Vacation!!!!

So you’ve all heard my theory that to stay sane here you must take vacation every 2-3 months. So far I have succeed in doing this and am happily sane. Shortly after New Years Jason and I hopped a bus to northwestern Ukraine. It was a 12 hour bus ride to Lvov (Ukraine’s 3rd ? largest city). When we stepped off the bus we thought we had mistakenly bought tickets to the North Pole. It was so freaking cold. The thermometers read -15 C (5 F). I suddenly remembered why I avoid traveling in the winter. It took all of our will power to leave the hostel and explore the city. I made by bag considerably lighter by wearing all the clothes I brought yet I still couldn’t stay warm. Every 10 minutes we would have to duck into a store or café to warm ourselves and fight against frost bite and hypothermia. But it was sunny out and the city was beautiful. But we couldn’t take the cold and were ready to move on to Poland after a day and a half. So after a day and a half we caught a mini-bus on the second day to the border. We were told it was quicker to walk across the border than it was to take transport (Jason’s friend took a bus across and waited at the border for 10 hours). And luckily it was really easy to get transport to the border and beyond. And we were even luckier to meet a Canadian guy from Poland, studying in Ukraine. He spoke perfect English and Polish and showed us the quick way through the border- all in all it took 30 minutes. We posed as students. If we would have waited in the line at the border I am sure that today I would no longer be Jennifer the daughter, the sister, the friend, etc but instead Jennifer the popsicle. So we flashed our American passports (it is really an advantage sometimes having one) and walked right through. But we did have a bit of a problem with the border guard not believing that Jason was really Jason. His passport picture doesn’t look too much like him anymore, especially with his beard. It was pretty funny. I think it took 10 minutes to convince the guard that it was him but then he proceeded to say Jason’s name around 10 times in disbelief. But we made it through and the Polish let us in much easier. Our new Canadian-Polish friend was on a break to visit his parents in Poland. And did we luck out. His dad was picking him up at the border and offered to give us a ride to the nearby town where we could catch a train to Krakow. During the 15 minute ride to the train station we got to escape Eastern Europe as we rode in his brand new Chevy truck that was shipped over from North America speaking in English and reminiscing about America and Canada. But then we were thrown back into the cold and Eastern Europe. (half-hearted and sarcastic) hurray.

Our firs step was to get our train tickets. Bummer, we just missed a train and have a 2 hour wait. Not too bad though because it was around 8 and we needed food anyways. So we wandered around for oh 5 minutes before the cold wrestled us into the first cozy looking bar we came across. What better way to warm up than with beer. While sitting there contemplating if a dinner of beer was good enough we looked up at the clock and to our surprise was an hour behind our watches. Crap, Poland was an hour behind Ukraine and Moldova and therefore we had a three hour wait, ugh. So we made the best of it by drinking beer, eating French fries, and experimenting with all the options available on my camera.

Around 10 pm we forced ourselves out of the bar into the cold. We realized we still hadn’t eaten any dinner and were still hungry. The only place we could find open only had snickers, chips, and more beer to offer us. We got 2 of each. So we boarded the train and headed to Krakow. Around 2 am we arrived in my new favorite city. We woke ourselves and went on search of a internet café to see if we had a response and an address from the guy we were to be staying with. It took a while to find but we eventually made it to his place and fell into bed around 3:30am. The next few days were full of adventure. We walked everywhere and had tons of fun.

On our last day we visited Auschwitz, 2 hours outside of Krakow.

My vacation then came to a close and I had to travel back to Lvov to catch my bus back to Moldova. This was a long ordeal that began at 3am and didn’t end ‘til 6am the next day and involved very little sleeping. I had to take many different buses and wait a few hours between each one just to get back to Moldova. But I was greeted by tons of snow!

The Holidays

I survived the holidays! Christmas was spent with a few close friends and New Years I stayed at home with my host family. Both included tons of food and lots of fun. I am happy to report that I got to play lots of games (Scrabble, Taboo, Cribbage, Rummy, etc).

Turkey Feast!! Complete with red and green mashed potatoes!

The stockings I made for everyone. They fit our feet!

A Real Winter

For the past many years, living in Washington, I have never had a real winter. Yeah, maybe when I was a kid we had huge snowfalls but due to global warming, or whatever your personal theory is, it has been a very long time since I have gotten to play in the snow. Let me clarify this. I of course have gone to the mountains every winter of my life (last year being the exception, if only Moldova had mountains… if only). But this is not the same as having multiple days in a row where you step out of your house into your normal everyday world that has been transformed into a white paradise. I think everyone can agree that even the ugliest place on earth instantly becomes beautiful after a heavy snowfall. So, because last year was a crazy warm year I didn’t get to experience the real winters that Moldova has. But finally my wait has paid off, 15 months after my arrival, I get a real winter. The snow started falling in late November, but only flurries. But as soon as December hit BAM we got snow. And since then we have had three big snowfalls. The trend so far is one to two days of snow followed by really cold, SUNNY days. I have never loved Moldova more (except maybe over the summer passing through the sunflower fields.) The thing about the sunny days is that it causes the snow to melt a bit. This of course makes me sad but then night hits and causes it all to freeze up. Some how this process makes the snow last pretty long, HURRAY! But it also makes it very slick outside. (knock on wood but I have yet to fall). Thankfully Peace Corps provides all the volunteers with bright neon green Yak Traks. So not only do we stay upright but we attract everyone’s attention while doing it. Neon green doesn’t exactly blend well with black shoes. But hey, they glow in the dark!!!!

(A side note. Winter left us for a little while last week and the temperatures were quite nice. This however caused all the snow to melt and create a very sloppy, mucky, muddy mess. And I of course continued my morning runs coming home completely covered in mud, something that is very looked down upon in Moldova. It amazes me how Moldovans can stay so clean in such a muddy place. I can’t even walk 100 yards to the bus stop on my tip toes with out covering my shoes with mud and spraying it halfway up the back of pants. But then again, Moldovans are a little crazy when it comes to keeping their shoes clean. I watch many on a regular basis stop at each puddle on their way to slip their hand into the dirty water to clean the mud of their shoes. That’s right, they don’t care about sticking their hand into a mud puddle and wiping the mud off their shoes with their BARE hands as long as their shoes are clean.)

And a funny story. Last Saturday night I had prepared a Mexican meal for my Moldovan friend Maria. Since I don’t like staying out very late and everyone else was drinking except for me I decided to take off around 10:30. Though I have lived in Balti for a year now I still am not quite sure of the bus schedules. There doesn’t exist schedules like in America that say when the bus starts, comes, or finishes its route. This only really poses a problem when I stay out late with friends. Taxis are available and ridiculously cheap for American standards, roughly $2 to go 4 miles, but I still prefer to pay 10 cents for the bus. So, after I left Maria’s I went to the bus stop to wait and see if possibly a bus or routiera (small mini-bus) would pass by. After ten minutes or so I decided I would just flag down a taxi. As I was standing on the edge of the sidewalk trying to get one to stop a car swerved in close to where I was standing and also where lay a huge mud puddle. I knew it was going to hit the puddle and acted accordingly, I took a few steps back. Usually that’s enough, but this time, no! I was completely splattered! And it was more mud than puddle. And to top it off I was wearing light colored khakis. They were covered from the foot to the thigh and my shoes no longer showed any black. This was something that you would see on TV. I wish I could have had some on there with me to appreciate the hilarity of it. And I wish I had taken a picture when I got home because you probably think I am exaggerating a bit but no.

Fitness Club “Jennifer”

That’s right, you read correctly. We named our fitness club after yours truly. It wasn’t my choice and all my protests against went unheard. My counterpart and the girls I had worked with wanted a name to remember me by. What better name than my own. We wrote the project back in June and started our renovations in July. Finally, finally everything was finished two weeks ago and we had our official opening. We invited all the important people- the mayor, PC director, officials from the mayors office, the director from the health center, etc, etc. We cut the ribbon, talked a bit, then had a big masa. I provided chocolate chips cookies and apple cinnamon placinta. My treats got eaten the fastest and everyone loved them best. Of course. The really cool thing about it though is that the village now has a place to work out for cheap without having to travel into the city.

The center was created in a section of the building that our NGO is in. We have one room for aerobics/yoga/etc. and one room with weights, a bicycle, and an elliptical machine. We have about 8 big balls for exercises and two discs full of different aerobics, yoga, pilates, ball work outs, jump rope work outs, etc. So far it has all been very successful and we have had lots of people pay to use it. I use it everyday after work for 1-2 hours. I am hoping to keep my winter weight in check. Especially with all the holiday masas coming up. But we have a group of girls who have volunteered to run the center and in exchange they can use the center for free. I am still so surprised by how successful it has been. I am glad to say that I have contributed something really big to this village and have something tangible to show for my time here.

Vacation (part 1)

I know I went on vacation over a month ago but I have been busy. It takes up a lot of my time to play in the snow, read, knit, work out, etc. So this part is about the first part of my vacation, before I ran the marathon. It all started way back in October, the 29th to be exact….

Our vacation started at 7:00 in the morning on October the 29th. We awoke early to jump on board the 7am bus to Iaşi, Romania. It took us less than 2 hours to reach the border and say goodbye to Moldova for 10 whole days. We would have arrived in Iasi within 3 hours but of course boarder crossing can never be a quick and easy process. Instead you have to disembark on the Moldova side and show the officials that you are only smuggling smîntină (sour cream), cabbage, milk, and brînza (special yummy Moldovan cheese) instead of drugs. I kid you not, that is what people’s luggage was full of. Why pack clothes when you can pack fresh milk from the cow to bring to your relatives in Romania, because Romania obviously doesn’t have milk or cabbage. So anyways, we have to get off the bus again on the Romania side of the border and present our documents and bags again, maybe they don’t trust the Moldovans did a good enough job. We finally arrived in Iasi. Finally. We were on vacation and out of Moldova. Hurray! We celebrated by seeing a movie, in English. I repeat, in English. And t wasn’t some bad Steven Segal movie that they play on the TV here but an actual new, good movie- The Reckoning. Anyone see it? It was good, I recommend it. We also splurged and ate at a Chinese restaurant. Though we regretted it as soon as we bit into our food because of the huge chunk of glass I found in my rice after Jeff had chomped through (and swallowed) something very hard and crunchy. You’d think that would have been the end of our meal. But no. We picked the glass out an continued eating. We are still alive aren’t we. We ended our night early with a 9pm bedtime because we had to be at the bus station by 6am the next morning for our bus to Braşov. We were going to see Dracula!!!

Waking up wasn't such a hassle and making the 6am bus wasn’t so bad either. But the 8 hour ride through the mountains without heat was a killer. We froze!!! The woman in front of us kept yelling at the driver that we were all going to die and muttered to herself almost the entire trip. We made our bags lighter though by putting on all the clothes we brought along, which wasn’t much. In the early afternoon we finally pulled into a dingy bus station and we announced that it was Braşov. I was ready to go home. I had pictured a town like Whistler, Canada. Jeff and Sharon drug me away from the ticket window and we rode into the center of town hoping for something better. It was amazing. Braşov is beautiful!!!! There are tons of old buildings and huge hills around with mountains in the distance.The Brasov sign in the background.

We came to Braşov with the sole purpose of spending Halloween in Dracula land. And of course we made Dracula costumes especially for the occasion. The 30h, or what was left of the day, was spent walking around the town. Annie and Anastasia met up with us and the 31st was spent having fun. First we hiked up the mountain to the big Braşov sign (just like Hollywood).

We could see all of Braşov and beyond up there. Not to mention a bear. I swear to god! And it was less than 50 yards in front of us. It was sleeping though and wouldn’t wake up, no matter how much we yelled at it. We even tried to call it in Romanian, hey, a bear in Romania probably doesn’t speak English. But we could only get it to move a little bit. Just enough to prove it wasn’t dead.

The brown spot in the middle is the bear!!!

So we posed up there with our Dracula capes on then headed down the mountain. Our next stop would be Bran castle, the fake home of Dracula. Some how word got out long ago that the Bran castle is where the Dracula story was born. So tourists flock there instead of the real castle that is 3 hours away. We didn’t have the time to go to the real castle and we heard that the Bran castle might have a Halloween party. But by the time we figured out what bus to take and got there the castle had closed. But we saved ourselves a bunch of money by not going into the castle that I heard wasn’t worth it anyways. SO we headed back to town, put our costumes on and headed out to find a party. We succeeded in finding a couple smoky bars where half of the customers dressed up. All in all it was a fun night!!! Plus, we did eat tons of candy corn! Thanks Mom!

The next day I had to head to Buchareşti to so I could catch my early flight the next morning to Athens for the marathon.

Fun in Delphi

4:54:29

That my friend is my marathon time!!! That's right, I went to Athens, ran the original marathon, and finished! Can you believe it? 26.2 miles! I think it may have been one of the hardest things I have ever accomplished in my life. My friend Michelle and I had been training for the past 4 months for this one day.

It all took place this past Sunday, Nov. 6th. Me and Michelle and our 3 cheerleaders (Steven, Mike, and Chris) met up in Athens last Friday for fun, food, sightseeing, and running. We spent the first day getting our race numbers and all the free goodies (t-shirts, towels, key chains, granola bars, bag, etc.). Then we took it easy and ate some delicious food. Saturday we took a two hour trip out of Athens to go see Poseidon's Temple along the coast. Since we were all on tight budgets we didn't pay the 6 Euro to get in to see some old rocks and instead hiked around and went for a swim in the sea. We didn't do much afterwards because Michelle and I had to rest our feet in preparation for the next day. We weren't supposed to be on our feet, much less running, but as we were wondering around Athens Michelle all of a sudden screamed and took off in a dead sprint as soon as spotted Starbucks 3 miles. I think she has a honing device that lets her know when one is in a 10 mile radius. So we all satisfied our Starbucks/coffee cravings that we have had for the past year. After Michelle had her hit of coffee we left the boys on their own so we could go rest our legs and get a good nights sleep.
The amazing thing about being in Greece is that it is the WEST. Everything exists here that exists in America and not in Moldova. And what really makes this true is the food selection. We had read in the Lonely Planet Athens book that there existed a noodle bar somewhere in the city that did take out. We were on a mission. And what happy girls we were as we were sitting in our hotel room watching a movie in English and eating Thai food out of a take out carton with chopsticks. I think this was one of the highlights of my trip...well, along with eating at Subway, drinking Starbucks, having a slice of cheesecake, and eating a huge juicy cheeseburger with fries. So Sunday morning came quickly. We set the alarm for 5:30 so we could make it to the finish line by 6:30 to take buses to the start line to begin the race at 9am. The marathon started in the town of Marathon and we ran all the way into the stadium in Athens. I was a little disappointed because the route wasn't that great. I was expecting amazing scenery but got strip malls and gas stations instead. But hey, I can say I ran the Original marathon. The route was tough. It as pretty flat with some "nice" hills in the middle and the last 12KM was all down hill. I had a good pace the first half of the marathon until I really started to feel my foot injury that I got about a month ago. It is tough running on pavement for 26.2 miles. But I finished and ran across the finish line! Mike, Steven, and Chris were near the end of the route cheering for us and taking pictures of us. It was an amazing feeling to run across that finish line. I was laughing, and I was crying. They gave us all medals and a huge bag of bottled drinks to rehydrate. I had a huge high and couldn't stop smiling the rest of the day, especially since I knew we could eat whatever we wanted for the rest of the day and the next couple days.

PS....for more photos go to www.marathon-photos.com, click on the link to photos, and type my bib number in: 8189

Somre more pictures

My host brother learning to eat cereal. He tries to scoop it with the spoon but ends up tipping the spoon before he even gets it 6 inches out of the bowl and ends up using his hand to eat it. He has been eating on his own now and every meal is so fun and funny.

Me! I don't know if you can tell but I got another haircut. My hair had finally grown out enough to fix the disaster that had happen back in March. I had my friend Amy chop it all so that every side would be even. When we were brushing it out before cutting it the back was about 3 inches longer than the left side which was about 2 inches longer than the right side. It was ridiculous! It is now relatively short and I just wear it in a kind of curly, wavy mess. It's cute! And I love it because it is so easy to prepare- just scrunch it and let it do what it wants.

A cool building. (If you email me, I will tell you where it is. Along with some of these other pictures.)

My host brother helping me with my homework. Usually when I sit at my desk to study or do my Romanian/Russian homework he likes to crawl up into my lap and scribble in my dictionary and on my homework.

So cute!

Jason and Annie in front of Ştefan Cel Mare.

A cool church.

Me and Annie!

Ţipova

SO, I was downloading pictures from my camera to my flashdrive today and found a bunch of cool pictures from our trip to Ţipova this summer. We went on an all day hike and saw some monastery caves and cool waterfalls.

Funeral (part 2)

After experiencing the big long process of the funeral here on Monday I was told the next day, Tuesday, that there would be another big meal that evening. The meals that celebrate the dead are called praznik (not sure about spelling). My host dad told me that they have these on the third day after the death (which was yesterday), the ninth day, the 40th day, at half a year, and then at a year. After that they can do it has often as they want. I think they all do it after 10 years. So after work I headed over to my old host family's house where the super long picknick table was still set up and we ate all the left over food from the previous day. My host dad's drunken dad cornered me at one point and talked my ear off about who knows what. There is a dialect of Romanian that we call Moldovan that is really hard to understand, especially from old village folk. It sounds like they are speaking an entire different language. But he made me promise that I would come for a masa at his house when my parents came to visit- so beware mom, dad, and Jenni. I met some other old, old woman who was very surprised I was American. She told me I had eyes like hers, a nose, and cheeks. She was baffled how similar I looked to a Moldovan. I guess her idea of an American is how we think aliens must look. It was amusing and I made a joke out of it telling her I had legs and arms like they did also. We had a good laugh together. So the next praznik will be Saturday. Another huge masa where I will probably stuff myself full of delicious food. It is funny that I am running 35 miles a week yet not losing any of my "Moldovan burta" (gut). The food here is just too good to eat a normal size portion. Plus I always have people telling me "eat, eat" so thats what I do. No complaints here though!

The tradition I was hoping to never have to experience in Moldova...

Yesterday I went to a funeral. Before you freak out, don't worry, I barely knew her. I am in no way upset. On Friday my host dad's sister died. She had been sick for a long time so it was no big surprise. I had only met her twice and they were very brief meetings. I didn't find out that she died until Saturday night when I got home from a few days in Chisinau. My family was in the village arranging the funeral and i happened to lose my keys and was locked out (thank goodness there are three other volunteers nearby I can rely on). So it wasn't until Sunday that I saw my host brother who brought me a key. My host mom said I could come to the funeral if I wanted. I had no idea what to say or do. What do they say to each other? Should I go to the funeral? What would I do there? I was to scared to ask and decided at the last minute, 10 minutes before they were walking out the door, to go. I figured I could lend support to my family and my counterpart (it was her sister-in-law). I have really only been to one funeral that I really remember and that is what my caparison is based on. We showed up to my old family's house (it was her sister) around 10am. There was a viewing of the body there until around 12. Then they did a ceremony thing with the priest and gave out gifts to people who had come, they gave bowls, towels, scarves, teapots, and colac (a type of ceremonial bread). That lasted about an hour. Then they formed a parade(for lack of a better word) line to walk the body to the church and then to the cemetery. In front of the line was the kids carrying the flower arrangements that people had brought, followed by the religious flag/banner carriers, then the priest, the body with the family, and then the rest of the mourners. We would walk about 50 yards and then stop to pray and sing for a couple a minutes, and we did this all the way to the church. The 15 minute walk took us about an hour. Then at the church they took the body inside for about a half an hour and prayed- I am not really sure because I didn't go in. I didn't want to impose being the outsider and all and because I am not religious at all. They then brought the body back outside and marched to the cemetery. There they laid the coffin next to the grave and gave the family members a chance to say their final goodbyes before they placed the lid on. I would have to say that this was the hardest part of the entire process. The family members were just wailing. A couple of the sister passed out. This all lead to all of us crying of course. I was sad because I saw how upset her sons were, who are my age, and how they had to bury their mother, who was only 43. This made me think of my parents and made me very homesick to be with them. It wasn't until the cemetery that I actually got a good look at her because I didn't view the body at the house or the church and the rest of times it was completely surrounded by people. And not wanting to impose and step on any toes I stood back. But finally seeing the body was really weird because they don't preserve the bodies here like we do. Her skin was very waxy and yellow. And I have heard from other volunteers who go to funerals of car crash victims who look exactly the same way they did when they were pulled from the wreckage. Not only do they not preserve the bodies but they don't put any type of make up on them either for the viewing. It is very strange to see. SO once the body was placed in the ground we went back to the house for a huge masa. There had to be at least 80 people sitting at the extra long table that was overflowing with food. It was weird to sit there eating the food and discussing with the women around me about myself- where I am from, what I am doing here, etc, etc- when we were supposed to be mourning this woman. I still don't know what to say to my host dad. I have just been really quiet around him and have just been staying in my room. I don't know how he is taking it and I am scared to ask. I don't even know the proper way to ask or give condolences. It is all very weird and i really hope to not have to go through it again.

Update

I know I didn’t post all summer but it was because I was out having fun. I spent every weekend traveling around Moldova seeing different cool places. Jason was here with me June and July and he really got to experience Moldova. It took us two months but we finally found a place to swim in a small town about an hour north of Balti. It was an actual outdoor swimming pool!!! And it wasn’t too dirty, we could smell some chlorine! It was so awesome. We also went on different hikes around Moldova, most not being real hiking places but us just walking beside a river for 10 miles, the best we could do. I worked some. Most of the kids were on vacation so my English classes were small and I didn’t have much to do. Most of you received the email about my awesome birthday meal and trip, those who didn’t- just email me and I will forward it to you. The weather finally mellowed down near the end of August. We have gotten a lot of rain, though a bit too late. Most of Moldova’s crops did not grow and they are now having to rely on donations from Ukraine and some world food organization. It is interesting that this was the hottest and driest summer in a 100 years and the winter two years was the coldest in 100 years. The group that came the year before us got to experience both of these, bummer. Now we are having really cool mornings and warm afternoons. It is nice to be wearing jeans again but still able to wear sandals. I have only worn tennis shoes once since the beginning of May (except of course when I run). Life is good though. I am currently trying to find some work to do. Now that we have hit the one year mark I am beginning to reflect on the past year and decide what I want to do this next year and how I want to leave my mark here in Moldova. A few of us have begun discussing an anti-littering campaign. That could be a huge project that would be really hard to catch on considering Moldovans freely throw trash everywhere, even on the ground right next to garbage cans. I just recently wrote a grant to do a village clean up and install a few benches and garbage cans and to do some anti littering seminars at the school along with a brochure to pass out throughout the village. I am still waiting the results. Today was my first morning teaching English at a kindergarten in Balti. I will be doing that two mornings a week. I have three groups of young children 3-5 years old. Each group only lasts at most 30 minutes because that’s all their attention span will allow. It was really funny today teaching the youngest group, we did it outside, and they way they would get distracted by an airplane overhead or saying bye-bye to a passing truck. We are also in the process of finishing up the renovations on our fitness center and have started buying the equipment. I hope it will be open in less than a month. Everyone wants to name the center “Jennifer”! I tried to say no but they won’t listen, they want to always remember me. Cute. Now that fall had hit me and my close friends have begun planning our Christmas festivities. We gotta have something to look forward to, right? It’s not that weird is it? (I am sure my mom has already started her shopping.) We picked secret snowflakes (we changed from secret Santa because we have a Jewish friend involved). So if anyone is thinking of sending a package and want to include a can of pumpkin, brown sugar, or some marshmallows- that would be sweet! And maybe some candy canes or other Christmas type candy, like reces (sp) cups! I miss you all a lot! Honestly.

The Current

I wrote a previous, very short, post about the weather being 95 degrees. Most of our summer here in Moldova was 95 degrees, at least. We had one week where the only time it dropped below 100 was at night, and even then I think it only got down to 95. One day was almost 50 degrees Celsius- what is that in Fahrenheit? Hmmm, maybe 115. Not sure, you can do the calculation yourself. So during the 3 months where days averaged 95 degrees (I think we had 3 days of rain) it was kind of miserable. Going to work became a punishment because with all the computers on and the 20 bodies crammed in increased the temperature by at least 10-15 degrees. And the place was full of flies! Seriously. There would be 50 flies flying into my face and landing on my forehead and hands while I was typing. I am not sure if I hate mosquitoes buzzing in my ear at night or flies landing all over me more.

So anyways, during this crazy heat wave draught that Moldova went through I had to use public transportation numerous times. I had to use to and from work, around the city, to go to Chisinau, and for different excursions I went on throughout Moldova. This might not seem like a big problem, except that no one would open any windows out of fear of the Current. I do not refer to a current of electricity but instead to the breeze or wind. Moldovans are terrified (!) of a breeze. They would have rather died of heat stroke in the overcrowded, stifling buses than to open the windows. It was something we actually had to argue and fight over to try to keep the top hatches of the buses open (though we usually lost to some old baba). Many trips we would disembark completely soaked as if we had just jumped in a swimming pool.

The thing about the Current is that it makes you sick. This simple breeze is what causes the illnesses here in Moldova. My host dad would often close all the doors in the house to stop the cross breeze cooling down the house in fear that we would all get sick. WHAT?! And this isn’t just some superstition like breaking a mirror and having “bad luck” for 7 years, or whatever. Everyone believes in it, seriously believe in it. Even the doctors will blame ailments on the Current. It is especially bad for young children. They wrap babies up here in as much clothing as they can without suffocating them to protect them from the current. This summer, when it was 110 degrees, a woman could tell everyone to shut the windows on the bus because her baby would get sick from the Current and not one single person would argue but instead rush to close up the bus. The only thing that is going to make that kid sick is heat stroke!!! But they don’t listen. We try to explain what really causes illnesses and that the Current doesn’t exist but they won’t listen, at all. It is crazy and frustrating.