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fultas01 · 8 years ago

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Hello Reader!

Hi mom! For the last three months I have been working on this post, which if you see the word count you’ll begin to understand why it took so long. With over 5,500 words this is my longest post ever. Sorry, not sorry. In this post I’m going to talk about a lot of my adventures in the month of December (I know its March, BUT I’ve been busy!). This post will talk about some of the dumber (more air-heady) things I have done in country, as well as discuss my first vacation in Europe! While there is a lot in these stories, there is also a lot omitted, so if you want to hear more about any of these things, you’ll have to ask me in person, or wait for an Angela-tells-all post (not coming soon). So just remember: this is going to be a looong post, make sure to see it as a marathon, not a sprint! See you at the finish line. :)

The first misadventure: Losing of the Phone.

After celebrating a lovely (and honestly completely different from I’m used to) Thanksgiving, I headed back to site with my site mate (sort of site mate, we live in different places, but he’s in the raion, so if I want anything I either go to his city or Chisinau), and about a half hour into the trip back I realized that I didn’t have my phone. Instead, I had completely forgotten that I had knocked it off the sofa the night before and left without it in the morning.

Some pictures from our fantastic Thanksgiving meal. Great food, drinks, and even better company.

We contacted our friend in Riscani and asked for him to look for it when he had time. He thankfully found it that night and texted to guard for me that I made it back to site, right before the phone died. He told me that it was like defusing a bomb, having to beat the clock to send a message as the phone was dying. After that, I tried to figure out a time when I could either make it to Riscani to pick up my phone from him, or if he could send it via rutiere back to Edinet for me. Unfortunately due to our schedules as teachers, and the rutiere schedule, there was basically no way to get to Riscani and back (without either missing part of the school day, or spending the night in the other town, neither were really acceptable). So, he being a great human being, said he’d take it to Chisinau that weekend and leave it in my locker for me.

Now I just had to make it a week or more without a phone. Normally, I don’t think that this would be difficult. Annoying yes, difficult no. But my phone has my alarm on it, which led me to being late two days of the week for school. I set the alarms on both my computer and tablet to help me wake up, and on the first late morning realized that my tablet had set the alarm for 8 am back in the states (not very helpful), and the one on my computer didn’t go off (no idea why… and now it will randomly go off around 8 am). Along with the fun times of sleeping in, I also found that due to random power outages, I had very little internet access. Every time the house lost electricity for a few seconds would turn off he motem, and I would be without internet on my laptop and tablet until it was turned back on by one of the kids. The lack of internet also was annoying at school, where if I was ever unsure of a grammatical rule or wanted to come up with quick examples of said grammar, I would google it. Without the internet on my phone, I was left to either guess at meaning or try some out of the textbook (and these textbooks are far from my favorite sources of information).

The final weird thing about being without a phone, was the fact that my program director was planning a visit to see me teach, and I was trying to fill out my request for vacation. I informed my program manager that I didn’t have my phone for the week, so she was awesome and called me via my host family’s phone. A little awkward to first few times, but since she ended up calling at least four times I got used to using their phone and my host family understood.

At the end of the week I was happy to find myself going to the capital for a meeting and to grab my phone. Being reunited was absolutely fabulous.

Misadventure 2: Teaching in a ‘Winter Wonderland’

I have a theory that in the month of December all kids that live in a country that celebrates Christmas are the same. They are counting down the days until they have a break. During this month we had our first snows, and did the kids go crazy at that! Even the teachers asked if I went out and built a snow man (no, no I didn’t, it’s freaking cold outside). And so, as any teacher can tell you, teaching students in December is somewhat similar to herding cats. They only learn when they want to, and you end up bending over backwards trying to get their attention.

During the month I had a hard time concentrating myself, as I was counting down to my vacation, so for the most part the only people who were trying were my partners. Sorry guys, I was distracted. But we pushed through and continued to teach vocabulary and grammar points while everyone was bundled up in their winter coats. This is because while the school is heated, there are some rooms that are better heated than others, and I think the English room was just a step above freezer.

Our heaters were located below the windows and they lazily pushed out a little heat. Meaning that the seats closest to the windows were the most coveted, since they were the warmest. But, sitting next to the windows made it easy for the students to get distracted by any and everything that passed by. While my 12th graders were very studious and interested in learning, my 11th graders took to talking about everything and anything that passed by outside, and just generally hold full conversations in Romanian. And how do you deal with this? Well, you probably shouldn’t follow my example and just start being sarcastic and snarky right back at the student in English. It gets their attention, and for those that understand what I’m saying laugh, but the kid who was speaking in Romanian just continue by saying N’am înțeles (which means, I didn’t understand). Which I would then reply (in English, and sometimes in Romanian) either, I know, or put a hand over my heart and dramatically go: no?! Not the most professional answer, and I don’t recommend acting that way in class, but it just came out naturally, and it had a moticom of success in stopping conversation. I would also go and sit right next to the talkers and just stare at them, that generally had them blushing and turning to the front of the class real fast.

In the middle school grades I just generally let my teachers work their magic to make them behave (less rather than more) and we pulled teeth with my middle grades for the month. Did they learn anything? Maybe. Maybe not. But I definitely taught them the American move of hitting your head against a table or the chalkboard when frustrated. So….culture exchange?

In my youngest grades (2-5th) the students were still generally good. They wanted to learn, so we kept to our work and even played some games, sang songs, learned our ABCs and all that. :) I even taught a couple of my classes some Christmas carols. I hadn’t been planning on it, but when one of my second graders just started repeating “jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell…” over and over again, I couldn’t help go over to him and start singing the actual song. Which got the attention of everyone else in the classroom, and we quickly switched gears and learned the chorus of Jingle bells, because why not?

Misadventure 3: What’s in a Holiday?

Winter break began on the 24th of December, so I packed my book-bag and went to Chisinau, which was completely decked out for the holiday. When I arrived, I hung out with some other M31s, including the two ladies I was going to Romania with, as well as another friend who we were going to celebrate her birthday! We walked around in the beautifully decorated area, took photos and then made it to our hostel.

I was so thankful to get to the hostel, because after an hour or two of carrying a 10 lbs (I’m guessing, I have no idea how much it really weighed) backpack and my purse with my laptop in it, I was getting a little tired…. If you ask the ladies I was hanging out with, they might even go as far to call me whiny or annoyed. BUT I’m sticking with tired, and I just had a desire to put my stuff down. Either way, we finally made it to our hostel after looking around downtown Chisinau and going down a sketchy alleyway to find our hostel (IDK if it’s just Moldova, but I feel like all of their hostels are down sketchy alleys).

Once we sat our stuff down, we set out to celebrate Beth’s birthday in style. We went to a nice Italian restaurant, that I won’t be able to find again on my own. And whose name I don’t know (so sorry if you were hoping for me to give you a good restaurant in Chisinau, I have the attention span of a Labrador retriever and Dory’s memory). I can say that the food was delicious and the company superb. It was nicely decorated for Christmas, so we had to take a picture together. Unfortnately, I had not dressed for taking a picture, I had dressed for the 3.5 hour rutiera ride into the city, so I look like a hot mess.

That night, we stayed up late watching the movie Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them in our hostel. The movie was great, however the quality from my computer was lacking. :/

The next day was of course Christmas! And being in an orthodox country, December 25th didn’t necessarily mean a whole lot. But we decided to keep some traditions alive and went to see the new Star Wars movie in the theater (it was even in English :D ). Another really good movie, that I was happy that I got to watch, with Americans.

After the movie, we met other volunteers and had a little Christmas party together. We had food, nonalcoholic beverages, good company, ginger bread houses, and a piano! With the piano available, and a gentleman who plays the piano, we decided to sing some Christmas carols! Because, why not?

From the party, I left with my travel partners and we headed for the South Bus Station to catch our rutiera to Brasov, the first stop on my wonderful winter vacation! As we made it to the bus station it was already around 6 at night. So, we sat down to wait for our rutiera… and we waited….and we waited. During this wait, one of my friends reminded me that I still needed to turn on the roaming on my phone. With that thought in mind I looked around for an Orange store (our cell phone provider, not the fruit). However, all the little phone stores were already closed for the night (everything closes up when it gets dark, which at that time was around 4 pm). Cursing under my breath and heading back to my travel buddies, I began trying to turn roaming on from my phone. This, I thought would be an easy process, but NOOOOOO, it had to be difficult, and wouldn’t let me do it, without an added 200 lei (about 10 usd) to my account, something I couldn’t do from where I was. So I gave up and decided to turn it on the next day from Romania.

While I was messing around with my phone we were still waiting for our rutiera, and getting a little anxious that we hadn’t seen it yet. So we went to investigate, only to find that there had only been five tickets sold, so they were getting a car instead of a rutiera. No sense wasting the gas and the space when you could do it another way, right? So, we got to drive to Brasov in a minivan! Not what I was expecting, but it was more comfortable than a rutiera, so absolutely no complaints…. Okay, my only complaint is about Bethany deciding to wake me up by hitting me. Thanks bro. I will get even.

We drove through the night and made it to our hostel around 2 am. Which, was earlier than we had anticipated… meaning that we had to wake up the employee to let us in and pay for another night, that we hadn’t been expecting. But that meant we did get to sleep in a bed that night.

Misadventure 4: Yes I’m American, yes I speak Romanian aka. Romania

We spent the next 2 days exploring Brasov and the surrounding areas. The first day we walked around Brasov, had some good food, walked up to the two observation towers (the white and black towers), threw some snow balls, checked out a grave yard (because…because!), checked out the black church, and generally just walked around the city.

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Each of these photos has a little story behind them, so if you want to know more, try to find me some day and ask, I’d be glad to share my experiences.

In the mean time, I will say that the pictures of us in the woods was in the middle of an impromptu snow ball fight, the big church in the early photos is the black church which was closed while we were there, and we joked that the tree looked like an old lady who had hair coming out of her hair net in every direction. :)

That evening (and the next one too), we came back to the hostel by 8 o’clock and played card games for a while. This led to us finding out that Susan is a card shark who spent a lot of time playing cards (successfully) in Vegas for years before she came to Moldova. Thankfully we were only playing Uno and go fish! However, Susan did wipe us out on first time around during one of the go fish games. She literally guessed all of my cards, then guessed all of Bethany’s. It was insane. I can also say, that I never won a game of Uno, and I don’t think I won go fish either.

Our guardian at the hostel, she really liked my bed :)

On the second day in Brasov we went to Bran castle (Dracula’s castle) and to a fortress! It was a fun day trip away from Brasov, so we could walk up to the different castles (it was pretty dangerous getting up, and then down, the steep and snow covered slope to Bran Castle). However, I can now say I was at Dracula’s castle!

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One the 3rd day we traveled to Romania’s Capital, Bucharest! We decided to go via train and hang out in the city for a couple hours just seeing what they have. We decided that we would go to the Hard Rock Cafe in the city, which I was definitely cool with, since I knew I would be getting my Starbucks craving finally sated after 6 months without it.

Unfortunately, we didn’t know exactly how to get there, and ended up a little lost, and we walked for over an hour before we came to the restaurant. During the walk I had cut my heel (how? I have no idea), so I was kind of limping and trying not to be on my heel for the last kilometer that we walked. After our wonderful meal, we decided to ax the walking idea, and had the restaurant call us a cab back to a mall we had seen so that we could do some shopping. There, I finally had some Starbucks!!! (Twice <3)!

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We widdled away the afternoon and I left around 4:30 to make it to the airport for my flight to Budapest. This is where my luck changed, as the driver took me for a tourist and it took over an hour to get to the airport, and cost me 30 euros (nope, not how much it should have cost, at all!). There, I found out that I had missed the check in for my flight by 10 minutes. I could only reschedule the flight in the next twenty minutes for a flight in two days. Fml. I said no, and tried to not make a scene in the airport about how stupid this was, and decided that I officially hate airports.

I went back outside and flagged down another cab to take me to the train station. From the train station I was hoping I could get a late night train to Budapest. This second taxi ride took 20 minutes and cost me 30 Romanian lei (7 usd). I talked to three different tellers in the train station and was able to get an over night train to Budapest that was leaving in 2.5 hours. Thank god! After almost crying of happiness about being able to keep going with my vacation, I sat down and waited (in the cold) for my new train. It was not the way I wanted to spend my night, but I was able to make it onto my train and head for Budapest. I left Romania with a lot less money than I started out with, but I still left.

Misadventure 5: My Favorite City: Budapest

Before leaving the US, if you would have asked me what my favorite city was, I probably would have said Chicago. It’s close, it’s beautiful, and it’s a place where I could see myself living in the future. Now, I can say all of these things about Budapest, Hungary. The city was absolutely gorgeous, the people were nice, it has a cool night life, and I would give up a lot of stuff in my life to get the chance to live there (sorry Mom, I know that’s not something you want to hear, but it’s true!).

But back to my story!!!

When I left off, I had missed my flight to Budapest, and had to take a train. This train didn’t arrive in Budapest until noon or 1 the next day. Meaning, I had slept on the train, but I did get to meet two nice ladies traveling through Romania and Budapest and ending their trip for the New Year in Vienna. The ladies were from Denmark, and as soon as I spoke in Romanian they could tell I was American (American accents are ridiculously easy for people to pick out), so we were able to talk in English easily. They told me about their travels, and I told them about my time as a Peace Corps volunteer in Moldova. We spent the trip talking off and on about different topics, and we came away with me adding Denmark to the list of countries I would like to visit, and I talked them into visiting Moldova in the future (as well as talking up Chicago).

When I finally arrived in Budapest I got out some money, the Hungarian Forint. This monetary system was one of the only downsides (because why do I need a 10,000 forint note? Why can’t it be 100???? I asked myself this question my entire time in the captial).

So, after I had some cash, I followed the first directions to the hostel: get on the tram and take it to the next station. Got it, so far so good. Well, that’s when I got lost. I made it to the correct stop on the tram, then went the wrong way on the street. Then I backtracked, when the right direction, then turned the wrong way again! It took me over an hour to make the 15 minute walk to the hostel… not my finest moment.

I finally made it to the hostel (a very nice hostel too) and checked in. I messaged the volunteer I was staying with and decided to crash until I heard back from her. Being able to lay down on a bed was amazing, and I was almost asleep when I heard from my friend and headed out again to St. Basilica church.

Saint Basilica’s around Christmas time.

Afraid of getting lost again, I asked the receptionist to give me directions and a map (which she did). I made it to the Jewish Synagogue (about halfway there) and then got lost again, as I headed the wrong way. Again. This lasted a hour and a half (90 minutes of basically walking around looking at buildings, thinking that that building looks like it could be a cathedral. Then realizing that I walked past it like 3 times) before I was finally able to meet and find my friend in front of the church, which we didn’t go inside of because we were starving.

Once we finally met each other, we decided to walk back towards the center of the city to find a restaurant. And guess what? We went the wrong way!!! We ended up walking a same way I had just come from and walked all the way around until we hit an overpass that seemed to be going out of the main city. Funnily enough, while we were walking, an English guy (probably our age) literally ran up to us, because he saw our map and asked us where we were drinking. Thankfully he kept going with his friends, so we didn’t actually talk to the guy, but it definitely made me more aware of how much of a tourist we looked.

I can’t remember where we ended up eating that night, but I think we ended up going to a ruin bar (which those are fantastic) and we drank Starbucks and talked while sitting outside listening to some random band playing in the background.

Day 2 of Budapest: Let’s be tourists

So on my second day in Budapest, we got all sorts of touristy with paying to have breakfast at the New York Cafe and do a hop-on hop-off tour. But when we left the restaurant, we lost more than we expected. My friend lost quite a bit of money (no idea where) and I lost my ticket for the bus. So I had to buy a new one, spending more than I had planned on spending that day (oops).But I will say, the New York Cafe was really pretty.

From there, we tried to make things better and jumped on the bus touring the city and listening to the pretty insane stories of the city’s history (they threw a guy in a barrel and then rolled it down a hill into the Danube, not to mention all the floods, wars, and other disasters that have affected the area). We explored the city for a long while and split up for a little while exploring different areas. We met back up at the hostel and got ready for our big activity of our time in Budapest: a bath party. Budapest is known for their public baths, so we decided to go to the New Years Eve bath party (held on the 30th… no idea why).

While the idea was a really fun one, it was supposed to be like a huge night-time block/pool party. We didn’t consider the fact that the temperature outside at night was well below freezing. Not to mention what happens in pools when there is a lot of alcohol and drunk people. Also, I am not much of a party girl, as the DUF (if you don’t know this acronym, urban dictionary knows what it means) of every group of friends I’ve had since the age of 13 (probably), I was on babysitting duty, and my RBF (same as my earlier comment: urban dictionary) made me good at the job, but it made me cold and bored for most of the 4 hour party, not to mention that I was sober. So yay, gross water party where I wasn’t distracted by anything (person or anything).

With that said, I do think that the baths would be fun in the day time and when there aren’t so many people around, and I could actually relax, and not be annoyed. If asked to go to this party again, I’d laugh all the way to the nearest ruin bar, and tell you to go if you want, but I’ll be here having fun. Either way, I had a great day taking pictures then an okay night out.

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Day 3: Bye-bye Budapest!

On our last day in Budapest, my friend and I started the day out by going to the train station and buying tickets to Prague for that night (our way of saving money because a room in either city was more money than all the other nights combined, so no.). We then had some breakfast together and made a plan to meet back up together later. Then I went back out to explore the city by myself. To my mother, who very much might be hyperventilating reading about me going two days in a city by myself: I know you’re worried, but I made it without a scratch. And I honestly had a really good time, and if you’re afraid of me going it alone too much, you’ll just have to join me on my next adventures. :)

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This day, I got to try some local food, and had some mulled wine (delicious!), and took looots of pictures. It was a great day of traveling around and seeing different sites. I ended my time in Budapest by getting a local beer at a nice restaurant and then some waffles and a milkshake at a boutique cafe, that I will go to again when I visit again. Oh, and I of course had some Starbucks (the guy recognized me from the day before) before meeting my friend at the train station.

Misadventure 6: What’s your Prague-lem?

The final leg of vacation was to visit Prague, one of Europe’s top-rated cities. But, it is not on my top favorite lists. I went, I saw, I got the shot glass. I don’t have any strong desires to go again. That would be due to a lot of different things.

Our first day there started really early (like 6 am) and as I got off the train I was automatically cold and had to try and find my friend (she had sprung for the sleeper car, whereas I hadn’t). It took us a while to find each other, and then even longer to figure out where to go from there, since we couldn’t check into our hostel until that afternoon.

We went to the Old Town area and walked less than a block before we turned back around and headed for the subway, deciding that before we get any food we should find the hostel and drop off our bags. So, we were tired, and freaking freezing. Not a great start.

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Throughout the day my mood fluxuated from happy to annoyed and back again. We ended up lost at almost every turn, the guy at the hostel, while somewhat helpful flirted with my friend and ignored my existence so much that the next morning he didn’t even recognize me. But we had Starbucks and saw some of the sites. Unfortunately while we did have some fun, I think we were mostly tired, and just generally annoyed that we had gotten so lost and had to wait around in the cold for so long waiting on buses. If I had to give this day a rating from 1-10, it would have received a 4. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t good either. Not every city can be Budapest.

Day 2: Do I look like D. Trump?!

Day two came early and I was annoyed to find myself ditched without a word. Not the best beginning of a day, but we were both annoyed from yesterday, so I don’t care about it now. But at the time, it had really pissed me off. That day, I missed out on everything I wanted to do because of getting lost (I had planned on doing a tour of a concentration camp a little ways outside of the city, then I wanted to do a walking tour of the city that talked about the history of the city from the time of WWII to communism, to the velvet revolution. However, I couldn’t find the place to save my life. So I walked around taking some pictures.

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I made my way back to the main area and decided to try some traditional food that I had heard about from a Youtuber from Prague. So I found the restaurant, which was more of a cafeteria. And sat down to eat. I was joined by a guy who began talking to me in (what I’m guessing) was Czech. But I quickly confessed to not speaking the language, and he happily switched to English, and we spent the rest of the meal talking about random things together.

After the huge meal that honestly I didn’t think was all that tasty. I walked to a nearby gift shop and bought my souvenir shot glass (I’m 22, I’m allowed to by tacky things as my souvenirs!). The clerk this time spoke to me in Russian (I can occasionally pick that language out now). And I replied, instinctively, in Romanian. When he just gave me a look I switch to English and he asked me where I was from. When I said Chicago (no one knows anything good about Indiana, so I almost always say I’m from Chicago), he told me he thought I looked German or Russian. Then he took that back and said that I look like Donald Trump. Which, if that isn’t the biggest insult I’d heard in months I don’t know what is. So, like a true lady, I had some choice words for him and left the shop with my shot glass (I’d already paid for it, otherwise I wouldn’t have given the guy my business).

After that, I settled down at a cafe and to make myself feel better about my frustrating day, I bought myself a ticket to a concert being held in the city. I left two hours early to make sure I would find it. And good thing I did, because I got lost again, had to ask for directions, finally find the the box office where my ticket was sold only to find out that it was closed. Basically crying in frustration, I quickly tried to find the theater and found (thankfully) with about 15 minutes to spare. I was surprised that they let me in, I got my ticket and even had a really nice seat in the first few rows (not that the show I went to see was heavily attended). The concert was amazing and it improved my mood tenfold. I finished the night going to a sandwich shop near the hostel and face-timed my brother, then went to the hostel and packed my things up for my early morning. And fell asleep before my friend made it back to the hostel.

Misadventure 7: Heading home

I hate airports. They are the bane of my existence. I hate, hate, hate, hate airports. My last day in Prague say me waking up at 4 am so that I could get around and leave for the airport. Which was an experience! consisting of a subway ride, then over crowded buses and having absolutely no idea where or when to get off. I arrived like an hour before I could even check-in and just hung out on the floor of the Prague airport next to a plug, as I charged my devices and tried to keep busy.

When I finally made it through check-in (not hard when you’re the 3rd person in line, and when the guy actually speaks English to you without looking like its a hassle). The only downside to going through security was they took my leave in conditioner (because I’m going to hold up a plane with the ability to have silky hair). Then my flight was delayed by a half hour (why? I have no idea, just because?).

From Prague I flew to Poland, Krakow. There I had a bit of an issue with my passport, since I had no stamps saying I left Hungary or ones that said I had ever been in the Czech Republic (great job, customs). So I had to stand there for a good 15 minutes while the guy checked on what to do. They eventually just let me through with a stamp saying I was leaving Poland (so according to my passport I entered Hungary, and then left Poland, not suspicious looking at all).

I then had something like 4 hours to kill. Which I did by first freaking out about not being able to find my flight anywhere on the list that would happen that day. Then found out that I was apparently looking at the wrong thing on my ticket. Then I freaked out about being at the wrong terminal and actually freaking out about thinking that I missed my flight, until I realized that Poland is an hour behind Moldova. So I had another hour of waiting and I was at the correct terminal. Talk about stress.

On the plane, my seat was taken by a mom and her kid, so I took her seat, and then listened to the baby cry and scream for the entire flight, plus the kid kicking my seat. Who says politeness doesn’t pay? Once back in Moldova, I was relieved to get to a hostel, but was over charged by a cabbie, only to find out that the hostel was booked full. So I called a friend and headed out of the city on the last rutiera to Balti of the night. And stood awkwardly close to people for a good 2 hours making my way to my friend’s house. I under shot where I should have gotten off, and ended up on the wrong side of her village and had to walk all the way through the village at like 10:30.

The next day, I made it back to my village. And that is the end of my adventures!

Final thoughts: aka the adventures of traveling alone

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Me and Czech Darth Vader, and my favorite picture from Budapest: sun setting over Hero Square.

Throughout my trips I spent some of my time traveling with friends, and some of the time traveling by myself. And I found myself meeting really nice people while I was alone. I met two women between Romania and Budapest, 3 gentleman between Budapest and Prague that I rang the New Year in with, David from Italy joined me at the cafeteria in Prague, and I ran into a couple different volunteers on their own vacations here and there too. All together, I had a really good time. Meeting new people, exploring new places, and just getting out of my comfort zone. The lesson here: go do something you weren’t planning on doing. Or travel! You never know what might happen.

Thanks for reading! Until next time,

Angela :)

The Misadventures Part 2: Or how I got lost in 4 different countries Hello Reader! Hi mom! For the last three months I have been working on this post, which if you see the word count you'll begin to understand why it took so long.

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