at the market. A lot of the vendors know I bring my own bags now.

And of course, as a science teacher with few resources available to me, I use everything I can in my classes. So water bottles, scrap paper, coins and old batteries have played supporting roles in my science demonstrations.

Recycle

Food scraps go into my compost pile and will help me enrich my soil and grow yummy things in my garden. I also put some small bits of paper and cardboard in my compost. (Of course, my neighbor torched my compost while I was away, so I need to start all over again. That's a story for another blog post though.)

Recently I heard that there is some kind of public plastic collection here, where people come into the village and you can give them old plastic buckets, cups and plates. Then these will be recycled into new plastic products. But I haven't seen this myself yet.

Visit to the Maize Mill

During PST I spent a lot of time de-kerneling corn with my host family. Often I would come home to a porch full of strangers shucking corn (or maize, as they call it here) and a mountain of maize kernels. These kernels went into bags which went into my host family's storeroom. I never saw the next stage of the process, until today.

Today I visited my local maize mill with my friend Flora, and she showed me the next steps in the maize to ufa process.

The maize kernels we're poured into metal buckets and rinsed in water.

Then the kernels were poured into the coarse grinder.

After grinding, the kernels are warm and smell like roasted corn.

The bran has been detached at this point, but is mixed up with the kernels. Using wide flat winnowing baskets, the maize bran is separated out.

The maize bran is collected in a maize sack, and the remainders of the kernels are stored in a bucket. They are still very coarse at this point, so they need more grinding to make ufa (maize flour). That's where we stopped today though. They are going to bring the maize back for the final grind another time.

A-maiz-ing! (I couldn't resist)

All's well that ends well

Today I thought I was gonna lose it. I had to go to the bank in the Boma, and I had to wait in line over half an hour for a simple transaction. Which is starting to be a common occurrence there.

Then I hopped on a mini-bus back to my village, only they waited for the bus to fill up... And waited... And waited some more. And I was trapped in my too short seat and it was hot, and people kept coming up to my window trying to sell me stuff, and this guy was trying to drum up passengers for our bus by yelling out destinations at people and pounding on the bus, which was giving me a headache. And then these teenagers decided to lean against my open window from the outside so they were actually pressing against the shoulder strap of my bag, and this guy was staring at me and saying "azungu", and this man was yelling about "segula mimba" which might translate to something like open stomach, I don't know. It was just total chaos. And I really considered just climbing over the lady next to me and running as fast as I could away from all the noise and people and cars till I got to the next village. Which is equally chaotic though because it is market day.

But I suffered through it and I made it back to to my village. Then I saw my friend as she was headed to the maize mill, and I had never been there so she said I could tag along. Which I did. And then I bought some Kalonkonda beans from a vendor and stopped at school to say hi before heading home. And then everything was good again.

Kalonkonda beans are rather bland on their own, but if you cook them with onions and tomatoes in a little oil they are quite good. Add some rice and you have a very filling meal. 

End of Term Exams

I'm finishing up my first term at my Community Day Secondary School here in Malawi.  We had lessons and review last week, and this week and next are for end of term exams.

While I have been assigning homework and having end of unit tests all term, none of it actually counts for the student grades. (Which might explain why many students don't do the homework.) Their entire grade is based on this one exam. My Form 1 and Form 3 students get three end of term grades, but even if they fail they will still progress to the next Form (grade level, so Form 2 and 4, respectively).

While higher grades are better, it is really more of a pass/fail from what I can see. The grading scale is a bit different here, so 40% is a D which is considered passing. Which is a good thing because otherwise I might have a lot of failing students.

I have had teachers that complained that the American grading scale had become too lenient. They said everyone expects to get As now whereas a C used to be acceptable, and you had to really perform well to get an A. Those teachers might like it here in Malawi because that is pretty much how it is.

End of term exams are a unique time because this is the only time the students don't have to supply their own paper. For all other homework and tests, I write the questions on the board and they copy them down and answer on a separate sheet of paper. So the size of the chalkboard limits the length of the exams and the types of questions you can ask. Not so for the end of term exams.

For my exams I used a combination of multiple choice, short answer and essay questions. It was kind of fun making up the wrong answers for the multiple choice, but sad when the students chose those answers incorrectly. I wasn't sure if they were familiar with true/false here so I left that out.

My exams are over now, so I just have to mark them and turn in the grades. Sounds simple, right? Well look at these stacks. That is over 160 exams to grade. By hand. Good thing my Mom sent me lots of red pens (Thank you, Mom!)

The next term starts in January. In the meantime I need to work on planning out the next term for my classes and recording my plan in the Scheme of Records books the school provided. I will also be doing some work in the library over the break. But don't worry, it won't all be work. I have lots of fun stuff planned for the holidays too!

Thanksgiving in Moldova!

1st Thanksgiving in Moldova! As you can see, me and 5 other PCVs (and one of the PCV's friend who is traveling the world for the next year who took this photo) met up at SaraH's apt (SaraH is the who's lap i'm sitting on) to celebrate together. 

(From left to right: Gabriel (English Education (EE) Volunteer), Nate (healthE), Heidi (Small Enterprise Development (SED) Volunteer - she's also one of the people i sat next to on the plane from New York to Germany), Jeff (SED) - he was at my table during Staging in Philadelphia, me (duh - healthE...p.s. thanks for the beanie Cin!! I LOVE it!!!), and SaraH (Community Organization and Development (COD) Volunteer). All of us are M29s (meaning we're the 29th group of PCVs in Moldova) except for SaraH, who's an M28, meaning she's in her last year and will be leaving next summer.)

Like Stesi mentioned in her Thanksgiving in Malawi post, i too had to work that day, and Thursdays are my longest days, so i didn't get out of school til almost 2pm. The rutieras (minivans that i have to take to get out of my village unless i hitchhike) in my village are pretty rare after noonish, especially since it starts getting dark around 4pm now. 

So, instead of going home first and changing into jeans, i went immediately to the rutiera stop after school (in my long skirt). After waiting for a few minutes, an older woman, weighed down by numerous bags, walked by. At first i thought she was also waiting for a rutiera, so i was hopeful that since a local was waiting, then there must be a rutiera that was gonna come by. But she just started talking to me and kinda giggling and then kept walking up the hill...which then made me think that if the older local woman was walking up a hill weighed down by bags, then a rutiera was probably definitely NOT coming after all. SO i considered starting to walk (which i did once before and it took me 1 hr 40 minutes to walk 7km with my backpack on), which i would've had to start doing right away cuz an almost 2 hr walk outta my village would've meant walking in the dark by the end, which is scary on these village roads cuz people drive like maniacs here and have no respect for pedestrians! 

So as i was quickly trying to contemplate what to do, one of my students walked up and asked me where i was going. I told him "Soroca" and he told me to get on the school's rutiera with him (Moldova's version of a school bus). So i did. The blue van pulled up with all students (all of them being in my classes) and they all got crazy when i, their funny foreign teacher, got on with them. They immediately surrounded me while the driver drove like a lunatic down the road, jerkily swerving (making me carsick) so that the kids were being tossed back & forth across the aisle, but not seeming to think it out of the ordinary.

Then, at about halfway between my village and the main road, the driver let us all out at another village. Then the kids told me to hitchhike to finish getting out and 3-4 of them waited with me til someone picked me up. 

The guy who picked me up was really nice. He started asking me where i lived and i started explaining that i'm a PCV, and he told me he already knew that (of course he did...everyone does!). Then he started speaking tome in his broken English and i responded in my broken Romanian. It was pretty funny. Then he dropped me off on the main road at my rutiera stop and i offered him money, which he refused :o]

(Thanksgiving dinner: rotisserie chicken instead of turkey, homemade pomegranite sauce instead of cranberry sauce, mashed taters, salad, green beans, Mexicanish rice, chopped tomatos, "dressing", and pîine (bread), of course...cuz no Moldovan meal is complete without pîine!)

Then i got picked up by the rutiera going into Soroca. When i got in the driver asked me if i was American (cuz of course he could just tell). I sat in the seat next to him cuz the drive was only like 5 minutes from there. He asked me in body/sign language if i wanted a "drink" and i politely refused. Then, when we got to Soroca and everyone was getting off, he told me to stay. Once everyone was off he said he was gonna go buy some smokes and he'd be right back. When he left, i got out and got on the rutiera going to SaraH's. Oh Moldova...never a dull moment! So, all of that made for a very interesting journey just getting to Soroca, which is only about 15km away from my village!

(The "after party": water, music, champagne, candy, dominoes, cards, score paper (i won all 3 games we played and i gave props to my mom who always wins all games ;op, and tp to blow my nose with (i've been sick with a head cold for a couple weeks now and go thru kleenex too fast, so i just carry around tp cuz it lasts longer.)

Overall, Thanksgiving was fun, but it definitely didn't "feel" like Thanksgiving, which made me think that all of the holidays i spend away from home aren't gonna "feel" like those holidays, and i'm sure by 2016 when i go home, the holidays are gonna be magical, wonderful BLISS!! :o]

soooooooooo cute!!!!!!