So here is an “average” day for me. Wake up around 6 (ideally, 6:30-7 occasionally (normally)). Prep for the day and study a little Romanian. Around 6:30 my host mother and brother head out to feed the pigs and milk the cow. I head for the kitchen to prep breakfast. Milk on the stove for coffee, potatoes in the pan, an egg or two every now and again. Fill the lower cistern with water from the well while I’m waiting for everything to heat up. Eat with the fam around 7:45, scrape my teeth and throw on some clothes, and I’m out the door by 8:05 for my 15 minute “commute” (I walk, no horse carts or anything like that). Arrive at school and prep for classes. Today’s vocob or some crazy drawing on our homemade white boards. Four classes with 10 minute pauses in between, just enough time to sprint outside to the bathroom around the back of the school. If it is one of our short days then I stay after with my partner and plan for the week ahead. Head home by three for lunch (nope, not a typo). Prep lunch if I beat my family home, and then eat between 3&4pm. Scrub up the dishes quickly and head outside to help with whatever chores need to be done. They are pretty stubborn about letting me help with the animals, but are ok with my lugging heavy sacks of whatever to wherever it needs to go. I also have taken over as the “barbat”(man) of the house, so I do plumbing work or electrical when needed (often). I head inside whenever it gets dark and start to prep dinner, host-ma and son head for the cow. Whip up some more potatoes, maybe a cabbage salad for a treat, and read my Newsweek while waiting (our sole consistent connection to the outside world, delivered every Friday).
Eat dinner, and then fight with my host mother over who gets to do the dishes. If she wins I head to my room to study (or read more in my Newsweek). When I can start to see my breath we go ahead and start a fire in the “soba”, which is an ornate wood stove built into the wall between our rooms. Fire is lit, and I settle in for a few more verb conjugations. Around 9 or 10 my host mom pokes her head in the room and we have our Romanian lesson. Sometimes as late as midnight we finish, and she traverses the freezing hallway back to her room. If I’m lucky, and my lesson in Romanian grammar has not knocked me out (grammar is my anti-coffee), I read a little, clean up my room or try and get some writing done. In bed by midnight with my two down comforters, waiting until I see daylight again.
Now this is my “average” day, though in reality every day is different. Mondays and Thursdays I have basketball practice at the high school (I teach at the middle school), after which I head to my partner teacher’s house for planning sessions. Wednesdays I don’t have class, but have been using the time to act as tech support for the computer labs in our region, or to head to the regional center to get mail or use the Internet. In the future this will be my time to work with the hospital staff or develop a side project. Fridays are a wild card, as I have to go into Chisinau fairly frequently for meetings, and thus have most of the day absorbed by the six-hour bus ride into town. Saturdays have been used almost exclusively for working in the fields, tending our six hectares, and Sundays are split between heading into the regional center to go shopping at the “piaţa” (pronounced peeatza), and then back into the fields to finish what we can.
