Cherries, Wine, and Pictures of More

That's us, the 30th group of Peace Corps Trainees to make it to Moldova. After 17 hours of flying, we touched down in the capital, Chisinau, and were greeted by some current volunteers, staff, and eventually each of us was shepherded to our own host family's home.

Mine is occupied by a single mother who has a hard time having "Peter" off her tongue. For now, I'm "Peecher." It's growing on me.

My room is the size of the one I have back home, and is adorned with Jesus and bottles of Alcohol, two things Peace Corps Jordan burned into my head as something NOT to associate with one's service.

I've been spending around 2-5 hours per day on Romanian, the first language I'll have to master before I try my mouth at Russian, probably at the 1-year mark. Coming from learning Arabic, learning Romanian is sort of like going for an evening run after taking off ankle weights you had on all day. It's liberating. Reading and writing on the first day! Cognates out the wazoo! A light at the end of the tunnel!

Another plus: a dog!

This is Gosha. She's probably 10 pounds, and an enigma when it comes to determining breed. Any thoughts?

The tree branches above her are bowed from the hundreds of soon-to-be picked cherries. And the ground behind her hides strawberries at their prime. Now is time to enjoy the products of Moldova's soil; the winter promises potatoes and cabbage prepared in many different ways.

So these first two weeks have been spent scooping out the language, people, food, and culture of this Moldova 70 of us have accepted as home. Ups and downs find their way into each day, and most of my downs come from thinking about the country I was previously serving in, how much I miss it, and the fact that I haven't truly "gotten over" being evacuated.

These are the volunteers evacuated from Jordan now serving in Moldova. In the middle is Lisa, the current Country Director for Jordan and soon-to-be-spearheader of Michelle Obama's Let Girls' Learn initiative. She (Lisa) visited us this past week to host some sessions on LGL-specific topics, and afterwards the six of us got to catch up and drink coffee together (on the first day of Ramadan no less). The only thing missing seemed to be a Call to Prayer's mellifluous song.

After the what's-new talk and first sips of thick coffee, our guards came down; deeper feelings welled up.

A few days earlier, I read about something called the "Availability Heuristic". It's a theory stating that we have mental shortcuts that allow us to estimate the frequency of something occurring according to how easy it is to think of supporting examples. "I'm (almost) always going to enjoy eating ice cream, because every time prior to now, it's made my tummy very happy."

So it was this concept that rambled in my head while sipping my coffee, chatting with Lisa. And in this new context, the formula seemed to have as its output: I can't have this country win me over, because the moment I'm enamored with it, we're going to be evacuated. Therefore, be engaged but indifferent, slightly above apathetic.

And it truly hasn't been that hard to pull that off. I've been with host families the past 6.5 out of 9 months, learning languages continuously, attending sessions on health/security/teaching techniques/country's societal overview, even attending some sessions for the 3rd or 4th time.... Being on autopilot has almost been automatic, and at times I feel far from autonomous, more like automated.

It's pretty clear Moldova PCVs won't be asked to leave the country, but it's hard not to go down the "what if?" thought-path. Rational thought vs. gut-level dread is warring here, and I know eventually the latter will quell, letting me move on.

So that's a small snapshot of my mental landscape for the time being. Soon it'll turn, and I'll be able to give Moldova all the attention it rightly deserves...it being a motley intersection of paradigms: Post Soviet gloom (and a yearning to return to its USSR past); European culture (I went to a public beach yesterday...which will require an entirely separate blog in itself); Western influence (American clothing and Coca-Cola are big deals); and a heavy drinking culture (#1 in the world!). These all mix together to create sites you'll have to simply see for yourself.

I'll try to give you glimpses when I can.

P.

To the Moon and Back

I'll start with something you probably didn't know about me: I applied to be an astronaut. The general application was open to the public. I put down my applicable experience as "none", my reference was the friend sitting next to me, and my available date as "two years from now, once I finish undergrad."

I've yet to hear from NASA.

But this small setback hasn't lessened my curiosity about what it'd be like, to hear the countdown, "3....2.....1.......LIFTOFF." And the solid thwump of g forces you'd feel on every Cm^2 of your body as you'd race toward the stars...and when that pressure's lifted...the feeling of no pressure at all: zero gravity.

And what about the Earth? What would that look like? Seeing NYC at night as a complex bright dot on a large piece of relatively dark earth. A tropical storm system making its way toward the Philippines. Earth as a blue-green spinning sphere surrounded by nothing in every direction.

What if all the humans gathered at one spot. How big would it be?

Rusty Schwolzkart was a person who did hear back from NASA, and they responded with great news. He was going to space. He felt the thrust backward into his seat. its release, weightlessness; and he saw what I've craved.

Trying to limn the experience with words, he wrote: You look down there and you can't imagine how many borders and boundaries you cross, again and again and again, and you don't even see them. There you are -- hundreds of people in the Middle East killing each other over some imaginary line that you're not even aware of, that you can't see. And from where you see it, the thing is a whole, the earth is a whole, and it's so beautiful. You wish you could take a person in each hand, one from each side in the various conflicts, and say, ‘Look. Look at it from this perspective. Look at that. What's important?'

I'm writing these words from Moldova, a country sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine, the fifth country I've visited in as many years. "What's important?" I ask myself this each time the plane touches down somewhere new. And the more I see, the what's important doesn't really change from place to place. Everyone seems to be dealing with the same problems, it's just each culture seems to be going at it in their own way. How to find self fulfillment. How to care for others. What constitutes truth, meaning, import. How to devote your time toward those things. And when these things clash between two philosophies/cultures/personal opinions, we get those disagreements Mr. Schwolzkart wishes he could let us put in perspective with, and against the backdrop of, our seamless, border-less home.

Perhaps those differences we perceive would turn, and we'd all have a new shared lowest common denominator for what makes us human. Peace would (hopefully) shoot up societies' immediate concerns, as would cultural understanding; short- and long-term sustainable lifestyles. Some of these reflect Peace Corps' aims and goals, and are what I'll strive to incorporate into the lives I'll touch these next two years, two months, and day.