Pop Pătru, woodcarver from Breb, Marămereș, Romania

Theron, a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer Stephen, and I were lucky enough to spend a few days in Breb, Marămereș, Romania. Breb is a small village where people still wear traditional costumes on Sunday. Our favorite adventure involved a visit to the local woodcarver, Pop Pătru. I met him by accident at our small hostel and invited ourselves to visit him the next day. In typically welcoming Romanian fashion, he replied, "Vă așteptăm!" which literally translates to "I am waiting for you!"

So, the next day we ventured out to find his house. The directions were pretty vague, "Go that way and then ask someone where his house is." We eventually found it, but when we arrived, no one was there. After a few minutes an ancient, stooped-over woman walked across the yard with her cane. Then out came an old man with holes in his shoes, tattered clothes, and a ratty old straw hat with a Marlboro ribbon above the brim.

Pop Pătru, Breb, Romania

Pop Pătru and his wife led us to their workshop. She makes amazing wool blankets from yarn she spins by hand (without using a spinning wheel) and then weaves (using a loom that for some reason includes chicken bones). According to Mr. Pop, these blankets are so warm, they will make you sweat even in the winter.

He then showed us some of his carvings. He was hardly modest, claiming that he was born with a wooden spoon in his mouth! His boasting had merit - we had already seen one of his most amazing works: the wooden gate to the church. In his workshop we saw crosses, spoons, ornate tools for spinning yarn, and stamps used for consecrating bread in the Orthodox church. We were glad to hear that his son and grandson are carrying on the carving tradition.

Jesus' Diapers

Today was another great day in the countryside. It's my favorite place to be in Romania. We are so welcome there that it doesn't matter if our comprehension plummets as soon as we cross the city line. Sometimes truth here is stranger than fiction; sometimes what we understand in Romanian seems like fiction, and we have to double check to make sure we got it right.

As we were wandering through the garden and learning the names of the plants, Theron saw what he thought was a marijuana plant. After many jokes and a lot of explanation, we realized it was actually a hemp plant. The fibers are used to make traditional Romanian costumes. Even more amazing to us, the seeds are used to make a special Christmas dessert called Jesus' Diapers (Scutecele lui Iisus). This time we triple checked.

All Worth It

The school year is over and I'm finally writing my first post about teaching English in Romania. I haven't written yet because my thoughts have been too muddled. The transition from being the person helping the teachers to the person helping the students has challenged most of what I thought I knew about education. I've done things in my classroom this year that would make my educational heros cringe. Plus I've struggled to operate within the Romanian education system which has some practices and assumptions that conflict with my values and knowledge about teaching and learning. Still, I must have done something right. An eighth grade student wrote this and read it at his class graduation.

You meet in life people with whom you bond above words, people that see in you much more than you see, and make the decision to work with you until you discover that part of you that you didn't even know was there. These people are made for your soul and one of them is my English teacher, a teacher that managed to reach to our souls by her way of being open, amusing, and understanding.
I wish that all of your days in life are special and the days at school are like holidays.
With respect, admiration, and friendship,
Yours truly,
Palade Valentin and Class 8B

I'm proud that my belief in the potential of each student has shone through the fog of this year. My year in Romania has been worth it.

Teacher for a Day

I want to brag about my wife for a little bit. She's an incredible teacher because she believes that her students can and will excel. She trusts them, and therefore she gives them challenges and opportunities that other people don't even imagine are possible.

The Peace Corps has given us the option to create small group Romanian language weekends. If we want to participate, we think of a creative idea, design a curriculum, and find a teacher. Then we invite other volunteers from our region and the Peace Corps pays for travel and expenses. Past weekends include touring the Bucovina monasteries and learning to cook various Romanian dishes (all while speaking Romanian, of course). 

But I think Sarah has had the most inspired idea yet. She decided to turn the tables and ask her students (ages 13-14) to teach us. 

There are so many beautiful things about this idea. Many students are smart and hard-working, but may not be comfortable in English. This gives them the opportunity to interact with their teacher and other Americans in a new way. It also gives students an opportunity for leadership. If they're thinking about a career in education, it translates directly, but this kind of experience is useful for almost any job. 

One of the biggest lies we tell children, through words but mostly through deeds and attitude, is that we know better than they do. My favorite thing about this experiment is that it gives the students the opportunity to be experts in a subject where adults aren't. 

Seven American volunteers visited for the weekend and a total of 10 student teachers worked in groups to teach thirty to sixty minute lessons. Topics included adjectives, summer vocabulary, music, dancing, touristic places, and holidays. The kids have been learning more than just English from Sarah as well. The classes were dynamic and the pacing of lessons was excellent. We played games like Bingo and a cool trivia game called Zong. And, the teachers always asked if we understood the material and patiently answered questions. The bonus - we got prizes! They know how to motivate!

In the end, the project was a huge success, and I think it would be easily repeatable. Way to go Sarah and way to go to our awesome student teachers!

How Are You?

How many times a day do you think you ask the question, "How are you?" I'd estimate at least 20: every phone call you make, each coworker you see, and don't forget the barista at Starbucks.

Well, after being in Romania almost a year, you would think I would be proficient at such a simple question. The problem is that the question "How are you?" literally translates to "What are you doing?"

It's an acceptable answer to say that you're doing well, but it is much more common for people to explain exactly what they are doing at that moment. For example, people will tell you they're at work (while you're talking to them in the teacher's lounge), they'll tell you they're talking (meaning to you), and they'll even tell you they're in the bathroom if you happen to meet them while washing your hands. I still haven't figured out what I'm supposed to say in response to their answer..."Wow! That's funny, I'm in the bathroom, too!"

For a while I thought of the question as an equivalent of "What's up?" In the States the most common answer to that is, of course, "Nothing!" But, here you're met with blank stares or open shock, as if to say "How could you be doing nothing? Did you stop breathing?"


Then yesterday, the inevitable happened. I asked someone "What are you doing today?" expecting them to tell me their plans for the day. But what response did I get? "Good!"

Pugs in Pașcani

Sorry, this post isn't about the Pug dog, but a local graffiti artist (or criminal depending on your viewpoint). I've seen the tags all over town for a while & decided to head out for a photo shoot the other day. It's tough to represent a city in photos, but here is a bit of Pașcani through one lens on one day.

Mărțișor: The First of March

Mărțișor from Our Students

Today Romanians celebrate the beginning of spring with the holiday of Mărțișor. It is an ancient holiday based on a legend about the beginning of spring. On this holiday people exchange small trinkets with red and white ribbons. The trinkets provide good luck and ward off evil. The colors signify the unity between contrasts: summer and winter, cold and hot, light and dark.

Ladybugs are particularly lucky!

Handmade from paper

Hand crocheted

The Legend of Mărțișor (thanks to Raluca from the Peace Corps Romania office for providing this)
Legend has it that hundreds of years ago an old woman by the name of Dochia had a daughter-in-law whom she hated. One cold day in late winter, Dochia gave her some black wool and told her to go to the river in the mountains and wash it until it was pure white. The young woman was afraid of her mother-in-law. So she went to the river and spent hours washing the wool in freezing water. For all her efforts, the wool remained pitch black. The young woman began to cry. Suddenly, a man appeared before her. He told her his name was Mărțișor. "Why are you crying?" he asked the young woman. After hearing her story, Mărțișor said he had magic powers to help her. He gave the young woman a red and white flower. He told her to wash the wool one more time and then take it home. The young woman put the flower behind her ear, washed the wool, and carried it home on her head.

When she got home and looked at the wool, she was speechless. The wool was white as snow. Old Dochia couldn't believe her eyes either. She had been sure her daughter-in-law would never be able to wash the wool white. Suddenly, she noticed the flower in her daughter-in-law's hair. "Where did this come from?" she asked. "It’s still winter." The young woman then explained how Mărțișor had helped her. Old Dochia started jeering at her daughter-in-law. She did not believe a single word of it but thought instead that spring had already come to the mountains.

Old Dochia owned a herd of sheep and decided it was probably time to take the animals to the spring pasture in the mountains. She took a dozen sheepskins to keep herself warm on the way. It was a warm and sunny day when old Dochia set off but freezing rain started in the mountains when she got there. Old Dochia changed her coats one by one as they got wet. When she had to take the last coat off, Mărțișor suddenly appeared before her. "How does it feel to be standing here in the freezing rain?" he asked. "You didn't think it was too cold for your daughter-in-law to wash wool in the river all day long, did you?" He then told old Dochia that he was responsible for the weather changes that had caused her so much trouble. Mărțișor disappeared. Old Dochia was left alone in the mountains. The sheep wandered away. The old woman froze to death and turned into stone. All of this had been the work of Mărțișor. It was after old Dochia turned into stone that spring finally came.