on the job: sometimes you feel like a nut. . .

Sometimes you don’t….

And some days I feel like a Peace Corps Volunteers and some days I don’t.

I’m counting my blessings because today was a very Peace Corps day.

I went to work and on the way, called dear Gretel to vent about something and then later to Tedros who called to check in on me. Super grateful for them!

I worked with beneficiaries and some gals in the volunteer club and planned for the first lesson of my new English Class for employees at my foundation.  Employees were grumbling all day about the English class.  “We don’t want to come.” “I’ll never learn English.” “I’m too old to learn.”  I tried not to take it too personally.  And while it’s not my favorite thing that the director has obligated staff to attend, I think sometimes you gotta get people out of their comfort zone to try something new. Despite grumbling and shyness, the class went amazingly well.

After a full day at the foundation, David and I headed down the road to tutor our favorite kiddos, Emi and Mada.  We did some review of basic conversation — Hello. What’s your name? Where are you from? How old are you? What do you do? And to make it fun, we pretended to be celebrities — Prince William, Hannah Montana, Nicholas Sarkozy, Razvan Lucescu, and Scooby Doo.  And man, those kids rocked it.  It’s amazing how their confidence, fluency and skill at English has grown in the past 5 months.  It’s even cooler that we’ve had a good time learning together.

After 2 hours of tutoring the kiddos, we headed to Mass.  Today is Saint Paul’s day  and since our little church is named in honor of Saints Peter and Paul, we had a special service.  David and I arrived a minute or two late, but we doubled the attendance.  We got to the daily reading and Parinte Iulian brings the lectionary over to me and says, “Hai, Veronica, citeste!”  (Come on, Veronica, read!).  And so I was a lector at church.  For the first time.  In Romanian. Smart man, that Parinte Iulian — He didn’t give me a chance to get nervous or back out of reading in front of people.

On the way home in the dark, we stopped at a store for something sweet to nibble on.  It took us almost 45 minutes to get home because we kept running into students or people from church or neighbors or random strangers who seemed interested in us.

Now I’m home, contemplating what to have for dinner and working on Istanbul pictures (gotta get them done before Egypt!) and a GAD project.

Today I felt busy, productive, needed, integrated, and best of all, like I’m finally doing what I came here to do.