Next week is D day as on Monday school begins. Although just now the weather has been perfect every day (no rain at all,) I am ready. It has been a long road here, and it is time to get going in the place where I’ll be for a while. A few days ago, the Economic Officer from the American Embassy came by town and invited the four of us new volunteers out for dinner. It was quite an interesting talk. The man, as I found out, was not an economics person by training. He studied history as an undergraduate, and got a masters in German. He mentioned that he had a “person” to do all the number crunching work – he himself was the big picture guy. I found that very interesting. When I asked him what was the thing I needed most to impart to my students, he said, “ethics.” Although I am starting to see the signs of this, perhaps given my relative newness here, I’m not really completely privy to it; that is, the mentality here is “get rich quick,” and whatever happens to others happens to them.

I think that I received a very good education, but inexcusably, I learned little to nothing of the Communist/Soviet world and the new challenges it faces now. In Uzbekistan I got some of that, and here I’m starting to see that things are similar. The idea, primarily, that grades are given to a) reflect well upon the school and b) are manipulated with greater ease in direct proportion with the parents’ social/political/economic status. Sure, stuff like that happens in the United States, but the issue here is scale. For instance, I got an anecdote today about how at some technical schools, students will show up for the first time to the last class with some gifts and grade will be decided. I won’t face that at my school, but I know that subtle and strong pressures will be operating to reflect a sunny image.

It worries me because this generation of students is, as I see it, the make/break for a country such as Romania. Here we have a country that is less united as a whole than by regions. A mind numbing Communist past coupled with a brutal dictatorship have done great damage to what constitutes civil society. Yes, compared to Uzbekistan, things here are shiny, but underneath it is a bit nasty. The law is something to be manipulated, and it is often not merit, rather connections that bring success. Again, these things happen in the US, but here it is more blatant. That is the system, and most people accept the system. The man from the embassy told us two Romanian proverbs he had learned:

“The bowed head does not get cut off,” and, “Although the water flows, the rocks remain.”

It makes sense. He said that the real revolutionaries were either killed or have left. So I guess this is the system I am up against. I do have one great thing in my favor, though. These kids love the United States. Yeah, we are talking mostly about movies, music, and other low culture – and perhaps their admiration is misguided. But if I have that opening, perhaps that is how I begin to teach about ideas such as the social contract, fair play, and the courageous individual spirit, all positive qualities of the American ethos. And yeah, these days I’d feel like I was swimming against the tide if I was teaching these principles back home. But those kind of Americans (I am pretty sure,) don’t join the Peace Corps – they go and work for Bechtel.

Oh, and did you know that Halliburton has received a nearly 20 million dollar contract for cleanup in the storm’s wake. Ain’t it grand?

From Romunia,