I left for China one year ago today and I returned home exactly one week ago. I spent just shy of a year there and left just over a year early. As my last, perhaps overly dramatic, post might have indicated, I ET'd. Despite having completed a full 2-year service in Romania, it's still considered an Early Termination when a transfer or extendee leaves early. Oh well. This will most likely be my last post here at thepickupsticks, but will certainly not be the end of my blogging life. I'll start a new blog in the near future to help me get through grad school and the post-PC life I lead and if you're at all interested in reading it, just send me an email (found in my profile) and I'll pass along the address. Don't be shy.

When people ask me about my site and why I left, I've found that it is very difficult to explain exactly what went on there. So many tiny details and a few big issues led to my decision. A volunteer currently serving in Romania is thinking about transferring to China and asked me for my thoughts about it, and here's what I wrote to him.

"...So let me explain a little bit about why I left. One of the hardest things for me to adjust to was the difference in the way the program was managed. I'm not sure how Sheila manages volunteers as a CD because I left about three months after she arrived, but the CD prior to her was Ken Goodson and he was an amazing CD and friend to me and just about all of the volunteers. Under him, the program focused mainly (at least in my opinion) on keeping the volunteers happy because they knew that happy volunteers meant productive, dedicated volunteers.

In China, it feels much more like the program's goal is to keep the schools and the government pleased and satisfied and will sacrifice the volunteers' experience and happiness in order to do so. In some ways, the program has its hands tied there because of the delicate nature of the relationship between the US and China. We basically have to do whatever China asks us to, where in most other PC countries, the US makes the decisions. Because of this, concerns and questions brought up (to the staff by volunteers) are generally shot down and there is little room for discussion. Only when I told them that I was planning to ET did I feel supported, which is not how it should work. Of course, this is all just from my experience. There are plenty of volunteers there who are quite happy, but the volunteers who are unhappy have no one on staff to talk to or receive support from other than the PCMO, who even then has to go through a rather generic protocol in an attempt to address issues.

Issues with the staff may not have come up for me if it weren't for my site - the real source of my unhappiness and ET. There's a major change happening in the college system in China. Most of the colleges and universities want to expand, but can't afford to do so at their current campus, so they're moving the entire university to brand new facilities. In many aspects, this is a good thing - more room for students, new equipment, better facilities, but it sucks for volunteers because the locations of these new campuses are often very remote and far from the original campus and city center, leading to a lack of community, an amplified sense of isolation and making all three goals of the PC unnecessarily difficult to fulfill.

Another surprise to me was getting placed at a three year, third tier vocational school where the majority of students are training to become automobile mechanics and have very low-level English and very little interest in improving it. (China's program is generally advertised as a future-English-teacher training program.) Turns out, luckily, that I love teaching and enjoyed that challenge, but having students who aren't academically driven or motivated to learn English, and therefore not interested in spending any time outside of the classroom with me, made that brooding sense of isolation and pointlessness even more intense. Combining that with the location of the school led to a depressed volunteer. I'm sure, though, that there are volunteers out there who could handle that situation admirably.

In short, my whole situation just didn't work for me. I'm pretty sure that if I had been placed at just about any of the other sites, I would have been ok. But who knows, it's pointless to ponder that. I loved teaching, but I needed more, as I think all volunteers do. We want a community to wander around in, where we can find people with whom to interact and make close friendships. We want students with whom we can bond and make connections, and none of that happened in the first year, so I left, especially after having such a great experience in Romania..."

So that's the heart of my ET, plus a multitude of other more minor issues. I am not attempting to dissuade anyone from joining the Peace Corps or going to China or transferring there, just wanted to be honest with my experiences. The Peace Corps can be an amazing experience; it was for me my first time around, I now realize. But 1/3rd of volunteers do ET and I now understand more completely why.

And, after a week of being home, there isn't a bone in my body that regrets leaving. I've seen more blue sky and sun in the past week than I did over the entire past year. I've spent time with friends and family and, though I feel a bit out of sorts a good deal of the time, the overbearing emotion is happiness, which feels wonderful after so many months of down. I don't regret transferring, it showed me that I do love teaching, but I don't regret leaving, either. Not a bit.

Here's to happiness. May we all be strong enough to find our own.

Remember this. Remember the disappointment. Remember the hard work and the tears and the longing for home, none of which was softened by friendship or even acceptance. Remember the dull-minded greed that took all of your effort to keep at bay, followed by the emotionless and dry-eyed goodbyes. Remember the anger and the foul words you never thought you’d say, screamed to yourself in an empty room or muttered under your breath after another idiotic hello. Remember the look in your students’ eyes every single time you tried to teach them something heavier than yet another silly game. Remember all of the one sided conversations and the struggle to think of more questions and the pure lack of curiosity, interest or concern. Remember all the stupid photographs that you never consented to, all of the pointing, all of the heads turning, all of the god-damned hellos. Don’t forget this. Don’t regret your decision. You’re miserable here. Every day. Nearly every hour. Never regret this. You’re going home. You’re going to hug your mom and pet your dog. You’re going to play with your little brothers and go back to school and live a better life. You’re going to feel happy again. I know the good memories and the kind people will eventually push the nasty ones out, and you will probably regret this decision some day, but don’t. Please don’t. Everybody deserves happiness, even you. Everybody has the right to leave a situation that makes them feel awful. You’re moving on to something bigger and better and healthier, don’t let the venom of regret poison a second of it. It’s time to let it go. Remember this.

I saw a foreigner for the first time today. My friend Lee said he saw one two weeks ago buying peanut butter, coffee and toilet paper at Wal Mart. Perhaps we saw the same foreigner. She was sitting on the bus headed towards the city center. The bus was packed, but she had a seat and was staring aimlessly out, ears plugged up with headphones and I imagine she was listening to Country Roads or My Heart Will Go On. Those are good songs. Or maybe she was listening to Chinese music. I wonder if she likes Chinese music. I could tell even from a distance that her eyes were not brown. I have only ever seen brown eyes. There are a few movies with actors who have blue or green eyes, but the color doesn’t show up very well in movies. I’ve always been curious what eyes of a different color would look like. Her eyes were definitely not brown. I think they were blue. It made me very nervous to see someone with blue eyes and blonde hair, someone who so clearly is foreign. I felt like I should say something to her, welcome her to our beautiful country, but I could not gather the courage. My neighbor nudged me with his elbow and said “look, a foreigner” and a few others in the crowd murmured their surprise. Foreigners do not come here to our Kong Gang, and they do not ride our buses. Her eyes looked sad, but that is not likely. Maybe it is normal for foreigners to look sad. And tired. I bet people are very friendly to her and always welcome her. We are a friendly people, so it is not likely that she is sad. Foreigners just look sad. And tired. But I bet she is happy. Just before her bus pulled away from the curb, her eyes flashed suddenly to mine. Oh, the thrill and fear of those bright blue foreign eyes piercing right into my own! I have never before felt such unease. When our eyes met, she cocked her eyebrow in a way I am unfamiliar with. I wonder what it meant, that eyebrow raise. But before I could analyze her expression more, the bus, with its sole foreign passenger, was gone. If I ever see her again, I will gather my courage and invite her to hot pot. I wonder if she likes hot pot. It will be difficult for her, though, having to use chopsticks and all. I hope I see her again and I hope I can be brave enough to speak to her.

I’m waiting for Mr. Right to give me an answer. It’s difficult because he often takes more than 30 seconds to gather his thoughts, but it’s always worth the pause. The other students know what he is capable of and have therefore stopped talking, not wanting to miss a word. Every time I call on Mr. Right, which I try to keep balanced with the other students, the entire class effortlessly falls still and silent, all eyes on the performer as he clears his throat and thinks. Finally, after a few false starts, the words come out. Everyone in the class, myself included, laughs. He, satisfied with his work, leans back in his chair and coyly smiles, knowing he got the answer wrong. Mr. Right’s wrong answers are always better than the right ones. Sometimes it’s hard to stop laughing and continue with class. What else could you expect from a student who gave himself the English name Mr. Right.

Forgive me, but it gets old. I love Peace Corps, I do. I really love what it stands for – helping underserved communities, spreading cultural understanding, learning about the world, making friends, on and on, but sometimes, it just gets old. Sometimes it treats you like a five year-old kid who can’t make decisions, who has no experience, who can’t be trusted, whose opinions are silly little nothings. Sometimes, it feels like your freedom to do what you want to do, to be who you want to be, has been stolen away, tucked into a filing cabinet, where it will be kept under lock and key for the next 27+ months. It takes away living options. It takes away apartment hunting. It takes away decision-making and negotiating and discussion topics and pride and friends, and then it tells you to take this one situation, this one situation in this one city at this one school, of all the possibilities and places and people, take this one situation, no matter how poor of a match, and live with it. Deal with it. Take it like a man. Take one for the team. And if you don’t like it and don’t make it beautiful and shiny and meaningful, your problem. Your loss. Maybe you really are not cut out for this wildebeest of an adventure called Peace Corps. Maybe you don’t deserve to be here. Maybe you should just shut up or get out because there are thousands of hands typing away at their aspiration statements at this very moment, dreaming of mud huts and straw hats and all that nonsense I once dreamt about. We’ll gladly fly you home and replace you with one of them, regardless of their dreams, regardless of your thoughts. Just say the word, just show one little sign of weakness, and gears shall start turning. And, if you have any questions, comments or concerns, keep them to yourself. They don’t matter, anyways.

Forgive me, please, it’s just gotten old. I love Peace Corps, I do. I’m learning and gaining experience and living a life that I’d never have back home, but, you know, it just gets old sometimes. Forgive me. I’ve always believed in honesty and the occasional rant and perhaps I’m experiencing the 3rd year blues.

Luckily, enough good things happen in this world that all the horrible stuff doesn’t have a chance of dominating everything. On February 27th 2004, little Tanner Joseph, more commonly known as TJ or Teej, was born. My little brother. He got out to a real shaky start, being born three months premature. There were days when we weren’t sure he’d make it. I remember going to the neonatal intensive care unit at Saint Mary’s hospital and visiting him with my step-mom, my dad and my sister. We’d have to scrub our arms up to our elbows with soap before we were allowed to enter to help eliminate the chance of germs affecting the fragile little bundles within.

Once inside, for the first few weeks, I could only look at TJ through the clear plastic walls of his incubator. My dad and step-mom were allowed to carefully hold his two-pound self once in a while, but the rest of us would have to wait until he was more stable. Honestly, I was afraid I would somehow hurt him if I were to touch him, so I was relieved by the rule.

Back then, he looked more like a little alien than a baby, especially when he wore his eye-protecting glasses and the flashing bracelets that monitored various bodily things. Tubes and wires were running in and out of everywhere. The one normal baby-like thing in there with him was a tiny blue hat, which fit loosely over his head and always seemed a bit crooked. I’m glad they put that hat on him, just to remind him that he was indeed a baby. A baby who would grow and get strong and would one day get to wear such hats while bouncing and giggling on his father’s knee, as all babies do. Not to be in a plastic box, wired to a machine for eternity.

TJ had to stay in that hospital room, in an incubator, for three months, up until the day he was supposed to be born. Even after that, he had hurtles to jump that other kids get to obliviously stride through. His digestive system took time to fully develop and for a while he was fed through a tube. He slowly graduated to eating real food, but not much of it. It took a long time for TJ to learn how to like food and he has always been underweight. Currently, however, he and his voracious appetite are doing their best to make up for lost eating time. His lungs were behind as well and he still suffers from asthma-like attacks today, but they’re getting less common.

The list of complications he faced, and may face for the rest of his life, goes on, but for the most part he is a very healthy, very happy kid. And he’s smart. And witty. And all the wonderful things a little kid can be. He might always be a hair shorter than the rest of the class, but he can tell fart jokes in a manner that makes his 30 year old sister, who hates fart jokes, laugh. Laugh hard.

Whenever I think about TJ’s first three months of life, and how uncertain things were and how strange he looked and how scared I was to touch him, I go numb. Of course, there’s no real way to describe it. He used to pester me non-stop to push him in his swing and I 99.9% of the time caved; he’ll talk to me for an hour on skype, though half of which is just him making faces at himself or making fart sounds; I once traced his hands with a pen and paper at least 50 times over because he liked it so much; he likes to race me around the house on his bicycle, even if it’s raining out; he helped me bake cookies this summer even though there was the opportunity for playing games on the Wii. Whenever I’m there, he’s around. Wanting to play or looking for help or needing to show me something. Making me feel like a big sister who’s loved and who loves. I can’t wait to be there in person for his birthday, some day down the line.

The second semester starts tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Of course, my internet went out the day following my previous post, dashing my hopes of charming the masses with a few bloggy tales before leaving Chongqing for a month. And by “the masses” I mean the kindhearted three who still take the time to stop by here no matter how bad I get at updating. Thanks for sticking around. And my internet is still out, but I won’t let that hold me back. I can do this old school style in Word and then upload whenever I’m reconnected.

Too much has happened over the past 30 days. It’ll be impossible to package it up into a tidy little post, so I’ll just ramble a bit. First off, I attended a ten-day language training at Sichuan Normal University in Chengdu, the city where our pre-service training was held. Those ten days were long and tiring, but totally worth it. Unlike Romanian, there are plenty of materials, resources and classes available to help foreigners learn Chinese. And Peace Corps even reimburses a decent chunk of the bill. I’m just barely beginning to feel like I might be able to semi-learn this language, tones and all, which is a nice feeling. The characters still terrify me, though, but I’m hoping to start cracking that code this semester.

After the ten-day training, I dove straight into our ten-day PC in-service training, which now feels like a blur. It was great to see everyone, but we were so busy and preoccupied and tired the whole time that it was hard to really enjoy each other’s company. I’m planning to travel more this semester, so hopefully I’ll get to see my closest friends again soon, but it’s too bad they’re the ones placed the farthest away. After staying with a friend for a couple of days in Chongqing following IST, I am finally back home and, needless to say, still exhausted. I can’t count the hours of sleep I missed out on, but luckily I have this week to regroup and rest and get ready for classes to start on the 28th. I’ll be teaching the same students, but it’ll be American Culture instead of Oral English, so it’ll be nice to have a new topic and some content to work with.

And I’m typing this feeling like I’m avoiding what needs to be typed about and feeling too falsely cheery…typing is how I deal with things, so deal with things I shall. On the first day of IST, February 8th, a little before 11am, our country director took the microphone to make an announcement. Her expression paralyzed the audience. She told us that the body of a US citizen had been found in a hotel in Thailand. She said that the body had been confirmed as a volunteer, as one of our own. She said that it was Cannon. There were no signs of violence and it appeared that his heart had stopped beating, she told us. The heart of a 6 foot 5, fit, 26 year old man had simply stopped beating.

Cannon had been at my training site, Chengdu University, and his host family lived not too far from mine, so we often ended up in the same group of 5 or 6 people who walked to class together. In all honesty, he intimidated me at first. He was tall, sported a multitude of tattoos, smoked tirelessly, spoke with a Bronx accent and wore less than appealing sweat-soaked white t-shirts and basketball shorts. But there was something in his demeanor that sparked intrigue. It only took five minutes of talking to him for the intimidation to melt away and a deluge of questions, curiosity and respect to take its place. I always liked Cannon’s presence and always wanted to talk to him more, but didn’t want to annoy him or appear to be too curious about his life.

He was the kind of person who spoke like he had failed English 101, yet had graduated summa cum laude from Boston University with a dual degree in finance and international management, something that even his closest friends here didn’t know about until reading it in his obituary. He was the kind of person who may or may not have been in a gang in his younger years, yet knew everything about Improv Everywhere and may or may not have participated on a few occasions. Although his tattoos peeped out from under his sleeves, he was an excellent teacher dedicated to and beloved by his students. He was the kind of person who appeared bored and uninterested, yet laughed at the cheesiest of jokes, even some of my own, to my surprise.

He broke down so many of the stereotypes people often have, yet he was completely oblivious to the good he was doing. Some people are capable of changing the way others view the world just be being themselves and to me, Cannon was one of those people. One of the diamonds in the rough, full of surprises. I thought so all along, just never felt the need nor had the courage to tell him. And it would have been a pretty weird thing to say to somebody I really didn’t know all that well.

Although Cannon and I, along with 15 or so other volunteers, were placed in the same city (Chongqing), I didn’t see much of him after pre-service training. He tended to avoid big groups and parties, for which I can’t blame him. I think the last time I saw him was just before Halloween. A group had gotten together for dinner and I remember chatting with him about classes and about how spicy the food was. We shared a moment over our mutual love of cauliflower. He laughed and smiled and I remember wishing I could think of more things to talk to him about that weren’t so lame.

Last Thursday evening, around 5:30pm, we held a candle lighting memorial for Cannon. The country director, his program manager, and three of his closest friends told a few stories about him, interspersed with tears and laughs, but of course mostly tears. We all shared a moment of candlelit silence to think of his family, reflect on the time we had with him, and focus on the little welt of loss stirring in all of our chests. Afterwards, a pretty little notebook was passed around for everyone to write their memories of Cannon in to send back to his family. His closest friends later added a few pictures and their own stories. His family, whoever they are, must be in an agony that I can’t even begin to imagine.

We all still have so many questions - how did it happen, why was he there, who was he with, was he happy, on and on – questions that will most likely never be answered, but all you can do is hope that he’s happy, drifting on a bright patch of cloud somewhere out there, keeping a caring eye out for all of us.

I feel like I should add, for anyone with a friend or family member in or considering the Peace Corps, the death of a volunteer is very rare and obviously devastating for the program and the volunteers and staff members who knew that person. For the three years I have been in the PC, eight out of approximately 7,500 current volunteers have lost their lives while serving. Peace Corps does all that it can, through safety training, medical care and volunteer support, to prevent harm to its volunteers, but it can’t eliminate all risk from service.

Prepare for something lame, cheesy and a touch cliché: I already miss my students. I gave my last final last night, after which my students sang a song for me and my sitemate and I joined a few of them for dinner. It’s become a bit of a routine with this one class. Finish class, go to the dining hall, eat dinner, and then sit there entertaining each other with random English and Chinese phrases for two hours. Last night we even went over all the different (non-offensive) hand gestures the two cultures have. Intriguing, intellectual stuff.

I wrote the above a week ago and now I sit in my apartment, the lone room on the whole of campus warmed by a human presence, contemplating things, as tends to be my norm when presented with a plethora of free time. Campus closed on Monday, following the mass exodus of students returning home for the celebration of Spring Festival, which everyone likens to Christmas. It is THE holiday of China, bringing about a ten-day vacation, large and extravagant meals, kids hyped up on sugar and toys, and an enormous, terrifying, gigantic wrench tossed into the gears of anything transportation related. Or so I’ve heard.

As it is now vacation time for all colleges and universities, the majority of volunteers are off traveling, island hopping in the Philippines, catching rays in Thailand, hiking the jungles in Vietnam, or warming themselves up in southern China. All of which sounds grand and all, but the more I do this, the more I just want to be normal. The more I just want to stay in my pajamas and drink hot chockie, curled up with a good book, like I used to do during the college breaks when I was a student. Perhaps I’m not embracing the abounding travel opportunities as well as did in Romania, or perhaps the huge transportation wrench scares me too much, or perhaps this lingering cold is making me sleepy, but I have to admit – I am sick of traveling.

Moreover, I am sick of the stress of traveling. Researching hostels, figuring out bus/train/plane/taxi/subway/foot routes, staring at maps till my eyes hurt, spending money and getting the “foreigner tax” every step of the way, eating in unknown restaurants, attempting to sleep in unfamiliar beds, spending every waking second with the same group of people (no matter how wonderful they are)…all of which has gotten really old.

I love the form of traveling that Peace Corps offers – living, on your own, for two years in one community. You develop a new home, a new life, a new sense of comfort and security. You make friends who recognize you and smile every time they see you. It’s a form of traveling that I think I could do for the rest of my life. I love it. But this other, briefer, more stressful form of traveling…I don’t think I’m cut out for it anymore. Or maybe I’ll get more into it next year. I should remember that I didn’t travel at all my first year in Romania. Maybe it’ll be the same way here.

But for now, I shall embrace a deserted campus, my kindle stocked with nearly 1,000 books, the two bags of coffee perfuming my freezer, my recently acquired gym membership, and maybe catch up on a few things that I’ve been putting off, such as this here blog. Oh, and I guess I’ll also embrace quietly turning 30 tomorrow. Weird.

Some of our entourage - clockwise from left - Speaka, Teddy, Elizabeth, me, Tiger, Bear, Doris, Finn. Elizabeth and I gave Teddy and Finn their English names. This photo is from Elizabeth's online photo album. She takes way more pictures than I do and actually posts them. I can't add links on the side due to VPN issues, so I'm going to post it here: http://www.dropshots.com/iamechan4

Thanks for sharing all the great pictures, sitemate!

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing

The theme for this week’s lessons was, fittingly, New Years. In one of the classes, we did a little mini summary of the highlights from 2010, like what is your best memory of 2010, what was the most difficult thing you did, what was your proudest moment, etc. All of the answers involved going to college, studying for the exams and taking the tests to get here. There’s only one girl in my mechanics class of 23. She rarely speaks, but her English is surprisingly good. I asked her what her proudest moment of 2010 was and she replied, in perfect English, “My proudest moment was leaving the countryside and coming here to study.”

I have to remind myself of that sometimes. There are three tiers of universities here. The first is the top, where the students with the highest test scores coming out of high school go, then there’s the middle tier where students with average test scores go, then there’s the third tier, where students who did not do so well on their exams go. My school is a third tier school, more like a vocational school than a university. My students are studying automobile design, mechanics, hotel management and logistics. They tell me readily every day that their English is very poor. And, for the most part, it is.

It’s a challenge every class to be understood. It’s a game of figuring out how many different ways I can say “describe a trip you would like to take” and knowing whether they really understand what to do or if they’re just saying ok to get me off their backs. It’s a puzzle of deciphering what English words they could possibly be struggling so intently to say. It’s a miniature show of gesticulations and crude drawings as I try to describe Santa and his eight tiny reindeer. Every class takes all of my effort to understand and to be understood. Every class comes with many silences of 30 or more seconds while Nick or Nancy or Bruce or Jim wrench the sentence “I want to travel to Beijing by plane first, then to Sydney by boat” from the recesses of their brain. And many of them have been studying English for 6 years.

At first I wondered why a school like this needed native English speakers to teach, especially because most of the students are going into professions that don’t need English to get by. Most volunteers are working with students who are majoring in English and who will one day be English teachers and who really really want to practice their English. That makes sense to me - giving future English teachers new teaching methods and improving their English skills at the same time. Benefits all around.

But here? Where the students often consider English a thorn in their side, where the students would rather hear me speak Chinese than practice their English, where even the English teachers seem uninterested in the language. Why here? In one short, sweet answer – Because the government says so. My school is directly tied to the government and because they want Peace Corps volunteers here and it’s a delicate relationship that needs to be maintained, they get them. That’s in a nutshell formed from my shoddy understanding of things.

This became a grudge in my mind and for a while it was difficult to not feel angry about being placed here, and slightly shafted. I hear about other volunteers holding debates with their students and teaching them about art and discussing politics (delicately) with them, getting invited to lunch every day by different students, not getting to practice Chinese because everyone wants to speak English, and I question what good I’m doing way out here, on the edge of town, with my hundred or so students who tell me every day that their English is very poor. And, for the most part, it is.

Then I find out that some of my students are coming from the country side, where education might not be top priority. Where a student feels proud to leave. A place that produces students with lower test scores, but students who are nonetheless intelligent. Students who can write sweet notes on Christmas. Take, for example, the following, which accompanied an apple:

“Dear Arien, Apple stands for peace, safe and well in China. Though you can’t celebrate with your family, you can celebrate this holiday with us. May your holidays be bright. Happy New Year, Merry Christmas  Yours, A.”

It’s not much, but I’ll take it. And I’ll take the 40 or so other equally kind-hearted notes I got, and the endless badminton matches and the numerous performances that are suddenly popping up and the little band of student friends I’ve acquired over the past month. We might not be able to say a whole lot to each other yet, but we can definitely play a mean round of badminton.

As 2010 ends and 2011 begins, I will keep it in mind every time I want to question why I’m at this school that coming here was, for some of my students, their proudest moment. And I think the best way to look at it is to be proud of being a part of somebody else’s proudest moment.

Happy New Year.

It’s official. My students have won me over. At least one class of them. A couple of students approached me last week about attending a show they were putting on and I, possibly a bit too enthusiastically, said I would be there in a heart beat. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Thank you for inviting me. I’ve been dying to be invited to something, and here you are finally inviting me! Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!

So the event happened tonight, but I got a sneak peak yesterday, when, before class, I asked them what they were going to do during the show. Before I knew it, the entire class was singing a Chinese song. They got really into it…clapping the beat and swaying and all. A couple even stood up. And they’re all men, except for one. I have a tough time imagining a whole class of American eighteen and nineteen year old mechanic students serenading their teacher before class, so I’ll count myself fortunate.

They were the last group to perform tonight, of about 10 other freshmen performances. I must say, though all the acts were interesting and funny (as little as I could understand), the best was certainly saved for last. Who knew that my little class of mechanics is filled with natural talent? I’m all jazzed up now to start a drama club again and work with the students on more creative stuff. After the show they all clamored around my sitemate and I to get our feedback and all I could do was beam.

On a side note, after the show, we went to the little supermarket here on campus. I saw one of my best students, and being all jazzed up as I was, I went over and lightly punched him on the shoulder and said hi. Of course, when he turned around, I realized it wasn’t my student at all. It was someone I had never seen before. He just stared, wide-eyed. That’s what we giant, pale Americans do. Go around punching random people on the shoulder. Yup.

In every volunteer’s home, there is a constant reminder of the day that will eventually arrive. Sometimes it’s incorporated into the living room as furniture, covered with a pretty piece of fabric and passed off as an oddly balanced end table, or shoved into the bottom of the closet and used as a shoe rack, or tucked carefully into a corner, uncovered, but as hidden as possible, such as my own. It carried our lives here, balanced on our backs or tugged along behind us, and it will eventually carry our lives away. It’s the only thing we’re guaranteed to take back with us, in one form or another.

And in my opinion, it’s rather underappreciated. In many cases, even abused. On my first trip abroad, my big red roller bag blindly followed me, its brand new little wheels getting all scraped up and bruised, throughout the streets of London. I was careful at first. I avoided puddles and gently lowered it down any steps, and never tugged at its handle too gruffly. From my window seat before take-off, I looked on in horror as the airport baggage handlers yanked bag after bag from the truck and threw them menacingly through the air and onto the plane’s conveyor belt, where they slammed and crashed into one another, looking broken and sad. As I saw my big red roller bag appear, I turned away and fidgeted with the seat-back tray in front of me, telling myself it was just a suitcase. It couldn’t feel the pain the baggage handlers ruthlessly doled out.

At London Heathrow, my heart caught in my throat in anticipation each time a piece of luggage popped out of the airport bowels and slid onto the baggage claim belt, where onlookers either admired or questioned its owner’s sense of travel style. Where was my bag? A black, oddly shaped trash bag, tied at the top with red rope, slid by, causing several murmurs and raising a few eyebrows, until a man with a tiny boy by his side grabbed the bag, untied it, and unleashed, to the child’s delight, a stroller. The crowd returned its attention to the carousel. Bag after bag plopped onto the conveyer belt, which ran endless laps around and around, showing off its goods.

Soon the crowd had plucked out most of the items, leaving just a few tattered and crumpled unclaimed duffels, and it was clear that baggage claiming for my flight was coming to a close. By this time, my palms were itching and my throat had gone dry at the prospect of spending two weeks in a foreign land with nothing other than my puny, pointless little carryon backpack. Just as the last of the passengers picked up their things to leave, a thud came from within the carousel, causing heads to turn, and seconds later my big red roller bag raised itself up and out of the airport bowels, then it turned casually onto its side and slid gracefully down to the belt. For an almost imperceptible second, the remaining crowd hesitated, drawn by the appearance of such a fine looking bag so late in the claiming game. They looked on in what I believe was envy as I proudly, yet carefully, claimed my big red roller bag.

Such was the beginning of my love for the big red roller bag. A love which has bloomed over the years to produce adventures and wanderings, stories and photographs, experiences and friendships. And today, ten years after that first trip, I find myself worried about the big red roller bag. It has been stuffed well beyond capacity, then thrown ruthlessly to the ground (not by my own hands, of course), or hurriedly dragged down dozens of steps, or yanked up stairs, or sat upon, or left to topple over onto itself (all of which I feel horribly about), and all of that abuse is starting to show. There’s a hole in the seam on the side, the color is no longer bright, the wheels wobble feebly under even the most modest of weight, an audible groan can be heard each time I try to zip it up.

Yet there it sits, patiently in the corner, with neither complaint nor hostility, a friendly presence, waiting till I’m once again ready. Ready to stuff it to the gills, roll it from this room and into a plane and on to whatever is to come next. I know it’s silly to love an object, but I love you, big red roller bag, and I hope you can see me through till the end of what has turned out to be a rather long adventure. After this, you will take an extremely well earned vacation. I promise.

Thank you, kind goat herder, for answering my grammatically bizarre questions about your little herd of baby goats in a way that I could understand. Thank you for letting me stare at them with you for a while yesterday and for treating me like anyone else you had met that day. I think you’re my favorite stranger ever.

Thank you, dear student T, for walking and talking with me, inviting me to different events, coming to my office hours, going out of your way to help me, and for not once making me feel like an exotic beast on display at the zoo.

You, too, little students O and L. You’re very different from the others, but in a good way. Thank you for showing me that this place can have variety and a longing for the outside world. Your quirkiness and your ideas are gorgeous treasures that I hope you never lose.

Finally, thank you teacher N, for understanding so much. I appreciate your open mind and your honest words. You’ve made life here much more bearable and I really can’t imagine being here without you.

I hope this list only grows.

There are countless ways to get lost in China, or at least in Chongqing. You can get lost outside, navigating through the winding mazes of narrow streets, beeping bikes, tall buildings, shouting vendors and steep stairs, or you can get lost on a full-beyond-capacity bus by missing your stop and ending up in a part of town you’ve never been to before, even though it looks exactly like where you wanted to go. Everywhere looks like where you wanted to go. Or you can get lost inside, wandering around a many-storied, multi-escalatored mega-mall that connects to four other many-storied, multi-escalatored mega-malls.

The malls here confound me. And the fact that I can spend an entire day exploring the many layered bowels of just one frightens me. And I didn’t even see the whole thing, nor did I go into most of the stores. I just walked. Around and around, up and up. I’m convinced this mall itself never ended, but I eventually had to give up on the endeavor. Especially when I reached the top floor and there, magically, was an exit. To the street level. I was on the sixth floor of the mall, thinking I had long ago left the option to easily exit behind, on the first floor, where I had entered. But there I was, on the top floor, blinking at the light streaming through giant glass doors and the cars zooming by outside.

At first I thought it was a trick of some sort. Beyond the doors lie another section of the mall and a gigantic movie screen showing images meant to make the shoppers feel like they’re on the first floor, giving them the impression that they can leave at any time. But surprise! You’ve found the coat check and you now have to spend another 4 hours finding the exit on the first floor. Haha, gotcha! Well, I wouldn’t let them fool me. I kept my hopes low and gingerly approached the trick exit. Expecting resistance, looking for any sign of a giant movie screen, which is entirely plausible in Chongqing, I pushed on the doors. They swung heavily open and a stream of smoggy air brushed past me and dissipated into the mall. It was real. Real smoggy air. I took a few steps. I was really outside. The cars weren’t actors in a movie, they were real. Real smoggy cars. Huh.

I turned around to look back at the now shut glass doors, reflecting my confused image. I looked lost. And tired. And really, really, unnaturally tall. I’m not sure how long I stared at my giant, mutated reflection, while cars darted to and fro behind me. Something had melted down in my brain and was taking its time to recover rational thought. Finally, my image was swiped away by two young women emerging from the mall, shopping bags dangling at their wrists. They giggled and chattered and glanced at me a million times until I forced myself into motion and launched back into the mall, as much as I disliked it. That sixth-floor outside world, though real, could not be comprehended, nor navigated, by me. Perhaps next time.

Retracing my steps as quickly and accurately as possible, I fled. I flew down escalators, brushed by meandering shoppers, ignored hullo!s left and right, resisted the draw of numerous cafes, stopped only once to eye a comfy looking sweater, and just forty minutes later, I was staring at the exact same scene I had seen on the 6th floor. But I was now on the first floor. Wasn’t I? Giant glass doors. Cars zooming by outside. The doors swung open and a gust of smoggy air entered the mall. Real smoggy air.

I walked out and this time I resisted the urge to glance back at the glass doors with their confused foreigner staring out. I didn’t let myself think about how strange this place is. I just walked until I found my bus stop. That’s the craziest thing. No matter how lost I feel here, I never am. I’ll be approaching absolute certainty that I’m miles away from where I want to be, and then the bus I’m looking for blares its horn at me as it drives by and, without thinking, I run to catch it. All anxiety dissipates. Easy as pie.

I sort of forgot about how much I love receiving stuff from home until yesterday. My mom sent me a letter over a month ago and a small package about 2 weeks ago and I picked them both up yesterday. The package smelled like cinnamon and chocolate and home. I've grown deeply attached to the USPS flat rate box. Its presence means presents. And tasty treats. And sweet little notes written on everything. Thank you, Mom and Ozzie. You guys are so thoughtful.

If you ever feel like stopping by to say hi, or want to send a little letter or package my way, please feel free to do so using the address below. You need to use both the Chinese and the English, so it's probably easiest to just copy and paste the below into a word document and print it out. Bonus cookies if you copy it by hand :)

重庆市渝北空港桃源大道1000号

Erin Aldrich / An Xue

1000 Tao Yuan Avenue

Konggang Yubei Dist.

Chongqing China 401120

Perhaps the point of all of this is redefining comfort. Not just for myself, but for my students, my colleagues, the vendors I buy fruit from, the ladies who sweep the stairs, the guards who patrol the halls, even the people I casually pass on the street. Of course I’m going to feel uncomfortable, being the foreigner. I’m going to flounder through language mistakes and get off at the wrong bus stop and drop chopsticks and sweat buckets and go through innumerable awkward moments - hours, even. That’s a given. But pushing the comfort levels of other people, the people who live here, simply by being present? I never expected that.

The window of my apartment overlooks the main hub of campus, right by the cafeteria and the track, where just about every single student passes every day. I can watch the campus thrive from here. I see students walking to class, chatting with one another, teasing each other, bouncing a basket ball back and forth, jogging to class late. I see them from here and they look perfectly content, going about their business. Then I leave my apartment and walk down the stairs and join them, adding myself to the mix, and the whole scene goes to pot. The basketballs stop bouncing, the teasing ceases, the jogger’s step falters.

A little wake of discomfort follows me everywhere I go. Last week, at my favorite noodle shop, I heard the waiters arguing over who was going to help me. They weren’t arguing because they both wanted to take my order, they were arguing because neither of them wanted to. This was the first time it hit me. I make people uncomfortable for no other reason than being foreign. I’ve since been back several times and, though they’re very friendly, there’s always a hint of tension in the air, not just from the staff, but from the other customers, too. Like I might burst into flames at any moment, right in front of their eyes, so they better keep glancing over as not to miss anything.

I wonder if Chinese people who go to America feel disappointed when they arrive and no one stares at them, nor shouts “ni hao!” at them every few minutes. Diversity is one of America’s greatest strengths and something I’ve been taking for granted my entire life. At what point does a person, or a group of people, become comfortable with being around someone who does not have the same traits as them, to the degree that skin tone becomes invisible, hair color melts away, and blue eyes, green eyes, brown eyes all have the same exact function? I’m looking forward to the day when the scene outside my window will not be spoiled by my presence, and the waiters won’t think twice about jotting down my jaozi order, and everyone can just be themselves.

It started about a year ago, with one innocent visit. I was with a friend in Bucharest and she decided to get a coffee at Starbucks. I was just going to go in and look around and chuckle at how the chain really does not vary in appearance no matter where in the world you are, but then I decided oh what the heck, and bought a coffee for myself. 19 lei worth. It brought back a lot of memories. Good memories. Coffee shop memories. Non-Starbucks coffee shop memories.

We sat at a table with comfy chairs and chatted, warming our hands around our mugs, just like I used to do at my old favorite coffee shops. Up until then, I hadn’t had a Starbucks coffee in a very long time. Years. Up until then, I had done a very decent job of cutting a company I had somewhere along the line deemed unworthy out of my life. That’s where it started. Or, you could say, that’s where it ended. At a Starbucks in Bucharest, my long-term avoidance of corporate America and fast food nation ended.

What followed was a sad downward spiral into some of the horrible places I had taken measures to avoid for years. Dinner at Pizza Hut, followed by a McFlurry at Mickey D’s. Wake up to a scone and a latte at Starbucks. Repeat. I soothed my feelings of treachery by telling myself it was only while I was in Bucharest, which was once every other month or so. But a nagging guilt tainted each sip and every bite. I remember the first few times I went abroad and snorted at the other American tourists eating in places like TGI Friday’s or Ruby Tuesdays or McDonald’s. Why on earth travel if those are the places you are going to eat? Silly American tourists.

Back then it never would have occurred to me that maybe those Americans weren’t tourists. Maybe they lived there and maybe that was their occasional treat to themselves. A treat that made them feel guilty and weak and ashamed, but gave them a few glimpses of a comfortable place far, far away. It might not be the restaurant or the coffee shop they would have picked if they were in America, but because it’s the only option for something some-what familiar, they went with it. To those American diners who I snorted at years ago, I am sorry.

And now that not one, but two Starbucks shops are only an hour-long bus ride away, tempting me every day I have off, I have to put myself in check and rationalize the glee I’ve started feeling every time I know that a Starbucks is near. There is a part of me that still, deeply and possibly irrationally, dislikes the chain and I will never go to a Starbucks in America. I will spend the extra 30 minutes and dollar to hunt down a local coffee shop. That’s because those local coffee shops exist in America, where here, Starbucks is the coffee monopoly and I have not found another option that provides both decent coffee and a comfortable place to drink it. The day I find Chongqing’s version of Bibo, I will be there in a heart beat, thankful for no longer having to feel the guilt I now associate with drinking coffee, a habit I have found impossible to shake.

All of this has been coming about in my head because there’s a WalMart in Chongqing. It’s only 15 minutes away from my campus. I’m going there tomorrow and, this is the worst thing I’ve ever said in my life, I’m excited about it. I’m excited to go to WalMart. Good gracious, what has happened to me? It’s such a strange feeling, being excited about going to a place that I loathe. Starbucks is one thing, but WalMart? I am a horrible let-down of a human being. A traitor no longer eligible for the title semi-cool. Good night.

What does it take before a person’s life is considered a mess? Is it generally addiction related, relationship related, incompetence related, or what? If a person knew only the following things about me and nothing else, what would the conclusions be? I’m just shy of 30 and rarely live in one place for more than a year. I haven’t held down a full time job for more than a year and a half and have had a smattering of random part time jobs. I have two bachelor’s degrees, neither of which I’m actually putting to use, both of which took me seven years to earn. Most of my closest friends I see less than once a year and I often forget to wish them a happy birthday or a merry Christmas. My mom has been taking care of my dog for the past 10 years and I kind of question my ability to properly care for a pet anymore. My little brothers are more used to talking to me on a computer than in person. I have zero savings, no house, no car, no career, no marriage, no kids, no nothing. All I’ve accumulated are experiences and gigabytes upon gigabytes of pictures. To some, I’m sure, my life is a mess. I’ve never thought about it until today, for some reason. I’ve never thought about what it takes to consider a person’s life a mess. I don’t know quite yet if I should label this life of mine a mess, or just a convoluted maze. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been told I’m young and have all the time in the world to figure things out, but some day not too far away, people are going to stop saying that, and all the time in the world will start to run short.

I start teaching full time tomorrow and I damn well better like it.

My university changes every day. When I came for the site visit about two months ago, it was unlivable. Only the skeletons of buildings existed and not an ounce of green could be found on campus, which is strange for here. Now the teaching buildings are complete enough to hold classes all week long, the student dorms are abuzz with life (6 lives per tiny dorm room, to be exact), the soccer field is thickly coated in Astroturf and little oases exist in the most unexpected places. Despite the construction noise that has become the soundtrack to my life, the plethora of bottomless pits waiting to be stumbled into and the red dust hanging in the air and coating EVERYTHING, watching a campus spring up around me is pretty cool. CQIPC used to be in the heart of Chongqing, right across the street from the Olympic stadium and minutes by foot from a monorail stop. Downtown, in all of its skyscraping glory, was only a 15 minute monorail ride away. Now, at the new campus, it takes two hours by two different buses to wind up in downtown. We are literally at the end of the city. Beyond this campus, there is nothing but gently rolling green hills. And I think I’m growing to love it. Across the street from the university is what I would call a village, even though it’s still considered Chongqing. There, chickens run through the streets, which are too narrow with too many stairs to allow for cars, and people sit in front of their houses playing mahjong and chatting. Little kids run around pant-less and gardens are interspersed between the run down houses. I walk through there and I feel much more foreign, but some how much more right, than I ever do when I walk through downtown. I thought I would hate being in a huge city and far away from all the attractions, but who needs another towering skyscraper with a starbucks? My attractions come in the form of clucking chickens and counting stairs. I’m a little worried about my village, though. Future plans for this university include taking over the area across the street and turning it into a shopping district for the campus. I hope those plans include leaving the chickens, pant-less kids and mahjong players alone. We shall see.

Other than the possible demise of the village, I can’t wait to see how my campus develops over the next two years. It’s nice to be a part of it from the beginning, when a lot of things are just as new to everyone else as they are to me. We briefly visited the old campus during the site visit and it is puny in comparison to this place. Many universities are doing exactly what CQIPC is doing – selling their old downtown campus and building a new suburb one – because they need to modernize and to accommodate for an increasing student population. It’s hard right now because all of the teachers live near the old campus, so they’re doing that two hour commute every day, twice. But the monorail will eventually come all the way here and our campus will have its very own stop. I have the feeling the stop will open on the day I leave, but it’s still exciting to think that some day getting to downtown from here will be an hour long coast on the swanky monorail. Until then, I’ll savor walks through my chicken-lined village and venture into the overwhelming depths of downtown sparingly.

Before anyone can begin their higher education as a college student, they must complete military training. The universities provide the training to all incoming freshmen and it's during the first 2 or 3 weeks of the semester. Currently, my school is on day 3, even though it's Saturday. My apartment overlooks the field where all of the training occurs and I've spent many minutes over the past few days observing the drills. Mostly what I've seen has been a lot of organized standing and sitting and walking around with lots of shouting. At all hours of the day, and many hours of the night, there's shouting. It sounds to me like they're yelling "Wheel! Of! Fortune!!" but I'm pretty sure they're just counting to four (yi! er! san! si!) as they do some sort of exercise. I don't know how they do it. It's been over 40/100 degrees the past 3 days and they're dressed in full camouflage suits standing or sitting still in the open sun. Granted, I am a pansy when it comes to heat, but it's got to be awfully sweaty out on that field. For a couple of days last week, my site mate and I contemplated asking our supervisor if we could join in the training, especially since there's very little for us to do right now because nearly all of our students are freshmen. Luckily we didn't pursue the idea. I've been hunkering down in my gloriously air conditioned apartment and getting some lesson planning and studying done. On Wednesday, the high is supposed to dip to 27/80 and I am counting down the days. Oh, to walk outside and be comfortable.

When I do toughen up and get outside, I experience a roller coaster of thoughts, especially when I'm alone. I'm trying to figure out the best way to handle being stared at and/or called to. Even though I'm in a huge city with lots of foreigners, we are still few and far between and I'm on the outskirts of the city. As I walk, I feel my hackles go up as a hand full of faces turn. I see a girl glance at me and whisper something to her friend, who immediately turns to look at me. She turns back to her friend and they both start giggling and whispering to each other. Maybe they were talking about the building behind me, who knows. I shrug and walk on, feeling confused and slyly checking my fly. A group of boys walks by. They stare, but smile, so I smile back. Okay. That was okay. A few minutes later, I walk by a building that's under construction. From within, I hear someone shout "Hello! Hello!!", but I see no one. I continue walking as another Hello rings out, followed by some string of Chinese that I can't understand. Whatever. I can't even see the dude and he's yelling at me. I give no response and ignore the subsequent hellos. My walk continues. I pass several people who seem to be purposefully not looking at me, though the side-ways glances are still noticeable. Thanks, I guess. Next a girl walks briskly past me. As she does, she smiles brightly and says “hello!” I smile back, a little surprised, and say hi. Well, she was nice. I hope I seemed nice. Huh. What next. I approach an old man who's carrying two heavy baskets that are slung over his shoulders with a thick bamboo rod. As we pass each other, I look to see if he's staring at me. He is. I match his stare. Despite his obviously heavy load, we nearly turn around backwards to stare at each other as we walk. Finally, he turns back and I breathe a sigh of relief. I know. I look weird. I dress weird. I sweat a lot. I know us foreigners are very very foreign here. I know. I get it. You're curious. You're surprised. You're happy I'm here or you’re not. You want me to feel welcome here or you want to make fun of me. Okay. So why can't I just deal and not let it get to me? Do I try to respond to all the hellos? Do I stare back? Do I smile at the giggles? Do I walk with head down and eyes glued to the side walk? I can’t figure it out. Each time I go for a walk, I feel humiliated, annoyed, rude, awkward, surprised and happy at some point. Every single time. It’s not just a walk anymore. It’s a parade. I’ll be here on this campus for two years and I’m going to make it a goal that I will one day go for a walk and feel nothing but happy. All we need is to get used to each other.

I was almost a Stephanie. The top two picks on a pretty long list of possible baby names came down to Erin and Stephanie. We still have the list somewhere. It was written before my parents knew I was a girl and on the backside a few boy's names are scrawled. If I had been born with a Y chromosome, I'd be Anthony right now. I wonder what he'd be like. I'm not sure how Erin beat out Stephanie, or Anthony for that matter, maybe it was a coin toss, or my quarter of Irish blood taking charge, but I'm glad she won. I don't know how much really depends on name, but I'm pretty sure the Stephanie me would be an entirely different me.

I now have another name. When I arrived in China, my Chinese name was ready and waiting for me. An Xue, pronounced more like On Shoe-ay, was given to me by our training site language teachers, who all sat down with our pictures and our English names and decided what would suit each of the 23 of us best. Like in Romania, names are said family name first, then given name. An is my family name, meaning peaceful, and Xue is my given name and means snow, so my Chinese name is Peaceful Snow. All pale jokes aside, I like my name. During training, I was called by this name by all of the teachers, my host family and many of my fellow trainees. It has become part of who I am and I can feel An Xue taking on a life of her own. I hope I can cultivate her life into something unique and meaningful. I've spent 29 years turning into Erin, good and bad, and I hope I'm able to do something halfway respectable for An Xue over the next two years. It's a little intimidating, a clean slate. A name waiting for its history to start.

So far, An Xue has eaten hundreds of kilos of rice and has developed strong cravings for the grain when it's not eaten at least once a day. She has also acquired a taste for spicy food, which was previously seen as an impossible feat. She can use chopsticks to eat peanuts, noodles, eggs, pork, oatmeal, cow tongue, cow tail, banana, apple, pig lips AND spinach. She can also spit fish bones directly on the table without thinking too much about it. She can haggle for prices, even though her language skills are laughable (literally), and she will eventually figure out how to get from A to B, be it by bus, by foot, by train, by monorail or by taxi. She's got squatting down to an art and rarely misses. She can strike up elementary conversations with strangers, though those conversations don't go very far. Yet. Basically, she can survive. Now it's time to get the real story started. Teaching starts next week, just one class for now, but hopefully it will get the life of An Xue rolling a bit faster.

In December, a friend of mine told me about her plans to transfer from Romania to the Peace Corps Nicaragua program, an idea which had never occurred to me. I had considered extending my service in Romania or transferring to the TEFL program there, but my enthusiasm for staying in Romania, as much as I love it, eventually waned and was replaced with the desire to experience something new. I talked with our country director about transfer options and China's TEFL program quickly rooted itself into my brain and I applied to transfer. And was accepted. So here I sit after being home for one month and getting reacquainted with all the glorious things that I love about Nevada, those dusty hills and that dry sage breeze and all my family and friends, knowing that in one more month, I'll be back on a plane heading even farther away. To Chengdu for another round of PST and then to who knows where for two years of teaching English to university students. Why am I doing this all over again? I certainly went through some rough and low times, but now that Romania is in the past, those bad times pale in comparison to the good times. The mean people have been nearly forgotten and the kind ones bring my memories to life and make me smile. The government's corruption can no longer compete with the people's compassion. And I don't want this challenge to be over yet. I'm not ready to be an RPCV and to find that elusive next thing to do and to decide what my long term future entails. I still don't know what I want to do, so I'll continue with this temporary thing that is changing who I am and making me love life and breaking my heart all at the same time, over and over again. Put me back on the roller coaster, I'm not done yet.

I've been home for a week now and feel surprisingly ok. Based on the stories I've heard about returning home after two years, I was expecting all kinds of anxiety attacks and sleeping issues and instability, but I feel fine. A little out of step and weird, but fine. Perhaps I'm not yet in the clear, though. Both Reno and Romania feel like imaginary places, like they belong in a book of myths and legends. From Dracula's Backyard to the Biggest Little City: A Tale of Two Towns. Or something like that. I like how Romania feels right now. I love the country in a different, more powerful way now that it's a memory. It's a warm, light place in my brain that, when focused on too intently, can bring tears to the eyes. I hope that feeling never fades.

There was an older Romanian woman on the flight from London to Dallas. She was alone and could speak no English. At Heathrow, I heard her ask a man if he spoke Romanian. After repeating herself three times and getting the response "what?" three times, she gave up and started shuffling through her purse. Her hands shook a little. Surrounded by a sea of English speakers for the first time in two years, I was immediately drawn to her, and found myself clinging to this last little piece of Romania for as long as possible. We found a great deal of comfort in the other's presence and I couldn't help but get choked up as she boarded her plane to Tulsa, Oklahoma an hour before my flight to Reno. Goodbye, Romania. You kept me company all the way to America and I'm very grateful for that.

My mom, sister and sister's boyfriend met me at the airport with a welcome home bouquet and balloons. The length of space between where I could see them and where I could actually hug them seemed to last a decade and I think I may have pushed a few meandering fellow-passengers out of the way. Sorry about that. Tears of joy are strange creatures and I'm still trying to figure them out. Obviously, I have done alot of crying over the past three weeks. Tears for leaving, tears for missing and tears for arriving. But for now, I'm just happy to be home. I've really missed this place.

The final night in Sfantu Gheorghe. My two very heavy bags are packed, this amazing apartment is as clean as I could get it, I have said enough goodbyes to run my eyes dry and I have six more hours until I need to leave for my final checkout in Bucharest. It goes without saying, I can't believe my time here is already up. I've been telling everyone (including myself) that I'll be back in two years for a visit. It's the only way I can get myself to leave. This place and these people have given me something too wonderful to permanently leave behind. As Arnie is known to say from time to time, I'll be back. There's no doubt in my mind. Thank you, Saint George. I love you and I will miss you more than you'll ever know. Va pup.

You'd think living in a different culture for two years is long enough to learn the ropes and to know how to avoid making mistakes, right? Well, not for me. I haven't made any hideous horrible mistakes, but, with all of these semi goodbye parties and gatherings I've been hosting and attending, I've made quite a few little baby mistakes.

Mistake 1: Coffee. I forgot that Romanians typically like their coffee very strong and very small. So when I brought out a tray of large mugs brimming with weak American style coffee for my tutor and some other friends, they immediately and kindly asked to pour half back into the pot, half of which ended up on the counter due to my own shakiness. They drank the rest of the coffee without complaint, though I'm sure it was too weak for their liking. Oops.

Mistake 2: Diplomas. I also forgot how much people here love diplomas. You can hand out diplomas for ANYTHING and often times they are expected after a special class, meeting or session. During the party at the EPA, somebody not in the English class asked when the English class was going to get their diplomas. It had never even crossed my mind to make them diplomas, but of course they deserve them and how could I not have thought of that? Four hours later, I was busily designing generic diplomas for both the English class and the drama club, which were received with beaming smiles. Phew.

Mistake 3: Cake. A friend made a cake for one of the going away parties. It was a beautiful huge chocolate thing that looked heavenly. After they brought it and some presents out, I hugged and pup'd them and opened the presents and then we all sat back down and started chatting. Time went on and I kept staring at the cake...wondering when we were going to eat it. Finally, after twenty tortuous minutes, I asked if we should slice into it. The lady who made it said, a little exasperated, "We're all waiting for you to cut it! You have to serve it because it's your cake!" I jumped into action and five minutes later, we were devouring the cake. It was delicious.

They're all little harmless mistakes, but still mistakes that a local wouldn't make. I wonder what mistakes I'd be making after living here for ten years. Or would I then finally be a pro.

The Drama Club put on its last play of the year tonight. It was a spin on fairy tales and involved Prince Charming and Snow White a year after their wedding. Special appearances were made by Chuck Norris, Bob Marley, the Wicked Witch of the West, Hansel (of Hansel and Gretel), Little Red Riding Hood, and even Death himself showed up. The students wrote the entire script and designed the set (we actually had a set this time) and came up with their costumes and did everything on their own. Yet, for some reason, they don't think they can continue on next year without me. Although I'm touched, it's nonsense. I wish they could see how talented they are. We'll meet up one more time next week for a little goodbye party, then my time with the Saint George Drama Club will come to a close, most likely tearfully. All I can do is hope that the club will still be running when I come back for a visit, 5 years down the line. That would be so cool.

Today also marked my goodbye party at the EPA. Despite not going in much at all over the past few months, nearly the entire agency stopped by to bid me farewell and munch on a cookie or two. It made me realize how much I did, at certain times, enjoy working there and how nice some of the people are. For a while, I had it in mind to leave without really saying goodbye, but I'm so glad I didn't do that. Several of them have been a part of my life for the past two years.

I feel surprisingly numb. I had my first going away party on Monday with the 5 people I've worked the most with at the EPA. When they brought out the surprise cake and gifts, I started to cry. It didn't last long and wasn't too over-dramatic, but the cake and gifts and kindness were unexpected and really hit home. I'm leaving. I'm going to miss these people and it seems that they're going to miss me, too. Since then, I think something inside has shut down a little bit and isn't registering all of these goodbyes and isn't letting me cry. It'll wake up at some point. Maybe in Bucharest. Maybe on the plane. Maybe at home. It'll wake up and want to speak in Romanian and wonder why I've left and crave the comforting te pups, but none will be found. Hopefully I'll be around my family and friends by then and their presence will undoubtedly lessen the shock.

If Iceland's volcano or any other sort of natural disaster doesn't get in the way, I have one week left in Sfantu Gheorghe and 9 days left in Romania. I'm so sad to leave, I can't wait to get home, I'm so sad to leave, I can't wait to get home, repeat to infinity.

A little warning: this entry might be a bit much for animal lovers...

Last Friday, Mihaela, Hana, Auntie, little Luca and I drove to a nearby village to pick up the most important part of our Easter feast. By the time we arrived, the lamb had already been killed and hung eerily from a rafter in the barn. It hung upside down with a red streak across its woolly neck and a bucket on the floor underneath, catching all the drippings. The lower half of the legs had been removed.

As I squinted from a safe distance, I caught sight of three little lamb bodies already skinned and cleaned hanging in the back. Our small friend had a ways to go before it was ready to be packaged up in the trunk of Mihaela's Dacia. I watched as a lone lamb emerged from a separate barn, took in the four bundles - one fluffy and creme colored and much too similar to itself, the others smooth and sinewy white and somewhat sinister - and, with two sad bleats, retreated back inside the barn.

Before my stomach could turn too much, we were ushered into a small kitchen and served coffee and fried patties of some sort by Mihaela's aunt, who took great strides in ensuring that I and the rest of the guests had plenty to eat and drink. Small talk and banter ensued and my mind quickly stopped following the conversation and wandered out to the barn and its four little tenants. I followed Luca's initiative and darted outside at the first opportunity. He, being almost two years old, was more curious about the outdoors world than the indoors one.

We wandered over to our prized lamb, who was now being attended to by an overall-ed man with a sharp knife and a surprisingly kind smile. The progress that had occurred in the past 10 minutes was significant. It now looked as though the lamb was wearing a wool skirt that, flipped upside down as it was, dangled at its chest. The white stockinged legs and lower body lay exposed. The man obviously knew what he was doing. With gentle punches and flicks of the knife between the skin and the muscle, he separated the two and progressed in quick circles, around and around the lamb's body, until the skirt became a cape that hung from the lamb's shoulders and nearly touched the floor.

Luca was just as transfixed by this process as me. We stood there, side by side, watching a dead animal lose its fur and become meat. Right before our eyes. I wondered how I would be different if I had witnessed such a thing for the first time when I was two instead of twenty nine, and continued witnessing such things throughout my life. Would I still feel a weakness towards every baby animal on the planet? Would I still shudder every time I saw a badly limping stray dog wander into the street? Would I still feel a distinct difference between the lamb meat on my plate and the lamb bleating in the barn? As the man prepared to remove the skin from the lamb's face, I turned to leave, knowing my limit for the day had been reached. Luca, however, did not follow me.

The next day, I helped Mihaela prepare some traditional lamb recipes. Luckily, the lamb had been chopped up into manageable pieces by the time I arrived and I spent the day dicing the lamb's heart, liver, kidneys and lungs, all while its tongue poked out at me from a bowl on the other side of the table. We also prepped some of the meat to go into a ciorba (traditional soup) and to be roasted with potatoes. The following day, Easter Sunday, my friend and I arrived and we all sat down to a table of lamb dishes and ate to our heart's content. This proved to be the closest I have come to seeing a meal through from start to end.

Last Easter, the piatza sold lambs by the half. I had always assumed that I would pass out at the sight of the innards of any once living being, but as I strolled through the market that day, perusing the aisles of half-bodied lambs, I found myself more fascinated than grossed out, like I was revisiting the interesting and unseen side of Biology 101. The piatza buzzed with shoppers probing and prodding different parts of the lambs' entrails, discussing signs of health and quality.

Where in the US could you go to buy a lamb by the half or see one being skinned and prepped for cooking? Not that it's something I want to witness regularly, but it's a part of the food process that seems to be locked away and inaccessible where I grew up, which leads to a person believing they will pass out at the sight of animal intestines. Or leads to a person not understanding the connection between the piece of meat on their fork and the lamb frolicking in the field.

I'm sure there is a sizable population in America of people who witness these things daily, on farms, in butcheries, etc., but I have the feeling the average American is much like myself and has a huge gap of vast nothingness between the image of an animal and the image of its meat, where here, people start understanding the process when they're two and probably have a more accurate idea of what it means to be a carnivore.

Since being here, I've become vegetarian when I cook at home, but almost never refuse meat when it's offered to me at someone's home, especially around the holidays. I feel better about eating that meat, knowing that it most likely came from a nearby village and was carefully tended to by a person with a kind smile and a few healthy and happy (for the time being) animals in the barn out back.

No, I do not know the child in the picture above, but he would squat down and make that face every time I pointed the camera at him. I bet he never knew it would get him featured on my blog. Heh.

Today I said what I think may have been my first goodbye to a local friend. Anisoara is leaving on Saturday to visit her daughter in Virginia and won't be back until mid May, a couple of weeks after I'll have left. Her daughter moved to the states a few years ago to be with her American husband and last year at about this time, their twins were born. A little boy and a little girl, the boy with dark green eyes and the girl with bright blue. I know because Anisoara has shown me countless pictures of them. She has also shown me countless pictures of her daughter, her husband, her house in the countryside, her dog, her life.

The first time I got a peek into this quirky lady's life was two years ago, when I stayed at her apartment during my site visit. When I think back to that weekend, which was my first introduction to the city of Sfantu Gheorghe, to my assigned agency (the EPA) and to the people I'd be working with for the next two years, one word comes to mind: awkward. The whole weekend was full of awkward, especially with Anisoara. But not a bad awkward, a very comical and enjoyable awkward.

In the mornings, she'd poke her head into my room and say "Ereen, please come to chicken." I'd get up and go into the kitchen (aka chicken), where she had already set out a typical Romanian light breakfast of cucumbers, tomatoes, eggs and bread. As we munched and tried to think of things to say (my Romanian and her English were at about the same level: beginner), she would start dancing to the music playing in the background as she ate. Just a little bit, a little sway and dip of the shoulders, a little bob of the head and a little wobble on the stool. Then she'd start to hum along with the tune and clearly there was no other option than to join in. So there we'd sit, eating the breakfast she'd prepared, awkwardly dancing and humming in our seats. And smiling.

On the last night of my site visit, I was in my room pretending to study when she knocked on the door, walked in, sat down next to me and opened up a photo album on her lap. During that entire weekend, I had hardly learned anything about her, but through those pictures I learned volumes. It was easy. She'd point to a picture of a young, beautiful smiling lady in a park and say "my daughter, Virginia" and I'd nod. Then a picture of a handsome man "daughter husband" and I'd nod. Next came an old picture of a man in the snow "My husband, dead" and I frowned. She never explained how he died. The next picture was newer and showed a man working on a ship. She said "new husband" and I nodded. It went on like this for over an hour and I learned the basic story of my new friend's life.

There is total truth in the phrase "a picture's worth a thousand words", especially when those thousand words are in a foreign language. Just this week, Anisoara showed up at work with a new stack of photos to show her friends and I looked over every single one of them. She brings in new photos every month or so and I never tire of looking at them, for some reason. Especially the ones of her daughter. I think it's because we're leading opposite lives, in a way. She being the Romanian in America and me being the American in Romania.

Anisoara has always been the top attendee at my English hour, almost never missing a class, and I hope those lessons help her out over the next two months as she gets a sample of what I consider home. Today we kissed eachother's cheeks and hugged and I tried not to think too deeply as I said "mai vorbim, mai vorbim" (we'll talk more, we'll talk more) as we parted. Anisoara's one of the few people I've met here who almost always has a smile on her face and a hearty laugh ready to go. I'll miss her.

You know how sometimes you discover certain songs at the exact right moment? The moment when that song rings its truest for you, and if you had discovered it 6 months ago, you might not have even noticed it (which would have been impossible in this case because the album was released a month or two ago, but still...). Last night I found Laura Veirs' album July Flame and listened to the last track - Make Something Good - maybe twenty times. If you're a PCV at the end of your service, maybe it'll ring true to you, too. Or anyone who has had the best of intentions for something. Here are the lyrics, but even better -

here's the song.

(I hope this isn't some how illegal...)

I wanted to make something sweet

The blood inside the maple tree

The sunlight trapped inside the wood

Make something good

I wanted to make something strong

An organ pipe in a cathedral

That stays in tune through a thousand blooms

Make something good

It's gonna take a long, long time

But we're gonna make something so fine

I wanted to make something pure

Emerald field from steer manure

A wild-eyed child in a moonlit room

Make something good

I wanted to make something built to last

A bottled ship with a golden mast

And through the squall the course stays true

Make something good

Make something good

It's gonna take a long, long time

But we're gonna make something so fine

It's gonna take a long, long time,

But we're gonna make something so fine

- Laura Veirs, July Flame, Make Something Good

My apologies for talking so much about the looming end of my service on here, but I find it difficult to think of anything else right now. It's weird. The little knotted ball of anxiety that formed in my stomach just before I left home two years ago has returned. It's not like any other ball of anxiety. It's the lots-of-stress-and-tearful-farewells-on-the-horizon ball. The one that shakes you awake at 3am to ask where your original passport is and isn't calmed until you go and find it, just where you left it two years ago. The one that can't stop pondering the amount of material a person can accumulate in 24 months. The one that pitches the hardest each time you say goodbye to someone and wonder how many more times you'll get to say goodbye. Just when you seem to strike a balance in your life, a balance that gives you enough work to keep you involved and busy, enough free time to take long walks and learn to cook, enough friends to have weekend plans and tea times, and enough confidence to feel good about where you're at and what you're doing, it's time to wrap things up in a tidy package and say goodbye. When I signed up for the peace corps, one of the main things I was hesitant about was the two year commitment. Two years? Might as well sign my life away. Why isn't there a one year peace corps program? Well, once I reached my one year mark, the answer was obvious. After a year, I was truly still at the beginning. And if I word it in my head a certain way, I will always be at the beginning. So many unanswered questions and unrealized projects remain that it's difficult to feel like I've accomplished anything. BUT when I think about how hard I've tried and about the things I've been a part of and have witnessed, it all makes sense. It all seems about right. The past two years will never fit into a tidy, easy to handle package. They will remain in a massive heap on the attic floor. A heap that can be carefully and lovingly picked over, with forgotten shining treasures showing up in odd locations.

Now that my tutor's two year long maternity leave has ended, she's been back at the high school teaching English. So instead of tutoring lately, I've been going and observing her classes just to get a feel for what a more realistic, every day classroom is like instead of the "special-occasion" classes I've been teaching. The first class I observed was all tenth grade girls preparing for some sort of essay competition. I chose to sit quietly and unobtrusively in the back, hoping to blend into the wallpaper (as tends to be my norm) and disturb the class as little as possible. As a native English speaker, I figured the class would be a piece of cake and I'd know everything that was going on the whole time. Ha. After the students read the ideas they had written down for their essays, Miha went over conditionals. Conditionals are typically "if" statements, like "If you bake cookies, I will eat them". Simple, right? Well, there are a few different types of conditionals. Four, to be exact. There is the type 0 conditional, which contains present simple verbs in both the if clause and the main clause. For example, the sentence "If you heat cookie dough, it bakes" is a type 0 conditional. As Miha explained this and wrote on the chalk board, the students busily copied in their notebooks. Type 1 conditionals consist of an if clause with a present simple verb and a main clause with a future simple verb, such as "If you bake cookies too long, they will burn." Type 2 conditionals are used to express unreal situations in the present or future. At this point in the lecture, Miha caught my eye. "What's wrong?" she asked. "Am I incorrect?" It was at that moment, as all of the students turned to look at me, that I became aware of the expression on my face and immediately took action to correct it. I tried to untwist the look of utter confusion and fear into a smile and said "Oh, no. Looks good to me!" The students smiled and turned back towards the board just as the bell rang and Miha assigned the night's homework. Conditionals.

Thank you, stars, for the fact that high school was ten years ago.

Shortly after arriving in Romania (which occurred exactly two years ago today), I met a few volunteers who were at the end of their terms. They had just attended their Close of Service conference and were winding down their projects and disentangling themselves from life here. They seemed so knowledgeable back then, so wise. And calm. I couldn't wait to be in those comfy, well worn shoes. I didn't want to steal their plane tickets and go home, I didn't want to magically speed things up, I just hoped that I could make it to that point some day and emanate the same sereneness. Then, two months later, after a blink of the eye, those volunteers were gone. Poof. The end. I'm getting on a train tomorrow afternoon that will take me to the city of Sibiu, where my own Close of Service conference will be held. Then, two months later, I'll be boarding a plane Reno-bound...poof. The end. In many ways, I can't believe I made it. Two years ago, I think I would have pegged myself as the first to go home, but I like the fact that I am capable of surprising myself.

Tonight, after an enthusiastic session with the drama club and an interesting showing of Hamlet, I walked home with three of the club members and one of the teachers. The five of us chatted about science fiction novels, Harry Potter movies, Star Wars, Shakespeare and baked goods. We discussed the next play for the club and how difficult it is to work with the younger students. We laughed about how my voice gets high-pitched and quiet when I want the students to focus and stop being silly. Finally, as we went our separate ways, we joked about next year and how I won't be here. In the silent space between them and my front door, I pictured this place without me and felt the sliver of soon-to-be sorrow deepen. Another one of life's stages that will be sorely missed.

I believe I have created a monster. A cookie monster, much like myself (I am indeed eating a cookie AT THIS VERY MOMENT). I like to make cookies and give them to people, so I've been doing that sporadically for my tutor over the past two years. Her son Luca will turn two in April and has taken on the energy and chaos of a tornado. Their apartment has one of those kitchen connecting living room connecting hallway connecting kitchen circles that any child or energetic dog would love to make themselves dizzy with and many times my tutoring session contains at least 5 minutes of watching Miha chase Luca around and around, until he's caught or takes a faulty step and plows full speed into the washer door, making it slam shut. As he's gotten older, he's been allowed to sample my cookie offerings and has developed a strong affinity for the snickerdoodle. So much so that the other day, as he ran his laps and Miha chased him, I pulled out the signature flimsy plastic baggie filled with goodies and he stopped dead in his tracks. "Erin papi?" he asked as he took a tentative step towards me, eyes wide. Papi means snack and the way he says "Erin" pretty much melts my heart. I confirm his hopes, "Da, Erin papi." I hand the bag to Miha and feel a bit dejected as his attention immediately snaps to her. By the time Miha gets the bag open and hands him a (possibly not so) well deserved snickerdoodle, he has said "Erin papi" about twenty times and has stretched to his absolute tallest tippy toes reaching for the bag. She thanks me for the cookies and asks me to please write the recipe down so she can make them. Apparently he asks for "Erin papi" every thirty minutes or so every day. I can't help but feel a small dash of pride at creating another cookie monster. I do not, however, endorse children eating cookies every day. Unless it's an Erin papi.

It seems to be customary for many volunteers to create some lists right about now, with a little over two months to go. One list to bring back the good memories, one list to bring back the not so good and one list to remind me of why I missed home so much. So, here goes, in no particular order.

List Number One: What I'll miss

1. My tutor Mihaela and her two-year-old son Luca (he was born just before I arrived) greeting me at the door every time I show up for tutoring and bidding me farewell each time I depart.

2. The little crafting adventures Anca, her three-year-old daughter Dodo (short for Theodora) and I embark on whenever we get together - whether it's painting eggs, baking cookies, planting tomatoes, creating Christmas ornaments, making paper stars or pressing juice, it never ceases to be awesome.

3. Hearing the drama club chatting excitedly from our classroom before I enter and getting a small sample of their uninhibited enthusiasm.

4. Letting the English Hour at the EPA slip into a brief gossip in Romanian session.

5. Responding to all of the goodbyes and thank yous after a successful American Corners class.

6. Visiting my favorite little craft shop and chatting with the kindest shop keeper in the world.

7. Going to the post office and picking up packages from the lady who knows me by name now...though I don't know hers.

8. Fresh fruits and veggies from the piata in summer.

9. Trains.

10. The view from my apartment.

11. The sounds of church bells and horse shoe clomps.

12. Wonderful volunteer friends, who I will hopefully see in the states some day.

13. Being able to walk everywhere.

14. Drinking tea and reading in my favorite coffee shop, Tein.

15. Wandering around our nature reserve, Reci.

16. Ease of TRAVEL.

17. Te pups.

18. Romanian and Hungarian.

I'm realizing this list could go on quite a while, so I'll end it here.

List Number Two: Things I Will Not Miss

1. Stray dogs and the poop that goes with them.

2. Knowing that my landlords (who I do actually really like, just not this part) could drop by unexpectedly at any moment to fill up my fridge and freezer with more of their own stuff.

3. The language barrier.

4. The pressure to always be out integrating and being a good, productive, useful volunteer.

5. The crazy corruption and bizarre bureaucracy that exist here.

6. Icy sidewalks that never get salted or shoveled.

7. Smelly, drunk, rude men. Especially on the trains.

8. Touchy train conductors.

9. The bubble-gum way things are often fixed.

10. The mischievous malicious mosquitoes.

11. Discrimination towards minorities, especially the Rroma.

12. Homophobia.

13. Late trains.

14. Grody bathrooms without toilet paper and/or hand soap.

15. The mold growing on some of my walls.

16. Crazy arse drivers.

List Number Three: What I'm Looking Forward To

1. Actually hanging out in person with my family and friends. Hugs.

2. Going for long walks with mom and Ozzie.

3. Meeting all the new babies and puppies and kitties and goats that people have acquired.

4. Kickboxing till I can't move.

5. Bibo and the American coffee culture.

6. Access to English books that I want to read.

7. Swimming in Lake Tahoe till I turn blue!

8. A wide variety of restaurants with a wide variety of food options.

9. Oh man, relearning moonlight sonata and all my other songs.

10. Shopping in stores with sizes and styles that I like.

11. Painting pottery at clay canvas.

12. Going to shows, concerts, plays and movies in a language that I can understand.

13. Weddings.

14. The clear, blue desert sky and the dusty brown hills. Nevada.

15. English.

16. Chocolate chips and all the other baking supplies I've been having shipped over.

17. Cheap contact solution.

18. MINI EGGS!!!

There. My customary lists are complete. There's quite a bit more that I could add to each, but this covers the basics, I think. Time for bed!

The most common way for women to greet one another here is to kiss each other on both cheeks. Typically, you kiss the left cheek first, then the right, which I figured out after many an awkward moment. Occasionally, this will happen a couple of times. Left cheek, right cheek, then back to left and one more on the right. Just for good measure. Men also do this from time to time, to women who are not their wives nor their girlfriends and even to other men. For how homophobic the majority of Romania seems to be, it's a pleasant shock to see two young men pecking cheeks and firmly embracing. Pecks between men seem to be reserved for the closest friends, and only for special occasions. In Romanian, to kiss one's cheek is to "pup", which is pronounced, amusingly, "poop". "Te pup" means "I kiss you" and "ne pupam" means "we kiss each other". Te pup is most commonly said amongst close girlfriends when they are departing and I always feel a rush of glee when somebody says it to me. It's not a phrase typically used between basic acquaintances. You have to earn your pups, so whenever I hear a "te pup!" aimed my way, I know I've done something right. The best, though, is when you greet someone and get the actual pups. On your cheeks. Yes, it was very awkward at first, but now it's often the highlight of my day. And yesterday just happened to be the Happy New Year pup-fest at work. The best pup-fest of them all. I hadn't been to work in nearly a month due to vacations and my aversion to the place since my counterpart quit, but now that I'm back and needing things to do, I decided to go in. Every single lady and a few of the guys I ran into gave me a heart felt pup on each cheek and welcomed me back with open arms.

Some days are just really nice.

Do you ever feel like you've missed some important life step? A step that everyone else around you has taken or is in the process of taking, but somehow you skipped it and are now left outside the loop, jogging on a different track. Wondering where everyone went. It happens when the inside jokes formerly close friends post on facebook make zero sense to you and feel more like messages of "you don't know me anymore" than silly gags. Or when the entire sphere of people you know seems to be pairing off into happy little couples, dining and dancing and marrying and multiplying, with or without you, in the face of your bewilderment. How does it happen? How could you miss so much of the lives you once felt close to? I guess it's an easy question to answer. You leave for two years. It's more than that, though. I don't feel like I've known someone, really known someone and been a more or less daily part of their life, for more than two years. Ever. Best friends, boyfriends, whoever. My mom, dad and sister being the only exceptions. My friends back home who I consider close are the ones I correspond with through some sort of medium maybe once a month, tops. I know the very simple, surface basics of what's going on in their lives. My close friends here will all be scattering to different parts of the world in four months, myself included. And even now I rarely get to see them. I'm horrible at staying in touch. How do people do it? How do people keep their close friends close? Is it something none of us can do? Is it something only the loners slash wanderers struggle with? Am I missing something important?

Religion for many Romanians is a pretty big deal and it's often one of the first things a total stranger will ask you about, especially if they're a little older. "Hello, I'm so and so. It's nice to meet you. What's your religion?". As someone who doesn't identify with anything, this kind of conversation always makes me squirm and has elicited the most bizarre responses that I can not explain. I've been Methodist (which I was actually, once upon a time, confirmed as), Protestant, Catholic and Buddhist. Once, I even said I was Mormon. I wasn't trying to lie and I wasn't trying to have fun. But I didn't want them to dislike me for not having a religion, so I said the first thing that came to mind. The one time I said that I didn't belong to any religion, I received worried looks and heard an exasperated "how can you not have a God?!", followed by the cold shoulder. I don't want to paint Romanians as judgmental or super hyper religious, but it's very strange to them if you don't belong to ANY religious sect at all. You can say pretty much any religion, and they're satisfied and will continue with the conversation as normal. In fact, many do not actively participate in or attend their church because in the past, particularly under Ceausescu's reign, churches were used as spy mechanisms for the communist party and the people quickly lost their desire to attend mass after their conversations with priests were used against them. The lack of trust remains, but they still believe. They still cross themselves three times whenever coming anywhere near an Orthodox church. They still whisper a prayer while settling into the driver's seat, even though the seat belt remains untouched. They still exclaim "Jesus has risen, yes he has risen!" on Easter morning, while the candles lit just a few hours before by the same holy flame slowly burn out. This is where I find myself liking religion, in whatever form you please. It may have no logical sense, but I feel comforted when the bunica sitting across from me on the train crosses herself and whispers her prayers for our safe travel. It reminds me to take a moment and just hope that it all goes well. Not to necessarily pray to some sort of God, but to think about where I am, what I am doing and how undoubtedly fragile life is, especially when speeding masses of metal are involved. What's wrong with that? What's wrong with stopping once in a while during the day to think about a sick friend or a family member who's overseas? God doesn't have to be a part of any of it, or can be all of it. Does praying necessarily have to be religious? Can't I use the calls to prayer that I witnessed in Istanbul as a time to think about my family, acknowledge the fact that they're thousands of miles away and hope that they are all doing ok? I'm not charging one super being with the power to protect my loved ones, but really what's the difference between saying "please protect them" and "I hope they are ok"? Perhaps this is what Romanians are getting at when they can not believe that a person has no religion. Maybe it's not just about God to them, but about hoping, too. Hoping and praying and crossing all mushed up into one.

Ack, I need to go to bed.

Despite the fact that I still have more than four months to go, I can already feel myself detaching. I don't know if I'm ready to detach, but it's happening. In the evenings, I spend my time researching grad school programs for next year instead of baking cookies for my tutor and friends. I don't feel the need to go for two hour walks to explore my city anymore. I feel little guilt when I spend a full day indoors doing my own thing. While I look forward to next year and pursuing a new path, a peculiar sadness is taking root. Something I don't think I've felt before. Perhaps it could be defined as the recognition of a dissatisfaction that has spanned nearly two years of trying. Last night I went through some of my old computer files and came across a word document saved as "ProjectIdeas". It was last modified on June 30th of 2008, back when I was a different volunteer. Upon opening it, I found a list of all the little project ideas my brain came up - building a trail and sign system through Reci, forming a sister park relationship through the National Park System in the US, creating and conducting outdoor educational classes, developing a theater and music in the park program, establishing a pedestrian and bike path between Sfantu Gheorghe and Reci, on and on the list goes. There are about twenty ideas. The final being to build a welcome sign and some picnic tables and trash cans at Reci, which was the only project I was able to pursue with the EPA and which, as previously mentioned, failed. Peace Corps always stresses how much they want their volunteers to feel successful. How can you state with certainty whether or not two years of your life have been successful? I may not have accomplished a single item on that old list of mine, but there are certain things I've done and am proud of that aren't on the list. Perhaps it's too early to reflect on the past two years, but I'm struggling with this peculiar sadness taking root and pushing back the urge to start feeling dissatisfied. I've had choices to make every single day and each one has led me to where I now sit. That's all there is to it. It is what it is. I've tried. I may not have put every last little bit of energy into everything, but I have tried. And now I'm starting to move on. When the time comes, I know that I will dearly miss this place and the friends I've made here, and I'm comforted by this fact. It means that I have done something right.

Of course, when I type "the real world" into the Google search engine, I am offered nothing but links to information on the MTV hit reality show of the same name. A small part of me had hoped for a link that led to something intriguing. Something more deserving of the title "the real world". Over the course of my soon to be 29 years, the term "the real world" has usually had a negative connotation attached to it. Something along the lines of a damp and dreary cubicle with a bleary monitor displaying never ending numbers that are attended to by tired, dark-ringed eyes and hands burdened by carpal tunnel syndrome. A little bit of hell in exchange for being able to pay the bills. It's something that I've wanted to avoid at all costs, even after MTV glorified it, but it seems to be an inevitability according to the masses. Volunteers frequently toss the phrase around when referring to going back home and finding work. "It's time to go back and join the real world..." I wonder when the term was first used to mean "a boring job" instead of "the Earth unadulterated". If you look simply at the words and not at the current use, the phrase The Real World would, to me, evoke images of far off places. Of the African Savannah and the distant, icy reaches of Antarctica. Of the depths within the Marianas Trench and the sharks of the Great Barrier Reef. Of the red and gold striped Grand Canyon walls and the windy steppes of Mongolia. Not of computers. Not of the nine to five routine we all frequently fall victim to. I feel like being here is the most real thing I've ever done and I hope that in forty years from now, when I look back, I'll feel like I've managed to experience at least a little bit of the real world. The real real world.

A while ago, I heard about a couple of volunteers who received a score of Superior on their language tests at Mid Service Training. Superior is the highest ranking you can get, indicating a nearly undetectable accent, impeccable grammar, huge vocabulary and the ability to understand everything said in a natural, free flowing and rapid conversation. All of this at MST, the half way mark of service. As I keep my goal set high on a score of Advanced Low for my Close of Service test three months from now, I can't help but wonder what it must be like for those volunteers. How different my daily life would be if I didn't have to plan phone call conversations in my head before dialing, if I didn't have to use Google Translate on a daily basis, if I could understand every single conversation going on around me, if I could converse naturally with my coworkers, if I could confidently go into every store knowing the terms for exactly what I wanted, if I didn't have to rely on an English explanation for all the "advanced" stuff. What would the difficult part of my day be, then, if I could do all of these things? If I could eliminate the stress of sucking at both Romanian and Hungarian from my life, what other worries and inadequacies would occupy my mind? I can't even imagine anymore what it would be like to live in a foreign country and speak the local language fluently. I used to think it'd be simple. "How can you live in a country for two years and not learn the local language? That's ridiculous." My, how wrong I was. Why can't my daily battle be negotiating fair vegetable prices at the piatza instead of trying to remember the word for pumpkin? After a year and a half, I feel suddenly anxious to have this nagging worry out of my life. I wish I could eliminate it by being at the Superior level, but it seems that I am mentally incapable of accomplishing that. For shame.

I'm gonna go eat a slice of carrot cake now. Phooey.

As I made my way from the hostel where volunteers usually stay when in Bucharest to the metro station, some graffiti caught my eye that I hadn't noticed before. It was very simple, just three words: Noi Vrem RESPECT. Noi Vrem was in black and RESPECT was in red. We Want RESPECT. On either side of this piece of graffiti were political signs promoting certain presidential candidates. The political signs said things like "You and us together" or "Come on, Romania!" or some other meaningless pleasantry. The red was dripping down the wall beneath the RESPECT, as if the person spraying had gritted their teeth and pushed down on the nozzle as hard as possible, using up the entire can to get a solid RESPECT on the wall. Perhaps it took all their might to keep from turning the spray towards the silly sayings and the dowdy faces peering at them from the nearby political posters. Good words combined with the right actions speak louder than anything.

I really haven't meant to let a month slip by without updating, but things have been oddly hectic due to the following activities:

1. In mid October I took a trip on my own to Budapest and Vienna and had a great time, though it did get a bit lonely around meal times. It was also exhausting traveling alone because I had to be "on" the entire time, knowing where I was going, what I was doing, etc etc. I slept well each of the seven nights I was away. I will put pictures from the trip up once I have more time...

2. Drama Club is back in full force with an attendance of over 20, which, when compared to last year's regular attendance of about 8, kinda overwhelmed me. But I think we'll split the club into two, one advanced and one beginner, and problem solved. We put on a little Halloween show and the kids did nearly everything on their own. I felt unneeded, which was nice because it means the club is sustainable, but sad because they don't need me anymore. Phooey.

3. American Corners has once again started and I've gone in two weeks in a row to discuss Halloween and Nevada Day topics with the kids. Both sessions were fun for me and, hopefully, for the kids, but they took alot of planning. I'm still used to summer time, when there wasn't a whole lot to plan for.

4. English classes have also started at the agency, which means more stuff for Erin to plan. I've added on an advanced class, too. More planning. All this planning. Jeez.

5. The SPA committee meeting was last week in Bucharest and it took me quite a while to read all six of the proposals and prepare for their evaluation, but I found the process unusually fun. Lots of people out there have great ideas for projects and it's (usually) interesting reading about what they've come up with and hearing what the other committee members thought.

6. The Environmental Education Committee met this weekend in Sighisoara and had a good session on creating some 1st through 4th grade lesson plans, followed by lots of entertaining moments.

7. Finally, I'm studying for the GRE, which I'll take this Thursday in Bucharest. Of course, I don't feel ready for it, but oddly enough I don't really care. It's an annoying test and I'll study a bit and do the best that I can, but it's a ridiculous way to judge a person's ability to succeed in grad school. And it is almost entirely to blame for my past month of silence. Whenever I have free time, I'm reviewing all those idiotic hoity toity words, like enervate, that I'll never use again. I don't even want to go into the math. Enervate, by the way, means to weaken and it's one of the top GRE words. They try to trick you, those sneaky prats. Studying for the GRE is enervating my desire to go to grad school. Phooey.

I guess that's it for the main things I've been up to. Sorry for such an enervated post. I'll try harder next time. By the way, the SPA project I've been working on with the EPA, the one that would build picnic tables, benches, trash cans and a sign at Reci, has officially been canceled due to too many boring reasons to go into. And Lajos, the main guy I work with at the EPA, is quitting this week. But I've got plenty else to do, so I think I'll be ok. I think.

Oh, last note...my official Close of Service date is set for April 20th. I will travel for a while afterward and should be home by early May. Am I excited? Yes and no. More on that next time, gotta go to bed.

Please wish me luck on the GRE, if ya feel like it. Here's something for your viewing pleasure (thanks to Erica).

There are two dogs in Reno that I would like to think I saved. The first one was this big rottweiler running across McCarron Blvd, looking lost but sniffing out something tempting and heading right into swiftly approaching traffic. I pulled over, called the obviously friendly dog to me, checked his tags, and called the owner. A few minutes later the owner showed up, apologized profusely and said thank you. I saw the second dog jumping over a ridiculously high brick fence as I drove to work on Bering Avenue. After he landed, he raced immediately into the middle of the street and I barely missed hitting him. Slamming on the brakes, I pulled over, got out, cautiously called over the huge pit bull (who turned out to be a little love bug), and drove around with the guy drooling in the back seat until I found the address because no number was given on the tag. Both times the owners were really embarrassed, apologetic and grateful. If they hadn't been, I would have been worried. I saw a few other dogs running loose in Reno, but wasn't able to get to them or was pretty sure they weren't in much danger.

Cut to today and I don't give the scrawny stray passing me on the street a second thought, other than please don't bite me. I don't like that I've grown accustomed to ignoring the plethora of roaming dogs here. I don't like that I cringe out of fear as a big dog approaches and I don't like that I pick up rocks as I jog just in case the stray dogs by the river decide to take a toothy interest in me. The animals that I would pull over back home to save I now want nothing to do with. Instead of saying that I've lost some sort of tenderness towards animals, I'm going to say that the animals here, the dogs particularly, are different. They're smart. They'll wait at a crosswalk to cross with people. They'll look both ways before stepping into a street. They'll stay out of your way if you'll stay out of theirs. And in times of dire need, they will even take the bus, to the amusement and fear of all passengers.

It's survival of the fittest, not to mention smartest, working its magic. Our American house dogs wouldn't last five minutes here on their own and perhaps the stray dogs of Romania should feel proud of their ability to integrate into society and make it on their own. They do, however, cause many problems, especially in the forms of possibly-rabies-laden bites and car accidents, but the situation is by no means their fault. Stray dogs form yet another reminder of the communist past, when landowners were forced to give up their homes in the countryside and move into apartments in the city, where dogs were not allowed. The only option, other than to kill the family pets, was to release them into the wild, where they bred and bred and bred into the iron tough and quick witted dogs we see today.

There are very few programs here like the SPCA or the humane society, so there is simply no place for stray or abandoned animals to be sheltered, meaning they remain in the wild where they breed and breed and breed. A few programs have started up recently that take in stray dogs, neuter or spay them, put a chip in their ear, and then release them, which will eventually start having an effect if enough counties and people start supporting the procedure. Therein lies a large part of the problem. Getting several people who are still recovering from a traumatic past and who are still trying to find their feet in a global life to care about the status of animals in their country is, understandably, tough. And getting several people to believe that spaying and neutering animals is a way to prevent hundreds of unwanted animals from being born, not a form of cruelty that takes away an animal's machoness or femininity, takes time. Thoughts and ideas will have to change before the packs roaming the city outskirts start to shrink. The dogs can't be expected to do it all on their own.

I think of those two dogs in Reno once in a while and wonder how they are. I hope their owners are taking good care of them and they aren't jumping over any tall fences. I hope they pause from time to time and recognize their good luck, even though that's not a possibility for a dog to do. I'd still like to think that they're aware.

Again, or anew. The Drama Club met for the first time today since May and I was pleased with a turn out of 17 students, most of whom were eager to participate. As I made my way from work to the meeting, I questioned my nerves. Last year at this time while I prepared for my first encounter with the Drama Club, I could hardly sleep at night. The notes in my hands trembled as I delivered my cheesy little spiel and I wondered why on earth somebody so self conscious actually thought she could teach drama. Today was different. I felt nothing but excitement as I passed through the school's gates and crossed the cement yard. I made my way up the stairs and down the stairs and through the winding corridors that now feel rather homey with nothing but bursts of glee and the unnecessary paper-copy plan for the session. A symphony of hellos greeted me as I entered the room and we started year two of "Teach the Volunteer", also known as Drama Club.

I was just beginning to think that Romania, as beautiful as it is, doesn't really vary a whole lot visually and, in all honestly, was starting to get a bit boring. Not the people, not my time here, not the culture, just the landscape and the scenery. Even so, it was a very beautiful boring that I could stare at through the train window all day - like watching the clouds changing shapes and sizes. Clouds are all pretty similar, fairly fluffy and some shade of white, but watching them slide across the sky, spotting an occasional heart or dinosaur, is never a disappointing way to spend an hour or two. But after you've seen a couple of clouds, you've seen them. Just like after you've seen a few tree speckled rolling hills dotted with quaint, pastel painted cottages and their little wisps of chimney smoke curling into the sky, like a postcard you wish you could step into, you've seen them. And after you've seen a few centuries-old, boldly painted and Jesus adorned churches, you've seen them. I don't want to say "you've seen them all" because each location and each church is unique and who am I to lump them all together? They've just gotten redundant enough now that I know what to expect and as much as I love staring out the train window, little surprises me. Then, like finding an impossibly detailed replica of starry starry night in the clouds above, I take a trip to the Danube Delta. Instead of a train, my friends and I board a tiny seven person boat, and where the tree and cottage dotted hills once filled the view, our gaze is captured by the open waters lined with lush beaches, reed-roofed houses and subdued boat docks. The grazing cows are replaced by rare species of birds and the incessant roar of the train engine is completely absent, as is nearly all sound. How silent a group of people can be, especially as they carefully approach a floating sea of pelicans. Hundreds of them bobbing gently, quietly with the waves. All sound is gone, except for the quiet lap of water against the boat, the occasional stifled sound of awe and the light swish of wings taking to the air. Romania still has more than just hearts and other polygons to show me and I'm glad I still feel like looking.

My name appears in a local news article. Craziness! My sister comes tomorrow. Awesomeness!

This is my 101st post on here. Cool.

Tonight marked the occurrence of my first pancake date. It wasn't really a "date" in the traditional sense because it was with my friend Anca, her husband and their daughter, but I like how the phrase "pancake date" almost rhymes, so I'm sticking with it. Despite having lived here for a year and a half, tonight was the first time ever that I invited people into my apartment and prepared food for them. This might seem surprising, but considering the fact that I can not recall a single time when I did such a thing for friends in the states, it's pretty status quo for me. I just don't invite people over, and I particularly don't cook for people, unless it's with them (I secretly love cooking with people). I don't know how to cook and have little desire to learn. But, I can do pancakes. I really like Anca and her family. They have invited me to their home countless times and shared their food with me, they've taken me on hikes in the mountains, on trips to Brasov (where Anca's mom feeds us copious amounts of goodies) and on strolls through the city, they've played ping pong with me, taught me how to paint eggs, helped me run part of the drama week and written an article for the local newspaper about me and the Peace Corps. All of this, and the most I've done to reciprocate has been to produce a bag or two of cookies at dinner time. It's tough, even for a non-entertainer introvert who relishes an empty apartment and a silent phone, to take in so much kindness without doing something more significant than cookies in return. Well, tonight was the night. My little mediocre pile of pancakes and sticky saucer of "mock syrup" hardly make up for what Anca, Doru and Dodo have done for me, but it's a start. A start that I was nervous about all day, but will remember for a long, long time.

On a side note, pancakes are called clatite here and are cooked super thin and rolled up with jam or chocolate in the middle, more like the French crepe than our puffy version. The family was very curious about the process that goes into making and eating American style pancakes, so it turned into a pleasant little cultural exchange, as well.

Every time I see an unattended yet occupied baby stroller, I feel slightly disturbed and wonder how on earth a parent could trust all these random people milling about to leave their child alone while they idly browse the second hand racks. A stroller parked in the middle of a busy Monday morning sidewalk, with tiny hands and feet flailing about inside, and no parent anywhere in sight...it's something I've never witnessed before and something the movies use to create an atmosphere thick with suspense. I fight the urge to label this action as bad parenting because it has become apparent that the definition of good parenting depends on which country you were brought up in.

In elementary school, my mom and I followed the advise of the local news station, which faithfully and thoroughly and redundantly reported on every possibly-abducted child case, and made up a "code word" that I would request from strangers in the event that they tried to coax me to go with them. The word was, fittingly, "muffin". One afternoon, my mom couldn't pick me up from school and asked a friend to fill in. We had arranged this beforehand and she told me to use the "code word" and I, thrilled at the opportunity to use the "code word", waited anxiously at the designated corner until a white jeep pulled up in front of me. The passenger side's tinted window slowly rolled down to reveal a nice looking lady with sunglasses, curly hair and a baby seat in the back, but I was skeptical. "What's the code word?" I asked as sternly as my seven year old voice could handle. She pulled her sunglasses down to reveal her eyes and whispered "muffin", followed by a kind smile. Feeling a bit disappointed that she actually knew it and I didn't get to ask for the "code word" from anymore strangers, I opened the door and got in. I still didn't feel totally convinced, though. What if this stranger had somehow overheard the conversation with my mom? What if the person who was really supposed to pick me up was tied up and gagged in the back? What if this was the CIA? My rising panic didn't ease until I reached my front door and the nice lady with the sunglasses was driving off down the street, concluding the one and only occasion in which I put "muffin" to use.

As silly as this story seems to me now, it has a grim undertone and strategies and fears like this are becoming more and more dominant in American parenting, and those fears are by no means unfounded. When a parent feels the need to create a code word that may prevent their child from being kidnapped, some sort of societal innocence has been lost. And each time I pass by a baby sound asleep in a stroller without a parent nearby, I am at first startled out of habit, and then I am envious. Envious of a society that is still capable of one of the deepest forms of trust. Your government may be corrupt and your neighbor may steal your money and your spouse may be out on a date, but your children are safe.

Remember the mountain bike that was going to take me to all the lovely nearby villages around Sfantu Gheorghe? Well, I haven't touched it since discovering the fatal faulty back brake and the sinister swing of the cute little handle bar basket, and that fact has been eating at my conscience. Having a potentially perfectly usable bike chained up and gathering dust during the summer months when so many other volunteers (not to mention locals) could use one just seemed flat out selfish, so I sent out an email a week ago looking for any takers. Surprisingly, only one person out of nearly twenty responded (slightly clearing my guilt, slightly) and yesterday she claimed her prize and my title of "evil bike hording monster" was renounced. I feel much better. Another thing I won't do in Romania: become a biking pro. Eh, whatev.