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The Lance February 2007 Volume 46 Issue 6 The Peace Corps Experience Through the Eyes of a St. Android David Parsons-Foresi graduated in 2005 with a mcgor in PhiLsophy. Forest was actively involved within the St. Andrews community serving as SGA President and was part of the St. Andrews Campus Lions Club. Forest has been overseas serving in the PeaceCorps. For more information, David Parsons-Foresi can be reached via email at davidnarxons foresitaiemail. com David Parsons-Foresi ai Opening ConvocatiorL Picture courtesy of Communications. A St. Android and Peace Corps; Dr. Dick Prust requested I pen an article for your enjoyment to clarify what Peace Corps is like from the eyes of a recent St. Andrews grad. I am happy to do that for you. I finished my degree in Philosophy with a minor in Economics in May of 2005. I left for Romania in May of2006 the year between graduation and arriving in Romania was spent partly in Washington DC, where I interned for a congressman and in my home town Raleigh, where I tutored kids at a local elementary school and coached a soccer team. My decision to join Peace Corps was spurred on by a few things, the most prominent was my reflection on St. Andrews and the education I earned there where ideas and classroom discussion take apart, dissect and then rebuild thoughts and ideas about what is: good, right, moral, pure, authentic and just. I realized that I had this wonderful classroom knowledge but no real world experience to put these ideas to use, where the rubber meets the road if you will. Also, as a recent college grad I had not yet developed the relations or become encumbered in all the things that people are typically too afraid to put down to go ofiF and try something new. My biggest responsibility is college loan payments. Peace Corps has paperwork to fill out that will defer the loans so they are not a factor in you service. I live in Targoviste, Romania in the South East corner of the country about 90 minutes from the Capital of Bucharest. There are about 100,000 people in my city. It is the home to Chinda Town, which was Vlad the Impaler’s home and kingdom for a few decades in the 14* century. Every morning 1 sit, drink my coffee and look out my kitchen window at Chinda Tower. Taigoviste is also the city where Elena and Nicolae Ceausescu were executed on Christmas Day 1989 following the overthrow of the communist regime. Targoviste is also home to Colegul National Inachita Vacarescu the high school where 1 teach. At Inachita Vacarescu 1 teach literature, history, culture and civilization and geography. The Romanian school system is far different from any school system in the States. Students stay in the same classroom all day long and the teachers move about the buiding between classes. For the first few months, 1 would be in class on time and ready to start. I very much ran my classroom like any classroom in the states would be run. This also precluded me interacting with Gaijin is the Japanese word for foreigner and like all countries, if you are staying over a certain amount of time one must apply for a license to live in the country as a student, worker, or other guise in order to inform the government of your intentions. While important, this is not what I am referring to by the title. The Gaijin License I am talking about is much like Doctor Who’s psychic paper, invisible in writing but situations can instantly be talked out of by the bearer of such a license. The Japanese people are sophisticated, and therefore understand that their culture can be quite different for those who come from abroad. This leads them to be relatively lenient towards foreigners in a way that I do not think I would see in my own country. Most of the time if we see a foreigner and they don’t know what they are doing, there are two reactions, pity that they do not understand David Parsons-Foresi my collegues in the teachers dealing with. America and lounge. 1 wondered at first Americans are most often why the teachers did not perceived one way: rich and talk to me in the Jounge. I inconsiderate. My not sitting figured it wasjust cultural and in the smoky teacher lounge they’d come around. Nope, and enjoying a terrible cup of During communism one in luke warm coffee during the seven people worked for the break between classes was secuirata (the secret jx>lice) so viewed only as inconsiderate, if you did not know someone My days are spent at school you did not talk or even look teaching, and drinking luke at them for fear of their being warm coffee and teaching. At securata or reporting you to first lesson planning was very a securata officer. Romania difficult, and teaching was was the most repressive difficult as well. Like anything commumst country- they you find a rhythm and leam cut off relations with China what works and what does not. because china was too liberal. I have interpreted living After 1 realized that 1 was in the city where Ceausescu going to continue to be ignored was executed, and teaching at unless 1 changed something. 1 Inachita Vacarescu in my own spoke with a few fellow older very literary way. Vacarescu PCVs (older- having been in is a famous Romanian poet, country longer than 1 have) he wrote in the late 1700s and they said just kick it in this was about the time that the teachers lounge between the root of the Romanian classes and then when the langu^e changed frx)m majority of teacher head out Slavic to Latin—its current to class- leave when they do. root. Vacarescu is famous for Since then 1 have demystified being one of the first writers most of the differences and to produce his work in the otherness that is inherent ‘new’ Romanian language; when dealmg with people he is a national hero. I look and things of a very different at the death of Ceausescu as nature than you’re used to the shedding of some of my Gaijin License Kime Neal Stationed in Hirakata, Japan our customs, and outrage hear anything, and the one past, naTve beliefs. Most of my beliefs arc the same, but the ones that have changed, have changed because I always understood them in a place and in a way where they were reasonable there was no reason to challenge them. Now; however, some tlH>ughls have been challenged and a few don't ‘hold water’ so I am in the process of changing them. These old beliefs and ideas are developing into new, more mature beliefs and ideas. This is an out with the old and in with the new process, but the new is genuine and bettor than the old. 'Iliat is what a Liberal Arts education is about, developing as a person in an ever changing and dynamic world and having the development of you as a person and the manifestation of your actions come from a foundation plush with good, right, moral, pure, authentic and just causes and ideas that are learned in the classrootn and applied in the world. I hope this finds evei^one who reads it well and in good health and spirit. Feel free to contact tne for any reason. that they would travel in our country yet not take the time to leam our ways. Usually 1 hear the snide remarks of those in the anger column of the chart, even here 1 have encountered study abroad students who criticize the way the Japanese live, and 1 cannot understand how this comes about. Housing in Japan. Picture courtesy of Kime Neal. 1 sympathize more with the Japanese who have differing approaches: sternly, in a parental manner, explain as best they can what the gaijm did wrong so as not to have it happen again, laughingly point out what happened to the slight embarrassment of the who committed it usually finds out later from friends that an error was occurred. If you want to easily spot a foreigner go to a fast food restaurant and sit where you can observe the register. Here it easy to discover a gaijin (in any country) because they will point to what they want, perhaps muttering a few words with a pleading and confiised look on their face as they order. If you want to narrow the margin even more, tread to your local McDonalds because when everything is different from home there’s always one place you can go to and know that you will find something you can eat and will taste close enough to home that if you avoid the windows you could almost be there. There are those that know of this license, and choose to use it to their benefit. 1 was recently told Contents Lance News- 2 St. Andrews Academics-3 Student Life -4 Health and Wellness- 5 Equestrian - 6 Knights Athletics -7 Editorials- 8-9 Entertainment- 10-11 Announcements- 12 foreigner, or moM Japanese *', “7 , , ... (Contimiea on page 2.) pretend they did not see or
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