That Settled it

I had known for a while that I needed to come to Chisinau, capital of Moldova, for a weekend of language training October 28th and 29th and that I needed to be in Chisinau Friday evening by 5:00. My original plan was to go there after lessons on Friday (I only teach two) but as the week progressed I began to think more and more of going early Friday morning, doing some work at the Peace Corps office, and relaxing a bit. My feelings were bolstered when my partner teacher told me that she could take my students if I was gone.

I wavered back and forth all day Thursday. The main problem is that there are two ways to get to Chisinau: I can go by bus that leaves the village every day at 6:00 or take two smaller busses and a trolleybus in Chisinau to get to my destination. Both have advantages and disadvantages. The bus is nice because I can just sit down and, two hours later, I’m at my destination. However, I need to get up at 5:00AM to ride it. The smaller busses allow my to sleep in and go after lessons, but it’s a big pain because I have to transfer in the regional center and then on the outskirts of Chisinau again.

Then Thursday I arrived home after working with a girl in the 10th grade. My host mom told me something about the pig, and I thought we were going to kill it. That got me excited, because it’s really interesting to watch. However, when I asked how we were going to kill it she told me that I was wrong and then made a snipping motion with her fingers. That requires no
transaction - castration time.

I won’t go into details but I will simply say that, as I was watching it, I figured that a trip to Chisinau would be a great gift to myself to get to Chisinau early.

So above are pictures. The top is of the two girls with whom I spent the "xpam" a few weeks ago - Alina on the left and Katya on the right. In the middle is a photo of our barrel of grapes from which the wine came. And on the bottom is the name of my village in Romanian and Russian.

Good luck with the Cyrillic.