School and Grapevines

Today has been one of the first days in my new site that I had the quintessential Peace Corps experience. It started off with my being bombarded by a large group of second graders who spoke in rapid fire Romanian that I understood none of. Later it transitioned to me teaching my best English lessons so far. About the middle of the day I was informed I was teaching another optional class of twelfth grade. That class might turn out to be a lot of fun because even though they don't know any English they all want to learn and I can teach them absolutely anything that comes to mind. Which is very liberating after having to stick to a textbook very strictly. When I left school I walked home with a 10th form student who asked if I would have more conversations with them in English as practice. Which for me means someone to talk to in my native language other than my partner teacher, who speaks great english but so far is the only one in my town that I have really talked to….which brings me to another great adventure. When I finally came home I was quickly given lunch and ushered out to the field to pick grapes. Because I had come home late from school because of my extra class most of the grapes were already picked. I helped for about 30 minutes by which time the vineyard was picked cleaned and all of the grapes were pressed and collected in a big wooden barrel. Juice, skin, and vine. In the field were three other people other than my host mother who were all very excited to test my Romanian skills and I was given an invitation to their house…although I didn't catch when exactly this visit would take place. To me this was very exciting because for the most part the past month I have kept mostly to myself. Mostly talking to only my host mother in Romanian and only my Partner teacher in English. But after today I have prospects in my future for meeting new people and speaking in Romanian and in English. To make my future even brighter I have a full weekend ahead of me with a baseball game on Saturday in another volunteers village and a meeting about human trafficking on Sunday. (Although I have no coordination to speak off I was reassured that none of the other players of the baseball game have ever played baseball before. Which means I might have a slight advantage only in the way that I will most likely know what is going on and have a slightly better understanding of the rules…At least I hope.)

Note to self: Next time more paragraphs.