New Year, New Classes in Moldova

From Lenin’s Asylum: Two Years in Moldova, by A. A. Weiss (Everytime Press, 2018), Kindle pp. 182-184: The first week at school passed without any major incidents. There weren’t any fires or drunk students or kids challenging me to fights. As they had the year before, the students hesitated to participate—even the pupils who’d been in my classes the year before. I might have felt stress if I were a new volunteer. In retrospect, my comfort level with craziness was the only difference between the beginnings of the first and second school years. This time nothing fazed me, not even when a boy went after his classmate with a belt. Several parents and guardians had requested the school keep their sons and daughters under my tutelage. Natashka’s class—the class that had started the trash fire—were now sixth graders. Two boys I knew from basketball, Vova and Alexander, were now in my ninth grade class. And the rambunctious pupils belonging to Lyudmila Petrovna’s homeroom, a different class…