Finally, An Update

As you've surely guessed by my last entry and the lack of updates, my power cord for my computer fried a week ago and, as a result, there been no computing for me. I spend my time by reading (finished War and Peace) and doing crosswords for five hours a day.

But I'm in Chisinau now and have three big things to write about as well as some time to do it, so here it goes:

1)My new favourite activity around here is hitch-hiking to get around. It's not at all unsafe and usually affords me the luxury of being able to sleep in certain mornings. I just walk to our sanitorium on foot and wait there, usually no longer than twenty minutes. It also leads to the type of event that I had a few hours ago (literally), one of the bext experiences in my time here. After waiting a half-hour a guy came up and instead of getting a ride just to my regional center, I was able to go with him all the way to Chisinau. On the road we talked about politics, the fall of the dollar, and our lives (he knows my host mom and brother). He shaved 45 minutes of my commute and the the best part of all, he didn't take my money when I tried to pay him. It made my day.

2) Last Friday a friend of mine called me on my cell phone when I was in class with my 5th graders. I answered and immedeatly the room went silent while they stared at me, but about thirty seconds into the call they started to giggle and when I hung up (after a minute), they first laughed for another minute, then looked at me in shock and surprise while asking if my friend had actually understood me. Then they said, "Mr. Andy, this is how you talk" before making gibberish noises for a minute, then they tried to talk to each-other in Russian as fast as I was apparently talking on the phone. It was great.

3) On Wednesday's I have a group that meets after school for extra work. Last week one of my 4th graders came for the first time, a smart kid who tries hard and is great to be around. We did some work for a while (I go back and forth between the older and younger kids) and he was struggling for a while before having a bit of a breakthrough. When he finally understood something I said, "hey everyone, Victor understands this" and started to clap and cheer, upon which all the kids started to clap and cheer along with me. The kid started to blush with a half-smile on his face and ducked his head a little bit, proud and embarassed at the same time.

Not to sound to melodramatic here, but it was a great reminder of why exactly I'm here and go to school every day.

False Advertising

On October 27th I went up to the north of Moldova to help celebrate 'xram', which is like a town festival that is condensed into one day. People invite all their friends and family members for a day of eating and drinking and in the evening people usually congregate in the center of villages for a little dance. My friend told me about the day in early September and I was looking forward to it for a while, and I was especially happy when he told me that they would be serving otter meat, figuring it would be something interesting to try and the type of chance that comes alone maybe once in a lifetime.

So after a day spent in his local regional center (where I got into a yelling match with a taxi driver trying to milk twenty lei from us) we took a bus to his village, were picked up by his host-brother, and proceeded to his house to dine on the supposed otter. It was actually a pleasant surprise, like a dark-meat chicken that was softer. It was so good that we ate quite a bit before finally, at one point, a friend of mine asked his host mom just what exactly we were eating. She said something but we weren't sure we understood so we asked her again, and after she repeated her answer again it hit us like a brick: we weren't eating otter. It was nutria, the animal like a glorified rat. As one friend of mine said at the time, “This just went from being the coolest thing we could be eating to the most disgusting thing.” And just like that, we put down our forks and stared at each-other in silence for a few moments.

However, I have to admit that as . . . unappetizing as it was, I'll just have to mark it down as another experience that I likely would never have received had I never come to Moldova. At the very least, we all got a great story to tell.

And speaking of stories to tell, I also got a not-so great one out of it too. On the way back we took a bus that took four hours to travel a distance of 100 miles. We stopped seemingly two minutes to pick up someone from the road. It was brutal.

Notes:
- Only one – my computer is acting up (the power cord won't take a charge), so while I realize this entry is painfully short, my battery life is currently at under an hour and I don't have a lot of time. I promise promise promise to give a full, new report on happenings as soon as I get this problem straightened out. Meanwhile, I hope this problem will simply require me getting a new adapter (a simple solution) or getting a whole new cord (which would be a disaster). Wish me luck.