November 21, 2005: Headlines: COS - Moldova: Holidays: Thanksgiving: NewsOK: Heath Melrose will spend Thanksgiving cooking his first turkey, eating a traditional holiday feast and playing football in Moldova where he serves as a Peace Corps Volunteer
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November 21, 2005: Headlines: COS - Moldova: Holidays: Thanksgiving: NewsOK: Heath Melrose will spend Thanksgiving cooking his first turkey, eating a traditional holiday feast and playing football in Moldova where he serves as a Peace Corps Volunteer
Heath Melrose will spend Thanksgiving cooking his first turkey, eating a traditional holiday feast and playing football in Moldova where he serves as a Peace Corps Volunteer
Instead of gathering with his family, Melrose, 29, is helping to prepare Thanksgiving dinner for about 200 Peace Corps volunteers, employees and guests in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova. The Oklahoma City resident has been working as an English teacher in the Eastern European nation since he became a Peace Corps volunteer in June 2004.
Heath Melrose will spend Thanksgiving cooking his first turkey, eating a traditional holiday feast and playing football in Moldova where he serves as a Peace Corps Volunteer
Peace Corps service gives Oklahoman grateful perspective
By Brandy McDonnell
The Oklahoman
Heath Melrose will spend Thanksgiving cooking his first turkey, eating a traditional holiday feast and playing football.
But for the second year, the Oklahoma native won't be home for the holidays.
Instead of gathering with his family, Melrose, 29, is helping to prepare Thanksgiving dinner for about 200 Peace Corps volunteers, employees and guests in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova. The Oklahoma City resident has been working as an English teacher in the Eastern European nation since he became a Peace Corps volunteer in June 2004.
"It will be great, and I seem to have more to be thankful for each day," Melrose said in a recent interview by e-mail and phone from Moldova.
A traditional turkey dinner will be a welcome change from the bland Moldovan diet of potatoes, chicken and rice, he said. His Peace Corps experience has immersed him in a culture where everything from the language and transportation to the gender roles and types of jobs are much different.
"It's no stretch to say I've learned much more than I've taught here, but hopefully, I've taught something, too. And that's our goal, to teach each other," Melrose said.
Peace and friendship
In 1961, President Kennedy signed an executive order creating the Peace Corps, a federal agency devoted to world peace and friendship. Since, about 182,000 Americans have served in 138 countries. The Peace Corps now has about 7,800 volunteers in 71 nations working in education, health, business development and agriculture.
"Volunteers learn a great deal about how society works outside the U.S.A. They learn one can get along without a car, without cable TV, without an e-mail connection in their home. They learn that other cultures have different values and priorities," Jeff Kelley-Clarke, country director for Peace Corps Moldova, said in an e-mail.
"All this better prepares them to go home to the U.S.A. and look at life there a bit differently. It especially prepares them to be active players in the increasingly multicultural U.S.A."
Melrose was working as a special-education teacher at Cleveland Bailey Elementary in Midwest City when he signed up for his two-year stint with the Peace Corps. The Enid native, who had never been outside the United States before, said he wanted to see another part of the world and use his teaching skills to make a difference.
"I am in denial about how fast my time here is going," he said. "I am mostly loving it here."
Different culture
Tucked between the Ukraine and Romania, Moldova is one of the poorest nations in Europe. The country is dominated by small farming communities, where people grow their own food and are famed for their homemade wine. Melrose said Moldovans are generally welcoming and hard-working, and their culture is rich in music, dancing and traditions.
"The most noticeable difference for me here is the continuity from one community to the next. Because it is a very traditional country and much older than America, it seems that you can go from the south where I live to the north to visit someone there, and things are very similar, from the food to ... the decorations in the house," he said.
When Melrose arrived, he was sent to the village of Lapusna for nine weeks of training. He lived with a host family and spent five hours a day learning Romanian with fellow trainees.
He then moved to his permanent site, Caplani, an even smaller village near the Ukrainian border. Melrose said he is only the second American to come to the village. Most of his students are curious about the United States but don't know much about it.
"The hardest concept to teach about America is the size and diversity of it. ... They like to ask about cars and mobile phones and popular music," he said. "They surprise me from time to time with something they've seen or heard. Some people I would consider world famous they don't know, and then randomly they will ask about someone much more obscure."
Teaching abroad
Melrose teaches English in Caplani's village school, which offers first through 11th grades. The national curriculum covers 12th grade, but not all schools offer it. His students who go to university will have to take an extra year to catch up.
"Children in Moldova are both very similar and very different from children back home. The major difference I see is the amount of responsibility my students have here regarding farming and household work," he said. "They also seem to be more self-sufficient here."
Neither attendance nor punctuality is monitored, and students often miss classes to work. This fall, his seventh-graders spent almost four weeks harvesting potatoes and apples.
He tries to introduce topics such as domestic violence, family roles, respect and responsibility along with teaching English.
"Teaching here for me has been difficult in that English is not really important yet in my village, and I cannot say when it might be in the future," he said. "The reality is that most of my students will not have much (or) any opportunity to use English in their lifetimes. ... I can only keep trying; if I will not see any fruits today, maybe at least I have planted some seeds for future teachers to develop."
Since Caplani is small and isolated, he said some of his students probably have never visited Chisinau, a fairly modern city with fast-food restaurants and Internet cafes.
Living in a foreign land
Melrose said living in Moldova makes him appreciate America's convenience. The only forms of transportation are walking, hitchhiking and riding a bus. Housing options also are restricted, so he is living with another host family, which limits his independence.
The Life Church member said activities he took for granted in Oklahoma, such as working out, going to church and dating, are difficult in Moldova.
"It's part of the package, but it's hard to just stop living parts of your life for two years. Either you do stop, or you do it very differently and it's weird," he said.
He said dealing with the drinking culture and strictly traditional gender roles is harder than adjusting to the lack of heat in classrooms or outdoor toilets. He is working with a woman volunteer to plan the Thanksgiving dinner at a Chisinau hotel, and the staff members insist on giving her all the cooking instructions, even though he is in charge of the kitchen.
He got the chance to empower young women while volunteering at a summer camp called Girls Leading Our World. He also makes monthly visits to a boarding school for children with disabilities.
He has experienced Moldovan holiday traditions, traveled through Romania and Bulgaria to Istanbul, Turkey, and vacationed in Italy. He hopes to travel to Egypt and Israel this winter.
Some of his most unusual experiences were appearing on the TV talk show "Buna Dimineata," or "Good Morning," and singing "I Will Survive" with Miss Teen Moldova at a cookout.
Melrose has only been back home once, traveling to Hobart earlier this year when he learned his stepfather, Bruce Myers, was dying of cancer. He said he misses his family and friends, the milder Oklahoma winters and the food at Ted's Café Escondido.
His time in the Peace Corps has been life-changing, and he wonders how he will adjust once his tour ends next summer. Before he traveled to Moldova, he planned to return to teaching in Oklahoma, but he said he isn't making any definite plans now.
"I just see every day as one less day that I have here, so I don't want to waste any time," Melrose said.
His mother, Evelyn Myers of Hobart, said her son has stayed in touch through e-mails, letters and photos. Although she misses him, she is proud of his Peace Corps service.
"The holidays have been hard for him to be gone. ... But it's been a wonderful opportunity for him to learn and have new experiences," she said.
When this story was posted in November 2005, this was on the front page of PCOL:
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