2011 in review

It’s the week of lists and reviews, the year in review, top 10 lists of the year past, and lists for the year that is just hours away.  Well, if newspapers can do it, then why not Embarkations?  So, forthwith and without pause, looking back on the past year.  (Skip to the end to see the most popular stories.)

Sparing for a last minute run-up in the numbers, 2011 saw:

·         3,385 visits from 2,346 unique visitors (about 9.3 hits/day)

·         The average visit lasted for a little over a minute and looked at 1.4 posts

·         68% of visits were from new visitors

Top countries of origin were as followed:

1.       United States

2.       Moldova

3.       Canada

4.       U.K.

5.       Romania

Although by far, the most interested readers came from Moldova, whose visitors stayed longest and visited the most pages.

Some surprises coming from the U.S., where I’m most popular in Tennessee, followed by California, New York, Texas, and then Illinois at #5.  Colorado came in ninth and Iowa fourteenth.  Overall, visitors represented 95 different countries and all 50 states.

In life, 2011 was a pretty awesome year, with a few strong highlights:

·         Friends: ringing in 2011 in Brasov with Amanda, Sinh, and Miranda.

·         Service: finishing my first year, and all of a sudden being the “experienced one” in the Bloc

·         Work (youth): Winning Plural+ Moldova with my students’ first short film

·         Work (medical center): opening our public showers and hygiene improvement project for the elderly who use the soup kitchen

·         Work (partners): seeing my partner teacher coach new partners through practice school and standing next to my nurse partner – who is terrified of public speaking – speak to a room of more than 80 women about breast cancer

·         Vacation: hard to choose, they were all so amazing, but I think I’ll choose Krakow and Berlin for the HIA conference.

·         Family: seeing Keith and Eugene get married in Korea (cheating, I know, it’s also vacation)

·         Integration: My host-sister Rodica’s wedding

·         For the Peace Corps family: Thanksgiving (integration points for killing a turkey)

I’m also critical of lists, of course, because they tend to wax over the daily flow of life and make it all about the big moments.  In reality, life, and most of Peace Corps, is what happens in between the big successes.  Still, when most readers are so far away, I suppose it doesn’t hurt to distill things down a bit.

And finally, what were the year’s most read stories?

·         Most read story written this year: Another Cup: follow-up on Greg Mortenson, with 523 views

·         Most read post of the year: My Peace Corps Aspiration Statement (posted prior to my departure with Peace Corps), with 1,467 views

The Mortenson piece also generated the most daily traffic I’ve ever seen, garnering 200 visitors in a day and earning first place as the most commented piece on the blog.  Maybe I should follow scandals more often in 2012. (Kidding)

This time last year, I had finished my first semester, and thought, wow, 25% done, looking forward to a productive year of new initiatives.  Now, I’m looking around and saying, wow, it’s almost done, but there’s still so much to do.  How am I going to tie it together?

So, with that, here’s to what has been a great 2011 of successes (and trials)! And here’s to a great 2012 ahead, a year of transitions.  And what could be truer to Embarkations’ theme than that?  Happy New Year and fiți sănătoși!

March Wrap-up and my Great Trek North! aka, Site Visits (slideshow at end)

Well, March was certainly an action packed month!  At site, school had a week of spring break, my nurse partner and I held our second public health education activity for the community, my work with the soup kitchen has been going full speed ahead as we finished off a grant application, I planned my first seminar for the teachers at my school, and I facilitated a raft of needs assessments with partners.

A lot of these projects were long on the to do list, so spring break came at a welcome time to do some catch up.  Break it was not, and come to think of it, neither was it spring (though the latter was finally making some progress this past week, with the exception of last Monday’s rather unfortunate snow…)

Both for better and for worse, action packed also meant a month when I was away from my site far more than normal – a full third of the month by my tally. Previous posts have already covered the exciting 50^th Anniversary Kickoff  and even more exciting visit by Vice President Biden.  Aside from that, other travels that pulled me away from my non-routine routine at site included facilitating two GLOW seminars (Girls Leading Our World, a global Peace Corps girls empowerment program) and an extended trek through the north of Moldova to 5 other volunteers’ sites during the final week of the month.

“Site visits” are a practice heavily encouraged by Peace Corps.  There are a number of reasons for site visits, but they generally involve some combination of work, learning through observation of fellow volunteers, and cultural curiosity/travel. I’ve hosted a number of volunteers on visits at my site.  Melissa came to facilitate a Schimb de Experienta for my youth club – twice, in fact, as the you may recall the first one was snowed out.  Craig came out of a general curiosity in the HESC program, and another time just to keep me company when my host family was away.  Most recently, Lindsay (my BFF here in Moldova) spent the night after we co-facilitated a GLOW seminar in a neighboring village.  Yet despite all my own hosting and Peace Corps’ encouragement, I had yet to pay visit to other volunteers.

My own trek north was an odyssey of long-overdue social visits, youth programs, and classroom observations.  It was my first time north of Chişinău, and in the space of a week I doubled the number of raions (districts) I’ve visited, from four to eight.

And I'm out!

The semester is done.  Six months + in Moldova done.  Goals completed, more work added.  Probably a good time for reflection.  But a better time for vacation!

So with that, I scurried around my site for the past two days, saying goodbyes and reviewing where we'll start up again after the holidays are over and I return.  I've gotten very good at saying Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year in Romanian over the past 48 hours.

Now, dear friends, I am off for my first vacation in 6.5 months.  I'm not taking my computer, so don't be surprised if you don't hear from me.  If there's time, I'll sneak in a blog or too of my travels.

The Plan

• 12/24 - to Chisinau
• 12/25 - to Balti
• 12/26 - to Budapest via Iasi and Cluj, Romania
• Chilling with Bill and haunting my old haunts
• 12/29 - to Brasov, Romania
• New Years, friends, Couch Surfing, and skiing!  (What more could I want?)
• 1/5 - Depart for Chisinau, arrive in the wee hours
• 1/6 - First bus back to site, in time for Orthodox Christmas on 1/7

That, plus the schedule for 1 of my trains is about as much as I have planned.  Wish me luck!

Weekend in the Big City

After three weeks at site, many of the volunteers headed into Chisinau for a few days of birthday parties and meetings last weekend.  Being amongst the September babies, I wasn’t about to be left out.  I’d negotiated a compact teaching schedule – all my classes Tuesday and Wednesday – just to facilitate occasions like this, and the rough bus schedule I’m confined to in my village.

So, Friday morning, well before the sun was even hinting at being up, I set out with my host father to negotiate our muddy road in the dark.  He packed two large bags of fresh homegrown fruit onto the bus for his daughter and niece in the city, and then said his goodbye to return home as the bus rumbled out of town into the first rays of the morning’s light.  A full-sized bus leaving crawling at snail’s pace along a dirt road out of a village of just 3,000 is one of those things that would have seemed odd a few months ago; now, just another day in the life.

Except this time, I was folded up against the window, watching from the inside of the bus. 

Liveblogging from the strike!

I’ve been meaning to write something about Hungary for a while now…you know, the type of entry that talks about the Hungarian things I’m beginning to love and the daily routines I’ve settled into, with witty anecdotal generalizations about the people and culture thrown in. Unfortunately, I have yet to visit Hungary. For the past semester, I lived at the Central European University, which operates something like the Vatican, as some form of sui generis entity within but apart from Budapest.

If I were to write about Hungary, I’d probably mention some things like paprika (the word is Hungarian, and refers to both the spice and bell peppers, the former which is on every table and the latter which is in every dish). There would probably be some mention of the numerous thermal baths (I can now provide instructions on proper loin cloth etiquette). And then I’d probably wrap up with something about the people, (if you’re a guest in a house, you’re likely to get fed a few meals, if you’re a guest in a restaurant, good luck getting a waiter). Maybe something cynical about the politicians (It’s a very hands-on approach to capitalism, by which I mean their hands are on EVERYTHING…politics: Blagojevitch style!)

Like I said, I’d like to tell you those things. But something else has come crashing so noisily into the forefront daily life, that it cannot be ignored. Transportation.

Now, I can understand that everybody wants a holiday. But recently, the entire transportation industry has decided that it wants its holiday NOW. Airport workers have been on strike since last week. Monday, the national train workers went on strike as well. Budapest public transit workers were clearly feeling a bit left out, so they thought they’d have a ‘half day’ strike this morning, (read: there was a killer party Wednesday night and the boss couldn’t find anybody to work Thursday morning, given that the strike didn’t materialize, I can only assume the party was lame).

On the upside, traveling around Budapest is quite entertaining, erm, I mean safe. Take for instance a tram accident a few weeks ago, when a fire truck was immediately present on the site of the accident. Never mind the fact that the fire truck had been the one to hit the trolley. Unfortunately, the department was a little slower to arrive last week when a bus spontaneously burst into flames. (Nobody was harmed, so it’s okay to laugh).

Luckily, the majority of my daily commute occurs via metro. The upside here is that compared to the numerous people hit by cars every week, it is harder to get hit by a train. It’s pretty obvious where the trains go, just stay off the tracks. (No word yet on how a passenger hit last week managed this feet when they were NOT on the tracks…)

Despite the strike, I nevertheless have made it to the airport, where I am now awaiting my departure for a much needed winter break (so far, we think the plane will depart, despite the fact that the entire ground operations staff is on strike…) My semester ended precisely 55 minutes before I left for the airport, by which I mean I submitted my last paper at 2:35 AM, and then left my place at 3:30 AM. I am on may way to Spain, where I will spend Christmas with Yeshe. To those of you I have ignored for a few weeks now, I apologize; apparently, ‘hell week’ on the semester plan lasts longer than a week, and it really is hellish.

Break should be conducive to more entertaining stories…stay tuned.

Travel by Train!

I have now arrived in Budapest. Despite my strong desire for a shower, I am first posting this entry, written this morning while onboard a train.

Train is perhaps my favorite mode of transportation – the futuristically sleek ICE that glides across Europe at 200+ km/h, the festive Denver-Winter Park Ski Train, the obsessive punctuality of the German DB, and even the dated happenstance of Amtrak, (which is as obsessively late as the German trains are punctual) – I love it all. At present, I am watching the plains of Hungary glide by under the early morning sun, keeping my eyes peeled for the first signs of Budapest.

Yesterday morning (Friday), I left Switzerland to meet up with Conny’s youth group in Munich. Serendipitously, they had a prearranged trip in Munich, and I needed to be there to catch the train to Budapest. Conny’s group had left the night before; I was supposed to be with them, but a silly mistake on my part delayed me until yesterday.

I awoke Friday morning to a picture of green Alpine meadows and craggy peaks jutting through the mist. As Conny’s mother drove me down the mountain to the train station, we descended through the clouds into the valley of the Rhine River headwaters. It was as if I was returning to earth from a dream – a fitting image for my time with Conny.

We have had a great time together this past week and a half. We dozed away a day on the shores of the Caumasee, only daring to dip into the chilly water once. Later, Liliana and AnnaMaria (Conny’s sister and mother, respectively) explained that scientists have been unable to determine the lake’s water source, despite great effort. Last Sunday, I joined Conny’s family for her grandfather’s 90th birthday. There was good food, good company, and a small choir recital. We have taken hikes and went to a dinner party, and throughout the entire week I have met Conny’s friends and extended family, who always took an interest in my presence.

In Munich, we got a tour of the Paulaner Brewery; this was especially exciting for me as Paulaner is one of my favorite German beers. I had heard the tour included a tasting…I later discovered that “tasting” meant over half a liter of beer. Munich is in Bavaria after all…and the home of Oktoberfest. Afterwards, we sat in the beer garden, enjoying wurst and fries. If ever in Munich, skip the tourist-packed Hofbrauhaus; the locals are all at these beer gardens. (From a previous visit, I also recommend the Augustiner Keller.)

Then it was back to the main station, and onto the train! For the 9.5 hour haul from Munich to Budapest, I have enjoyed the comfort of a sleeper car shared with one other person. This afforded me a private cabin with a sink, a pre-made bed, snacks, and a morning coffee brought to my door by the steward. All this for only 69 Euro! For all those traveling in Europe, I highly recommend looking for specials offers from die Bahn.

That’s all I got written on the train, but it’s probably plenty for you to read. Last Saturday, I was helping Conny move to Basel, where she will soon be starting University. A week later, now it’s time for me to unpack in my new home. So, I will end where I began: travel by train!