On Potatoes

Potatoes, for those of you who don't already know, are generally accepted to be the tastiest food known to our proud species. Many people, especially those coming from cultures in which the potatoes is a relatively recent addition to the agricultural and culinary repertoire, may erroneously insist that other foods (usually meats or candy) are tastier. Deep in their hearts, they know the truth.

In the States, we have several varieties of potato, ranging from the crisp Red to the gentle and delicate Yukon Gold. As with all great things, there are impostor quasi-potatoes, such as the "Sweet Potato" and the "Yam." True to our factory culture, we even have instant potatoes, designed for quick and easy consumption of a delicacy defiled. In the very near future (if not already), I am sure we will see some sort of synthetic potato which, due to it's artificial nature, will invariably be a smash hit. But all of these, base or refined, are ruled in the States by the great Idahoan Spud: the Russet.

The Russet is the most common potato grown and consumed in the States, despite it's excessive starchiness, it's deficient aroma, it's unwieldy size, and it's unappealingly bland color. The Russet is a proud and indefatigable tyrant of the American potato realm. Inexpensive as it is, the Russet's dominance in the States seems to be supported by those who prefer to consume life, rather than to savor it. As evidence, I direct your attention to the American term "couch potato," which likens the potato (potato, in this case, synonymous with "Russet") to something bland and tasteless, which usually fails stirs the imagination and depends only the stimulation of the most basic and primitive senses.

Thankfully, there are places in the world where the potato has escaped the cold and tiresome grasp of the Idahoan Russet. In the Andes of South American fame, from whence these tubers came, one can find valleys filled with hundreds of varieties of potato, each with it's own distinctions. Other places in the world had to import this excellent plant, usually introducing one a handful of varieties. (We are all familiar with the horrific results of the Irish depending on only a single variety -- further evidence of the potato's importance.) The French, known for their highly-developed culinary arts, called the potato a fruit (pomme de terre), suggesting the rather elevated nature of the tuber.

In Moldova, I have discovered a culture that has introduced only the highest forms of the potato into their agricultural and culinary cultures. Small, yellow-tinted, and slightly soft to the touch, these thin-skinned and richly-flavored potatoes most closely resemble miniature Yukon Gold. Moldovans usually prepare their potatoes by frying (cartofi prajiţi) or by mashing (cartofi piure). It should be noted, however, that the mashed potatoes are unusually tasty. Lacking garlic, they cannot be compared to the splendor of my mother's mashed potatoes, nor to the debauchery of my 7-potato puree. The excellence of Moldovan mashed (or fried) potatoes rests entirely in their simplicity -- that is, in the potato, itself.

These potatoes are the great artists of the potato world, rivalled perhaps only by certain isolated varieties in the Andes. Boil Moldovan potatoes, and the skins practically peel themselves (unless you are me, in which case you can't peel one to save your life). Fry them, and they produce the most delectable aroma. To bake such a potato would be spit on its glory. Used in pastries and salads, they are the prime attraction. I can only imagine what heavenly delicacy a bread from these starchy spuds might produce.

Indeed, while families and defiant individuals across the USA slowly divine the value of potatoes of such appetizing quality, I bask in the under-appreciated glory of the Moldovan tuber.

I'm a Real Boy... I Mean Teacher!

After an unexpected hiatus for over a month, I now have both the time and the internet connectivity to resume activity on this site. PST became extremely busy during the last four weeks, due in no small part to practice school. This is a time when we TEFL and Health Ed. volunteers are given a classroom full of Moldovan students and three weeks to try to figure out how to teach. Peace Corps does a great job of training us during PST, loading us up with all sorts of teaching theory, creative ideas for in-class activities, books, and an excellent support network. Practice school is kind of like the test at the end, where we find out how much we still have to learn about teaching in Moldovan schools. Personally, I love being in the classroom, and I've found Moldovan students so attentive and so intelligent that I am often at a loss as to how much I really need to teach them.

After Practice School, PST rapidly came to a close with one more week of language training and a Language Proficiency Interview (LPI), in which we all found out how much language we still need to learn. I scored dead center with an "Intermediate Mid" and I'm pretty OK with that, for now.

Now I'm at my permanent site, which is a wonderful town in the center of Moldova filled with friendly people and several highly-remarkable schools. Friendly people can be found everywhere in Moldova, but I consider myself uniquely lucky to have been given the opportunity to teach at the lyceum (roughly equivalent to high school) in this town. The teachers are all top-quality, and the director (read: principal) seems to be universally loved, not only in the school but also in the town, the raion (kind of like a county or district), and by just about everybody who has ever heard of him. The students are, of course, of no lesser quality; it is of these students, primarily, that I formed the aforementioned opinion about being in Moldovan classrooms.

In Moldova, school starts on September 1 (or the following Monday, if it is a weekend) -- a day in which students assemble in what need only be described as clothes that look better than anything any volunteer has ever brought with them, ever. I decided not to wear my suit, mostly because I know that I cannot compete with the impressive accouterments of Moldovan students. Had I thought ahead, I would have taken my camera to capture the sea of well-clad students standing in the courtyard before the school, waiting for the school year to be introduced.

At this point, I really didn't know any students at the school, and I tried my best to hide off to one side. The students, as they milled about, cast curious glances at me which seemed to say: "Who are you? You're not a student, unless maybe you've transferred in from Romania or somewhere. Maybe you're just visiting somebody? Hrm..." Just before the ceremony began, the director, the mayor, and the regional minister of education appeared at the top of the steps, drawing the attention of most of the students. The director, seeing me, motioned for me to join him, stimulating a new set of curious glances from students, this time implying: "OK, so you're not a student. You're standing next to the director, so you must be somebody of some importance. Hrm..." I tried my best not to make eye contact with anybody for more than a second or two at a time.

Speeches were made, most of which remained shrouded in the veil of my own personal language deficiencies. Gifts were given to certain teachers, and to certain students. After pretty much everybody at the top of the steps had spoken, the master of ceremonies said something in Romanian, the only words of which I could really understand were "Corpul Paci" and "Jeffrey Zundel" and the microphone was passed to me. The students, their questioning glances answered, promptly delivered to me a surprisingly enthusiastic cheer. I sputtered some broken Romanian about being happy to have the opportunity to teach English and, trembling ever so slightly, retreated to the side of our director.

Every moment I have spent inside the school since then has been great. The daily schedules are still a bit unstable, and I am still figuring out how to be most effective in my role, but I have a great set of students, talented partner teachers, and a generally positive attitude. With luck, I'll still have all three by the end of the year, too.

Staying Positive

I love this country.

I have been sick and injured for the past two weeks, solid. Pre-Service Training (PST) is stressing me out, as usual. I'm hungry, thirsty, and extremely tired. And yet, as I walked home from where the routiera dropped me off, I noticed me shadow stretched out in front of me.

I have tended to be a poet, in the past. Perhaps this is a continuing trend. In any case, I could not help but think, as I observed my casually elongated profile pacing the ground before me, that Moldova (or perhaps someOne) was trying to tell me something. For me, a poet, shadows usually symbolize memories and the past; but here, in the rural landscape of a Moldovan sunset, my shadow crosses the ground ahead of me -- the future, quite literally.

The decision to join the ranks of Peace Corps volunteers and wander off into the developing world was not an easy one, though perhaps too many of us realize this simple fact only after weeks have passed without State-side-quality sanitation, infrastructure, communication, and so forth. I joined because "it felt like the right time," and I still hold to this. But I admit, now, that I had no idea what that really meant, and means still. It means that I am in a completely different place, no matter how similar the climate, the wine, or the people. It means that I am apart from my friends and family, without whom I would have been abysmally without hope, long ago. It means that I can't go see Sigur Ros in concert, when they pass through Portland in October. It means that more responsibility and more expectations rest on my shoulders than ever before. And it means that every day is a challenge.

But seeing that shadow walking in front of me caused me to pause, and to think, and to look around. Moldova is an amazing country, and I consider myself entirely lucky to be here.

For a long time, I have wanted to live on a vineyard. Today, as I looked out over rolling hills covered with grape vines, it occurred to me that I have realized this dream, simply by living within the borders of the remarkable vineyard known as Moldova. Of course, Moldova is so much more than its wine, but this thought brightened my day. It made the particular challenges of the past two weeks seem worth the sweat.

Site Visit

I am a fairly relaxed person, as a general rule. I enjoy challenges, and I may even be known to seek them out from time to time. However, when the challenge has been exhausted or sufficient effort has been consumed to the challenge's end, I appreciate opportunities for me to kick back and decompress. Pre-Service Training (PST) in Peace Corps does not, to my inexpressible dismay, afford such opportunities.

Aside from the usual schedule of language training and cultural orientation, this weekend I was required to visit the site where I will teach English for the two years immediately following August 20. To say that the weekend was overwhelming, exhausting, bewildering, confusing, and mildly understructured would be only the most broad and polite description of my experience. Of course, I should also say that my future site is wonderful and full of innumerable avenues of potential interest. Ultimately, what made my site-visit difficult was the simple fact that I was expected to make a decision, with only a few days' investigation, about which family I prefer to be my host for the next two years -- hardly rock bottom, I know.

To make matters even more difficult, almost every family I visited was absolutely wonderful. Different, yes, but wonderful in their own ways. The differences between potential host families' houses were too often only a matter of the color of the walls and the shape of the toilet. (Perhaps that is an oversimplification. Nonetheless, the differences were menial, by my standards, indeed.)

Now, the site visit is rapidly becoming only a blurred memory of PST, and I still have very little basis for my decision. I know I chose a host family, but only by default; it was an unfortunately hasty requirement, but one that will invariably result in an interesting (and likely pleasant) experience.

Like so many other PST activities, however, the site visit has left me feeling entirely drained of energy. If I did not have such excellent support from my PST host family, from home (in USA), and from my fellow volunteers, I cannot imagine how I could continue. This continues to be an interesting, if trying, experience, and I can't wait to look back on PST with a sigh of relief.

More energetic and enlivened posts to follow, once I regain sufficient energy to see straight.

Post Script: My full report on the nature of Moldovan condensed-water-vapour economics was rejected by all reputable journals on the grounds that no such industrial sector has yet been identified by any leading economics monitoring or research organization. The editor of the Decianual Journal of Applied Atmospheric Hydrodynamics singularly respond with praise for my lovely diagrams. I stand, nonetheless, starkly offended by the lack of scholarly interest by global economics experts. I turn now to the artistic community. See below for diagrams.

Pain in my... back

The first ten weeks of my time in Moldova is being consumed by the much-appreciated and highly productive process of language acquisition and cultural integration. This is a difficult process that involves much more than simple language classes. I am often overwhelmed by the sheer mass of information being thrown at me, and by the (albeit justifiably) long hours. It is entirely common for me to return home with only enough energy to swallow some dinner before collapsing in an unmoving heap on my bed.

My host family seems to be very understanding with respect to my exhaustion. I often say to my friends (and once or twice to neighbors and my host family members, themselves) that I would stay with this host family for my entire two-year assignment, were it possible. Despite some cultural misunderstandings in the beginning, I absolutely love their approach to life. They are happy and relatively calm, which is a perfect match for me. Of course, I feel confident that my next host family will be wonderful, as well, but all change brings with it risks. It is easy to stay positive, though, when the Moldovans I interact with on a regular basis seem so pleasant and amicable.

These positivities have been essential on offsetting certain inconveniences of the past week. Not least of these has been the reinflamation of an old back injury that I had thought (read: hoped) had healed and disappeared. A couple years ago, I was involved in a (body) surfing accident in Hawaii, which injured my lower back in some apparently undiagnosable way. Despite many visits to doctors, the injury remained unidentified. Luckily, it doesn't really incapacitate me -- only slowing me down for about a week. It is almost back to normal, and I am trying to decide whether it is, in fact, the same old injury, or if it is some new ailment.

My communication with friends and family in the State* has been mixed. Some friends and family have been in regular, prompt contact, and the efforts of these individuals has not gone unappreciated (which is to say that I love them SO MUCH for saying "hello" now and then). Their messages, however long or short, are my primary emotional and psychological supports during these difficult initial months in Moldova.

It's always nice to know you are loved, even when that means you are missed. I make serious efforts to let my friends and family know that they are loved and missed, as often as possible.

And so the experience continues...

Manufactured Clouds

Moldova produces some of the greatest clouds I have ever seen.


I speculate that Moldova unofficially imports water vapor and exports magnificent, billowing clouds. Unfortunately, border controls on this particular export are extremely lax, and much tariff revenue is lost. Slovakia, Hungary, and the Ukraine receive black-market Moldovan cloud products at rock-bottom prices, and the Moldovan cloud factories bear the cost. Perhaps suggestive of mass corruption in international politics, the UN, EU, NATO, and other regulatory bodies have failed to take action against these thefts. But not all is lost; a handful of connoisseurs visit the country annually to reconfirm Moldova's place among the top cloud-producing nations in the Modern Era.

These clouds are exported in magnificent shape, but living in the factory means that I see my fair share of what can only be called "throw-aways" and "works in progress." I have returned home completely drenched (and probably cleaner than when I had departed in the morning) as a direct result of industrial accidents in the factory, as well. When the rain falls on Moldova, it doesn't mess around. However, I love the rain here, and for the same reason I love the rain in the Pacific Northwest: it cleans everything out and makes the world around me vibrant with life. As I walk (read: run) to school each morning, I notice the grapes weighing heavier on their vines, and the raspberries flashing bold new shades of red. These are the byproducts of Moldova's great cloud production, and I am the grateful recipient of the excellent meals and impromptu snack therefrom.

The rain here is something of a mystery to me, though. It rains as though mountains were pinning the clouds against the sky, which is the situation with which I am most intimately familiar. And yet, the closest mountains are the Carpathians in Romania, which can hardly be held responsible for the air pressure in Moldova. Perhaps the rain is simply a result of Moldova's close proximity to its source of water vapor, the Black Sea. Perhaps the amount of moisture coming off of the sea is simply too great for continental atmosphere to handle, and the massive black leviathans have little choice but to shed lakes and rivers of rain onto Moldova, in the form of stunning lightning shows and bombastic symphonies of thunder and howling dogs.

I continue my study of Moldova cloud production, and will report my conclusions in next month's issue of Science.

Life is good

Moldova is a wonderful country. I had little involvement in the decision to come here for Peace Corps, as opposed to some other part of the world, but I sincerely appreciate the opportunity I have been given. I am prohibited from publishing my exact location, explicitly or implicitly, which is a shame, because I would love to share with you all the minute details of my current situation. Perhaps in ten weeks I can tell you, but for now, let me just say this...

There is life everywhere. I have only been in this country for a short while, but I feel energized and enriched by the amount of vibrant vivicy that seems to leap out of every nook and cranny of this place. My daily wanderings take me through docile neighborhoods, across fields of wine-grapes, through placid cemetaries that might easily be parks, past impressive basiricas (churches), and among chirping and cooing animals of every variety. Indeed, this is to say that I pass through the life of Moldova in the Spring.

I have experienced the brilliant sunshine of this place, as well as the torrential downpour. And all of this is paralleled by the welcome I have received from my host family and the people of my town. Of course, most are weary of me, as a stranger and as an American. Moldova was once a part of the Soviet Union, and I have been told that many Moldovans may initially suspect Peace Corps volunteers as spies. Usually a jovial smile and a "buna ziua!" to match bring a smile to fellow pedestrians' faces, and I appreciate the amusement in their eyes. I think I know what I just said... I know I don't know what they just said...

Language classes progress rapidly, and I am daily becoming more comfortable with my Romanian. I must acquire this language rapidly if I am to learn Russian, like the two of my colleagues already being so instructed. My goal is to be fluent in Romanian and proficient in Russian before my departure, and I know this will be difficult.

First things first: get over the jet-lag and culture shock. Check, and check. Well, culture shock is a work in progress, but I feel comfortable with most of my daily lifestyle, thus far. I am a bit disappointed at the lack of interconnectivity with the folks back home, but such is life. We are all busy living. It is a strange feeling, to be half a world away from both the people you love and the people you greet each day. I am sure that, once I am settled, I will have more time and energy to commit to my family and friends back home, but for now I shall rest in my homesickness. I hope you are all doing well.

Bine, until next time...

La revedere!