July 2009
13 posts
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I LIKE EAT HAMBURGER
Last week we began practice school. Practice school is an ingenious idea: Peace Corps English Education trainees, many of whom have no meaningful classroom experience (like myself), teach two lessons a day for a little more than two weeks to actual Moldovan students. Everyone wins, because the Moldovan kids get free English practice during the summer that they would not normally receive, and...
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MOLDOVAN PROM
On Friday night there was the graduation ceremony for one of the two village high schools. Each school has about five hundred students, and their classes are fairly small. I secured a ticket because host sister of a friend (the sister’s name is Olesia) was graduating, and I had promised that I would dance with her at the party afterward (the Moldovan version of prom).
It was incredibly hot on...
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SIC SEMPER PORKUS
After I shut my alarm off the other morning (the 4 a.m. roosters do nothing for me now), I was unable to go to back to sleep because there was a pig somewhere on my street that was shrieking like a banshee. I didn’t think much of it at the time, because frankly, no animal sound I hear at this point surprises me. What I surmise was the reason for all the hubbub was that a pig was being castrated.
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THREE MASAS AND A FUNERAL
Last week I attended three masas. A masa is like a dinner party given for a special occasion. The first was small, and was in honor of my host brother, Condrat, having opened an office for his photography business (he had previously been working out of his bedroom). A few of the neighbors came, as did my host dad’s younger brother, who used to be a police captain. My host uncle seems gentle,...
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June 2009
12 posts
1 tag
