Vrei sa pleci dar nu ma iei

Without anything major to elaborate on at the moment, I will instead try to create a collage for you of my life in the past two weeks:

Language Weekend, two days of Romanian classes in Chisinau with fellow trainees from my summer group, was a great reunion after more than a month apart. No psychedelic substance can equal the trip of speaking fluent Romanian for hours with a group of five other Americans and the Moldovan woman who, just four months ago, was leading you in a circle with a playground ball teaching you how to count to ten and conjugate the verb "to be".

A Lebanese restaurant in Chisinau called Class is probably the best eating experience I've ever had, rivaled only by Double D's in Los Gatos after our Senior Talent Show. Complete with belly dancers, Lebanese music, customers dancing with napkins in hand (it's the custom), nine bottles of wine and three hookahs split among six guys at our table (don't know what the six girls went through), spectacular food and more Muslims than Bush could shake an M-16 at. In essence, it was what I thought every day in the Peace Corps would be like, before I found out I was going to Moldova. The only downside: what would have cost me probably $60 in America cost me only $12 in Moldova, yet I can't remember ever feeling so guilty about spending money on food. Consider that our per diem for the 30 hours was less than $10 and that my personal monthly restaurant budget is $8, and you can start to understand what I mean.

While listening to my iPod in a free period today, I finally understand the chorus from O-Zone's Dragostea Din Tei. "Vrei sa pleci dar nu ma iei," meaning, "You want to go, but you're not taking me." I guess that explains the airplane in the video, but why the jet engines on the plane turn into booming speakers when someone hits the eject button on a Mac keyboard halfway through the video, nothing can ever explain.

Wednesday was the first day of school after two weeks of grape harvesting, and the kids were rather unruly to start off. By Friday, they had mellowed out a bit, and I had productive classes again.

Wednesday was also Teachers' Day. To celebrate, the 11th-graders organized a dance and a masaВ for the teachers. Dancing with all of my colleagues, all but four of them aged 40 or more, was much more fun than I thought, and I worked on my ridiculous move-around-in-a-circle traditional dance moves. When teachers asked me what the traditional American dance was, I made a quick reference to line-dancing, but said that it was more of a Southern thing. I said that by and large, the dancing that goes on in American discos is raunchy and vulgar. I illustrated this by putting my hands up over my head and saying, "I didn't do anything, Mr. Policeman!"

Teachers dancing with students is accepted an encouraged here, along with the whole kiss-on-the-cheek thing that's everywhere here. Who would have thought that this would be the thing that would take me the most getting used to?

I believe the 11th-graders are also trying to fix me up with my counterpart, since we are the only two single teachers at the school. They invited each of us to the school dance tonight. I believe logic and earlier posts can explain why I am not interested in romancing my counterpart, but Mereseni 11th-graders have neither logic nor access to my blog.

Toilet paper is softer than copier paper, but sometimes necessity dictates. When I look down the hole at the school's outhouse, I see I'm not the only one who's had to compromise. I still don't understand why it's so bright at the bottom of the outhouse pit; if there's light, doesn't that mean there's a large hole somewhere that lets in light and, by extension, animals and small children?

I'm pretty sure that today's fifth grade lesson on the possessive case was supposed to be review, but when all of my students told me that "the girl's hair" meant that there were many girls, I knew I was in for a long lesson. By the end of the 45 minutes, I had them shouting and repeating "Apostrophe S, Apostrophe S, Apostrophe S." They were pretty into it. After class, I took a black marker and wrote it on some of the straggler's hands. I told them in Romanian, "When your mother asks you why you have this written on your hand, tell her that it's because it's easier in English than in Romanian."В 

To demonstrate my point, Poftim the Possessive Case in Romanian:

masculine possessor, feminine object: the boy's cat: pisica baiatului (pisica=cat, baiat=boy)

masculine possessor, proper name, feminine object: Tom's cat: pisica lui Tom

feminine possessor, feminine object: the girl's cat: pisica fetei (note that this uses the plural form of fata, even though there's only one girl)

feminine possessor, proper name, feminine object: Oxana's cat: pisica Oxanei (this is only possible because every Moldovan girl's name ends with -a)

masculine possessor, neuter object: the boy's pen: pixul baiatului

masculine possessor, proper name, neuter object: Tom's pen: pixul lui Tom

feminine possessor, neuter object, the girl's pen: pixul fatei

feminine possessor, proper name, neuter object: Oxana's pen: pisica Oxanei (for foreign names that don't end in -a, use the masculine form, "lui Tom")

masculine possessor, masculine object: the boy's uncle: unchiul baiatului

masculine possessor, proper name, masculine object: Tom's uncle: unchiul lui Tom

feminine possessor, masculine object: the girl's uncle: unchiul fetei

feminine possessor, proper name, masculine object: Oxana's uncle: unchiul Oxanei

masculine plural possessor, feminine plural object: the boys' cats: pisicele baiatilor (this neglects several key accents that are not available online)

feminine plural possessor, feminine plural object: the girls' cats: pisicele fetelor

masculine plural possessor, neuter plural object: the boys' pens: pixurile baiatilor

feminine plural possessor, neuter plural object: the girls' pens: pixurile fetelor

masculine plural possessor, masculine plural object: the boys' brothers: fratii baiatilor

feminine plural possessor, masculine plural object: the girls' brothers: fratii fetelor

Compare those variants to this rule: If there's no s at the end of the possessor, write 's. If there's already an s, just writeВ '. For names like Dennis and Jesus, do whatever you want.

As Jess A. said in our language class two months ago, "I like 's better."

In non-grammatical news, I am helping with the house winemaking. Today Dumitru and I took all the bags of grapes that the women of the house had picked all day and poured them into a masher that emptied them into a huge cask. There, the sun's heat (caldura soarelui)В will make the stems, leaves, seeds and skins rise to the top, allowing us to scoop those things out and leave only pure wine. At first, Dumitru was very worried about me getting dirty; obviously he doesn't know what kind of American decides to join the Peace Corps. I told him after a few minutes that "O viata murdara este o viata mai interesanta", or "A messy life is a more interesting life." He laughed and agreed, and our discussion turned to essential wine-making vocabulary.

A journalist from Chisinau came to our school Thursday to interview some teachers, and I was included in the interview. When she found out that I had come from America, she asked me a lot of questions about how I was adjusting; all in Romanian, of course. When asked if I felt isolated from the world living in a country like Moldova, I responded that if anything, I feel more connected to the world because this is how the majority of the world lives. Western Europe and America are exceptions to the norm. When asked if it was difficult for me to live without hot water and all the other nice things that I had in America, I responded, "No, of course I have hot water here. I have a shower when I want and hot water in the morning." After a second-long pause, realization came over my face and I said, "Oh, you mean from the faucet? No, we don't have that. I forgot that I had that in America."

Diana came home from her first week of college talking about how big Chisinau was and how nervous she was. Sometimes it's easy to forget that when kids go from Mereseni to Chisinau for university, it's the equivalent of a poor Montana farm kid moving to New York City.

In American sports news, I'm glad to see that the NHL has started again, even if it was with a Sharks loss. Also, as my Soviet history lessons in America and here have taught me, when it comes Whites vs. Reds, the Reds always win. Hopefully the respective Sox colors are well versed in Soviet history. Hell, Red Sox ticket prices already practically constitute a war economy.

Lastly, there's nothing like walking to school and seeing an old lady yelling at her chickens. It happens more often than you'd think.