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.