Dusk

The cool night air bellows through the lace curtains in my room. It’s a whisper in my ear, taunting me to put down my books and come outside. I put on my brown, J Crew flip-flops that now show signs of the summer rainstorms that can creep up without warning here. With a low, scraping bang, I close the green metal gate with faint white flowers painted on the front, rusted from several years gone unnoticed by a paintbrush The crushed limestone path forks, leaving me with the decision to turn towards the main road leading towards the village on my right, or into the pinkish-purple glow of the sunset over the vineyards, orchards, and fields to my left. It’s an easy decision to make, and soon I find myself walking past the last few houses on the periphery of the neighborhood. These are the gray, towering giants that sit in limbo, half-finished, waiting for their owners to return from abroad with money for materials to commence their constructions. At first glance they look like an elephant graveyard, ruins from more a prosperous time; some show the signs of many harsh winters- unoccupied, and unkempt. Past the last of the houses, the road turns into a dirt path that is well worn from the famers on their tractors that tend to this land. After a twenty-minute walk, savoring the last bit of soft, hazy sunlight, I find a small dirt mound that overlooks the valley. This is the perfect spot to sit, reflect upon my inner most thoughts, and listen to the roar of the country-side silence; dogs are barking, an occasional truck rattles down the road, wind rustles through the grape vines and corn husks. I can’t help but feel like I was intentionally put here, at this exact moment, for a reason that I am yet to discover. Out in the fields, life makes sense; I am able to recharge my batteries, preparing myself for tomorrow’s battles, while releasing the stress inflicted from today’s blows. By the time the sun has set, clouds have rolled in and my skin gets damp from the evening dew. I feel like I am one step closer to piecing together the puzzle of my time here. This, I am sure, will be a puzzle that will take many years to figure out, but I am ready for the challenge, and feel as though there is no mountain too large to move.

Fresh fish and mushrooms

Vince and I at the winery. We are 80 meters directly below our houses.
Map of the underground streets at the winery. Famous for their "Str. Merlot" and "Str. Pinot Griot", etc.
One of the wine tasting rooms.

One of the many taverns in the winery.

Yours truly.


In the bus driving down an underground road.




Canning cucumbers for winter.
Buna ziua! I’m starting to notice signs of the summer winding down here in Moldova. For starters, I only have two more weeks of language classes before I have to take the training wheels off and go forth to spread peace and friendship, alone. Also, the delicious fruit is slowly starting to disappear. When I first arrived they were coming out of strawberry season, but the sweet and sour cherries, and the raspberries were in full bloom. After those started fading away the apricots and plums started up; I’m pretty sure I ate my weight in plums everyday from the tree in the backyard, but surprisingly I didn’t get sick from my 20 per day diet. Apples and pears were after the plums, and they might still be going on, but not to the same extent. Then came my favorite season of peaches and watermelon. I found out today though that we should be extremely careful with the watermelons because it’s really easy to get food poising from them, and that we should only buy them from trusted street vendors, Two things strike me as very odd about this recommendation; first, how the hell do you get food poisoning from a watermelon? If you know, please comment at the end of this blog. Second thing I don’t understand, and maybe this will come in time, but how on earth am I supposed to find a trustworthy watermelon vendor? Is this a trial-by-error type of deal and just hope that you don’t get sick, and if not, continue going there? All the street vendors I come across see a big “FOREIGNER” sign painted across my forehead and try to rip me off…is this trustworthy? I asked my host mother about where she buys her fruit, and I was told to just stop off at any stand on the side of the road. This slightly vindicates my skepticism. Now that the peaches have been turned into jam and juice for winter, I have to wait until September and October for the grapes to ripen. I’ve heard this is a great time to be in Moldova, because everyone is very proud of his or her house wine and want you to try it. I picture myself walking through my neighborhood, stopping off at friends’ houses, talking and drinking wine. Wine that fresh tastes more like Welch’s grape juice, and it’s deviously potent.

As you can see from the pictures above, I went to the winery in my village yesterday. It’s hard to describe the grandeur of the place because the tour was only the tip of the iceberg. We met a group of Community Development trainees at the fabrica de vin and had to convince our bus driver to drive us on the tour, and because the winery is so big, and they don’t have a tour bus of their own, we had to pay extra for him to agree. Everything is done underground, fabrication, storage, bottling, etc. After driving five kilometers past hundreds of gigantic oak barrels, each containing 10,000 liters of wine, we made it to where all the bottles are stored. I was shocked at how cold and humid it was underground and was really glad I brought a long sleever with me. They said the humidity averages at 85% and the temperature is a constant 12-14 degrees Celsius all year round. Here’s a little caveat for you all: I don’t know why we decided to be such a hardheaded and rebellious culture, but we really should convert over to the metric system; it’s a lot simpler, and the entire world but us uses it.

We did wine tasting at the end of the tour, and needless to say I wasn’t feeling cold after that. It, er, I, got pretty toasty after nine or ten tasting mugs. I felt like a hobbit in Lord of the Rings whenever he orders a beer, and receives a pint, because I was walking around with a large, ceramic mug full of wine. Out of all the wines I tried, I really only liked a couple of them. All the whites were too sweet for my liking, and I’ve had a lot better homemade dry white wines here. I don’t think they broke out the good stuff for us, because on the tour our guide was showing us the vintages celebrities have ordered, and mentioned that the Queen of England orders somewhere around 1,000 to 5,000 bottles of a particular vintage from them every year. When the tour ended we were still about 3 or 4 kilometers away from where we came in, and our tour guide was no where to be found. The bus driver was lost, there was no signs or lights showing us the way out. Full of liquid confidence, I directed the bus driver out of the maze. Surprisingly enough, since I really had no clue where we were and just thought it was funny to be giving directions in Romanian, we ended up successfully making it out without having to turn around.

I ended up getting two bottles of champagne for my host family, and I’m pretty sure we’re going to “make a party” tonight at dinner. This sounds miserable actually because I’m still not up to par from yesterday, and I have a big language assessment tomorrow. C’est la vie, da?

More randomness from Moldova:

Yesterday after I was finishing up a run, I saw a woman herding her five large geese down the main road in town. Curious about this, I stayed back and watched her for about ten minutes waddle her birds down the road, and then up a trail to her house.

I got my hands on a bus schedule for my village after spending countless hours waiting for the bus each day. However, I still spend countless hours aimlessly waiting in the boiling sun for the bus to come. I waited for a trolleybus on Sunday for an hour and forty-six minutes before giving up and jamming myself into a ruteria. Right after we started moving, I saw my trolley out of the corner of my eye making its way down the street.

Everyday I come back from school sweating from my 30 minute walk in 90 degree heat. My host family and I usually bitch about how hot it is with each other, and my host mother always tells me how much better fall is because summer is too hot. We usually have these conversations over big bowls of hot borsht soup and boiling tea.

I almost had a heart attack this weekend when I decided to take four 5 year old girls to get ice cream. We had a mile walk down the main road and twice I was sure one of them was going to get hit by a car going 90 to nothing. I finally decided to play a game and told them to line up and that I was the pappa duck and they had to follow me down the road. To my surprise, it actually worked and I had four giggling little girls following me around for the entire walk, and an hour after we got home.

My outhouse dog is actually a good Moldovan dog. My neighbor's ducks got eaten by a fox, but not ours. They attribute this to the fact that the mutt barks at everything, even his own shadow.

Rutiera Rides

Another week down, another bottle of Tabasco consumed. I didn’t think that Moldovans would appreciate the value of a little spice in their lives, but am thankful at every meal that my expectations were wrong. Now, thanks to a wonderful care-package, I now can put Tony Chachere’s on my gigantic breakfast of spaghetti a la fried egg.

This past week I have spent most of my time crammed into one of the various means of public transportation in Moldova. If you recall from an earlier blog, I was amazed at how many people could fit onto a rutiera. It seems like each time I think that we have seen the worst, and that we couldn’t possibly fit another person on the bus, the impossible happens. I was on one the other day, and was squeezed in so tight that I was smashed against a woman sitting down, with practically all my weight being supported by her shoulder. I’m pretty sure in the states the way I was situated I could have gone to jail for sexual molestation. You know it’s bad when the Moldovans start laughing and commenting on the impractical logistics of fitting more people on the bus. The trolleybuses aren’t quite as bad, but they can get pretty ugly around rush hour. All in all though, if you have a good attitude, can appreciate the ripe body odor of 100 different people sweating in 90 degree heat, lack of following air, and aren’t claustrophobic, the 20 to 30 cents you pay for a twenty minute ride isn’t so bad.

My Romanian skills are progressing nicely. I had a milestone moment last night after helping can hundreds of cucumbers, carrots, and garlic cloves for winter when I was able to talk with my host mother about the political situation in Moldova. I am finally starting to develop a more extended vocabulary, and it feels really nice to be able to be part of the conversation, and not the topic of conversation. I have found that I know a lot more Russian than I thought I did, and it worries me a little that I can’t even pick it out from the Romanian. I will be speaking in class, and will be corrected by my teacher that I need to learn proper Romanian and not Romanian peppered with Russian. So life continues through the blistering summer heat and I have found that beer and ice cream are really great for coping. It’s Saturday evening; no school tomorrow and I can’t find my host family so I guess I’ll try to find some sort of entertainment. La revedere.

Funeralopalooza

I am currently at my new site, and at my new job at Agrocons-Inform (ACSA) working as a consultant in Agribusiness and a specialist in the fields of technology and finance. I don't know if I would be fully qualified for this title in the US, but I really like the sound of it, so I'm going to do my best to make sure I don't look like an idiot to these Moldovans. Already on my first day of work, I have conducted an informal session in Excel with great success; I am especially proud of myself because the entire program is in Russian. The office is very nice, it's me and two other consultants that specialize in economics and technical agriculture practices. I am only spending two days at my new site, so I will get back to explaining my job when I understand it better myself.

Yesterday was one of the more hectic days I've ever had in my life. I had to get myself from my other village, to the north bus station in the capital, and from there make it north by an hour and a half to my new site. Well right from the get-go I started running into problems. I have ridden many buses in foreign countries before, and have always been told that if you accidently get on the wrong bus, just stay on it until you make the entire loop. That advice never has worked for me. The multiple times I have done this, the buses NEVER loop around. I remember once in Mexico City I got side-tracked for two hours because the bus didn't loop around and I was the last person on the bus before it pulled into the garage and I was forced to get off. Well yesteday was similar; My bus started heading in the wrong direction, and fast. After twenty minutes we arrived in a tiny village, everyone pilled out and the driver looked at me and told me I had to get off. I had no idea where I was, nor how to get back, so I told the driver I needed help. Luckily, I was the first American he has ever met, and he invited me to have coffee and breakfast with him at his family's house not far away. I have found that I always have a better time in Moldova whenever I just go with the flow, so off I went with a complete stranger trusting that I wouldn't be kidnapped and sold into sex-slavery (not sure if that would be a bad thing though...). Breakfast was awkwardly charming, and I ended up getting a free-it would have been a dollar-ruteria ride, and I was the only passenger. Great success!

Upon arriving in my new village, I had coffee and lunch with my new host family- only a mother and a 12 year old daughter, and a lady that I work with. Think of a run down, dirty apartment building from the Soviet era...that is what I now call home. It has two rooms and a kitchen. I am giving up a big family full of life, a fabulous garden, and a wine factory, for a run-down, seven-story Soviet block apartment building from the 1950s, but I have a shower AND a toliet indoors! Well, the toliet doesn't have running water, but I don't really care and spent a good ten minutes on it relaxing and thanking the porcelain gods for smiling down at me this morning.

After lunch I was instructed to take a nap, and then a shower, because we were going to a post-funeral dinner at my neighbor's apartment. Once again, I figured why not, all's fair in the name of peace and friendship. Upon arriving in the house I was warmly welcomed by a family and placed at a table full of fried potatoes, cold chicken and pork in a meaty jello, salami, cheese, cucumbers, tomatoes, bread, fried chicken, stuffed peppers, grapeleaves, tapiocca, and more. The father, with his shirt unbottoned with his belly hanging out, would come around the table and fill up everyones shot glasses every five minutes. It was like clock-work, the guy didn't even sit down until two hours after I got there, and this is when he plopped down hammered drunk next to me and told me that we are now best friends (I must have an affinity for bus drivers, because I found out later that he is a driver four days of the week). I had to sit out most rounds, because I still haven't gotten a platet back for Moldovan cognac ever since I had to go to the hospital for food poisoning. That doesn't mean I still wasn't feeling the booze I did end up drinking, and was merrily rambling off what was probably incoherent Romanian, but everyone loved the fact that I was trying to speak their language, and the four sons decided to give me lessons in both Romanian and Russian for the rest of the day. That is where it really started to get a little crazy.

I was asked if I wanted to go with the brothers to feed the roosters at the farm about two miles outside of town. I figured a walk would do me good, so I agreed. They all crammed inside a tiny little car, and immediately red flags started to go off in my head. I told them that I wasn't going to be able to ride with them because we were all way too drunk to be driving. This didn't sit too well with them, so I told them that if anything happened Peace Corps would kick me out, which seemed to suite them just fine. To accomodate me, they decided it was best to take the horse cart. There's a good time for you. Four Moldovan brothers, drunk and greiving for their grandfather, with an American in tote, all riding in a flatbed buggy singing Russian songs bouncing down the dirt roads. We ended up making a pit stop to get beer and a watermelon and went to the river. They asked if I knew how to swim and whenever I told them yes, they all started taking off their clothes. Standing there awkwardly not knowing what to do, I had another "When in Rome moment" and dropped my drawers and went swimming buck naked in a river with four of my new comrades. Let me tell you, there is nothing like the sensation of going off a rope swing with no mesh to impede upon the fresh air blowing against your privates.

After swimming, a couple warm beers, and a watermelon, I ended up driving the horse cart to the farm and back to the house. Three of the brothers were passed out in the back of the cart, and the other wanted me to become an authentic Moldovan man- I take it that this includes knowing how to drive a horse cart.

The site visit has far exceeded my expectations, and although it is still a little awkward with my host family (I never know if it's cosher to shut my bedroom door when I'm in there, strange, I know) it was nothing like the first day or two at my PST host family. They haven't quite mastered my name and I am refered to as Nehlu, not that bad considering I butcher every word in their native tongue.

Eu fac dus (Sounds like "Yo fack douche", but sadly only means that I take a shower)

Saturday night was the 4th of July celebration that the US Embassy put on at a “country club golf course”. All the trainees in my village and myself pilled on a private minibus that took us to the capital. When we got into Chisinau, the driver turned to us, all of whom barely speak the language and don’t know where the hell we were, and asked us where to go. We told him it was at a golf course, but that one blew his mind, because come to find out, there is no such thing as golf in Moldova (oddly enough though there is a golf store in Mall-dova, go figure). We finally made it at five o’clock when we were supposed to be there at four, right on time for Moldovan standards. Maybe it’s just me, but when I think country club, I picture a nice reception hall with a terrace overlooking a lush, green golf course, not a shabby, run down, four holed putt-putt pasture. They featured American food- hot dogs, hamburgers, and chicken, but you know there was a Moldovan in charge because the only condiment you could find was mayonnaise, and lots of it. One similarity between America and Moldova is that when you have an open bar, people don’t beat around the bush. Let’s just say that there were some pretty awkward moments throughout the night. All in all, it was a fun event. Michael Jackson blared from the loud speakers and everyone boogied down to pay their respects to the King. The bus drivers must have been happy because I’m still hearing stories from volunteers about how they accidently forgot their cell phones and/or cameras on the bus.

The next day PC officially started letting us travel on our own. I made it successfully to Chisinau with Vince to play on the PC baseball team. After getting slightly lost, we found our way to headquarters, pilled into a minibus and went to a village about 30 minutes away. The PC team had jerseys and equipment and I must say, we looked pretty legit., up until we watched the Moldovan team start to warm up for the game. It was quite evident that our team was going to loose, because the other team was full of Russian thugs that practice several times a week. We started off the game doing surprising well and I scored the first run for us. Even in the 3rd inning we were tied at 3-3. Due to a fairly biased Moldovan umpire, and our complete lack of talent and practice, we lost the game pretty bad in the end. You could just tell from the smirks on the other teams’ faces that they were gloating about the fact that they beat the Americans at their own sport. I’m still really glad I was able to get out of my village, and was it a complete mind-blowing experience to play baseball out in the middle-of-nowhere Eastern Europe.

It was a busy week, with only a busier week ahead. I found out where I will be going for the next two years of my life, and I leave tomorrow to spend Sunday and Monday with my new host family and partner. I expect this visit to be just as awkward as when I first moved in with my PST host family, so I’ve got that to look forward to. We were supposed to call our partners and tell them what time we will be coming into our sites on Sunday; this call was supposed to test our language skills that we should have acquired over the last month. I’m pretty sure I failed miserably, because both times I tried calling my host partner hung up on me.

Let’s see, what else has been happening lately? I asked my host mother if I could help prepare dinner. I was handed a large chopping knife and was pretty sure I was going to have to painfully chop the giant bowl of onions that were on the counter. I couldn’t have been more wrong. No, instead I was instructed to go outside, find the biggest duck in the yard, kill it, pluck it, and bring it back to her. Lets just say that is a lot easier said than done…

I quite possibly am now engaged to a Moldovan girl that works at the Internet/phone store. Once I found out that I would be living in a raion center (like a parish/county seat) with 8,000 people in it I decided to purchase the internet. Jesus Christ what a chore. I brought my neighbor to help me out, but he knows very limited English. After an hour I realized we were in a gridlock. The elder store lady didn’t want to sell me an internet contract because I’m an American, and I don’t have a visa. Okay easy enough I thought, I would simply pay the entire year out then and there. Well that would have worked, but I would have had to pay an extra hundred dollars, and I think this was an under-the-table “fee”. I told her that I wasn’t going to pay that extra amount just because I’m American, and was then asked if I am married. “No your not? Well my shop assistant here isn’t married either, her name is Anna”. This is right about where things started to get weird. Most of the conversation was lost in translation, and before I knew it my neighbor volunteered my last name, and the lady wouldn’t stop saying “Anna Collins, da?” The girl was even into it because she grabbed my phone, put her number in it, called her phone, and then they sold me the internet, without the extra fee. She even signed the contract in her name. I’m still flabbergasted by this turn of events.

Yesterday I spent the afternoon picking onions out of the ground and drinking wine. There’s nothing like getting hammered and working the land with your fellow comrades to make you feel connected to Moldova. Today was a little rough in language class, and now my internet is really crapping out on me; I guess Anna the internet girl is screwing with me since I won’t answer any of her phone calls. I’m pretty nervous about my trip tomorrow to my new site, and was really looking for a little American companionship via Skype to help settle my nerves a bit, but I guess this will have to be done the old fashioned PC way, a little mental pep-talk.

As Promised, pictures

Building a grape-ery at my house.This is the Nistru River. Across it is Transinistru. Crazy to think that we aren't allowed to go there.
Me at a WWII monument where the liberation of Moldova began.
Selling fish on the corner in my village.
Central market in Chisinau.


My neighbor holding a hedgehog he found in the garden. We started to play pass the game pass the hedgehog and give it a kiss.A lady selling kittens on the street in Chisinau.
My beloved outhouse.
My outhouse mutt.
Typical house in my village.


I just found the link to my neighbor Vince's blog. He has some great shot and videos of our village of Milestii Mici. www.vinceinmoldova.blogspot.com. Check it out.

Going to chill with the Ambassador

I hate the computer I'm on, I promise more pictures will be up soon.

July 3, 2009

I’ve gotten into the habit of wearing wife beaters because of the heat. It has the bonus affect of making me feel like one badass Russian comrade. All I need now is a gold chain around my neck and a Red & White cigarette in my mouth. The real deal would probably drive down the road, see the gold chain, and jump me. I would only make matters worse if I tried to stop it because the majority of my Russian vocab is cuss words. It’s such a beautiful language to swear in, because even the phrase “Cheers to our health”, the most sincere of my Russian repertoire, comes out sounding harsh and insulting.

All the ARBDs went on a field trip yesterday to a current volunteer’s village. He lives across the river from Transdniestr, a breakaway republic from Moldova that has soviet ties. Peace Corps won’t let us travel there, and no other country in the world, except for probably Russia, recognizes it as its own country, even though they have their own government and currency. It was really cool getting that close to such a political hotbed, and I might have to “accidently forget” about that rule once I can travel in country by myself. The volunteer who we visited has been working with a family to setup an Heirloom tomato farm; these are the tasty tomatoes that vary in shape, color and size. It is the first of its kind in Moldova, and currently the family is enjoying the benefits of such a niche market and sells to restaurants and embassies in Chisinau. If you were to sell these tomatoes in the markets Moldovans wouldn’t dare to buy them, thinking that they were radioactive, because god forbid they aren’t red. It was great to get out of our little village and the family let us take bags of tomatoes back to our host families (I’ll get back to that later). While at the farm, I was exhausted from the heat and sat on the front steps of the house. The woman of the household came running over with a chair for me and, quite frantically, told me I can’t sit on the ground. Thinking that she was just being hospitable, I told her she could sit in the chair, I was fine sitting on the stoop, which she countered with the question of “Do you want to have kids?”…Where in the hell did that come from? I’m getting accustomed to bizarre questions, and so I replied that yes, someday I would like a couple runts to call my own. Immediately she grabbed my arm, yanked me off the ground, firmly rooted me in the chair, and told me, more like yelled at me with frantic hand gestures, that I was going to freeze my balls to the concrete and not be able to procreate. It was 85 degrees outside.

After some investigation I did find out that women also have the potential to ruin their chances of maternity by freezing their ovaries if they dare sit on the ground. Bear in mind this conversation with the woman was in very broken Romanian, and if I ever end up playing a game of Charades here (not like I don’t do that every time I meet someone who doesn’t know English) I will call this lady up to be on my team.

I brought my bag full of redish-green, yellow, and orange tomatoes home to my host family. It was hilarious to try and convince them that not only were the tomatoes edible, but they were ripe, juicy, and sweet. Once I told them that these went for a premium price in the capital and that the embassies order them, they lost hesitation. Slowly, but surely, they are gaining trust in their strange new American pet. I haven’t grown a giant tumor yet from using my laptop while not being in the presence of a cactus to absorb the radiation, and I usually win most of the arm wrestling matches I’m propositioned into on a regular basis; respect, and trust, can be built in the strangest of ways.

I had a history lesson this afternoon and learned that where I live in the village is a breakaway subdivision, dubbed Transdniestr (Vince and I live by far the furthest away from the school out of everyone and have a nice half hour walk to town). Also, the wine cellar of the big winery extends literally underneath our houses. The teachers said this is why some people here have problems getting water from their wells. Vince can attest this because he will wake up and the family will be doing all their cooking and cleaning out of buckets because their water in the house stopped running. Because of this situation, he takes a bath once a week. However, I’m still a little confused by the fact that I live twenty feet away and our water, although at times can have low pressure, never stops running and I take a shower everyday.

I received letters today after my history lesson. Surprisingly three got through without a big X over a dollar sign on the outside. The act of receiving a letter is pure jubilation, until you realize that there is nothing in it. Someone, somewhere (I’m not pointing fingers to any particular country), opened my envelope, took the letter out, and instead of putting the card back in after seeing there was no money, sealed it back up and sent it on through. Bastards. Way to darken my mood a bit. I perked up quickly after when I was sitting around the table hanging out with my host family drinking Community Coffee (dark roast is my favorite, hint hint) and noticed that the green and red Tabasco bottles are now permanent fixtures at the dinner table. The family, like always, was first wary about my foreign coffee that doesn’t dissolve in water, and the liquid fire sauce I copiously put on everything. Sure enough though, a little dash of southern charm and a whole lot of tenacity won them over, and now they are just as bad as I am with the Tabasco. There are a couple things I miss more than I thought would, Tony Sacheries, peanut butter, and something else, but regrettably will have to wait until a little after Christmas to get this present shipped to me. Happy Independence Day all, hopefully I will be able to sneak off tomorrow afternoon to post this before I go kick it with the Ambassador at the embassy for a party.

I'm alive

June 30, 2009

just finished reading My Other Life by Paul Theroux, and was captivated by one of the beginning chapters where he spent time at a leprosarium in Africa. The chapter went into a considerable length about the fevers that terrorize the continent, many of them unnamed. After reading my last blog post I became very nostalgic because I came to the realization that I should not blog when I have a fever over 100. I think I have confused my blog with my diary, There is a balance between blogging and journaling, and because my blogging is a nonfictional compilation of experiences, I think it will be a constant struggle not to divulge into my inner emotions, knowing that I have a readership that seeks to solace. I’m going to have the longest blog after PC because I enjoy writing so much. That being said, it has been a difficult past couple of days- one day spent in the hospital, and three more bedridden with bathroom trips every ten minutes (this probably doesn’t even come close to the severity of malaria, or what was being described in the book I read), but I feel better now and have shed ten pounds after dieting on nothing but rice and tea. I just had my first real meal and either ate hedgehog or duck- the Romanian words for these are surprisingly similar.

Yesterday was a beautiful day. The birds were chirping, the roosters crowing; sunlight flooded the fields of grapes, sunflowers, and corn that punctuate the gentle rolling hills of the Moldovan countryside. Like out of a movie, the animals started going wild. All the dogs in the village started barking, the birds started circling the sky, the roosters frantically picked up their clamoring. All the doors in the house came alive, smashing into their frames and walls. I shut mine, afraid that the glass paneling would shatter on impact. I sat on my balcony and watched the sky turn colors from gray to a luminous black. You could feel the air pressure drop, and my ears started popping; the temperature plummeted twenty degrees in a matter of seconds. The heavy, rain-scented smell faded just as it started to hail. At first the hail was the size of rabbit pellets, then gumballs, then the sky started hammering golf balls into the ground. I was sure that all the livestock- chickens, goats, cows, ducks, everything- would be completely wiped out. The hail lasted ten minutes, and then the rain came. The rain made streams that formed in-between the rows of grapes in the vineyard next to my house. Soon after, the streams became turbulent rivers, and within fifteen minutes the field was a lake. As if someone flipped a light switch, the rain stopped, the clouds dissipated, and the sky radiated a soft pinkish-yellow glow.

In an odd way the storm reminded me of home. On a fishing trip into the Gulf with my father and friends we experienced a similar storm. Tied to an oilrig, riding out the waves, we had the outboard motors revved up to keep the bow steadfast into the salty spray, so as not to capsize. Like a slap to the face, the wind shifted from the north and the temperature dropped. That is the most vivid memory I have of a storm clandestinely sneaking up on us, and it’s odd that reminiscing and comparing a jarring memory of almost dying at sea, and this Moldovan thunderstorm have a tranquil effect on me.

All was well after the storm. The livestock was still alive, and unfortunately so was my sneering outhouse mutt. However, the dirt roads turned to mud, and large amounts of mud and sediment washed out onto the main road in town that I have to traverse in order to get to school. Not fun, I wished I had my winter boots with me today, even though they would have been overkill. I didn’t know what to expect coming to Moldova and was thinking that I would be trekking miles each morning through three feet of snow and mud, so I went out and bought the biggest, gaudiest pair of combat meats extreme outdoorsman boots. They elevate me a good two inches and I thoroughly enjoyed stomping around my apartment in them. Now I’m picturing myself freezing my ass off outside my Moldovan house in the winter struggling to pull my feet out of the shin-high jowls of my frozen, muddy boots. This should make for an interesting winter.

I’m going to leave you to this amounting fear that I have about my PC service in Moldova. No light spin is put on this because I’ve heard some crazy re-adjustment stories when volunteers return home to America. Anyways, I meet people constantly here. There is always a new neighbor that wants to have coffee and cookies, packs of kids wanting to practice saying “Hello, how old are you?” the drunk waking up from a nap in the middle of the road, at 11:30 in the morning, or even people my age hanging out at the mini-store. I think out of everyone I have gotten three names. The guys solemnly give you a “Noroc” and a handshake, and women avert their eyes (it’s not customary for a man to shake a woman’s hand). If you pass someone on the street they will stare at the ground, daring you in their domineering Eastern-European manner, to say “Good day” to them. I only hope that after my stint in PC Moldova I won’t loose the congeniality of saying “Hello” to a passerbyer, or a “Hey, good to meet you, my name’s Neal. What’s yours?” So for all of you out there that shy away from the awkward Hello’s on the street, have I got a place for you to live.

Moldovan lawnmowers.