Alanica Fara Frica

Sorry that my blog was down for a few days, but it’s back now and I PLAN to keep it that way.  I request that if you visit this site and have something to say, please PLAN leave a comment, I’d love to know who is able to catch up with me and my crazy adventures.  Also, more good news, I have set up a picture page on this site and will PLAN to post many pictures from Romania and most of the favorites from the past few years.  I don’t PLAN on doing that in the next few days because I will be busy with… 

This coming weekend I PLAN to be in the city of Pitesti with about 30 other volunteers helping out with a Habitat for Humanity project.  I have never done habitat and am excited to go and build the interior of a house.  Even though I am very fortunate to have a great living situation with my gazda, I am excited to go stay in a hotel for a few nights and not feel like a houseguest.  I PLAN to make the most of it.

Speaking of PLANS, the project I have been working on with a few other volunteers has been going well.  Two saturdays ago, we took some high school students on a walk around the central park to get some design concepts for a master design PLAN that we will be submitting to the city of Ploiesti.  It was a nice walk and we learned a lot from the kids, they seemed to be pretty opinionated about what they wanted to see in that space.  This past weekend we held a design session with them where they got to sketch out their ideas for the park in one master PLAN.  About eight kids showed up, which we were pretty happy to see, considering it was the saturday after their last day of eleventh grade.  We have spent this past week putting their ideas together into one plan that we will present to the city.  Hopefully, a few of the kids will be able to be a part of the presentation. 

When preparing this project, we made the decision that it’s goal was not to create a working PLAN that the city would adopt and implement, it’s goal was to affect the attitude of how the PLANning process gets done in Romania.  Our first impression from the kids was that they were really frustrated that they would not listen to their ideas.  We were also concerned when we first met with the city and realized they did not really know how to involve the public in their PLANning process.  So our hope with this project was to open dialogue between both sides and help them realize the importance in public involvement in the planning process.  Assuming everything works out with our PLAN present, it should be successful, despite whatever PLAN we present.  (unfortunetly, that the PLAN could turn sour if the city flakes out on the presentation, which isn’t very likely, but the first lesson I learned here was to control my expectations)

From PLANet Earth,
-alannesti

My daily schedule here is to wake up around 7 or 7:30, shower and make a lunch.  My breakfast has consisted of water, tomato juice and crepes with homemade jam.  I walk to PST (preservice training) over an active trainyard with 8 tracks, something that would never be allowed in the states.

PST is located on the top floor of a high school.  At the school, half the students love us being there and the other half dont really care for us.  We have 3 hours of language, an hour for lunch, and then either an afternoon session on Romanian culture, Peace Corps Policy or our practicum assisgnment.

Practicum is small group assignments to help us learn how to work in Romania.  My group was assigned to city’s urban development office.  We have four weeks to work on a project and the office said we could do pretty much anything we wanted.  We decided to hold a public workshop to rethink uses for the central park.  They do not have a very good concept of how to work with the public and it seemed that we were a little over our heads so we are now working with a small team of design students from the local highschool.  Our plan is to meet them at the park this saturday and talk about existing conditions of the park.  Then the following saturday hold a design session where we will draw out some ideas to present to the head of the urban development office.  Nothing will actually get built, but it will be a good excercise for the students to learn about designing space, the city to learn the importance of public involvement and us to learn how to work in a different culture.

After PST, I usually go to a terasa with a group of other volunteers and share a beer or coffee.  I pretty much have to stay out until I get hungry because I know when I head back over the tracks and into my bloc, my mama gazda is going to feed me silly. 

Dinner usually starts with a round of palinka (very strong moonshine) to help with “digestion.”  Another habit I’ve picked up here is eating green onions raw.  I was so used to chopping up the green stems for cooking and throwing away the white bulb.  I have been playing the fool.  Dip it in a little salt and it is delicious.  I prescribe 3 onions per meal.

I hang out in the kitchen with my mama and brother practicing my Romanian and drinking coffee until around 9.  Then I read in my room for a bit, then pass out.  Noapte buna!

-alannesti

Life at my gazda has been amazing.  I have never eaten three full meals a day with such regularity.  My mama gazda Ana is a great cook and everything that I eat is homemade.  She is very funny and likes to sneak me shots of palinka (moonshine) before each meal. I have definately been eating a lot more meat than I’m used to, but I don’t mind too much because the meat is much healthier than in the states.  Of course we are trying to stay away from chicken because of bird flu, but even here, it is a pretty distant threat.  I think I may break 150 pounds, I’ve been holding steady at 145 for five years.  We live all live in a small aparment in a large bloc on the south of town.  It is much nicer on the inside than it looks on the outside.  However, I hope that when I get my site assignment (in 3 weeks!) I will get to live in housing that was built before the communist era.

This past weekend I went to Brasov (pronounced bra-shove) with four other volunteers and we had a blast.  A lot of Romanians had told us that Ploiesti kinda sucks and we only understood that after spending a weekend outside of it.  Brasov is set inbetween two big hills and it is probably the most beautiful setting for a city that I have seen.  (it has aproximately 300,000 people)  Check out the pictures at www.828pm.com/photos. 

Sorry I haven’t been posting any pictures, but I’ve had some technical difficulties with setting up some of my site.  I also hope to be posting more often, but right now my daily schedule is school for 8 hours, hanging out with volunteers for 2 at a teresa (cafe), eating a big dinner at home, talking with my gazdas for a while, then passing out around 11.  Once PST is over at the end of July, I will have more time to organize my communications. 

Pa!
-alannesti

We woke up early on sunday to have our last breakfast at the hotel (a great collection of bread, cheese, yogurt and veggies) then off to meet our gazdas (host family).  It was a slow process where they called each of us up one by one and we met our family in front of everybody.  It was pretty nerve racking because we were all nervous that we would get a gazda who would be real overbearing on our daily schedules.

When I got called, a young man was there to pick me up.  He was 26 and spoke english well.  He took me home to meet my mama and papa gazda and I instantly felt comfortable with them.  Mama gazda spoke very little english, but we are able to communitcate well, and papa gazda I havent really interacted with much because he doesnt speak any english.  I thoguht I’d spend the day unpacking but almost immediately I got into John’s car (his name is ionutz, but everyone calls him john) and we met up with some of his friends, then went food shopping.  We went to a Wal-Mart type store outside of the city, it was pretty surreal to be in a store of that nature in Romania.

Got home in the late afternoon and unpacked, then John came into my room and told me to put my shoes on and get in the car.  When I got in I decided it would be smart to find out where we were going.  His two friends were in the car and mama gazda and they in all told me “Bucharest!” in excited voices.  We were about 40 km north of the capital city, but it took just over an hour to get to because there is no highway like we know in America and there are gypsies and dogs running across the street everywhere. 

Bucharest was big and full of traffic.  We ended up just going there for shopping, which is not my favorite past-time.  But it was fun going to malls and seeing all the beautiful and interesting people walking by.  The malls themselves were a little to familiar to me.  It was a pretty interesting trip and I’m glad we went, but I was about ready to pass out in the car on the way home.  I think I’m going to get into a habit of going to sleep early after a long day of learning Romanian and eating.

La Revedere!

-alannesti (alannati in the states = alannesti in romania… pronounced alan-nesht, as in ploiesti, bucharesti, pitesti…)

Greetings from Ploiesti (pronounced ploy-esht for those Romanian-challenged).  I am currently finishing orientation here in Romania and will start language training on monday.  I met the 72 other volunteers in Philly for two days of staging where we learned about Peace Corps policy and hung out at night with our newly acquired living stipend (which was more than ample, thank you American taxpayers).  After bonding at the pub and playing ice breaker games at the Sheraton hotel, we headed out on a bus to NYC to kick off 30 hours of travel which was not special and I don’t really want to talk about it.

When we arrived in the Bucharest airport everyone stayed pretty silent as we all realized that we weren’t in Ohio anymore.  We got on another bus to head an hour north to the city of Ploiesti (pop. 250,000).  There, we stayed in the nicest hotel in the city (it was alright) and had a few more days of orientation where we learned some basic Romanian and talked about our host families that we would live with for the next 3 months.  We meet them on Sunday so wish me luck on a family that doesn’t treat me like a 16 year-old but still gives me a fantastic introduction to Romanian culture. 

So far I love how the Peace Corps has handled us so far and have been pretty impressed with our group.  the ages range from slightly younger than me to over sixty.  We are one of the biggest groups to all train together (73) and are all very excited to grow relationships with each other.  We have gone out in constantly rotating groups so that we can hang out with as many people as possible.  Romania has pretty much the same climate patterns as southern ohio so I am able to handle the humid heat that is setting in for the summer. 

Now I must go and study up on my Romanian… Noapte buna!