I'm healthy, happy, 28-years-old, and coming home next year (technically).
We had a snowstorm Dec 23 which left 9 cars stuck on the hill I live on and 2 semis grinding for hours trying to look for traction. If you hadn't heard, Moldova has an unwritten law prohibiting driving up a hill in anything but 1st gear - and an additional regulation requiring coasting when going down-hill (i.e. shutting off the motor). I say this sarcastically, but this little "rule" is followed so rigidly, you'd think each car had its own black-box and was being monitored by the authorities. Therefore, without the use of momentum, an un-plowed, un-salted hill at 2mph is freaking unpassable when 6 inches of powder drop from the sky in the course of 3 hours. Its not as if we're in Miami -- Moldova gets snow every year, it just seems to surprise them a lot.
I headed to Chisinau on the 24th, spent 3 hours on the bus-ride that should only take an hour (Moldovan traffic jam - not pretty) and then spent Christmas in Chisinau with Jerry. The whole city was glazed with ice by the 25th. I only saw one snow plow, in Cimislia, and it was really a tractor with a blade in front. I still haven't seen a shovel. My trusty Columbia boots kept me dry and on my feet - as I watched everyone from babuskas to businessmen wipe out. If you're wondering, the furry hats everyone wears can actually roll a decent distance, like a hub-cap, when the wearer takes a tumble. When I was in Chisinau, we caught the Nutcracker and sushi on Christmas Day as well as Catholic mass on Christmas Eve. I received a lot of cool presents for Christmas - including a few items from Tiffany's (Jerry), a towl (host mom), and a monkey statue (Virginia). Did you know that the Moldovan Orthodox church has an animal of the year policy just like the Chinese Zodiac? Seriously, next year is the year of the monkey - talk about some interesting religious posters w/the Blessed Virgin and Monkey.
On the 27th, I went up to Soroca to check out the far north of the country. VERY COLD. Right on the Nistru river - and across the river was Ukraine. I was impressed. John Strauss, Corporate Bob, and John Ritchey (who was with me in Suruceni) plus Ethan and Jerry were all with me as we bonded with the locals at the disco (another bathroom/tree/whatever you can find outside deal).
When we got back to Chisinau, I headed to Suruceni via the familiar #35 rutiera to see my friend Hope and Pacii. To make a long, long story, very short - Hope and I slogged around Suruceni (oh, by this time the weather had changed, warmed up significantly, and most of the snow had melted into mud) and then through the neighboring village of Danceni looking for Pacii, who according to the daughter of the lady I left her with, had moved to the grandmothers house. When we got there - no Pacii, and no grandparents to interrogate. I plan to go back to Suruceni next week to see Christina & Valentine (I just dropped of presents for them and didn't get to hang out) and further investigate the mystery. I'm definately bummed.
New Years was very, very normal. A bunch of volunteers: Kristi, Geneva, Nick & Shireen, D'Andrea, Bob, John & John, Jerry, Ken and I got a hotel room, components for cocktails, and music and had a fiesta. Hats, masks, and peanut butter were involved. The photos are priceless and I hope to get them developed soon. Around 11ish, most of the crowd headed to the Stefan cel Mare Monument where about 500,000 people were hanging, but I chose, instead, to stay at the hotel and mitigate any risk of being stopped by the overly-curious police. As with most holidays, the Moldovan version has a twist -- such as gift giving on New Years (and not at Christmas) as well as firecrackers. Babas were all over Christmas selling sparklers and bottle rockets (add sparklers to the list of items not to be purchased at the piata).
Thanks to the Mapes/Albert families for their huge box and the smaller package w/hot chocolate and a blanket. And also to the Lettson-Maddux family for the chopsticks and wasabi powder. The wasabi was mostly confiscated & spilled by the time it made it through Moldovan customs, but I get a kick out of thinking about some stupid and corrupt cop getting a big snoot-ful of powdered Japanese-horseradish. It made me smile.
More a little later, but just wanted to let everyone know, I'm doing fine.
Today, on my slippery-snowy walk to work, I saw the following: a blue tractor towing a Lada (crazy tiny Soviet car seen only in the poorest of the former Soviet republics) with a rope attached to the car's bumper (I'm pretty sure that's one of the less-firmly attached parts, along with the outside mirrors and antennae). What made this so Moldovan was the fact that the Lada was without its windshield and the driver and passenger inside were eating sunflower seeds and spitting the hulls out through the opening.
Sunflower seeds are a popular and particularly funky treat around here. Old babas sit everywhere (street corners, bus stations, all over the piata) with bowls of these black things, running their not-terribly clean hands through them, and dispensing them into paper cones made from pages of books. Around here, a book can be transformed into napkins (when you buy something fried it comes wrapped in Russian car-repair manuals), toilet paper (just rip off as much as you need in the outhouse), or, in this case, a way of toting your cup and a half of sunflower seeds. In the states, the only sunflower seeds I ever ate in bulk were the ones I found, already shelled and salted from Byerley's, in Carolyn's kitchen - therefore I'm not even sure what we do w/the shells of sunflower seeds in America. Here, people run around spitting shells everywhere. The ground is littered by them - like a lot of black pepper on gravy - but it makes the sweet, fat, little birds happy. And, super-disgustingly, I often find several chewed hulls wedged between the treads of my boots. Ick.
Well, that brings me to another Moldovan tracition: Clean Shoes. To my shock, and lazy horror, it is expected/demanded, nightly that you will wash your shoes, outside, with a rag and a bucket of warm water. There is so much mud around here that it sort of makes sense to try to get some of it off -- but that's not the standard we're aiming for. I'm talking bottom of your shoes look like they've never been off of carpet kind of clean. And the water treatment goes for leather as well as other, sturdier, shoe materials. My host mother has resigned herself to my slovenliness (like I'm going to spend a 1/2 hour a night cleaning my stupid boots so I can go tromping through the mud the next morning!) and has set for the simple requirement that I scrape off the big stuff, wet rag the tops (which I do happily) and then leave my less than pristine, but not quite heart-attack worthy boots in the garage overnight. My boots are banned from the front entryway where everybody ele's shiny and perfect boots hang out. Karen, the Enlish-teaching volunteer who also lives in Cimislia with me, mentioned this gem from her host mother: "Karen, We are a civilized country. We keep our shoes clean."
Work is getting tricky, as I try to negotiate the mine-field that is business-relationships in a former Communist country. I'm seeing a fabulous grad-school essay on how I'm learning to "work with the system". But I can't complain, really. I have work - unlike some of my friends (I'm researching funding sources for various projects, trying to get free office furniture, the setting up of an NGO in the super-poor village of Topal, and Odyssey of the Mind), I really like my host family (especially the grandma and grandpa next door who are constantly doling out these precious, if totally intrusive, pearls of wisdom every night at dinner. I'm growing expecially fond of grandma's grabbing my hips and telling me I should have children by now.) and the house is warm, dry, and the toilet flushes most of the time.
I think I actually gained a little weight over the holidays (remember we have 2 of everything around here - including holidays - and you sit at the table for course after course - even when there is no more room for other plates on the table - and then they start piling the plates on top of each other!). And I found Moldovan potato salad - and it comes with FAKE CRAB!!!
Thanks to George & Jen for their packages - and bubble-wrapping the Christmas cookies was so YOU George.
Oh - and I'm losing my hair - something about the water and Uranium??? More later. S