Placement and Medical Sessions

It’s scary to begin to think that our language sessions are already beginning to wind down, but over the next few weeks they will be doing just that. It seems as if we have already learned all the nouns that are essential and are now working more on fluency and grammatical aspects of our language skills. It is nice because, besides making a noun plural, they have simple grammatical rules and they seem to follow a pattern. Our Country Director, a paid American position that develops the program in Romania, came and spoke with us both individually and as a group. He said that the most important aspect to remember is that we should not judge ourselves against one another or even where we would like to ideally be, but against the progress that we make on a weekly basis. I thoroughly enjoy spending time with our director as he is always looking for opportunities to get to know us on a more personal level and remember what it was like for him to be a volunteer. He even comes to our language cultural sessions so that he can brush up on his knowledge of Romania as it is continually changing. He is the most amazing example of a wonderful leader.

This week in grammar we also learned about a form of sentence development that does not exist in English. As it is so abstract to many of us it was difficult to learn it and will take excessive practice to master. I will attempt to describe it to you so that you can see what I’m attempting to master. When you are using a verb that involves someone receiving the action of the verb as well as the sentence indicating who receives the action of the verb then you must use the Dative form of grammar, the one non-existent in English. So the sentence in Romanian would be, Eu ii da Marie un pix. (I her gave Maria(her) a pen). You have to add the pronoun her before the verb because she is the one receiving the action of the verb. Along with the pronoun before the verb you must add a pronoun after the verb or alter the proper noun, in this case Maria to Marie. Then when dealing with the past tense you must do the same thing. I-am dat Marie un pix. While discussing the past tense you must have the word I-am. The Am is expressing the person who is doing the action and the I is expressing the person who is receiving the action. Again you must alter the proper noun after the verb to match the pronoun, in this case Marie. So, I know you probably understand that as much as a doctoral thesis about biochemistry, but I just wanted you to sympathize with me when I complain about the variance of this language.

This week I had my final interview with my site supervisor and am looking forward to hearing my official site announcement next week Friday. After discussing what types of work I would like to do and what type of town I will be living in, she told me that she was ninety five percent sure where I would be placed. Since I don’t want to explain my new placement and work opportunities in the rare case that I do not receive that particular placement I will wait until next week to fill you in with all of the details about my future work. If I do end up getting the one I am expecting though you will all get to see some amazing photographs and I will witness some of the worlds most beautiful mountains, wooden churches, and valleys. I might also indulge in the freshest milk as I will be living in a town of 9000, and no I did not forget any zeros in that number. I will fill you in with more information as my site announcement becomes official.

This week we spent two afternoons discussing medical information. The doctor for the PC is a very humorous man and enjoys using very harsh sarcasm within his presentations. As you can only imagine lectures about STD’s and bacteria in food including worms, parasites and disease would be right down his alley. He enjoyed joking with us as he showed us some of the most disturbing images and created mental pictures that even made the individuals with strong stomachs quiver. These presentations are notorious within the PC Romania group and even the current volunteers continue to talk about how disturbing all of the pictures were, guess that eliminates the question as to whether anyone will avoid washing their hands before their next meal.

Hope that you have all had a wonderful week, and know that I think about you all and what you are doing at that particular time seven hours before myself. I can only imagine that Bill, outside of work, continues to hit the gym no matter the condition, knowing that I would be there right beside him if I were home even when the YMCA staff does not due to ten inches of ice and snow. Enjoy your weekend!