Un "chinez"

As a white guy who wears boots, pants, a coat and a hat that all conform to the Moldovan norm, I get none of the strange looks that some other Peace Corps volunteers get when they walk around. That's why I was shocked, but not surprised, by what happened when Scott, a Peace Corps volunteer who was born in America to Korean immigrant parents, visited my school last week.

Because my students had been studying journalism, I had invited Scott to be interviewed by some of my top eighth-grade students for a profile they were writing for our one-issue English newspaper. I only had two classes that day, so I met him at the school in the late morning. I knew that for just about every student at the school, Scott would be the first Asian they had ever seen; still, I wasn't prepared for their reaction.

The bell rang, and the students flooded into the hall for their 10-minute break. My sixth-grade students came into the classroom to drop off their backpacks, and they stopped dead in their tracks when they saw Scott standing next to my desk. Girls stood 10 feet away and giggled. Boys stood in the doorway and stared. I described the scene to Scott as he had his back turned.

"It's okay," he said. "I'm used to it. It happens everywhere I go. I don't mind when kids do it, because they've never seen anyone like me. It just bothers me when adults act the same way." On the plus side, none of the students pulled their eyes back to slits, which is an inexplicably rude and offensive gesture that seems to be obligatory whenever a Moldovan describes an Asian.

At the beginning of class with my sixth grade, I allowed my students to ask Scott questions. They stuck to cookie-cutter questions, such as, "How old are you?" and "Who is your best friend?" After answering a handful of them, Scott sat in the back of the class and observed.

After that lesson, I had a free period. I took Scott next door to see the computer lab, where we discussed computer games from the late '90s, a subject in which Scott is well-versed—some Asian stereotypes have truth behind them.

Next was my 8b class, which asked Scott questions for about 15 minutes. The questions were wide-ranging, from "Do you smoke?" and "Do you like the Chicago Bears?" to "What are your parents' names?" and "What is Shao Lin?" Questions about Shao Lin and whether Scott spoke Chinese were based on stereotypes, but Scott was happy to deflect them, and in some ways affirm them, since he speaks some Korean and did a small amount of martial arts as a child. The kids came away learning something new about a kind of person they had only seen before in action movies.

Then came my 8a class, specifically the group of girls who were ready to interview Scott. They talked to him for the full 45 minutes of class time, and then continued the discussion for a few more minutes. Their questions were generic enough to ask any American working in Moldova, since I had told them only that they would be interviewing a Peace Corps volunteer. During the interview, I threw in a couple questions about what it was like looking different in Moldova, and I think Scott's answers made a small effect on the girls. It surprised them, for example, that Scott was stopped by Moldovan police 13 times in 2006, including once when he was hauled off and interrogated (thankfully, he's now on a three-month streak free of harassment).

I saw Scott off, feeling that I had exposed my students to something new, and hoping that meeting someone with Asian heritage who didn't know karate or how to speak Chinese had challenged some of their assumptions.

The next day, one of my sixth-grade girls bounded into my classroom and asked, "Mr. Peter, is the Chinese man going to be here today, too?"

"Did he say he was Chinese?" I asked. "No, he said he was American."

The girl merely shrugged and laughed. "I don't know. He looked Chinese."

Perhaps my expectations were too high.

Folclor

I often have dreams in which I have to go onstage, not knowing the plot of a play or the words of any of its songs. In my dreams, I'm never that worried about not knowing what I'm doing; I just go up and do my best.

During today's school play about Moldovan traditions, my dream of unpreparedness became real, and I totally winged it.

The play, as I had gathered from attending only one rehearsal, centered on a husband and wife, played by two 9th-grade students, as they hosted a party for dozens of friends, who sat in a circle, knitted, told jokes and sang songs, "just like in the old days". My part was to sit on a stool close to the hosts, have a short, unscripted dialogue with the wife, and then lead that dialogue into a song that I would sing solo with accordion and flute accompaniment. Later, I would dance the hora with everyone else in the final number.

The song was the least of my worries. I had sung "Buna Seara, Mandro, Buna" many times before, even in the exact same assembly hall that I would sing it in today. But other than the three minutes in which I would sing my song, what else was I going to do on stage? I asked my school's principal, Mrs. Maria, who was also the stage director for the play, this exact question less than one hour before the performance. It didn't seem to bother her that in the 20 minutes between my entrance at the beginning of the play and the time when I sang my song, I had nothing to do and didn't know any of the words to any of the songs the kids were singing. If it didn't bother her, it didn't bother me.

In the fourth minute of the play, I made my entrance, Mrs. Maria feeding me my line two seconds before I needed to say it: "Will you welcome me, too?" I sat down next to the hosts, certain that even though I was sitting on a low stool, I was still blocking the audience's line of sight to several of the 7th, 8th, and 9th-grade girls who were sitting on a table behind me.

Each of the 25 girls in the circle—compared with four boys—was holding some sort of knitting work or another item that you can find in a Moldovan home economics classroom. The kids traded scripted jokes, stories, riddles and tongue-twisters, and joined together several times to sing songs. Even though all of my theatrical experience was in school, choir and church productions and ended before I entered high school, I knew what I was supposed to do in this situation: realize that anyone could be looking at me at any given time, always turn toward whoever was speaking, and mouth fake words to any song that the kids sang so that it wasn't obvious that I didn't know the words. I did that much well.

Then it came time for my big scene. Diana, the 9th-grade host, stood and asked me several questions:

"Mr. Peter [even though everything else was in Romanian, she still said, 'Mr. Peter'], in the time that you've lived here, what traditions have you liked?"

"I've enjoyed all the food in Moldova, and I like how you sing and dance."

"Have you learned any of our traditions?"

"Well, I've learned how to dance in the Moldovan style, and also how to sing Moldovan songs."

"Could you sing us one this evening?

"No problem."

I stood up, the accordion started, and I began to sing.

It was not my best performance of the song, because I have three very memorable performances of it under my belt: once at the Peace Corps Swearing-In ceremony with the other guys from my summer training village in my first three months of living in Moldova; another at last year's school alumni dinner, where we were all a little liquored up; and last summer, when I was vacationing in Romania with my sister and a friend and surprised them one night by performing it with the musicians at a restaurant in Brasov.

It wasn't my best performance, but it was the one during which I thought the most. In the song, the singer says goodbye to his love as they see each other for the last time before he joins the army for two years. When I learned the song at the beginning of my two years of service, the lyrics hit me personally, as I had just left America and for two years would be away from the people and country that I love. But as I faced an audience full of students, over 150 of which I teach at least one subject and sang the words, "I leave you with goodwill, because I'm leaving you today," I nearly choked up as I realized that the tables had turned. Mereseni was no longer my two-year assignment; it was the home that I would be leaving in less than six months. I settled myself, sang the final two verses, and received applause as I returned to my seat on stage.

The kids continued the play with other songs, me mouthing the words the whole time. After my solo, however, Mrs. Maria seemed to have noticed that I didn't have anything to do. She told one of my 7th graders who was sitting behind me to give me her ball of yarn. For the rest of the performance, I held the yarn that Vica was knitting with, slowly un-spooling it so she would have enough to work with; whenever I didn't feed her the yarn fast enough, she would tug on the yarn to get my attention, and I would continue giving her material to work with.

Then the final dance came. The older students left the stage to dance in front of it, leaving the younger students to dance in their own circle on stage. Since I am much closer in height to my 7th, 8th and 9th graders, I assumed I would dance with them. Mrs. Maria had a different idea; she and I would stay on the stage and be partners in a circle with the younger students. As we organized ourselves into pairs, Nadia, one of my 5th graders, came up to Mrs. Maria and said that she didn't have a partner.

"Then you'll just dance alone," Mrs. Maria said.

"Or I can dance with her," I said, resigning my principal to be a wallflower.

"Okay, good," Mrs. Maria said. I joined hands with Nadia on my right side and another student on my left, and the music started.

Nadia and I danced well together, even though her head barely came up to the same level as my chest. She also kept coughing a very wet cough every 10 seconds or so, and I made a mental note to wash my hands extra-thoroughly before I ate lunch.

The performance ended, and I had done it; I had participated in a Moldovan village school play, by no means a goal which I had set out for myself two years ago. It was not a crowning achievement of my time here, but it was fun. Most importantly, I realized today, more than I ever had realized before, that in a short amount of time, I'm going to miss this place.

Ajutor!

We still need thousands of dollars to help fund the Moldovan Village Basketball league.

You can help here.

Razboiul Rece nu s-a terminat

The Cold War never ended. Just ask Vladimir Putin.

Putin has a couple valid points, especially regarding the illegitimacy of the Iraq war. To counter, though, here's John McCain, quoted in the New York Times:

“Will Russia’s autocratic turn become more pronounced, its foreign policy more opposed to the principles of the Western democracies and its energy policy used as a tool of intimidation?” he asked. “Moscow must understand that it cannot enjoy a genuine partnership with the West so long as its actions, at home and abroad, conflict fundamentally with the core values of the Euro-Atlantic democracies.”

But what really bothered me about the article, especially considering the quality of the Times, is this paragraph:

The United Nations is weighing a proposal that would put Kosovo on the path to independence from Serbia, which Russia opposes because it fears that such a move could upset its own turbulent relations with ethnic groups in the Caucasus. Russia has crushed one separatist-minded people within its own borders, in Chechnya, but supports two breakaway regions in Georgia: Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Excuse me, but Russia supports a third breakaway region, and it's in Moldova. Why does the Transnistria problem continue to get absolutely no acknowledgement in the Western media?

Emigratie

This article from Edward Lucas describes the emigration situation well in all of Eastern Europe, not just in Moldova.

Notice that of all the Eastern European countries, Moldova creates the highest amount of its GDP through remittances; in total, over a quarter of the country's GDP is based on workers sending money from abroad.

Also, with Romania's entrance into the EU, Moldova faces another problem; Moldovans requesting Romanian citizenship, mostly in order to give them even easier access to the West's job markets.

Informatica

I have said very little this year about my double life as my school's computer teacher. I teach eight classes a week to students in 7th, 8th, 9th and 11th grades. It's tiring, but it's by far the most enjoyable thing I do in my village, for several reasons.

First, my students understand me. In the English classroom, I can only make jokes with a few students, and more than half of my students don't understand most of the things that I say. When I teach informatica, as computer class is called in Romanian, I am speaking my students' native language. They feel more comfortable, and their personalities can come out more than they would in English. This also allows me to reach more students; I have about a dozen students, especially boys, who are poor English students but love working on the computer and enjoy talking to me about the latest computer technology.

Second, I feel like I'm back at summer camp. I was a digital video instructor at iD Tech Camps for five years, and I enjoyed seeing each kid "get it" as they worked independently and as a group. I also knew that once some of the faster students learned how to do a specific task, he or she would help the others. I have tried to instill this same concept into my computer classes, and the result is that I have a classroom full of students working, calling me when they need help, and slowly learning to ask each other for help. I instituted the "Ask Three Before Me" rule, meaning that students need to ask three of their classmates how to do something before they ask me. The goal is to make the students resources for one another, and also to save me from repeating the same thing over and over.

Third, informatica teaches my students critical thinking skills that they don't necessarily develop in their other classes. When an 8th grader asks me for help with a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, for example, I'll ask her to try to figure out why we use a particular formula. This has resulted in some frustrating moments, such as when it took me over five minutes to push two 8th grade girls toward the conclusion that in order to calculate the price of a number of items, they needed to multiply the unit price of the item by the number of units. (Imagine repeating in a foreign language, "If I buy three notebooks for three lei each, how much do I pay?" for a minute before getting the correct response, then waiting another two minutes before the student realizes how she got that answer, and then waiting another two minutes until she understands how to write the correct formula in Excel.) But overall, my insistence that students think for themselves develops their minds much more than simply having them repeat rote activities or copy down my lectures in their notebooks, which is the more common method of teaching informatica in this country.

Fourth, I'm now teaching my students what are arguably the two most important subjects for their future outside of the village: English and computers. I repeatedly tell my students that in 20 years, they will be unemployable in well-paying jobs without computer skills. I am planning on bringing guest speakers to the school in the coming month, and a major focus in our discussions will be the importance of computers and foreign languages in their work. These kids will need to use computers in their lives, yet very few of their parents understand the value of computers and don't stress their importance. It is part of my job to drill it into their heads that they need basic computer skills like typing, using Windows, writing documents in Word, creating spreadsheets in Excel and navigating the internet.

Fifth, I'm giving the finger to the Ministry of Education's curriculum. I believe I've complained already about the ministry's curriculum for 9th through 12th grades, which is centered on programming in PASCAL. PASCAL is as useful a language to the average computer user as Zulu is to the average American. I have completely scrapped the 9th and 11th grade curriculum (we don't have 10th or 12th grades), and replaced it with more important everyday computer skills that the students didn't learn in their first few years. My 11th graders, after a semester of typing lessons consisting of about 35 minutes of practice per week, have gone from typing approximately 3 words per minute to 10.6 words per minute with 94.1 percent accuracy.

One of the ways I'm changing the curriculum in my schools is through fun group projects that express creativity and individuality. In the second semester, my 11th graders will be writing their own web sites, both for themselves personally and for the village or school. The sites will be written in combinations of Romanian, English and Russian, since I am stressing the importance of publishing items online in foreign languages in order to improve exposure to the rest of the world. These sites will include photographs, links to other sites, and hopefully some really nice formatting through cascading style sheets; that's as much detail as I can give without boring segments of my readers. I might do the same project with my 9th graders, or I might create a monthly newsletter with them. What do you, my readers, think I should do? Please leave comments.

The allure of these projects is that students use their voices. When I told my students that about 2,000 people read this blog every month, they were flabbergasted. "Have any of you ever written anything that 2,000 people read every month?" I asked. The answer was no. "But I'm not anyone special," I continued. "I'm not an important person, but I have put myself on the internet and I've found people who are interested in my life; Americans like reading about my life in another country, and Moldovans are interested to see what a foreigner thinks of their country. You can have just as many people reading your opinions and thoughts, and you can read about other people's lives, if you use the internet." I think that got my students' attention.

In all, I'm loving my time as the informatica teacher, even if it seemingly takes up every moment of my free time and keeps me at the school from 8:15 a.m. to 4 p.m. nearly every day. I have invested time and money into the computer lab, which is something that past informatica teachers haven't done. I was able to buy 10 CD-ROM drives for the lab for a total of $30, including shipping, while I was in America in December. I am upgrading the memory with chips that my dad sends me from the vast computer graveyard at our house. Slowly but surely, I am improving both the quality of the computers and of the students at my school. It wasn't my goal when I came to Moldova, but now it's become my niche.

I'm also publishing here my first ever web page written in Romanian. This is the first exercise in writing HTML that I gave to my 11th graders, in which I gave them the source code to enter in order to make this page. Their assignment is to find the names of several tags and name the ones that create, for example, lists or bold text. Then the students will write their own web pages based on my model. Later, the students' sites will expand to include photos, multiple pages, links to one another's sites and links to outside material. All of these pages will be published online as they are created.

Fotbal american

As a native Chicagoan and life-long Bears fan, I'm very excited about the Super Bowl this sunday, where my Bears will take on the Indianapolis Colts. It's not the first time the Bears have been in the Super Bowl in my lifetime, but I was only two years old when they won in 1986, so my memory is a little foggy. I'll be in Chisinau watching the game in a secret location, although there are only so many secret locations in Chisinau that receive the Armed Forces Network, so you can probably figure out where I'll be.

Friday, I wore my Bears sweater to school and wrote "Go Bears!" on the chalkboards in both my English and informatica classrooms. I told each class about the game, and offered them one extra credit point if they came to school Tuesday and could tell me the score of the game. Why extra credit in informatica? Because the only way for them to know the score is to do a Google search of the team names, and that shows some technical savvy.

Also, before I let each class use the computers, I made the kids yell, "Go Bears!" with me several times. Some of the students looked at me like I was an idiot, but others really got into it. During passing periods throughout the day, boys would come up to me, and say, "Mr. Peter!" When I turned to face them, they would put both their fists in the air and say, "Go Bears!"

Vorba la Masa

Friday night, my host brother, Sergiu, and his wife, Olesea, visited the house with their infant son, Gabriel. We and the rest of the family stayed at the table until about 11:30 at night, eating and drinking.

The Romanian radio station was playing Afro-Cuban Latin jazz, and I my mind began to wander.

"I'm thinking about how I thought my life in the Peace Corps would be," I told my host family. "I knew that I would be sitting at a table, eating and drinking wine, and listening to Latin music. I just thought that it would be in Latin America." I told them the story of my application interview for the Peace Corps.

It was summer 2004 when I went into the Peace Corps' Boston office for my application interview. Within minutes of entering the downtown government building, I was greeted by Suzanne, the woman in charge of my application. We talked for about 15 minutes about the Peace Corps experience in general, and then she asked me what regions of the world I would prefer to work in.

"Well, I'd really like to go to Latin America," I said. "I really like the culture and the people, and it seems like a great place."

"Okay," Suzanne said. "How well do you know Spanish?"

"Well, I've taken one semester of it in college, and by the time I graduate in December, I'll have taken a second semester."

"The issue is that we already have lots of Spanish speakers applying to Latin America," she said. "Because of that, we can choose people who already know Spanish and not spend as much time training them. But where else would you like to go?"

"Hmm..." I said, having not expected this problem. "I think Africa would be really interesting. My neighbor's from Senegal, and he's played some music for me from there. I think it'd be great."

"How's your French?"

"Well, I studied it for three years in high school, and I'm sure that if I took a class, it would come back to me," I said.

"Once again," she said, "we have a lot of people who already speak French, so it's a similar situation as with Spanish. Where else would you like to go?"

"Okay," I said, sensing that my options were quickly dwindling. "I guess you can just send me anywhere you want. It doesn't matter much."

"And that," I told my host family, "is how I ended up in Moldova."

I told my family a few more stories which I'm sure they must have heard already, but they showed the same courtesy and enjoyment the second or third time that we all give Dumitru, my host father, when he tells the same story for the third time; after all, if they're good stories, why not repeat them? The topic then changed to the renovations that Sergiu and Olesea are doing on their house, which they bought about five months ago. Sergiu mentioned how hard it was to find money for everything they wanted to do in the house.

"Slowly, slowly," his mother, Maria, said. "Do you think our house was built right away when we got married? It takes years."

"Yeah," I said. "In America, we say, 'Rome wasn't built in a day.'"

"Ah, but here," Sergiu said, "we say Moscow."

I burst into laughter for a full 10 seconds, pausing only to say, "That's perfect."

"But both Rome and Moscow are still being constructed," Dumitru noted.

"And neither of them," I said about the capitals of the two countries that employ the most Moldovans, "would be built without Moldovans."

Another big laugh from everyone in the room. The discussion was just how I had imagined years ago that my Peace Corps experience would be. The only differences were the language and the continent. And while I'll never know what my experience would have been like in Latin America or Africa, I'm incredibly happy with how it's gone in Moldova.