"We live life forward, and understand it backwards"

The rolling hills of Moldova.

Too funny not to laugh.

V.I. Lenin. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov! ...What's he talking about Dude?

I just re-read my blog post from last week, and yikes. I apologize for the incessant droning. Maybe I needed some brînza with that whine. The next day life pulled a 180 on me and everything that I was complaining about fixed itself. My program manager called me in the morning and told me he had (somehow) spoken to the landlord and was meeting us at noon to check the place out. We had a great meeting, the apartment was clean, it has a really nice garden that I’m looking to overhaul upon moving in, and we have a contract for me to move in May 1^st. Maybe the best thing I found out is that it is coming with a laundry machine! I was getting used to the fact that I would be hand washing from here on out, and that thought doesn’t really bother me, but I’m not going to turn down a laundry machine. Although now that I think about it, the last time- the one and only time- I actually used a Moldovan washing machine I ended up shrinking half my clothes to midget size since all the buttons were in Russian. I wonder what my villagers will say about me when I’m walking around in a tight, formerly-white-but-now-is-pink shirt and acid wash jeans.

I’ve been quite busy lately, although I haven’t sat in my office for more than two hours over the last week or two. It’s planting time and I’ve been kicking it with the farmers in the fields learning how to plant beans, corn, onions, potatoes, and peas, while empirically learning that strawberry plants are not weeds and you most definitely will get yelled at if you try to uproot them. This is some backbreaking work, and I sometimes feel like a wimp compared to 70 year old babas that work like horses in the fields. The most amazing part- they don’t drink water, just wine. Gee-zuhs, I can’t keep up with that pace. When I sweat all the water out of my pores I decided to get a couple pulls off of grandpa’s homemade cough syrup. Bad idea. I was hunched over, panting, trying to comprehend Romanian and plant potatoes before I imperatively had to take a pauza and find the nearest water well. Peace Corps Medical staff recommends that we don’t drink this water, but at that time I felt the trade-off of spending a couple extra minutes on the john outweighed the dehydrated dizziness I was experiencing.

For my desk job, I recently was informed that I will be taking over the newly created electronic newsletter that my village is mandated to put out since we won a Democracy grant from the US Embassy. I have only seen this newsletter one time, and what it looks like is a weekly run-down of any current events in the community, grants that are available, and any other tid-bits deemed worthy enough to be sent to a select few that actually have email (although I teach weekly seminars to change that). This is going to suck up some hours out of my week since I’ll be scouring websites in only Romanian and Russian, and then producing a three-page report, in business-friendly Romanian. Truthfully, I wasn’t initially excited about this, but have now come to realize that I potentially have the influence to suede people to look at certain material (grants and programs I’m interested in) and hopefully get community backing for my projects.

This past weekend I went up to the border of Ukraine and Moldova to celebrate the birthday of a good friend of mine and to catch up with other volunteers. The PCVs house we stayed at reminded me a lot of camping. The gas didn’t work and we barbequed outside, no running water so we drank/washed dishes from the well outside, the outhouse was overflowing and it was better to find your own spot than sit in the torture box, and we all smelled to high heavens after three days of debauchery and camp fires. At times the weekend was a little blurry from rachui- distilled liquor made from beets, and a lot of sun. Some of the more specific memories were walking through a beautiful valley full of sheep, goats, lambs, cows, calfs, horses, and ducks; eating a raw goose egg out of a feces covered egg with Moldovansș and my utter incomprehension of the dialect they speak up there. Since it is close to Ukraine they speak Horholește, a Russian/Ukrainian mixture. Throw in some deep country Moldovanește and it calls for one hell of a time trying to piece together conversations.

I can truly say that I’m having the time of my life right now. The longer I stay in this country the more I learn to appreciate and understand not only the Moldovan cultural, but also my own as well. I read in a book onetime (although I can’t remember which one, go figure) that the best way for you to know your own culture is to live in another. This couldn’t truer. Va mulțumesc Moldova!