Coffee breaks

Vaca

My host mom posing

Host grandpa with his pigs

The fields are a growin'

Norok oameni. I’ve got a free moment to kill while I’m here at work seeing that I can’t seem to pay attention to the Word document I am working on. I attribute this fact that we just had an impromptu wine, placenta (national dish that is a fried sandwich with either cheese, cabbage, cherry, pumpkin, or potatoes inside), honey, and tomato party in our small conference room. This is a normal occurrence when my main partner Petru is out of town. The lady partner that I work with, Larissa, who is probably the sweetest old lady you could ever imagine once you get to know her, loves to invite her friends in our building over for a midday snack. Also, we occasionally have all our consultants come into our office one or two days a month, and like magic, a large masa full of food and wine appears at the end of the meeting. Business in Moldova revolves around personal contacts, and it is important that you partake in the breaking of bread. For my birthday my partners called me up at 8 in the morning and told me that we had a seminar in an hour. This is a somewhat regular occurrence so I put on my clothes, ate a quick breakfast, and hit the road. Upon getting to work I was greeted by a large table full of traditional Moldovan food and spirits. Gotta love it.

Lately I’ve been getting overrun with workmen and water and gas “controllers”. I’ve been having a problem with my water pipes in my apartment, and like clockwork once I turn on the hot water heater my bathroom floods. My landlord has been calling several different repairmen for this issue to no avail. Also, the gas and water companies have been coming by to check my meters, they call these meter readers “controllers”. I don’t know why they don’t install the meters outside of the houses, especially since these people come at the worst possible times of the day (when I’m taking a nap). I’ve decided to turn it into a tea party, and instead of getting upset that I have people barging in on me at all times of the day, I politely ask if they would like to have coffee or tea with me. To my surprise, I am yet to be turned down. This morning actually I was telling a telephone repairman about my regular visits from the water controllers, and how in America they do it differently. He got a funny look on his face and asked me if I had ever been to America before. I thought he was kidding at first and so I replied “Once or twice”, but then realized that he was dead serious. I took it as a huge complement that after ten minutes of continuous dialogue he couldn’t make me out for a phony butchering his native language.

I’ve been going into the capital regularly for training with the new volunteers. When I returned the other day the gas in my apartment wasn’t working. I figured that I hadn’t paid the gas bill yet so I went to the post office to check and see. As I thought, I had already paid for the gas at the beginning of the month. I figured the gas would come back on within a day or two, because that’s just how things work here. After three days I still didn’t have any gas and I was getting tired of not being able to cook anything. Racking my brain for a way to have a hot meal, I decided that I would try to cook pelmeni (meat stuffed pasta you can buy at the store) in my chainik (water boiler for tea). This method worked beautifully. The second day of me boiling my pelmeni in my chainik my landlord came by and asked me what I was doing; I responded that my gas wasn’t working so I was preparing my noodles in my water boiler. Man, did he laugh at me. He told me that since I had been going out of town so much that he turned the gas nozzle off just in case there was a gas leak. Worst part about it is that the nozzle is about eye level on the wall directly above the stove. Oh cultural differences…

Happy 4^th of July and hopefully everyone has a safe holiday. I will be going to the annual 4^th of July Picnic the US Embassy throws in Chisinau. Last year it got pretty wild with an open bar and a Michael Jackson CD playing on a loop to commemorate his death. Hai devi!