Lessons Learned

One of the things we were told over and over again during our pre-service training was to not compare our experiences with other volunteers because it is an easy way to feel like a failure. In our current digital age it becomes even more challenging when Facebook status updates seem to rule the day. I have been extremely conscious of trying to chart only my own work rather than compare with my peers. Thus, I am happy to report a little growth last week. The previous two weeks I ended up with only 3 students in one of my Friday 12th grade classes, but last week I am happy to report that I had a whopping 5 students in my class. While this still is not the full class, I am closer to getting half the class to attend!

I am working on making my classroom a little more inviting. The previous volunteer at my site left a U.S. map and my mom sent me a Washington state map and some Seattle postcards. I am also working on getting more postcards from across the U.S. to display for my students.

Trying to think about my Peace Corps experience as a whole thus far also proves very difficult. I find myself only thinking of a few encounters that I have had of late. I thought I would share these to help share a little abut what I have learned about Romania.

I tutor a six year old boy in English and then have conversational practice with his parents each week. The family is from my town, but lived in Belgium for quite a few years. They moved back to Romania because they felt Belgium wasn't a good place to raise their children. In Belgium, they frequently went to parks. They said the parks were full of old people walking their dogs, but never out with their grandchildren. They moved back to Romania so that their children can grow up knowing their grandparents well. I can say that if the weather is nice that I do see lots of grandparents out with what appear to be their grand-kids.

However, there is another side to this. Many parents move abroad to try to get better wages. I have many students with one or both parents living and working in Italy and Spain. Some of my students live with grandparents, aunts, or uncles, but a few also stay alone. I can't imagine what that would be like. I find it hard enough at twenty-nine living alone, I can't imagine doing it at sixteen. I have my students write in weekly journals and I thought I share a passage from one of my students. I asked my students to write about their summer vacations, "One of sad moments, was when my mom left to Italy, to work. I was sad not because almost all of the things she maked, now I need to make; just because I am not used to come back from school and meet only my father and my brother. Now I am speaking with her after two days so it is not so hard to live."

This week I met a woman from Holland who moved to Romania five years ago to do aid work and has been here ever since. She had trained as a psychologist in Holland and didn't enjoy work in Holland. She originally came to Romania during one of her school holidays and fell in love with both the people and country. She helps to run a pretty amazing organization, run by just two women, that I am still learning about. Thus far I have learned that they work proving families with basic needs as well as knowledge in family planning and general hygiene. They help families apply for government support, especially in many cases when literacy is an issue. On top of this they also do sex-ed classes in local school as sex-ed is not in the Romanian national curriculum.

I am still working on trying to integrate into my site. I am able to keep myself busy, but still am working on trying to find the community to become a part of. I have been trying to learn to play handball with the girls' team at my school. The coach know some English and tries to translate for me, but I spend most of the time watching and trying to figure what is happening. Today I think I finally understood that I should play zone defense, but I could also be wrong about this. There is always next week!