I am a graduate student now.

At the University of Central Missouri I will be studying Linguistics and Teaching English as a Spoken Language, Teaching English as a Written language, Second Language Acquisition and all such things.

By a stroke of unanticipated luck I was offered a part-time Graduate Assistant job at the Nursing Department correcting "Intro to Nursing" quizzes.

I don't know anyone in Warrensburg,Missouri, so I go to the town library and read books like Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant, which allow me to romanticize my hermit lifestyle and inspire me to buy eggplants at the farmer's market.

I keep looking for an herb plant that I can pot and put on my table and pinch savoriness from it flame my fledgling interest in cooking.

This evening I sat on my one-step stoop in the golden light of sunset, ate my eggplant and watched a stealth bomber glide over me from the nearby Whiteman Air Force Base.

Different from sitting on my balcony and listening to the cows make their way down from the hills. But still good.

I am in Dresden right now.

And Germany is a force in the world cup.

So Ilie and I went to a local events park next to the Elbe river, despite the "I feel like I am sitting in a sauna" heat. After getting patted down in security, we walked into the masses of german-flagged cheeks, german-flag dresses, german-flag top hats, german-flag Burger King hats. One exuberant woman was wearing a plastic yellow hula skirt, a red bra and enormous black peacocky headwear.

Because we had arrived a mere twenty minutes before the game, the sandy benches were already full.

"That's ok. We'll feel the spirit of the game standing with the german-flagged masses."

As game time approached, the Dresden announcer played K'naan's Wavin' Flag and the germans diligently waved their sea of flags.

Then the same announcer yelled out the first names of team members and the fans yelled out their last names.

"He is only saying the names of the German players. He's not saying the Brazilian or the Turkish players' names that are on the German team," Ilie informed me.

I was amazed that all of these people could match the first and last names of players, even if it was just the German ones.

Within the first five minutes of the game, the German team scored and I got beer splashed on me by excited fans and then almost choked on the dust cloud that we were surrounded in by the dancing crowd. The cheering continued whenever a German player stole the ball, passed the ball, when the goalie caught a simple pass kicked to him by his own team...

When Argentine's coach flashed on the screen the same excited fan who splashed beer around boo'ed loudly.

This is dedication.

I have been hearing We No Speak Americano every fifteen minutes on the radio here.

I tap my fingers to it and the Charlie Chaplainesque music video doesn't hurt.

And then I discovered that the version I am incessantly hearing on the radio is a remix of the 1958 Tu Vuò Fa' L'Americano whose comedic musicians and poking-fun-of-the-ugly-american-wanna-be lyrics are even better than Charlie Chaplain.

If all melodies could have the same luck as We no speak Americano...

I have been reading Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food and Wendell Berry's What are People For?. Pollan's mantra is "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

This, combined with Berry's admonitions to appreciate the fruit of the land that is beneath our feet and to be a part of caring for the "varied and versatile countryside, fragile in its composition[...]," has primed me for summer in Vama.

If not hay and potato fields, every household has at least a garden with onions, garlic, dill, lettuce, beans, beets and strawberries.

Mamaitza, my "grandmother" is out in her garden every morning, weeding this, taking a look at that. She has done this since she got married as has her daughter-in-law, as does the next neighbor down the road and the next.

Mamaitza and I weeded the onions and garlic on Tuesday morning, leaving clean dirt valleys between the plants. Later I picked strawberries at Silvia's. We ate some of the strawberries with polenta and cream, and cleaned the remaining strawberries to make jam.

Whenever I want lettuce, I walk the 20 meters to Mamaitza's garden and pick some a few lettuce leaves.

My Chemistry teacher neighbor has bunches of red, crunchy radishes in her kitchen for snack time.

Summer gives even without cultivation.

The air at the stadium where I run smells of fresh hay from the recently made haystacks on the end of the field and the woodland strawberries are almost ripe in the forest behind my house.

Last year, Milica, Mamaitza's son, taught me how to search for mushrooms and distinguish the edible ones from the "nebuni" (crazy) ones. While the forest floor is littered with mushrooms, many are nebun, especially the red and white ones that look like mario brother mushrooms. The prize mushroom is Hribi and they are notorious for being difficult to find. Last year, I found one hrib, and it was old and yellowing. But this summer, I am finding hribi. Fresh, brown capped hribi. A lot of hribi:

Many people in Vama ask me if I am not bored now that school is out.

No.

In his discussion on work and the inherent pleasures that are coupled with "drudgerous" work on farmland, Wendell Berry writes that while doing this work,"One does not miss or regret the past, or fear or long for the future. Being there is simply all, and is enough."

A few days ago, my throat was sore. The perfect sore throat for honeyed tea.

So I went to a couple of the stores in town.

"We don't have honey" they all told me.

I was confused. I know honey exists here. I've been given choices of honey or sugar in tea, I've copied a recipe for honey cake, I've seen bee boxes.

"Where do you buy your honey?" I ask Silvia, my math colleague.

"I buy it from my cousin who is the Principal at the Construction high school in the nearby town."

"I'm going there tomorrow. Do you suppose I could buy some from her?"

"Of course. Actually, why don't you buy me a bottle while you are at it?"

"Sure"

"Just go to the high school and ask for Doamna Directoara Geta."

The next day, after finishing errands, I walked through the nearby town towards the Construction high school.

"Buna ziua Rachel," a fellow teacher and his wife greeted me on the street. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm on my way to buy honey."

"Where do you buy honey?" his wife asked me.

"From Silvia's cousin who is the Principal at the Construction High school."

"Oooh. Can you buy me a bottle too?"

"No problem" I answer nonchalantly, although I am becoming anxious that the Principal will not be at school and I have two orders on my conscious for this elusive honey.

As I near the high school, I meet some of my now 9th grade students from last year.

"Where are you going, Miss? Are you going to teach here next year?" They are excited to see me.

"I'll take you to the Principal's office," one of the more enthusiastic girls offers.

We enter the courtyard and climb the stairs.

"Hello. How are you," the english teacher at the school recognizes me. "What are you doing here? The Principal? She's not here.

Can I help you? You need honey? Of course. I'll give you her phone number."

I call the number and the Principal answers her phone.

"Hello. I am Rachel and I am a volunteer and colleague with your cousin Silvia and she told me I could buy honey from you."

"Of course. Very nice to meet you. If you go to the Secretary's office, they will help you. If there is not enough bottles at the office, The secretary will call me."

I walk into the secretary's office, which turns out is four desks with four employees busy with diplomas and typing.

"Hello," I speak to all four desks at once. "Who do I talk to about honey? I just talked to the Principal and she told me to come here."

"Honey?" said the young man behind desk one. "Here is a bottle." He lifts up a bag.

"I would like two bottles."

"Just a minute.....Are you going back into town? Come with me and you can pick up the second bottle with me."

We drove into town and parked next to an alley behind an apartment building. A woman was standing in the alley in an open doorway, holding out a 2 liter bottle of honey.

"It's ok." the young man called out to the woman in the alley. "She speaks Romanian."

I went over to the woman, settled the price for the bottle and was invited to have coffee with the principal the next time I visit her high school.

Back at the car, the young man asked, "Where can I drop you off?"

All for a spoonful of amber honey in a cup of tea.

This week is my last week of teaching school in Romania. Teachers are "closing the grades," several students from one notorious 6th grade class have received the news that they get to look forward to 6th grade again in the fall, classes are having their end-of-year parties.

On Sunday I met for the last time with the English Club. Instead of the typical lesson, I opted to take the students on a short hike on the hills surrounding Vama. The sun exhaled summer into the air and after the first fifteen minutes of climbing, we stopped for a water break.

While I often slip into Romanian during class time, I maintained a strict only-english rule for myself. Three students picked up on my lack of Romanian and tried their best to speak with me only in english. The other seventeen prattled away in Romanian in response to my english questions. Listening skills: check.

When we arrived at our destination, we sat in the sun and munched on sunflower seeds, looking down on Vama and talking about summer plans.

On Tuesday, I finished my last english hour with my favorite 7th graders and said goodbye, explaining I wouldn't be here next year. As I was about to leave the room one of the english club girls got up and hugged me. The rest of the class followed her.

"Oh. Don't cry Miss Johnson" they protested through their own watery eyes.

I was sitting in a mall in Germany this week, on our way back from Paris, with a 4th grader from my school and his dad, Aurel. The 4th grader had just shaken up his coke and when he opened it, it fizzled onto him. His father looked on disapprovingly and told his son, "Don't be a Gheorghe."

I looked at him quizzically. "What is a 'Gheorghe'?"

During the last 12 days this man had spent with me on our school field trip to Paris, he had found endless enjoyment in explaining Romanian proverbs and sayings to me.

Aurel settled back into his chair.

"Gheorghe (George) milks the cow and Ion (John) drink the milk."

I'm not so sure that Ion has the better deal, though...

The amount of cooking and baking I do here is pitiful. really.

I am not starving, just people give me food enough times a week to be substantially sustained.

But sometimes I get in the mood for something that people don't eat much here. Last Saturday I was in the mood for bran muffins. So I looked up the word for bran - tărâță.

"Do you have tărâță?" I asked my counterpart.

she chuckled. "Of course. We feed it to the cows."

"Really?"

"yes"

I asked a couple different people where I could buy it and someone finally asked me, "Why don't you ask any of your neighbors that have cows."

So I did. "Of course you can have some tărâță. They told me, eying me suspiciously for wanting their cow's food. What for? A cake? Hm."

Granted, the tărâță you feed your cows isn't exactly the tărâță you eat in bran flakes. I painstakingly picked out the wheat grains that had gotten through the crushing process whole and mixed up my mom's recipe for bran muffins.

In the kitchen Gabi was curious about the recipe, Mamitza tried to give me directions for making some other type of Romanian recipe that uses tărâță, and Cipri was shocked that I would use tărâță for baking.

They turned out golden-bottomed, and bran-textured, with the occasional oat grain.

Gabi, the politically correct one, didn't say they were amazing, nor that they were horrible.

Ciprian, the one who says what he thinks, told me that when I get married and make these, my husband will tell me that they are delicious, but to never make them again.

Marin, my neighbor who I got the tărâță from took one bite and told me it tastes like the black bread everyone ate during communism as he ate two more muffins.

Last Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, I had an Easter marathon of traditions and food.

At 12:30 Sunday morning, I went to the church with my host family to circle the church three times and then went back to bed.

At 10 minutes to 4, 2 hours after getting into bed, my alarm woke me up to go back to church for the blessing of the baskets.

Then I had breakfast with the sleepy-eyed Cozmatchi family at 5:30 that morning.

Slept. slept. slept. Hiked up a nearby hill, played pingpong. slept some more.

At 10 monday morning, day 2 of Easter, some friends of mine took me and Alicia, a visiting volunteer, to a string of monastaries and Daniil Sihastru the hermit's cave. He gave advice to Stefan Cel Mare, Moldova's warrior ruler who fought back the Turks from overruning Europe in the 15th century.

Monday night, in a rain storm, me, Alicia and some friends went to a traditional dance night at a nearby village. Jaunty green alpine hats are sexy.

We arrived home at 3something Tuesday morning.

On Tuesday, we visited Voroneti Monastery, known for its blue colors that retained their hue for 600 years.

Tuesday night I saw Alicia off on the night train and walked back home in a light sprinkle.

Easter is a fantastic, if rough holiday.

Yesterday I traveled to the city of Botosani which is the county seat of Botosani county in the plains of north-east Moldova. Romanians from other counties treat Botosani like Americans treat Arkansas. There are numerous jokes concerning the poor driving of Botosanites and their living in Romania's reserve county.

Despite these deprecations, Botosani has a soccer team, an almost 24 hour marketplace, a pizza place run by an actual Italian and a Philharmonic.

Last night I went to the Philharmonic with a couple of volunteers who work in the reserve counties seat.

We filed into our faded dusty-rose velour covered square seats with the soundtrack of musicians warming up behind the stage.

Soon the members of the Philharmonic paraded on stage and took their seats, playing a few more practice cords while waiting for the conductor.

The conductor was Ilarion Ionescu-Galati. He walked onto the old wooden platform, stooped with a slight limp-twitch in his right leg, silver haired. He wore a dark maroon jacket. It was laced to halfway up his neck with black kimono-style buttons. Around his neck was a short bolo tie and the material widened into puffed sleeves at the shoulder. Anne of Green Gables might be jealous of this man's sleeves. Domnul Ionescu-Galati pulled off the look and made it distinguished to boot.

The musicians were talented, the conductor gracious, and the solo cellist danced his head to the music that was smoothly flowing from his bow.

I often listen to classical music on my laptop. It is a different experience to see the music, not coming from a battered square silver box, but from a multitude of delicate wooden instruments and horse hairs. Twenty bows going up down up down in unison.

I was gingerly walking home on the icy road on Tuesday when I passed a few seven year olds milling around in front of a neighbor's house, each standing next to a flexible-flyer type sled. As I passed by, they respectfully saluted me

"sarut mana"

"buna ziua" I responded as I walked by.

Behind me I heard whisperings. "Uite. Asta e profesoara de Engleza." (That's the English teacher).

"Nu. nu cred." ( No. I don't believe you)

"ba da" (is too)

By now I was several meters in front of the children and I heard them pick up their pace, their sleds' scraping-on-ice noises becoming louder.

"Buna" said one of the boys, who I recognized as one of my kindergarten students, Ionuti.

"Buna ziua. Ce faci?" (Hello, what are you doing?)

"Mergem cu sanie." (we're going sledding)

"Pe parte dreapte sau pe parte stange?" (Towards the right or left fork of the road?)

By now, all three are walking abreast with me.

"Pe dreapta" (to the right)

"E bine acolo" (it's good over there).

I continue my small talk until I reach my gate. "Distractia placuta" (have a good time), I tell them, as I start to turn towards my driveway.

"Doamna, el nu ma crede ca esti Doamna de engleza" (Mrs, he doesn't believe me that you are the English Misses) my kindergarten student blurts out.

I look at the doubting thomas. "Sunt Doamna de Engleza" (I am the English Misses).

Ionuti looks at me with satisfaction and turns up the hill with his sled and his friends.

Applying for graduate school is like fishing for a frog prince. I spend hours casting my google searches until I find a school that I fall in love with and imagine myself meandering across the campus grounds so beautifully photographed on the welcome page. I painstakingly give them my detailed information, find contact information for various references and write an eloquent but honest personal statement about how certain classes on the course schedule would fit my exact needs and desires. But will the frog turn into a prince?

So in my uncertainty, I turn back to the sea of google...

Last week, my 8th graders learned how to write a thank you letter. Their homework assignment was to write a thank-you letter to one of their teachers who has impacted them. A couple of the letters were for me:

Dear Rachel

I thank you for teaching us English. You are a great teacher. With you English seems to be so easy. I'm sorry if I wasn't so good as you were expecting. Thank you because you are so patient.

That club in English that you made for us, it is great.

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to share American culture.

Thank you for coming in our country to teach us English.

Yours Sincerely, Lavinia

Dear Miss Rachel,

Thank you immensely for that this year we have progressed in English and that only thanks to you. I am very sorry that you will leave soon as it was and still is an excellent collaboration. If you were not here I would not have the knowledge that I know now. In the near future we will get together if you will of course come to Romania because I do not think I will go to America. As I understand you will go on to do master in your native land. I hope that you will come back.

Thank you once again,

Of your student Andrei

Booyah-kasha

A peace corps volunteer who lives near me received a package in which were, among other items, a package of dove heart chocolates.

These chocolates were wrapped in shiny foil with hearts on the outside and Martha Steward quotes on the inside.

"To start a romantic fire, crisscross kindling on top of newspaper." -Martha Stewart

If this is how you start a romantic fire, I have to ask, how do you start a regular fire? with squared kindling on top of newspapers?

Also, Ms. Stewart, not to be rude, but you're romantic fire will only last you as long as a french kiss.

Following the successful Halloween and Christmas parties at my school, students asked if I could help with a Valentine's day party. Several 7th grade girls, actually. While the student council's party committee were the designated decorators, friday night before the party, twice as many students showed up to decorate the school's gym as were required.

We cut heart shapes out of pink construction paper and taped them to the wall, we strung up red lights and the crowning achievement was the big pink heart outlined in red christmas lights.

The Valentine's party was sparsely attended, due in part to the heavy snowing. We danced the Brasoveanca, Pinguini, and Macarena at least 3 times each, interspersed between a variety of games and snack breaks. These are group dances that are typically danced at least once at any wedding, barbecue, dance.

8th graders setting up the speakers

The light-lined heart and dance floor

7th grade boys scared to dance volunteered for the food table

Macarena hair

Me and a fellow teacher in the Penguini line-up:

right foot, right foot, left foot, left foot, two hops forward, one hop back

repeat for 8 minutes

Middle school is grand, especially if you're the only boy with the guts to dance

Last night, I was chatting in the kitchen with Gabi and Ciprian.

We were talking about my trip to Vatra Dornei that morning, to go skiing.

"So, when you visit other volunteers, do you cook or do they cook for you?" Gabi asked me.

At first, I was confused by the question. Well, of course if you invite people over you cook for them. But I was stopped on this train of thought when I remembered the majority of my visitors...

When Natalie visits me, she typically makes the coffee

When Dave Pi visits, meals are a joint effort.

When Mark came over this summer, he demonstrated his potato frying skills.

When Baddorf comes, if he doesn't cook, he always does the dishes.

"Typically, we cook together. Like when I was in Cimpulung a few weeks ago and we all stood around the oven, stirring something," I responded. "But, people cooking for me might be pretty specific to me. I know how to cook, but if others want too..."

"Rachel likes to sit back and watch," Ciprian commented.

"I was just asking out of curiosity, because when people visit me, I always cook, and I noticed it's not that way when you have visitors."

"It is not something with American cultural," I said. "It's me."

Or the volunteer culture.

When I come home from school, my room is still warm from last night's fire, although chilly. I make some tea and read, snuggled under a blanket in the afternoon light, allowing myself to drift. As the dimming light makes reading more difficult, I start to feel the chill even under the blanket.

I put back on the layers to go outside and pile a load of wood on my arms. During January and February, the climb up the stairs with the pile of wood becomes easier than in November. I sweep last night's gray fine ashes down through the grate in my soba and place two kindling pieces a few inches apart, crumple up some pages from a romanian language manual I used when I first arrived in the country for training, and place the crumpled pieces between the wood. After stacking more kindling perpendicular to the first two pieces, on top of the paper, I light a match. Today, the paper burned quickly, before properly lighting the kindling. I sat crouched next to the soba's mouth, feeding more paper, watching my kindling fall on top of each other, extinguishing what little flames had begun, amazed at how fire can engulf thousands of acres of California forest and yet catches onto my kindling so reluctantly.

Now the fire is noisily lapping up 3 logs behind the closed door to the soba's mouth. But it has transmitted its reluctance to me as I consider the rest of the week's schedule, summer plans, commitments.

Hopefully I will catch on to something soon.

Final

This week it snowed lightly for three days. I went on a walk with some colleagues and friends for a couple of those afternoons.

So much white and more coming.

Looking at general uncertainty coming up in a few months, the whiteness over everything was nice. And the numb feeling toes... :)

It is perfect weather for Simon and Garfunkel's hazy shade of winter

One of my peace corps colleagues received a bag of Ty stuffed animals last year.

I pilfered a few from the bag and use them as classroom props. The first time my students showed interest in forming the future tense was when I introduced Iggy the Iguana and the class had to create a story for what Iggy would do next summer.

As a past tense review to a sixth grade class today, I pulled Iggy out from under my sleeping bag in the bag of my closet and took him to school today. I started the fictitious story on the board "Iggy had a great Christmas." And invited the students to elaborate while asking questions to encourage their sleepy creativity. This is the story of Iggy's Christmas.

Iggy had a great Christmas. Where did Iggy spend Christmas? Iggy celebrated Christmas in the jungle Who did he celebrate Christmas with? with his friends. What did he eat for Christmas? He ate flies and bananas for Christmas dinner. What did he do after Christmas dinner? After dinner he opened gifts. What was his favorite gift? His favorite gift was a pink girlfriend.

Yes. a pink girlfriend. I was thinking more on the lines of a computer game or a basketball, but a pink girlfriend (Iggy is green). Not a bad Christmas for Iggy.

A wonderful, wintery week in Dresden

Decorating an outside Christmas tree. Putting lights up with a stick is NOT a simple task.

Dancing New Years away with colleagues and friends from Vama.

Romania is looking at 5 more years of Basescu and an even lower opinion of their country's political system after the conclusion of the recent elections.

Supporters on both sides speculate about vote-stealings, which would theoretically even out the two parties, if both groups stole an equal number of votes. The Economist even commented that the "The campaign was exceptionally dirty." As Christmas approaches and my fellow teachers are more concerned about the extra week of unpaid vacation they are receiving as a "gift" from the government's struggling budget, talk has died down about the election results.

And life keeps happening.

Today is the second and final day for Romanian voters to decide their president for the next five years.

The first day of voting narrowed the pool of candidates (many) to two, and today was the decision day.The two candidates are

Basescu, who has been the president for the last five years

Geoana, formerly the foreign minister, and who many believe will bring stability

At 9 o'clock tonight, the exit polls from across the country were counted up and televised. I sat in the living room with Gabi and Ciprian.

One station said Geoana had 51.4%, while Basescu had 48.6% percent.

Another said they both had 50%.

Milica thinks Basescu doesn't have a chance anymore.

ne vedem.

On Saturday I was at the Planetarium in Suceava.

The presenter at the planetarium was a short, merry, bald-on-top man, who wore a wrinkly sweater over his hunched shoulders. After explaining the north star and constellations, he rotated the night sky above us and projected the twelve zodiak constellations one at a time. Taur (bull) Gemini (twins) Rac (crab/cnacer) Leo (Lion)...

The bull connects three stars in a sort of "A" triangle...The crab's pincher's loom in the planetarium sky.

The astrologists who superimposed these images in the night sky were creative in "earthizing" the far-away suns.

How would I "earthize" the stars? I thought.

Maybe, from the 19th of April to the 20th of May, the great cul-de-sac in the sky. From the 20th of May to the 21st of June, you can see the the encased i-pod rising from the setting sun. And from the 21st of June to the 22nd of July, you can see some summer of 69.

Saturday was Saint Andrew day here, Sfantul Andrei. There is a tradition for the evening of Sfantul Andrei. A tradition in line with MASH and pulling petals out of flowers.

Mamitza told me about it tonight. On the night of Sfantul Andrei, you must go to the well with a saint's candle from Easter. If you hold that candle over the night-blackened well water, you might see your future husband on the water. But if you see a coffin, you will die before you become married. Mamitza's mother saw a coffin. If you don't see your future husband in the water, you still have a chance to escape from old-maidenhood. You can pray in each of the four corners of a room and then go to bed and you will dream of your future husband. Mamitza dreamt of her future husband this way.

You can also make dough, roll it out and cut it into four squares. Put jam on top of the four squares and close up the dough to make a triangle. Then you boil the triangle in water. I'm sure this sweetcake has an english name but I don't know it. So you do all this work, and then you put the finished products in a circle and give each cake a name of a perspective husband. Next, call your cat over and whatever sweetcake he chooses will be your husband. Mamitza did it when she was 9 years old. But her cat was a scrounger and wasn't hungry by the time Mamitza had finished putting the named sweetcakes in a circle and refused to choose one. Persnickety cats.

This evening me and my work-out buddies were doing "the cobra" and talking about our weekend plans.

me: You want to hike over the mountain between Vama and Gura Humorlui Monastir on Sunday?

S: Sunday? no no. Sunday is voting day!

D: You should come by and see how we do voting in Romania. This room is actually the voting room.

me: How late is the voting open?

D: Until 10 or 11 at night, I think. Either way, people are here until late. haha. Maybe what happened last year will happen again. Remember when those two old ladies came in.

S: hahaha

D: These two old ladies came in and one of them is beginning to become senile. And they went together to vote so that the one could help the other. And the whole room could hear them deciding who to vote for, because the beginning-to-be-senile one talks really loud.

(I realize at this point that I know these two ladies. They're my neighbors)

S: If you're lucky you can come when they are here. haha.

Last night I watched Food, Inc . I had heard about most of it before - growth hormones, international mixtures of ground meat, corn feed lots for cows, e. coli breakouts in spinach. I have heard complaints about the costs of organic food, and the film explained why buying organic is worth the money because of the longterm environmental and health benefits.

By the time I got to the credits, I was feeling a lot of patriotic embarrassment. But I also felt like I did when I red Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palanciuk last spring. Invisible Monsters is full of plastic surgery, drugs, and seeming superficiality. I sat on my balcony and struggled to get into Palanciuk's story. It felt unrelatable. But I used to like Palanciuk's twisted stories and modern plots, so I must have related in some way.

While Food, Inc was an expose that makes me appreciate my family's deer-hunting, vegetable gardening habits, I kept thinking in the film about how I buy my milk from my neighbor, whose cow I hear coming down from the mountain every evening. When I help Silvia make Ciorba, I run out to her back-yard garden for herbs. Last night, one of my neighbors butchered their young bull, and sold the meat to other villagers. You can't get much closer to your food sources.

Sometimes I forget that I have a different lifestyle here. Thank you Food Inc for reminding me.

Stefan likes to dance. His signature dance move is jerking his right arm back and forth and running in an awkward circle until he gets dizzy. He was doing this yesterday until I brought out my camera.

Then he tells me my phone is on the table. Meanwhile his grandma is trying to get him to dance.

So he improved a pillow dance for me.

mom: Your dad bought another car for you for when you get back

me: really? I told him when I was home that I didn't know my plans and that he shouldn't buy any cars for me.

mom: This is the second car he's bought with you as his excuse. Don't worry. It doesn't work.

My village has two main schools, a ten minute walk away from each other. On Mondays, I teach one class at the first school, and then rush the ten minutes to the other school to teach another three hours. A math teacher at the school has a similar schedule as mine and we usually hurry to the second school together, buna ziuaing people along the way.

One day I said that it was inefficient it is for us to have to walk to a second school.

"As a new teacher, I taught in Vatra Moldovitza, (a 25-minute-away-by-bus village).

"When I got married, I moved to Vama because my husband lived there, and I commuted to Vatra Moldovitza every day.

"That's a ways to commute every day," I responded, calculating in what I have heard of getting places during the 70's in Romania.

"It took about an hour and a half to get there, so I would get up every morning at 5:00 and got on the bus at 6:00."

"mmhmm." I respond, dodging a pothole in the sidewalk.

"But y'know, during Ceasescu's time, gas wasn't very plentiful, so some days the driver of the bus would tell us he couldn't drive the whole way to Vatra Moldovitza, and would let me off in another village 11 kilometers away. I would start walking. A few times a logging truck would pick me up, but there were a few times I would walk the whole way. It took me about 3 hours, especially if the road was really snowed-under."

"So there were some days when you didn't get to school until 2 1/2 hours after it started?"

"Yeah. My colleagues understood and would cover for me."

Suddenly the not-even half a kilometer walk to the second school seemed piddly.

Last year's Halloween party was a cramped, dark affair. Too many students showed up for one room and freakily, the power went out. But enthusiasm was huge last year.

So I decided that if my 7th and 8th grade students were interested, they could help me put on a Halloween party this year. We had a scavenger hunt, games, a haunted cellar and a disco.

There were 100+ students in attendance and they went through 30 liters of coca cola and fanta within the first hour. Each student had to say trick-or-treat when they entered and then they got a big ticket with questions on it about Halloween. Throughout the school there were facts about Halloween on the wall that answered the questions on the ticket. On the big ticket, there was also 5 smaller tickets, so each student could have the opportunity to play a game.

We had "hit the ghost," inspired by those carnival games where if you hit the bulls eye you got an obnoxiously large stuffed animal. My students got a pencil if they hit a ghost.

We played Scary Bingo. Bingo had the best prize, a glow-in-the-dark skeleton necklace. It looked like ordinary bling bling until you walked into the haunted cellar, which was of course dark.

Blindfolded students got to pin up Frankenstein, although I realize that theoretically they were pinning up a poorly drawn apparition of Dr. Frankenstein's ghoulish creation.

Of course we had a photo booth with a spooky backdrop that one of my students apparently painted in her free time.

And finally, the haunted cellar. The school's cellar is damp and smells like earth. It is about the same size as my room. The students I delegated to haunting the cellar hung up white sheets to create a circle, and painted the sheets with dripping red paint and tore jagged holes into them. Then they put candles down the stairs, in the corners, and in the walls. One of them with a death mask hid behind the sheet and when a group of students would come down, they would jump out at them, screaming. There was a line at the haunted cellar all night.

The night ended with a devilish disco, as all school events should end. And the 7th, 8th graders and myself propping open our tired eyelids to dance the last song. Somehow 5th graders never lose energy.

Winter has not so much crept up this year as pounced on me. My room was cold enough to make me put layers of rugs on my drafty floors yesterday, and my soba has been burning a heaping armful of wood each evening. My desk is right next to the soba and my typing, the crackling wood and Tchaikovsky sounds are blending together around me. I spent my weekend with a group of 7th and 8th graders planning and executing a halloween party. There have been few times in my life where i was busy enough I forgot to eat, and this weekend was one of those. I fell asleep Saturday night, after supervising the Halloween dance until 10pm, giddy with the euphoria of success.

Theoretically I teach classes two days a week, but I have found other things to do in my time. I teach a couple classes at the kindergarten where we sing "old McDonald had a farm" and they learn how to say Good Morning Teacher. I have a weekly english club (which sponsored the Halloween party), where we've been talking about Halloween and this month we will talk about American music and dance and Thanksgiving.

I

grade papers

watch Stefan's mind develop

knit leg warmers

read Paulo Coelho in Romanian

chat with my neighbors

read perezhilton more than the NewYorkTimes

watch Mad Men

eat ciorba

think about where my aspirations will lead me

plan english club lessons

.

I was walking home one evening, brightfall on all sides, my stomach full of ciorba and pork, my bag full of test papers to grade. A student from last year who is now in high school raced across the road when she saw me to give me a hug and we discussed her new teachers, new challenges. I continued on my way, and when I got home I started a fire, made some ibric coffee and bounced a ball with Stefan for as long as his attention lasted. And I realized that I fit here, right now at least. Not that I am a generally "unfitting" person, but I have channeled lots of energy to fit as I do.

There are also days where I feel like I am a circle being stuffed into a triangle of a children's carpenter set.

But those "fit" days. mmmmm.

Stefan is walking now, and he likes to hang out with Cipri and play basketball. He is also intrigued by cameras.

I do not cook or bake much in Romania. Not that I ever did that much. I have my "specialties" wholewheat oatmeal pancakes, chocolate chip cookies, lentil barley stew.

But if I had to, I could get by on my cooking skills.

I don't cook much here because I have had the good fortune to know some gracious, giving gospodine (housewifes) in my village, and they have kept me eating delicious food.

This afternoon, though, I was in the mood for chocolate chip cookies, something they don't generally make here.

So i went to the store and bought a bar of dark chocolate and brought it back to the house, broke it up into chips, mixed up the cookies and turned on the oven. As I was spooning the cookie batter onto the pan, my bunica (grandma), who hangs out in the kitchen, told me

"aren't you going to roll it out first on waxpaper? oh no. you've already put the chocolate in it. You have to take out the chocolate and put it in after you've baked. It's going to melt all over the pan this way."

"It's ok, Mamitza," I assured here. "The chocolate won't melt all over the pan."

Ciprian, my host family man, wandered in for a bit. "Rachel's cooking, huh? Is it digestible?"

"Se vedem (we'll see)" I told him as I put the first batch in the oven.

Gabi, my host family woman, the encourager, told me, "If Stefan and Cipri like it, maybe I'll make them too with raisins. You can make it with raisins right?"

Sabina, my host families high school age sister came in. "OOh. this is what Irena (their sister who worked in the States a couple summers) brought back with her. I like them."

Cipri, the 12 year old came in and took the first bite out of still steaming cookies. "mmm" He generally likes what I've made (tacos, Hawaiian pizza, wholewheat oatmeal pancakes).

The final product was digestible and, if I may, even delicious.

So this is what my cookies made me think. Everyone reacts differently to a new or foreign food, idea, thing. Whether it be the lady gaga, ball point pens, the communicative method of teaching, democracy, or chocolate chip cookies. Younger generations might not think twice before they embrace the new idea. Older generations might try to mold the new idea into an idea that can be better understood from their own experiences, and most people observe the new idea before jumping for or against it. New ideas take a while, world.

The maintenance man at my school, Gheorgitza, speaks english to me. I speak english to one of my colleagues, the other english teacher at the school. And other teachers might throw out a "hello" during the course of the day, and a couple of the younger ones who know a little more will start a conversation with me in English which quickly becomes a Romanian conversation.

But Gheorgitza always asks me, "hello, how are you?" and continues the conversation in english. He told me he learned it from watching TV.

he is cool. last year, he would pass me on the way to school saying "hello", riding his dark green german bicycle with a handlebar basket.

This year, he is riding a compact red scooter.

"Gheorgitza," I called to him as he putted by on the scooter, "you have a scooter!? No more bicycle?"

Mirthful Gheorgitza replied, "I have developed. Progress," and flashed me a smile as he continued down the road.

I am blog lazy these days. The rain is beating against my window, and today is the first day in a month where I feel like I know what is going on with the new school year. At least my head is enough above water to see beyond my eyelashes.

The fall here has been beautiful.

An indian summer.

The weathermen say it might snow tonight though. After school today I was eating lunch at Silvia's house and in the hour I was there, the temperature had dropped from 8 to 7 degrees celsius. burr. and the dropping continues.

This year, I am doing an english club with my school. It is an opportunity for more motivated students to spend more time speaking english.

We have been carving pumpkins.

And Miruna, who forgot to bring a pumpkin, carved an apple.

The english club is the stuff that teacher's dreams are made of. A roomful of enthusiastic students.

ai. the rain is coming down diagonally now.

My brother's wedding was in a chapel on a hill with access by a white bridge.

This summer, I found out that my biggest brother, the one who sightes-in my gun before hunting season, taught me how to drive the speed limit, showed me up during tennis class, got us stuck in a Singapore jail for several hours, and with whom I lived rent-free post college...he's getting married! Next weekend!

Which means that this weekend, I will be traveling to him and his future wife...and my parents and various relatives.

The trip home starts at 6am Saturday on a train leaving my village which will take me to a city where I will get on a bus which will take me to the airport in Bucuresti. From which I will fly to Amsterdam, then to Houston and then to XNA, the airport built in the middle of nowhere Northwest Arkansas for Wal-Mart. And then I will get in a car with my mom 41 hours after I leave my village, and we will drive home.

And two weeks later I will do the same thing for the return trip.

So at first I wasn't jumping-out-of-my-seat excited about the trip. And then I told my friends and colleagues that I was going home.

"Oh you must be so excited!" they told me, with jumping-out-of-their-seat enthusiasm.

"You will get to see your mother."

"You will get to speak English all the time."

"It's your brother's wedding. You will have so much fun."

"You get out of school for two weeks," my burn-out colleague smiled dreamily at me.

"You will have to take pictures for us."

"I have some gifts for you to take to your brother"

"Tell him Casa de Piatra (House of Rock(what you say in Romania at weddings)) for me," one of my students who had met my other brother told me.

Their attitude has been infectious. I now get shivery when I think that in less than a week I will be talking face to face with my mom, grandma, dad, brothers... I will be driving, drinking large cups of coffee, making chocolate chip cookies, lounging with people who mean a lot to me.

ah.

This week I went to a beginning-of-the-year meeting for all the Suceava county teachers of english as a foreign language. One of the topics at the meeting was the benefits of using the communicative approach when teaching foreign language. The communicative approach is to the more traditional approach as the tango is to the wallflower. Interaction is required.

To demonstrate the ineffectiveness of using conversation in class solely for grammar practice, the speaker used the following conversation which was from a textbook used by his mother in Poland:

John: I am a man. You are a woman.

Mary: I am Mary Brown. You are John Brown.

John: This is a book. That is a pen.

Mary: What is this?

John: That is a pen. What is this?

Mary: That is a book.

John: Is this a book?

Mary: Yes, that is a book. Is this a pen?

John: Yes, that is a pen.

Mary: Is this a door?

John: No, that is not a door. It is a pen. Is this a window?

Mary: No, that is not a window. It's a book.

John: Are these chairs?

Mary: Yes, those are chairs, and these are tables.

John: Mary, what are these?

Mary: Those are books, John.

John: Am I a man, Mary?

Mary: Yes, John, you are a man, and I am a woman.

"What is this conversation about?" the speaker asked.

The teacher next to me, an older woman in a gray suit whispered to me, "It sounds like they are working up to sex."

While the communicative approach may be more effective in teaching conversation, the traditional method is much more entertaining if you're in a roomful of english teachers.

And really, are window and books that easy to confuse with each other?

If you could get anyone's autograph, whose would you get? I remember being asked this question as a twelve year old, sitting in a circle of other mk's at the annual missions conference. We were participating in an ice breaker and I was listening to the other kids name off members of dc talk, (a christian rock band), Drew Barrymore, one of the Spice girls. Or that was probably who they were saying. I didn't know who anyone was that they were naming nor was I paying attention.

I was struggling in my mind. Charles Dickens, or maybe Laura Ingalls Wilder, Tolstoy? What about Laurel and Hardy - that would get a laugh. Definitely not Clinton. Or Tchaikovsky? Oh, the Blue Angels would be cool to say.

(ok, so if you didn't have television and your main media influences were Voice of America, tapes of classical music and books left behind in the missionary library, you too might have this same list)

I was undecided, although enthusiastic to have a cool answer.

At Zilelei Vamei on Saturday night, I was walking between the bumper cars to the stage area when Ioana, one of my 5th graders, came running at me out of nowhere.

"Uite-te, teacher" (look teacher). Her face was radiant.

She thrust a picture of Raul, who had sung earlier on that night, into my hand.

Then she turned the picture around. On the back, I saw a blurry signature. Blurry because Ioana was literally jumping up and down as she was showing me.

I don't remember whose signature I ended up choosing at that missions conference, but what I said, there is no way I was enthusiastic as Ioana was about Raoul.

This weekend my village had a "days of vama" festival. Most romanian towns have a "days of themselves" festival once a year, where there is sure to be some theme park rides, mici (a grilled meat), chocolate filled doughnuts, cotton candy, and a stage with musicians playing back to back.

But

Not every festival celebrates their 600 year old anniversary, like Vama, my village, did this weekend. 1409 - 2009.

In honor of the anniversary, 20 French visitors from Vama's "sister" french town came, and me and some other peace corps volunteers went, making it, by all rights, an international festival :)

It was held at the stadium and walking from one side to the other, I was greeted by "hello's" from my students and buna ziuas from friends, every few minutes stopping to chat with someone I hadn't seen during the summer.

The best moment?

in the middle of the crowd, there was a large container set up for the film crew filming the traditional musicians that were performing. Music on the lines of this was being played. At one point, I looked over in the direction of the container and an elderly man, dressed traditionally, was dancing by himself above the crowd.

Table-dancing old men. We know how to have a good time.

I wrote the following to a friend describing my summer road trip around Romania. He made my prose into poetry. slanina is pig fat (traditional diet). Sibiu is a medieval city in Romania.

Eating slanina

and onions before

hopping into a hot car on a hot day

makes

for a sticky, smelly environment.

And the Fagaras mountains are craggy

and sulphur springs stink

and the danube is very wide and soft serve

in sibiu

is sexy

60,000 people went to Madonna's concert last night. Not the shepherd from yesterday, but 60,000 others went.

And from what I hear, it was great. Apparently, Madonna is touring with a group of gypsy musicians and chose to bring up the issue of gypsy discrimination in Eastern Europe to her fans.

Perez Hilton had his western say on the incident.

I wonder what will come of this incident.

Madonna is singing in Bucuresti tonight. This is her first and probably only time in Romania. It's a big deal.

So while Madonna's concert stage was receiving its final touches this afternoon I was in the woods near my house, foraging for mushrooms with my neighbor Milicha and his daughter Sabina. On our forages, we came across a Stana, which is the headquarters of a sheep farm.

So we were sitting on a picnic table, drinking whey and eating sheep cheese and polenta.

"Madonna is in Bucaresti tonight. The cheapest ticket is about 200 Lei (88ish dollars)" Milicha tells the picnic table.

"200 lei!" the shepherd and his mother comment shockedly.

"And she's 51 and her skin is saggy," Milicha makes saggy motions with his skin, "Paying 200 lei to see saggy skin." He shakes his head sadly.

"If you're at a big concert you probably won't be close enough to see the saggy..." I offer.

"Some of the tickets cost 800 lei," continued Milicha.

"That's how much I make in a summer," said the shepherd, in his green alpine hat, high grey pants and plaid long-sleeved button-up shirt. "I'll just work all summer to see Madonna in concert!"

I can definitely see him dancing wildly at a Madonna concert :)

Have fun tonight Madonna. All of Romania is talking about you.

A couple night ago my lighbulb went out. I've been waiting for it to happen since I moved in here more than a year ago and I haven't had to change it yet.

So the next morning I unscrewed the burned out lighbulb. I'm that person that reads everything - shampoo bottles in the shower, ingredient lists on cans while I'm cooking, romanian subtitles while I'm watching TV...so I read the lightbulb. And it said 'made in USSR.'

The USSR has been nonexistent since 1991.

Today is the 23rd of August. Not much different than any other day in August, I though.

But I was visiting my neighbor, Anucu, for a cup of coffee this morning and she informed me that this used to be the national day during communism. Currently in Romania, December 1st is the equivalent of the American July 4th, but after WWII until 1990, August 23rd was the big day. The Romanian News stations are broadcasting archived films of the parades in Bucuresti with Ceausescu heading up the celebration. The festivities reminded me of China's opening ceremonies at the Olympics. People lined up to spell the words August 23 and Ceausescu in the middle of the stadium. Youth dancing with ladders, traditionally costumed romanians in tightly choreographed marches.

"Wow, so that was a big day, huh?" I ask Anucu and Marin.

"Nah. Only in the big cities." Anucu replies.

"We've had too many national days," Marin informs me, counting them off on his fingers. "Stefan Cel Mare (the ruler who fought off the Turks in the middle ages)gave us a national day, when the Austro-Hungarians were here, they gave us an independence day, Ceausescu gave us a day, the 'free' western world gave us December 1st. Who can keep track of what day is actually the national day now?"

I have to agree with Marin, changing your national day every 30 years would take away from the patriotic spirit of the day. Either way, happy August 23rd.

There is a newspaper sold in Romania, Romania libera, that has a few articles from The New York Times folded between the society and business section every Friday. Whenever I remember its Friday (I'm on summer vacation, ok)I buy this newspaper at whatever newsstand I am near.

These excerpts are from an article about the current mayor of Kiev, Ukraine, a city I visited a few months ago.

"Leonid M. Chernovetsky, this city's unpredictable mayor, likes to answer his critics in his own special way.

"When Parliament memebers said he was acting bizarrely and needed a psychiatric exam, he went to a stadium where he jogged for the cameras before yanking off his shirt and doing pull-ups. He swam laps and flexed his muscles. Then he held a news conference - in his tiny bathing suite.

"'They are judging me today and want me to spend the rest of my life behind the bars of a psychiatric hospital,' Mr. Chernovetsky said. 'Look at my body, at how I express my thought. I am absolutely healthy.'"

-Friday, August 21, 2009 New York Times

Does Chernovetsky's logic make sense?

It is August, which should be the hottest month of the year.

A couple nights ago it got down to 9 degrees celsius. Which is somewhere in the upper 40s. Mark is visiting. Mark who lives in Arizona. He tells me the temperatures here are like his winter temperatures. And he has been spending the last couple nights swaddled in blankets and drinking tea to counteract the winterish elements that are August in Bucovina.

Mark is also a pyromaniac. When he was 12 and I was 11, he would shave off the end of millions of matchsticks and use this combustible material to make blue and red rockets which we would shoot off on special occasions. The last couple nights, swaddled-in-blankets-brother has asked, can we make a fire in your soba? Its so cold. I want to make a fire.

So tonight, after a drizzly day at a monastery and a hike in the drippy forest we came back to my room and Mark lost his soba virginity.

And these are the words that came out of the pyromaniacs mouth after the fire had burned out on him and the room's dampness was fighting the wood's catching fire.

"I have a lot of respect for you, heating like this all winter. It seems like you have to work really hard."

ha. i have earned the pyromaniacs respect. The soba in the winter is worth it just for that.

I found out what the midget and porsche were all about - a circus came to my village.

But I'm going to meet my brother.

yes. I am going to see my brother, Mark, here in Romania. In less than 24 hours.

Mark and I have obviously always had a caring relationship with each other

Besides pulling his hair, we'll do some traveling, he'll eat romanian food and become mind-fogged by hearing romanian all the time.

wweeeeeeeeeeee

Yesterday, I was walking into town. At the end of my road there was parked a porsche convertible. Behind this convertible there was a big white van with speakers on top blasting traditional romanian music. And inside the van, a midget was standing between the front seats.

As I was walking down the road, away from the porsche, the midget and the blaring music, I kept turning around and looking back.

What was going on?