A Moldovan Christmas, Unlike Any Other

Starting mid-November our group has been on a 3 month “lock-down,” which means we are not allowed to leave the country or stay overnight out of our sites. This gives us a chance to really integrate into our communities. However, Peace Corps realizes we are without family for the holidays and gave us the allowance to stay out of our sites for one night, for Christmas or New Years. I of course chose Christmas because I don’t like New Years that much and because Moldovans don’t really celebrate Christmas on the 25th. So 6 of us met up in the capital to spend Christmas Eve and Day together.
We all met up Sunday morning to head over to Annie’s host mom’s apartment that she was letting us borrow for the night (she has a regular house in Ialoveni where she lives). After checking the log book at the Peace Corps office for packages, which only Michelle’s where here, we get to the apartment. We quickly dropped off our bags and headed to the near by supermarket to purchase the necessary ingredients for a Christmas feast. Our plan was to make lots of cookies and then a yummy lasagna for dinner with garlic bread. The supermarket by the apartment was amazing, just like a grocery store in America (there were actual spices, a whole aisle for pasta, a whole aisle for sauces, etc). Forty dollars later we had food, wine, and water.
As soon as we returned to the apartment, ate a snack, we set in on making lots of cookie dough. I made sugar cookie dough, Annie had a package of Toll House cookie mix from the states, and we concocted a dough from chunks of chocolate bar, walnuts, and oatmeal. The doughs were delicious. We turned on the oven and put the dough on cookie sheets and when we went to put the dough in the oven we found out the oven wouldn’t get hot. So we called Annie’s host mom (couldn’t understand a word she was saying), found a neighbor to come help us (though she couldn’t figure it out), then we brought up the doorman (who couldn’t work it either but wouldn’t leave and we literally had to push him out the door). We didn’t know what to do, we questioned frying the cookie dough. We also thought maybe we should just eat dough and forget the cookies, but what about the lasagna? Half way through one bowl of dough we came up with the idea to use the toaster oven, it had to be better than frying the dough. And we got lucky too, because the grocery store didn’t have big lasagna pans so we bought 5 mini ones that fit perfectly into the toaster oven. So we ended up making bar type cookies that turned out delicious, even though each batch took about an hour to bake in the tiny toaster oven. The lasagna turned out perfect too. By the end of the night we had eaten so much lasagna, garlic bread, and cookies we were ill. We watched the Polar Express before going to bed and fell asleep dreaming of the cinnamon rolls Annie would be preparing for us in the morning.
Christmas turned out as good as it could away from family, even though my packages never arrived in time and the oven did not work. I had leftovers of lasagna to bring home to my host family and cookies that they absolutely loved. I have taught my host aunt how to make chocolate chip cookies and now she has made them multiple times. I next want to teach her how to make cinnamon rolls, yum! I got calls from my family Christmas night which was nice, even at 1am when my dad thought it was a 12 hour difference between here and the west coast. Now we are preparing for New Years which is a big holiday here and can’t wait to tell you all about it once it takes place. Happy New Year!

The Joys of Public Transpotation

Think really hard of the last time you rode public transportation that was crowded beyond your belief (ayone been on bus #44 at rush hour to ballard). Now times the amount of people by 20, and decrease the size of the bus by half and you will have Moldovan routieres and buses. Routieres are like giant vans with about 20 seats and standing room for about 10 (comfortably), though generally have at least 50 people standing (no joke). Routieres stop where ever you want them to while buses have specific stops and are cheaper. The worst transport I have been on is the bus/routiere to and from my village. It only runs every hour to and from our village to Balti. The bus/routiere is never empty. And about 3 weeks ago the big bus broke down and now we only have a regular size bus and a routiere. The routiere seems to be running most of the time which is a bummer with how many people are always riding it. Getting on in the center in Balti is always a hilarious scene for me. When the routiere pulls up everyone crowds around and pushes like first graders to get onto the routiere, before people even have a chance to get off. Once we all get in the driver has to come and force the door closed, because always the routiere is beyond packed(last Monday he slammed that thing 6 or 7 times to get it closed, I was glad I wasn't one of the people getting slammed). And when you think no one else will fit we make another stop and pick up 10 more people. (Whenever I do my shopping I try not to buy bananas when I know it will be crowded because they always get mashed). It gets so crowded that you don't even need to hold on to anything because nobody moves anywhere, you can't even raise your arm to itch your nose. Whoever comes to Moldova to visit I will make you experience the buses just because it is so insane.

I Finally Remember!!!!

It only took a whole month of walking home in the dark before I finally remembered to bring my headlamp with me when I leave the house. Two nights ago was the first night and boy were my ankles and shoes glad. When I was walking home without a headlamp I usually couln't see a single thing, there are no street lights off the main road. I had to feel my way with my feet praying not to step in cow pies, old burn piles, or holes. Some people have porch lights but they don't help at all. Instead of lighting up the ground at all they seem to hit me directly in the eye so I can't make out a single thing except blinding light. Every once in while I would come upon a wandering dog that would startle me or a teen couple making out. But without street lights the stars are amazing. You can see them all and every once in a while I have a moon to help light the way. But I am happy to know now that we have just hit the winter solstice and days should be getting longer now. Let's just hope I keep remembering my headlamp until the days are actually longer.

My Crazy Week

Last week was insane!!! It started with Monday. I went to work in the afternoon then to Balti to work with my Odyssey of the Mind group followed by dinner with another volunteer (we made chicken pasta in a peanut sauce, absolutely delicious). Then tuesday I went to work at the normal time and got stuck there alone working and running the place. I had kids yelling at me to put time on their computers so they could play their games, I had people wanting photocopies(and when the xerox went on the fritz I had to figure out how to fix it while it spouted error messages at me in Russian), and then I had old women wanting me to type stuff up for them(which would have been fine except they wanted fancy borders and stuff which I couldn't figure out how to do because the computer programs are in Russian). Then on Wednesday I had lunch with a couple volunteers then a tutoring session. Lunch was fun, tutoring was not. I was very frustrated and couldn't speak worth anything. Thursday I woke up early to go to Chisinau to take care of residency papers and such. Ran all around the city running errands. I got back to Balti aroun 5:30pm and missed the bus to my village. So I had to wait until 6:30 for the next bus. Somehow managed to miss that one too. Since the next one wasn't coming until 8:15 I took a cab home. It cost a lot but I was so tired and hungry it was worth it. Then on Friday I taught a computer class which was interesting because I don't know any computer terms in romanian and the computers are in russian. It went ok though. I taught the kids how to use Word, they wrote messages and changes the color, font, and size of their workds. Then Saturday I went to Balti early for Odyssey of the Mind, then worked the rest of the day. Then Sunday I worked all day. I had to open the center at 10am and was there until 5pm. For some reason none of the computers wanted to work correctly while I was there and had some arguments with some of the kids over them. I snuck out of there around 1:30 to go eat lunch and run, but returned to help out with a training my organization was putting on. And to top it all off our water pump broke Friday night. We are wihtout running water now. I am like other volunteers. I have to use the well and bucket bathe. It isn't too bad except that I am running out of clean clother and need to do some laundry. Host aunt says I can use her washing machine in balti but I haven't had time to go there and do laundry. Today I have oipened the center and have to go in an hour for my tutoring session in Balti. Maybe it might not seem crazy to those of you in the Western world who work 8 hours a day normaly, but it is a big change for me, I am used to barely working.

A few notes...

First off, I got a cell phone. You can call me anytime on that now instead of on my house phone. I will place the number in the contact box to the left. Also you can send me free text messages from www.moldcell.md . There is a tab for english so that you can navigate the website.

Second, some people have been inquiring about packages and what I may need. The only thing I really need is Peanut Butter. They do sell it here in Chisinau but it has no flavor, added fat, and it is exspensive. I could also use Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Other than that, whatever you want to throw in. I love anything from Trader Joes, and have been dying for fruit leather. If you send something I really appreciate it, but just remember it is kind of exspenisve to mail stuff here so don't make the package too heavy.

Third, I miss you all very much. I really like the comments you all post and will try post more on a regular basis.

Pictures

My coutnerpart, me, a bunch of boys, and her husband after we plannted shrubbery

Table tennis at my house cunstructed with the kitchen table

I cut my hair

Host cousin Mihai age 13, host cousin Nickolas age 6 months, and host brother Dumitru age 12

Me on my hike out past my village

Th cruţa I saw

An old oven

A cow skull, one of many that littered the hill I climed up

A flock of sheep I saw

My village in the distance

Just a view

Me

Progress

To work on my language I have started seeing a tutor twice a week which has added more to my schedule. It gives me a reason to leave the village and go into Balti twice a week for two hours. My language is doing ok, I feel like I have come to a standstill on speaking and vocabulary yet I can understand more and more what people are saying. Yesterday my counterpart and I discussed activities and programs to start in the spring after we remodel a room adjacent to ours, where our computer center is. We came up with activities and budgets to put into a project proposal she is currently writing. Also, yesterday I became a co-coach with another PC volunteer of an Odyssey of the Mind team with 7 teens in Balti, another reason to go into the city another 2 days a week. If you don’t know what Odyssey of the Mind is I will tell you more about it later, or you can look it up online. So things are going well, I am starting to make myself busy, not just going to work and then back home. I try to set little goals for myself all the time. Two of them right now are to run for 45 minutes and to go into Balti and get my jeans taken in. I have been meaning to get them taken in for a month and half now but am kind of scared to do it. I am scared I won’t understand the tailor and that they won’t understand me, that is why it is a big goal of mine. Hopefully I will do it tomorrow when I go into Balti for tutoring.

My Life

I know I haven’t written in a while, you may think I have been really busy. But no. I just simply haven’t been using the internet much except to check email. I am doing awesome though. I love it here, my mood has been much better since Thanksgiving. I don’t think as much about coming home though I do have quite a few dreams of being home or having people here visiting me. So, you are probably all curious what I am doing over here. Well the short answer is nothing. I work about 2-3 hours in the afternoon and just chill the other 22 hours of the day. My average day, I wake up between 8 and 9am but don’t get out of bed until 9:30. Every other day I run for a half an hour and than stretch and work out for another 20 minutes. I eat breakfast around 10 or 11 then chill out until 2 or so when I go to work. I work until around 5 or so, not later because it gets dark and my counterpart doesn’t want me to walk alone in the dark, which is tough to do without street lights. When I get home I watch TV, read, knit, or all of the above. I eat dinner between 6 and 9, later on the weekends, and then keep busy until 11 when I go to bed. I have gone though a few books already and I am a little over a third of the way done with the sweater I am knitting. I won’t really start doing much until my language gets better. Right now I am just working on language and building relationships within the community, trying to get invited to a masa or two (a masa is a big meal). But I love living in the village. It is bigger than I originally thought, I went on a big hike around it this morning to explore. I was told there is a forest and lakes but I found neither. It is so fun walking around though, you say hi to everyone and all the dogs bark at you. I am becoming a normal face now and some people are stopping to actually talk with me. Geese, chickens, turkeys, dugs, and dogs run all over the place usually running from me, every once in a while a dog or a goose comes after me. Everyday is interesting and I love it here!!!

Ziua de Reconistinta

In limba engleza, Thanksgiving. I haven't figured out how to do the special letters yet that only exist in Romanian. However, Thanksgiving was great, well except that I was on the verge of tears all day. It is tough being away from family and especially not being able to speak with them (I was in Chisinau with not phone to be contacted on). Luckily I volunteered to help cook all day Thursday, it kept my mind off of family. Cooking was a blast. I made biscuits from scratch with two other girls in my group. It was so fun, but a lot of work. I also carved a turkey for the first time. Well actually I carve four. We had fourteen all together. I know it seems like a lot but we were feeding 300 people(volunteers, PC staff and their families, and embassy staff and their families). It was a huge feast. I ate so much in the kitchen that when the feast came around I could only eat two pieces of pumpkin pie, I had planned on eating a half a pie. I love pumpkin pie. And yes, it was pumpkin from a can brought from the states. Our group was given a list of ingredients to bring over with us back in September. It was a great day, as long as i kept myself distracted. After the feast we had a talent show. There were many good acts that where very funny but there was one that brought the entire audience to tears. It was when a guy started singing "I'll be home for Christmas" that we lost it. The tears I had been holding back came flowing out. The guy sang it wonderfully but it was the wrong time to play it. We were a funny site to see, crying and laughing in our seats. I don't know if I mentioned the time in language class when we were learning about holidays. Well, Annie was describing how her parents weren't doing anything for Christmas this year because she was going to be gone and so was her siblings. During her story, in limba Romana, me and Michelle looked at each other and lost it. Our instructor, a man, was stunned. he had no idea what to do with us. So from that day on we banned talk of holidays in class. It is still tough to speak of the holidays without our families. Anyways, so Thanksgiving was great and we all stayed in Chisinau for two more days for conferences. I love you all and will be thinking of everyone for the next two months, in Moldova we have two months of holidays, a new and old Christmas and a new and old New Years. Moldovans love to celebrate!!

My first days, impressions, experiences

I arrived here, to my new home, Thursday afternoon. It has been an exhausting first week. No more English, no more Americans. It is tiring speaking Romanian and listening to it all day everyday, but let me tell you, I have improved so much in a few days. It is almost unbelievable how much better I can hear Romanian now than I could four days ago. So when I arrived I expected to be met by my new host mom who I met on my site visit, nope! She just left to work in Italy for two months. So it is me, my host brother, and my host dad(who was working in Moscow when I first visited). I was a little hesitant at first but host dad has turned out to be an amazing language tutor. He works with me very hard to make sure I understand and am speaking correctly. However, I just found out that he is leaving Sunday for Moscow for two months. What!?! Who am I supposed to live with? I asked him if I could still live there and he said yes that host aunt is going to come by and cook for me and host brother. Um, alright. Luckily she is very nice. Site is great though. I go to work every afternoon for about two hours and then return home to relax. I have so much free time! It is ridiculous. Though I can't get off my training schedule and still wake up at 7am every morning. I have decided to start running everyday to take up time and to stay in shape. The village is fun though. I have been meeting lots of people. It is very small with 2700 people. It takes me about 15 minutes to walk to work on unpaved roads with tons of ducks, geese, and turkeys everywhere. I love all the animals running around. My house is very warm, almost too warm at night, which is not the case for many volunteers. I am a very spoiled Peace Corps volunteer. I have hot running water(in a shower form), an indoor toilet, heat, and I am 15 minutes outside a big city. It is very different from those volunteers located in bushwack Africa. I think I have lots of work ahead of me. The kindergarten, school, mayors office, and my NGO all has projects they want me to do. I will be keeping busy. The great thing about my village is the lack of light in the nights. I can see so many stars and it is nice and dark when I sleep. However, I have made the mistake three times now of leaving work a little too late and having to walk home in the dark. Once I get off the main road I have to slowly creep home praying not to step in mud, cowpies, or holes. It is kind of an adventure, though hopefully next time I will remember my headlamp-which many Moldovans find very funny. Host dad laughs at me when he sees me wearing it on my head. Stay turned for more on my activities...

Goodbyes, a Ceremony, and Welcomings

I am now a volunteer!!!! I have been learning, teaching, struggling, succeeding, crying,and laughing the past two months for this moment. It was tough to say goodbye to my host family in Ialoveni. I left them on Wednesday morning to spend the day practising for our swearing-in ceremony on Thursday. It was sad, but luckily they only live two hours away and I can visit. Wednesday night we had a big dinner with all the trainees and quite a few current volunteers. We were warned not to show up to the ceremony hungover, if we were we would not be walking up on stage to swear-in. Luckily I was not tempted by the drink because I am trying to get over a cold that has just been wearing me out. Thursday we all woke early to dress in our best and head to the ceremony, we had to arrive at 9:30, the ceremony started at 11am. The ceremony was amazing. I wished my parents could be there to see me succeed in this and be proud, but my host mom was there so that helped. People from our group learned traditional dances and songs to perform on stage and four people gave speeches in Romanian and Russian. I didn't do any of these because the practices were after long Hubsite days and I always wanted to go home and hang out with my host family, especially towards the end of training when time was becoming precious. I instead took pictures of everyone performing. We were all called onto the stage though and swore-in in front of everybody, it was a bit emotional for me. I still can't believe I am doing this. After the ceremony we had a meal and then left for our sites. It was sad to leave everybody but it was nice to climb into a car, kick off my heels and rest for the hour and a half drive to Elizaveta, my home for the next two years. Besides, I will be back in Chisinau with everyone in less than a week for Thanksgiving.(I will post pictures later when I am in the city witha faster internet connection)

A Great Community Entry Activity

As an assignment for the technical portion of our training we had to have a big dinner in our village with the 7 of us trainees, our professors, and host moms. We all gathered in Anastasia's kitchen and learned how to make Coltunas(ravioli/dumplings). We stuffed them with cheese, potato, and sour cherries. Very delicious. A couple of the girls made sangria that turned out to be a deep violet color, almost unnaturally violet, that's what happens when you use homemade wine. I got to carve a pumpkin and we roasted the seeds. It was a great time, I wish all homework assignments could be like that!!! Us Americans sang oldies songs and our moms sang Moldovan songs. (I will upload pictures later, the connection here is very slow)

Halloween

I don't have much to say about this but I wanted to share some pictures. Americans love Halloween, for many of us it is our favorite holiday. Why? Because it is the one day we can dress up all crazy and be thought of as normal and we get to eat lots of sugar. Those of us here in Moldova didn't prepare for Halloween when we were packing our bags back in September, those extra sweaters and long johns beat out the costumes. It was a tough decision whether or not to bring the fish costume but in the end I would rather be warmer(I know, I know, I obviously don't have my priorities straight but oh well there is no going back in time). So in the end we all had to be very creative with what we had. I decided to just be a Greek goddess, it is very easy to just wrap a white sheet around you and put some leaves in your hair. Unfortunately, I hate to say this, but there were people much more creative than me. We had a walnut tree, a well, the current, the statue of liberty, Laura Bush, and much more. We made Halloween the best we could but it was tough without candy corn and "fun size" candy bars (who decided to name them fun size anyways? I don't think they are fun, it's more like a tease size).

Haram

Haram is village day. Last Friday was Ialoveni day. Anybody who works or goes to school in Ialoveni had the day off, however we did not. We begged and pleaded with our teachers but they didn't seem to care we were the only ones who would be doing any work that day. Fortunately during the day not too much was going on but towards the evening is when all the festivities started. Haram is a day when people celebrate and eat lots and dance lots. On Thursday night I came home to our table covered in pig parts in preparation for the next night (I ended up having to eat my dinner at the kitchen counter next to plates of pig guts, very appetizing). So on Friday after class I went home and made chocolate chip cookies for my family. Considering I had no measuring devices and a small old, portable oven they turned out very tasty. Around 5ish is when we all met in the center to party down. When we first arrived there was wrestling going on which a a traditional thing to do at celebrations. It was fun to watch guys without their shorts on wrestle. The winner of the whole thing got a sheep (never thought that would be a prize did you?) As it got darker out the music started up and we all danced non-stop for hours (well I guess we stopped when we had to use the bathroom). Speaking of bathrooms, there were port-a-potties there. Though, there was only two and they filled up rather quickly, so it was best to go behind a building. We all had tons of fun dancing the Hora (the traditional circle dance here) with a bunch of local kids, some we knew from around Ialoveni. Around 9 there were awesome fireworks. It reminded me of last summer at the lake with all the mortar shells we had(oh, homesickness). I know that my new site will have celebrations like this but I am very sad I am leaving Ialoveni, I love it here and I love my family here.

Third Times a Charm, Right?

Alright, so I tried to write this blog twice last Monday but twice the power went out, very frustrating. So I wanted to tell you all about our trip to the Milesti Mici wine cellar. We went a couple weeks ago. It was an interesting trip. We toured the largest wine cellar in the world, it holds a Guinness Book record for the most bottles in one cellar, about 2 million. Some of the wine dated back to the mid 80's and the bottles had the dust and cobwebs to prove how old they were. We got a short tour and two tiny tastes of wine (not worth the $12 I paid, which is a lot when we only get $2 a day). Thats all I have to sat about this, the pictures are cool though.

Daniel(a friend), Daniel(my brother),

and Adrian(the neighbor)

My brother Vadim and sister Mariana

The scary yet cool old soviet Hospital by my house that was never completed

We took the stairs most of the way up....

...But then had to crawl through a hole in the ceiling to get on the roof

The five of us on the roof with Ialoveni behind us

An Orthodox church in Ialoveni