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!