So...

I am still alive. I know I haven't posted in a while, but nothing too interesting has happened lately. I had a week of training in Chisinau and otherwise have just been working. Chisinau was a good time though tiring. We stayed up too late every night hanging out and had full days of language and technical classes everyday. I have changed host families because things didn't work out with the family I was living with. I am now living in the nearby city Balti. I am living with who was my host aunt but I guess now she is my host mom. I commute to the village to work, though it is only a 15 min bus ride. I am now living in a very nice apartment, not necessarily what you would imagine Peace Corps to be. As I have mentioned she has a 7 month old who is the most adorable thing ever(except for little James, Erica). I get to play with him everyday and it is so fun to watch him grow and learn new things, like how to bang the spoon on the table, he is laughing a real laugh now, and he is starting to crawl all over the place.
To take up some of my idle time I watched the second season of Lost. Amazing! This show is like a drug. I burned it onto disk from a friends computer and brought it to work with me and all I did for three days at work was watch Lost. I NEED to watch season 3 now. Next I plan on watching season five of 24, another show that will paralyze me from doing anything for a few days.
My Odyssey of the Mind group is getting ready for the competition on the 11th. They are currently making the sets and costumes now. At our next meeting we will start working trying to get the skit into an 8 minute time frame. I really want to win, I really want to go to the competition in Germany this spring. A little selfish, I know, but it would be super cool.
So, yeah, other than that nothing super cool going on right now. I have really gotten into the groove of Moldova now and am feeling quite content here. I haven't thought about quitting and coming home in at least two weeks, I think that is a good sign. I have made some good friends now which helps fight loneliness and homesickness. I have been running alot. I have decided I am going to run a marathon with my friend Michelle next November in Athens. So if anyone feels like travelling to that area around that time, I would love to have some cheerleaders.
Hope all is well with everyone. Hopefully my next post will be more interesting and action packed. Though, for anyone who likes to read, I just finished reading Eragon. It was an awesome book that I recommend to everyone! I also just watched Beerfest which was a really funny movie if you like stupid comedies. La revedere.

Knitting Acomplishments

The Glod!

The Romanian word “glod” which means “mud” is quite fitting and here can’t be called mud because it is very different. Moldovan glod is unlike any other, like most things here. I first discovered the glod my second or third week in Ialoveni after it rained. On my way to language class I liked to cut through the orchard because it was prettier, quieter, and quicker than walking the main road. The day after it rained I thought I would walk through as any normal day, the only difference would be a slightly muddy road. I was so wrong!!! About 100 yards down the “dirt” road I had about 2 inches of glod packed to the bottom of my tennis shoes. I thought it was strange for mud to that so I stopped walking, picked up a stick and scraped the mud off. But another 100 yards and I was walking two inches taller again. Well, the short cut ended up being the long way because I kept stopping to scrape the mud off my shoes. I thought then that maybe the orchard just had weird dirt that was a little sticky. Wrong again! When I reached the road our school was on I was met again with sticky mud. And from that point on the sticky, wet, slimy brown stuff would be known as glod and only glod. I don’t know what maybe the glod here so special, maybe it is the mixture of dirt, animal poop, and whatever else ends up on the roads. Or maybe it is the specialty of Moldovan dirt, the fact that it is so fertile it is said you could plant a shoe and grow a shoe tree, that accounts for its amazing stickiness. Whatever it is, I hate it. We had been luckyup until a few days ago with very little rain and not too much glod. But lately we’ve been getting just enough rain to keep it glod-y enough to make my jeans splattered with glod and my newly washed tennis shoes filthy again. And today we really got rain. The roads are horrible!!! Luckily, thanks to Colleen, I am sporting a hot pair of pink paisley rubber boots that have protected my feet from mud and water, though my jeans still got some splatter. This really makes me appreciate living back in the states with paved roads.

Christmas #2

As I said before, Moldovans celebrate many holidays. Last Sunday was the Orthodox Christmas. Not being Orthodox I wasn’t sure what was going to take place. Would I have to go to church? Is there presents? Well, for most of the day nothing exciting happened. I sat around, in my pajama pants (when your are at home here you don’t wear “outside” clothes, you where pajamas, sweats, etc. and if you don’t leave the house at all that day you never have to change out of your pj’s) and read all day, taking breaks to play with my host brother and cousin. For Christmas #2 the kids do all their caroling. They walk around in groups from house to house with bags for candy, cookies, and money and sing carols…kind of like our Halloween but without costumes and it is in the middle of the day. Around 4pm we all got bundled up and went to my counterpart’s house for a big masa. There were other family members there and we all ate a ton and of course drank wine, champagne, and vodka (which luckily I didn’t have to drink). My host family left before me because my counterpart’s daughter wanted me to stay and play with her. So I left when another family left so I didn’t have to walk home alone. But we didn’t go straight home. We made as top at the disco bar, very random. And the even weirder thing of randomly stopping at the disco bar with a random couple was that their year and a half old son was with us (whom drank some wine at dinner also, just a bit but it was funny to watch him cheers and clank glasses with everyone). So anyways, we were just hanging out at the disco bar drinking a beer. Then they left and some girl I don’t know too well convinced me to stay there with her. So we danced a bit and drank sodas. Around 11 I decided I should go home because my host family had no idea I was there and I had left my counterpart’s 3 hours ago. The girls made me promise though that we could go out again to the disco another time. Weird. And another random thing was that two nights I was walking home with the mayor and a teacher and the teacher randomly invited me in to dinner. It was fun and she said she would teach me how to crochet. I love it here!

I want to clarify...

Ok, so I don't normally laugh at dead animals but let me set the scene for why our dead, frozen dog was funny. Pets here in Moldova are very different from pets in the US. Most dogs and cats don't get to come indoors and aren't really petted or played with. I made the mistake early on in my stay here of petting a couple "cute" looking dogs to find out how dirty they are (no matter how cute or clean looking the dog is, it is filthy), and you can see the fleas crawling around in their fur. The two dogs we had at our language school in Ialoveni got used to being pet by the bottom of our feet. They got so used to it one would try to nuzzle under our feet while we were sitting at our tea and cookie breaks. If the dogs here aren't running around in packs looking for tasty people to eat, especially us runners, they are kept behind a fence (everyone here has a fence/gate around their house) on a very short leash, very short. Alot of the dogs have dogs house where they can get shelter from the elements but they more or less have to bear the cold, cold winters here outside. The dogs here are either very, very timid and scared (from being kicked and what not too often) or vicious as hell. I only come across the loose vicious ones every once in a while when I run and the "rock trick" always works. Because so many dogs are used to having rocks thrown at them if they attack all you have to do is bend down and pretend you are picking up a rock and the dog will take off like the Flash. I have gotten surprise attacks a couple times by dogs that run up silently behind me and bark just as they get to me which startles me to scream and jump and that in turn scares the hell out of them and they usually take off.
So anyways, about our dog. I think he was pretty old and may have been kind of sick (not a good combination with the coming winter). So New Years morning I was in the kitchen preparing my breakfast when Dumitru (host bro) went out side with hot water for the dog and pigs. He wasn't gone very long when he came back, looked at me, and said "Cîine a murit", the dog died. There was no sadness in his face, it was as if he just told me it was raining outside. I of course was like "Oh my gosh! What!?" Did I hear him correctly? Was he going to start crying, what do I do? Then Galea (aunt) came in heard what had happened, this time he added that the dog was frozen, and just laughed. This of course made me laugh because how many times does a dog freeze? (It is pretty common here actually). So we all pushed out the door and the dog was just lying outside of his doghouse stiff as a board. The four of us a laughed a bit more and then they said they would just go to the Piaţa and buy a new one. Oh Moldova!

Random Events

After I returned from Christmas in Chisinau last week I was going to work around noon expecting to open the place. I had to run over to the kintergarden to get the key from my counterpart's son and ended up staying there until 4pm. There was a New Years concert going on with the little kids and they made me stay and watch. The concert then was followed by a big masa for the kids. The parents set up the table for all the little 6 year yolds with tons of food. After the kids ate us adults got to sit down and eat wha the kids didn't, and of course the bottle sof wine and vodka came out. Many of the parents drank quite a bit and I was also forced to try everyone's house wines that they brought and wasn't able to leave the kintergarden until I took a shot of vodka with everyone. It is kind of horrible because I hate vodka and want to puke even when I smell it but they didn't seem to care about this and made me drink anyways. I didn't puke but I did provide great entertainment for everyone with the faces I made. Because this was the middle of the day I sobered up before going to bed and had a nice headache visit me around dinner time. 22 and a half months left of this forced drinking, what am I to do?!

Moldovan New Years

As I have mentioned before, New Years is a very unexciting holiday for me and usually prefer to stay home (though the last two years spent playing bunko at Bob and Robin’s was very fun!). Well last night I got to stay home and do absolutely nothing. I went into work for the afternoon so that the kids could play their computer games for hours on end and then returned home before it got too dark. On my way home I stopped to watch a group of boys play ice hockey, village style. The boys didn’t have any type of hockey equipment but made do with some sticks and a tuna fish type can. Clad in their tennis shoes they slipped and slid all over the frozen creek (it has been very cold here, everything is frozen, and we would have snow if it weren’t clear and sunny everyday).
When I got home I ate some food and relaxed with my knitting. As some of you know I am currently working on a sweater which I have now finished and will post some pictures later. It has turned out as good as a first sweater can. I wish I would have used a different yarn and color because with the texture the yarn created and the brown color, I look like I am wearing a fury/hairy sweater…not the most attractive, but oh well, at least it is warm. Relaxing at home I kept stealing glances at our Christmas tree, though I couldn’t really see any tree because of all the garland and tinsel. Moldovans think the tree is beautiful when I show them pictures but I have a different word, “tacky.” But really I wouldn’t change it, it makes Moldova what it is.
Around 9 pm we ate dinner and then watched New Years television, you know the kind…ice skating shows, comic shows, etc. with everyone dressed up and drinking champagne. We of course all fell asleep and host aunt woke us up at 10 til midnight so we could eat cake and drink champagne. While toasting there were awesome fireworks going off in the neighbors yard right behind us. Then around 12:30 we went back to sleep.
I woke early this morning to the boys watching TV and eating the chocolates I bought for them waiting for me to watch the DVDs I bought them (Superman and X-men 3). They bought me yummy dark chocolate and shared their chocolates with me. We pigged out all morning watching Superman. Then we had more cake for breakfast (I also had a banana, apple, and oatmeal) and the boys finished off the champagne. Yes, they are only 12 and 13 but here it is normal to drink at an early age. When my host brother went outside to feed the dog and pigs he found our poor little dog frozen. It is sad but we all had a good laugh that he was frozen. I find frozen dogs every once in a while walking around the village, survival of the fittest here. Now I am at work so the boys can play their games. Happy New Year!!!