Buna diminasta! I hope everyone is doing well and fully appreciating your central heating and fireplaces (or warm weather if you are fortunate enough). As I’m writing this, I am sitting here huddled in my room with two pairs of wool socks on, a beanie, sweats and long johns while drinking a cup of hot tea and I’m still cold. I would have a heater that Peace Corps supplies for us, except they gave me a monster that wants to burn down my apartment, so rather than start an electrical fire and set the place ablaze, I will wait for the soba (fireplace) we have on the 5th floor do it for me.
I was walking to the main road this morning to hitchhike to my village and was taking in the full beauty of the place- the green rye grass in the fields with horses briskly running around, the giant hill in front of me with tilled, dark earth and while doing this I managed to find the ONLY patch of ice on the road and did a very gracious skid with arms flailing almost taking out a baba walking in front of me. She turned around, looked me front head-to-toe and back, and muttered “Be careful boy”. Point well taken; I know out of everyone I would be the one to end up breaking an arm while walking. Soon enough it will be time to get the Yak-Traks out.
This weekend my raion mates and I threw a Deep South Bash in a Northern Village party for our fellow Ag’s and COD’s. Toumil, who lives in the next village over from me that has been here for 22 months now, has three houses on her host family’s compound where we were able to accommodate everyone. Friday night everyone came in and we rolled out a huge Tex-Mex feast that included tacos, quesadillas, salsa, wild rice, fried onions, pickles, and jalapenos that I am guessing was well received because there wasn’t a speck of food left over. After we spent the evening doing some taste testing of the local wine, we geared up and went to the village disco. After five hours of intermittent sleep I was woken up at 7 o’clock and got the day going. I must say we did a great job of wasting the day away by swapping stories and cracking jokes, and was finally forced to go heat up a gigantic pot of zama (soup) for lunch. Afterward, all the guys helped stack a tree’s worth of cutup firewood in a shed, with several wine pauses in the middle preempted by Toumil’s host father. There was a light snow and it was nice being able to help out one of the nicest Moldovans I have met here.
Saturday night I recruited some sous chefs to help me prepare enough jambalaya to feed a small army. I fully appreciate the hard work that Moldovan women put into getting food on the table, because I can tell you it isn’t easy when you have limited running water, two dull knives, and two burners on a stove. Lets just say I’m not exactly well versed in the kitchen, and have a lot more experience eating feasts than I do preparing them. While stirring the roux like crazy, I had to frantically call my mother to interrogate her on how much water to add to the rice. In the end the meal turned out fantastic if I do say so myself, and the food was practically wiped out in half an hour. Everyone got a little rowdy that night and Sunday morning there were some painful expressions of peoples’ faces. Hopefully it was well worth it.
All in all a great weekend spent with great people. I brought my camera with me, but the batteries were dead so I wasn’t able to take a single picture. I’m just going to have to commit this one to memory. I would like to say thank you to everyone that came, you guys have quickly become some of my best friends and it would have been really tough sticking it out here for this long if it weren’t for you. I had the chance to make new friends this weekend, and thoroughly enjoyed talking with Jami, one of the coolest ladies that I have met. To all the M22s, thank you for being our guiding lights and mentors, it won’t be the same without you when you all leave in April. To my 24’s, congrats on the half year mark and I look forward to the next year and a half with you, and to the future M25s, get ready, this is one hell of a ride and I can tell you we all are anxiously waiting your arrival. Thanks to everyone that helped prepare food and clean up this weekend. For the supervisors- you all were quite worthless, but did a great job of keeping the rest of us entertained. Drum bun si voi iti vadea in anul nou!
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