a day in the life

I can't believe it's already December. Yesterday I woke up and peered out my fifth-story window to see that the courtyard was white with snow. When I walked outside the air was still with that muffled quality always present after a snowfall. I walked past the old women wrapped in long coats and head scarves, sitting as always at their small tables set out on the sidewalk, selling cupfulls of sunflower seeds, only today they lay sheets of plastic over their wares.

I caught the number 18 marshrootka into the center of town, trying to read a book despite the Russian techno blaring from the speakers and the shouts of the woman who takes everyone's fare: "Move back, please! Choot-choot, please!" even though people were already packed in to a comical degree. Just when you think another body couldn't possibly fit in one of these vehicles, the driver stops to pick up more passengers. It brings to mind the phonebooth-stuffing competitions of the 1950s, or perhaps more fittingly, a clown car.

Once downtown I cut through a muddy pathway to my office, almost losing one of my shoes to the mud with a loud sucking sound. I tried to wipe my feet as best I could on the dirty sweater that serves as a doormat, and it seemed that the people standing at the building's doorway looked derisively at my shoes. The condition of one's footwear is very important to Moldovans.

It was cold in my office. They say the heat will be turned on in a week. We try using my PC-issued portable heater, but invariably a man who works in the building notices the electricity gauge spinning and then comes to chastise us and demand we turn it off.

At one my new, counterpart-referred tutor arrived for my lesson. She speaks lovely British-accented English. She placed a beautifully written cyrillic alphabet on my desk, suggesting we begin with the letters and the sounds they make. I apologetically told her I already know how to read and write the alphabet - already speak a bit of Russian, in fact. "I'm sorry, I didn't know," she explained. "Elena told me you don't know anything." "Did she," I said.

Today, armed with a map drawn by my host father, I took a bus to some vague point where I would meet my counterpart. From there we would walk to a local school to give a presentation on talented youth from Moldova, to hopefully inspire the students to learn foreign languages and achieve great things. I got off the bus at a landmark, and a kindly old man who saw me looking around in confusion offered to help me. "I'm supposed to go to the third traffic light on this street," I said. "Here, I'll walk you there," he offered. On the way he asked me where I was from - England? This seems to be a popular misconception for us volunteers here. When I said America, Oregon, he got excited and told me about one of his sons, who is working for Microsoft not far from Seattle. "Here we are, third traffic light," he said, and I began looking around for Elena. I said thanks, and we said goodbye. He walked away a bit, then turned and raised his fist in the air. "Good luck!" he shouted, and gave a final wave.

I never did spot my counterpart. Snow was flying furiously and I couldn't feel my toes, so after 15 minutes I gave up and caught a trolleybus to my friend's office nearby. After tea and cookies a taxi was sent for me by my counterpart, and I was brought to the school. There, another Elena - there are about 50 of them in this city, by my estimation, and half of them work with my organization - began yelling at me, demanding to know where I had been. Normally one to avoid conflict at all costs, I was too cold and irritated for this today. "Good question, I wanted to know the same thing!" I snipped, and sank back into my seat in the auditorium, arms crossed like an angry child. Later, after the presentation, we stopped in the office of the school's director. An old woman, the director's secretary perhaps, rose from the desk to meet me. "She's an American?" she asked the others in Russian. "Yes, American!" The old woman's shyness was adorable. My counterpart pulled my hand out of my pocket and began touching it. "Why is she petting my hand?!" I bursted out, forgetting another English speaker was in the room. The English speaker, a young man dragged along that day to serve as my translater, started laughing. "This woman says she has never met an American before, and Elena said she can touch you."