Third Goal

Cutting a pig

Winter in the Moldovan forest

The second snowfall in my village, which is enveloped in a centuries-old forest

Gender Roles

The Romanian language is split into genders, just like French or Spanish. For example, masă, or table, is feminine while scaun, or chair, is masculine. I introduce myself as a profesoară, not a profesor, because I am a woman. This makes teaching gender roles to my 5th-7th grades this week difficult, as the very words I speak have an assigned gender. Usually, the masculine and feminine versions of a word have the same meaning. I may be an americancă and you may be an american, but we are ...

The Bus....

September 19, 2010 It was my third week of “practicum” meetings on Mondays and Tuesdays and I was traveling for the fifth time alone by bus to Kumanovo.  I walked farther down the lane than normal to a bus stop that was (to my knowledge at the time) visited by two alternative bus routes, thus increasing my chance of catching a ride to town.  After waiting only a few minutes, and much to my delight, a very large bus barreled down around the corner and glided to a stop. The doors smacked o...

Our Garden

This charming young lady holding our dog is our neighbor, Nastia. From late spring until late fall, our garden was full of flowers and vegetables. 

My wonderful host family

I lived with the Skrebnevas for three years. They are wonderful, caring people and we had great times together, especially the summer holidays.

My Students

This is a photo of one of my English classes as we showed off a newspaper from Monterey, California, my home town.

Second Form

This is my second grade English class, pictured with my Azeri counterpart, Mahire muellime.  Adorable kids.

Um, so, how was it?

In the almost six years since I finished my Peace Corps service in Ukraine, I've thought a lot about what it all meant. Peace Corps as an organization often poses the questions: "What does your Peace Corps service mean to you?" or "How has you Peace Corps service impacted you life?" However, the question I've most been asked since I returned five years ago is: "Um, so, how was it?" A pretty impossible question to answer, actually. How to explain that you experience your highest highs ...

Linguistics 101

What a mystery is language.  What a wonderment.  The myriad ways humankind has developed for communicating.  And, the confusion caused when various methods connect, or attempt to connect, and fail. The best way I’ve found to comprehend many attempts at connection is to teach, no, to try to teach, a new language to children or teenagers.  It causes one to meet language face to face. Some examples--- “I am an ecologist.”  An English expression which states a profession.  The Russ...