Above: The hora, typical moldovan dance and singing
A school in my village and the well.
Other peace corps trainees with me in the capital.


The village I live in is about 4,500 people. Most of the ARBDs are training here, except for those learning Russian. Like I’ve said, I would have liked to learn Russian, but am really grateful that I’m not in that group. The alphabet is extremely intimidating. In the magazines, our equivalent of a neighborhood store/mini-mart, a lot of the goods are labeled in Russian. It calls for a good time when I want to get a bottle of water that isn’t carbonated and people stare at the foreigner shaking all the water bottles to make sure it’s natural water. But what can you do right? We already stick out so I’ve come to embrace it.

Tomorrow I get to go to hub site, which is where we doing all out technical training during Pre Service Training (PST). Here I will be able to refill my cell phone with more minutes. I’ve already hung up on two people from running out of minutes. I can still receive texts, even internationally, and really like waking up to “I miss you” text messages. I can’t respond to them, but it still seriously makes my day.

A little story about Moldova that’s pretty, hmm, cum se spune engleza, cute?:
“God was giving out land to all the people, but the Moldovans were out in the fields working hard all day. When they returned, God told them there was no more land to give out. However, he wanted to reward them for working hard and being good people so he gave them a little piece of heaven, and that is how Moldova came about”.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that folk story so I guess it had to make the blog. I’m getting a bath boiled for me right now and it’s going to be fantastic. It’s the little things in life that count, da? Just as good as any bath back home so don’t feel sorry for me. Well, except I’m still afraid of the outhouse, and the rabid dog that resides next to it. It’s only about half a foot tall, but its got the loudest, sharpest bark I’ve ever heard. I tried to tell my five year old host sister, Paula, we need to put a muzzle on it, but she just screamed and ran away. I really need to work on my sign language I guess. She’s precious and I’ve got a great picture of her trying to hide from me in the garden when I was trying to make her smell the flowers I was bringing to my teachers on the first day of school.

Language classes have been going well. We go all day long with a break each hour. They’re called coffee breaks, but should be redubbed “Cherry breaks” because I’m yet to find the coffee. That’s the way it’s been the entire time here, fruit breaks. Once I found a bunch of packets of instant coffee, but no water. It wasn’t a problem actually, I simply did what any logical, caffeine deprived Peace Corps volunteer would do, opened up and poured it down the hatch. I almost ralphed on the girl in front of me, but it was well worth it.

This morning I was running seriously late for school. I set my alarm on my phone, but forgot to take the phone off silent so I woke up at 8:05 and had to be at school in ten minutes. After arguing with my host mother that I didn’t have time to eat the four eggs, three hot dogs, an entire tomato, and two whole cucumbers that she was intent on feeding me, I had to haul ass twenty-five minutes down the road to school. Every time I see her now she thinks that she has to make up for the lost meal and continually is giving me sandwiches, peanuts, soup, candy, fruit, and bread to eat. Usually I beat my alarm because the rooster starts crowing at some asinine hour in the morning, but not this morning. I asked my host father why the rooster wasn’t crowing today and received the straightforward answer “Because we ate it last night for supper”. Awesome, just when I start to see the good of a natural alarm clock we go off an eat it.

Weird, but fascinating customs about Moldovans:
They eat off the serving plate. You have small personal plates but that is simply for cutting the food if you want.

Bread is served individually on the table, not on a plate.

You can always fit more people on a microbus. These things should only hold ten people max, but I swear, we were about fifty deep yesterday. Without air conditioning, and they don’t believe in circulating air because they think it will give them a cold. A clown would be seriously impressed by the ability, agility, and tolerability of Moldovans in buses. For all you Seinfeld fans out there, it reminded me of the episode that Elaine was on the subway when it broke down and she had a screaming dialogue in her head. I can empathize.

There is a cactus next to every computer because they think it absorbs the radiation. They’re convinced I’m going to drop dead from cancer from my laptop any day now.

Moldovans don’t like to drive their cars because gas is expensive. When you’re walking down the street they will tell you to be careful every time a car passes. I guess that’s because when they do get behind the wheel they try to defy gravity and lift off. On my walk back from a pickup soccer game this afternoon with some of the kids in the village we got a ride from Vince’s host brother’s friend. Our twenty- minute walk back turned into a twenty-second drive.

I hope everyone back home hasn’t melted from the Louisiana heat and humidity. Also, happy 29th anniversary Mom and Dad! I’m glad I was able to talk to you on the phone that day. I promise I will be able to call home more often now. If anyone receives a call from a bizarre looking phone number, don’t freak out, it isn’t blockbuster telling you that you are about to be turned over to a creditor for an overdue movie, but it’s me calling to hear a friendly voice.