From Chatterbox to Wall Flower

Spending this past year in Romania with the Peace Corps has helped me learn a lot about myself. I’ve learned to be more independent but it has also taught me to ask for help when I need it. What I didn’t expect Peace Corps to teach me was kind of an understanding for people back home. Lets use my brother as an example.

For those of you that haven’t spent 30 seconds with me, let me tell you, I’m pretty outgoing and social. I love to talk and to meet people and socialize. I have had a view of my brother as being a sort of opposite to this. He rarely had friends over to the house, he almost never “partied”, spoke very little to me or my parents (who I speak with almost daily) and spent almost all his time in his room on the internet playing games. I’m not saying any of these traits are bad per se, possibly a little unhealthy, but so would partying too much. More than anything his behavior sort of baffled me and sometimes hurt my feelings a little. This of course was before I joined Peace Corps.

For the last 18 months I have lived with two host families and neither of them have spoken English. They have welcomed me into their home been overwhelmingly kind and patient with me as I struggle to communicate and integrate. As incredible as these families have been toward me it hasn’t been without frustration and adjustments on both sides. Constantly being around people speaking a foreign language is exhausting, even when you’ve been speaking it for 18 months. Being at a dinner party where, the conversation is moving too quickly to follow, so you can’t really jump in and no one is asking you a direct question, can grow quite tedious. No one’s trying to exclude me or make me feel uncomfortable but there is a language barrier there and I haven’t quite broken it. So after about 20 minutes or so of smiling politely and zoning out I excuse myself from the table. Sometimes, later my host mother will knock on my door and make sure I’m not upset about something and I try to explain that I’m tired and it’s difficult for me to understand the conversations. But I don’t think she really understands, she’s never left Romania (much as she’d like to) and has little experience with foreign that aren’t me. Its times like these I think of my brother.

Here I am, spending all my time in my room “alone” and it must baffle my host mother to no end (and culturally “alone time” isn't necessarily valued the same here). I don’t generally feel alone or even lonely in my room. I’m almost constantly communicating with someone, be it an email to Peace Corps, a chat message from a friend or a skype session with my parents. Because I spend all day being somewhat socially awkward with my colleagues and students it just feels good to go home and communicate effectively with someone, anyone. Then I start to wonder if this is how my brother feels sometimes and maybe that’s part of drives him into his room and keeps him from responding to my skype messages.

I guess what I’ve come to understand is that yearning for communication and understanding from someone else and how people express that need differently. It’s strange to go from someone who will chat everyone up at party to the person sitting in the corner quietly. I gain a new sympathy for people that regularly feel awkward and uncomfortable in social situations in their own culture. Though who knows how well I’ll fit in anywhere after being gone for over 2 years. 

Pound Cake and the Sabbath Don't Mix

My language and debating skills were tested today when I “came out” to my host mother as an atheist.

It was the pound cake that started it. We’ve been overrun with eggs for the last few weeks. The chickens just won’t stop laying them (my cholesterol must be at a record high). Last week, I asked my mother back home about some recipes that would use up eggs. She suggested pound cake “I always look up those recipes and then see the number of eggs required and say never mind.” She was right, one cake called for 5 eggs (3 sticks of butter and 3 cups of sugar (it was a Paula Dean recipe)). So I made 2 loaves of pound cake and they turned out wonderful. My host mother was overjoyed. I took some to work and the other teachers acted like they had never eaten anything so good. I brought it to another volunteers place for the weekend and we made strawberry short cake for the first time in a year. It was good cake.

My host mother liked it so much that she requested I make it again the following weekend. I said sure, of course, hey it’s something to do in a place where there’s nothing to do.

I had spent Saturday shopping in Iasi (the nearest major city). I had gotten back in the late afternoon pretty tired from lugging all my groceries home in the heat of the day. Around 7 pm my host mother asked when I was going to bake tonight and I told her I was planning on doing it tomorrow. At this she was a little taken aback and simply said “you can’t use the oven on Sundays”.  And I, though I had a feeling where this was going, said “why not?”

Let me just pause here and say I knew “why not”. I have this terrible tendency where I enjoy inciting people into debate. Even when I know I have nowhere near the language level to support a well thought out religious debate, I bring one up. I could have just said “sure I’ll bake the cake tonight”. But no, I said “why not?” I believe I get this charming and quirky albeit troublesome trait from my father, Thanks Dad!

So, I say “why can’t I use the oven on Sundays?” and I get a full explanation about how it took God six days to create the earth and on the seventh day we’re suppose to rest. Just to fill the people back home in, many Romanians practice something similar to rules of the Jewish Sabbath. They don’t wash clothes, cook, I wasn’t allowed to knit, or plant my herb garden. So this explanation wasn’t surprising to me. But my response to her seemed to come as quite a shock. She and I had had the “I’m an atheist and I don’t believe in god” conversation before, though clearly she hadn’t taken me seriously. Because when I said “well I don’t believe in God so I don’t have a problem baking on Sundays.” She flipped her shit.

I want to jump in here again and say none of this conversation was said in anger. I have a wonderful relationship with my host mother and completely respect her religious views. And she knows that. In fact it was something I repeated quite often during the conversation that followed. It just gets to a point sometimes when it’s frustrating living in a house (for two years) where you have to follow rules created by someone you don’t believe even existed. But once again, though there was a bit of tension (though, when is there not when discussing differing religious views?) the conversation was quite light, we were both smiling and laughing throughout it. Dishes were not thrown, tears where not shed, voices were not raised. Unless I missed something big in translation, which is entirely possible, things ended well.

So we get into it. She starts quoting scripture, a lot of which I’ve actually read. I try to explain that she doesn’t believe in Islam or Hinduism, how is it any different that I don’t believe in her religion. All in Romanian. Then she tells me a story about the devil. And I have to state again that I don’t believe in him either so the story doesn’t mean anything to me. Then she asked me where my soul goes when I die. Now just think a second how hard that question might be to answer in your mother tongue. And then try picturing that answer in a language you’ve only known for a year. I’m sure I sounded ridiculous and very unconvincing. Not that I was trying to convince her of anything other than the fact of my own belief (or lack thereof). She had a very hard time swallowing that I believe there is nothing but this life and the normal people in it. I think being a Scientologist (I would have had to explain what it was of course) would have gone over better than being an Atheist. And once again, while she was explaining her beliefs to me I would continually say “that’s great for you, it’s just not for me”. I tried to work in the word respect as much as possible (luckily it’s the same in English as Romanian).

Just as I thought I couldn’t handle any more of this circular, philosophical conversation in a foreign language. Her brother knocked on the kitchen window with a sack of potatoes on his back and said he needed her help with something. Our parting words were me-“I’ll bake tomorrow”, her- “I’ll bake tonight”.

I have I feeling though, I’m going to bake it tonight. Just in case I have missed something big in translation and she’s actually really mad at me. ;)

This Gazda Life

Living with a gazda (host family (in this case a 45 year old woman named Maria who has two daughters and husband living in other cities)) has had its highs and lows. There's definitely been perks when it comes to fresh free eggs, chickens, and veggies. There is also a huge benefit to live with someone that speaks the language fluently and knows how things work and how to get things done. When our internet or power goes out she's the one that makes the call. When I forgot a bag on the bus to our village she called the bus station in the next village over and figured out when that bus would be coming back. She has been immensely helpful, kind, and patient with me.

I like to think that this street goes both ways, and I have done my part to help her with things she could not have easily done on her own. Her computer is set in English and most of the programs that she used are in English so every time any kind of message pops up on her computer I hear her call my name down the hall to help her to choose "yes" or "no", "continue" or "close".  I also recently offered to start adding minutes to her phone via the internet which would have been impossible for her considering she owns neither a debit nor credit card. She was probably the most excited about anything I've helped her with when she got that conformation text message. That is, until I introduced her to the wonders of the can opener and the veggie peeler.

Another sort of exchange we have is over food and kitchen gadgets. At least once a week there's this amazing moment when I introduce her to a food or gadget she has never seen/ heard of before. Romanian cuisine though generally very yummy is not all that diverse and even in big cities foods from any other country, save for Italy, is extremely hard to find and usually on the pricier side and generally not very good. So it's no big surprise that when I make fried rice, tacos, and the like that they have been met with hesitant curiosity. Though sometimes it's something simple like brussel sprouts or mozzarella. What has really gone over big and seems to be brand new to most people here is quiche. It is something my mother made all the time with a delicious yet simple recipe. It is something I make a lot here, and my gazda recently made a request that she be present next time i make it so she can learn how to make "pizza" as she calls it.

What I've really enjoyed is her teaching me how to make some of the traditional Romanian foods. My favorite, of course, being sarmale. Sarmale is generally ground pork and rice combined with spices and wrapped in either grape or cabbage leaves served with sour cream and polenta. Learning how to make it felt like a rite of passage. One of my proudest moments so far in Romania was at Christmas while making sarmale. A visiting gazda family member turned down my offer to help roll the sarmale because she figured I didn't know how. She was answered with a "Ba Da!" (But yes!) from me. The look of shock when I was rolling sarmale with the best of 'em (dare I say, maybe even better than some) was priceless.

It hasn't always been easy living with a host family. There's less privacy, there's been issues with food (usually the force feeding of it since "I'm way too thin and don't eat nearly enough" lol). Sometimes after a long day at school I just want to go home and not have to speak in Romanian because my brain is too fried to get a coherent sentences out. But I wouldn't change a thing. I get to be truly immersed in another culture. I'm forced out of my comfort zone as far as language goes. Which is a good thing. I have to use Romanian every day. That isn't the case with a lot of volunteers here. I am so grateful to have been welcomed into a new family.