Sleeping is my hobby

A gypsy in the woods dancing. Seriously.
A view from the monestary near my house.
The matriarch at the monestary.
One of the million cherry trees that line the streets.
Dinner. There are fifteen more in the box behind me on the windowsill.

After missing my alarm the other day my nieghbor Ana keeps telling me that I shouldn't make a hobby out of sleeping. It is one of the many English phrases I can't help but laugh at. When I first got to my village she asked me if I wanted to be single. I couldn't believe it, I had been in their village all of ten minutes before they were fishing for an American husband. Of course this ellicted a ten minute response from me about how I am in a foreign land for two years and being in a relationship is definitely not a priority. After confusing the hell out of these poor girls, I realized they were asking me if I wanted to be alone. I'm an idiot. Besides that, we are all progressing very nicely in each others languages. Everyday my Romanian doubles, although I still have the vocabulary of a one year old, and people think it's funny to tell me this everyday. The girls' English is coming along quite nicely as well. I can't wait for them to encouter another American, because they have the most southern repetoire of idioms we could come up with. I guess that's what you get when you put someone from South Carolina in one house, and next door someone from Louisiana. It brightens my day everytime I hear "What is up yall?" from a Moldovan. Everyday on the way to school I pass a small pond that is chalked full of frogs. One day I asked some Moldovans if they eat frogs here. Oh man they're reaction was priceless, the thought of eating a frog obviously had never crossed their minds before. Whenever I get stuck in a really spotty situation where you can cut the cultural tension with I knife, I always bust out "In Moldova, no voi muniest brazca. In America, noi munican brazca" which translates into "In Moldovan no one eats frogs. In American we eat frogs". This is seriously the best crowd pleaser and had my host mother throwing up from laughter. Laughter is great, and its nice that the host family and I have an open relationship to bust a gut at each other. Last night my mother made me eat an entire bowl of goat cheese. I'll tell you what, that definitely will put some hair on your chest. My vision started getting blury halfway through, but I persevered, mainly because I had a tank of a Moldovan woman screaming at me to eat it. At the end of my two year service I'm coming after Kobeashi in the Coney Island hot dog eating contest and bringing her with me.

Disclaimer for this post, I'm in an internet cafe right now and the computer keeps telling me that every word is mispelled because it is formatted in Russian so my grammer and spelling are probably horrendious. I had a great blog post saved on my flash drive, but my host sisters have been using my flash drive and it is now completely distroyed. Trust me when I say don't download any Russian software onto a flashdrive. I got rid of that as soon as I learned it was on there, but the girls rip the flash drive out of the USB port without ejecting it first and it now doesn't work. I have another one that PC gave me, and there is no way it is coming off my person.

Yesterday we went to a monestary close to my village. It was beautiful, and the place was entirely self-sufficient. There are only nuns there and they wear all black with black hoods over their heads. I've got a great picture of the Grim Reaper gardening with the slasher tool (for a lack of a better word that you call that scary machette). Afterwards we all went to a party in the woods and got to watch some pretty badass Moldovan, Russian, Ukrainian, and gypsy dancing followed up by a huge feast.

Above is a great video of the typical Moldovan dance, called the hora. The women make the craziest bird/cajun call I have ever heard. I'm pretty sure you get to hear it on the video so turn it up and jam it. I'm sorry this blog is so short and crappy. This internet cafe is definitely not the optimal place to write out your thoughts. Our clandestine bus trip to Ilalovine, the biggest city closest to me, was crazy from the start. Our bus was an hour and thirteen minutes late, but it wasn't crowded which made it worth the wait. We were discussing how nice it would be if the unfinished bus stop was outfitted with a capaccino machine and wireless internet, but then there would be no need to sit in this awesome internet cafe/disco that has fifteen little kids playing World of Warcraft with Russian techno and popmusic on full blast over the speakers. I can't even hear myself writing on the keyboard, and just succumed to the beat and bought a beer. I will post again soon, I promise. I'm not a huge baseball fan but I hear LSU is kicking some major ass in the tournament. Geaux Tigers!

..........Okay I'm sorry but this video isn't posting and I've been waiting for about an hour and have got to get out of here. I'll try to get it up soon because it's great.