Environmental Projects in Romania

This is extremely frustrating: working with the new tools in blogspot.

However, it must be done.

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I am adding this entry, with great pains (I had to delete and reconfigure earlier entries to have enough space to alter my closed blog) to compile environmental work I was involved with while in Romania.

I had to learn how to compost due to necessity, and after I saw results, I promoted it throughout my community: mayor's office, schools, neighborhood, and even to family and friends in the USA. My grandparents and mother still compost to this day.

 I learned that things like: paper, bread, fruit peels, and even hair can be great compost.

We built compost structures at every school in the community and educated students on their usage.

 I met people who worked with waste management in Austria. Austria is really ahead on how to manage waste in a sustainable manner. It was a great exchange. They came to consult Romanian communities because both countries have to follow strict EU regulations. 

 I was introduced to a plastic company, that said that if people in our community would collect and consolidate our trash, they could turn the waste into recycled plastic bags. It was a step in the right direction. I took samples back to my community and presented them to the mayor with several small project proposals.

 

When I realized that while people smiled and encouraged my grand ideas (they really weren't that grand or unattainable, they were very grassroot) they weren't keen to actually participate or to help me instigate them. 

I found enthusiasm and hope working with the children and sometimes (sometimes) the teachers in the community. I initiated several projects working with children such as small camps during the summer involving environmental stewardship mixed with: first aid training, leadership, technology, and water sanitation. All of these projects were funded with fundraising, local sponsors, or community donations.

 

 Peace Corps says that the strongest deters/emotion volunteers face after their service is the feeling that they didn't make a change in their community. That their 2 years of drive to help others have a better life was a waste. I know I made changes in my community. I know I tried my hardest to advocate and teach others on maintaining a clean community for children to live and play in. Like all the returned Peace Corps volunteers, I wonder if I could have tried harder. 

I don't have the resources to measure the changes before and after I was there, but what I can measure is how much I've changed and how much I've learned from my work in Romania. 

Those 2 years weren't a waste, it was a giant lesson on appreciation and acknowledgment.

Romanian stray doggy recycling

Romanian chicken (probably dinner) standing in underdeveloped sewage system

Here are a whole bunch of pictures:

More pictures from Thanksgiving, where we went to the village Sunday morning.

Cats:

Hey! We get a good shot of the turkey too! See how small its breast is. It was a female turkey too.

Gypsies in our region are the best metal workers. They make these type of pots and rice doesn't burn on it, they barely stick.

Some of Peace Corps came on a visit so we went to the Indian restaurant in the city. It was okay, but I've had better curry in the US. Maybe cause I like my curry spicy and more flavorful and Romanians tend to like more bland flavors. It was still ethnic and fun.

My backyard dump (all the trash besides the compost stuff):
The cat helped by lying in the sun, he didn't collect the bottles, my neighbor did.


So I built these things so the trash won't fly around and there's a plastic section for the left and others to the right. Not bad for May '08 to March '09; minus the trash that was lit on fire and burned in November.
Game: Where's the cat? in the picture to the right.

Market, and it was on the 1st of March, it was bring and warm and nice.

Hum...their version of sour cream and onion chips. I tried it...and I like the sour cream and onion a LOT more. (I had thought it was really the same, but nope, it's dill).


Working on my local paper. There's a shop, and there's the post office selling the paper for me.

Still Winter. Did you know people use the branches of this type of tree for all sorts of stuff: fences, whipping horses, holding up plants for their vineyard, tomatoes, etc...

Some people (mostly gypsies to my knowledge) come with large bags and sell stuff to the mayor's office. So my co-workers were shopping for clothes.

My large fish called: nov-lak

Yum.

Over at Emily's for a girls' weekend. We made sushi and watched Casablanca. It's a good movie =) I liked it and it was digitally remastered so didn't look like an old film.

We used raw..or smoked fish: herring salad. I dont' know who would eat this salad by itself, but it was good in our sushi.



I don't know why, but there's a beam of light directed at the plate of sushi on the left, and I find it weird and funny.

Recycling Education

Under the spindled web of games, laughter, and happiness I weedle out of these children, there is a purpose to all of this.
A selfish purpose you can assume, and you would assume correctly!

But of course!

I've told these children that to have even more fun in this class! I need something from them, not their soul, but trash.
I need them collect stuff they may normally throw into the street or leave in their backyard to burn into pollution and bring them to class to use for "art" projects.

Examples of what I asked them to bring: popsicle sticks from their ice creams, empty soda and water bottles, magazines and newspapers, toilet paper rolls, and empty boxes (ALL WASHED AND CLEANED FIRST!)
I can't stand for dirty trash =p

Why? To kinda work on recycling. It's hard here to recycle, or to even throw away trash.

Example:

• I feed left over meat and dairy to neighbor's cats and dogs.


• I dump left over veggie material and decomposables into my compost pile


• I have a few bags of plastics I don't know what to do with.


• HOWEVER! Before I had a compost pile I threw it in the trash, and now I have 2 bags of trash juice stuff in my apartment and it's been here for 4 weeks, but I can't bring myself to burn it....and I don't think it will burn anymore.

But in my class, it can't hurt to show that we can utilize trash stuff, and to store it and not leave it on the streets.

I WAS SOOOOOOO HAPPY WHEN KIDS BROUGHT STUFF! AND THEY STILL ARE AND A GOOD AMOUNT!!

The librarian got creative and built a flower thing with scraps of colored paper from the "trash bag" (I made for class) and a soda bottle. I think I'll let her teach a class on how to make it, though I'm not sure what we'd do with it after, cause would a mom or dad want it?