Differences

At the end of this entry you'll find a series of pictures that I've been meaning to post, mainly because it's been a slow week and I don't have much to write. Just a few little observations . . .
- I can't begin to describe the differences between my life here in Moldova and my life in America – I could write 3000 words on just this topic alone. But the difference that strikes me I think most odd (apart from the outhouse and lack of running water) is my daily proximity to animals. Not just cats and dogs but to fowl and livestock as well.

I've written before how, every time I go to the outhouse, I walk past a pig, two cows, a horse, and any number of ducks/chickens/turkeys that happen to be on the little path. Sometimes I get home and there are literally a dozen turkeys sitting on the stoop to the house. When I walk to school I again walk through a heard of various birds and, now that it's spring, a few horses and cows. The oddity of this whole situation didn't fully hit me until a week ago when, walking home, I passed a group of chickens that refused to get out of my way. Being higher on the evolutionary scale I thought I should assume right-of-way and when the offending chicken refused to budge, I just clapped my hands a bit and yelled out, startling the offending bird and freeing up my path. I then realized, the moment after I had passed, just how odd my world has become, how I can count on one hand the amount of times in America that I had seen a real live chicken before coming here but how now I have gotten to the point where 1)Seeing animals like this doesn't even phase me and 2) Yelling at them to get out of the way doesn't phase me either. It's an odd state of mind to live in.

This point came to full fruition a few days ago when I was finishing my run and wanted to end at the stadium around the track located near school but I had to avert my path because there instead was a woman with three goats (another animal I never really saw close up in America: I can report that they are very creepy looking up close) walking them and they were in the way. How many times could/will I be able to say that?

- As I wrote about last in my last entry, I was lucky enough last Saturday to have two friends come visit me. They came in on our bus and the first thing we did was head to visit my host-grandpa, of whom I have written about almost ad-nausea. We got off the bus and walked right there, with them being especially surprised because he lives in the boondocks of the next village - “This is Peace Corps,” said a friend of mine. We dropped in – I warned him the day before of our coming – and he was pumped to greet us. He naturally offered us wine and when the first batch was gone he sent my friend and I to the cellar to fetch more from one of the barrels there. There's no tap present; instead you need to take a little tube, place it in the opening on the top of the barrel, and siphon it out with the mouth. Usually it's a simple process that takes a few seconds but for some reason we were unable to do so. Grandpa sat at the top of the stairs yelling at us in Romanian – something hilarious, I was told – and he was insistent that we get wine, so we just knocked away the supporters keeping the barrel upright, rolled the thing until wine started to pour out, filled up the pitcher, and returned everything to it's proper place. It was one of those odd, surreal moments that had to be really seen to be believed. It was the type of story too that Moldovans find amazing – my host-mom almost lost it when we retold her later on.

- I'll end with a description of the pictures that accompany this entry: I figured it's been a while since I posted any I got some good ones.

The first picture is of my friend and I hoisting glasses of with with host-grandpa in the background. Under that is a picture of where he lives, with the outhouse in the foreground and the house itself a little ways right behind it. The third picture is of me and my host-mom (finally – I think it's the first of her that I've posted). I'm ready to go to the new bar. And finally, there's a picture I took last September and am pretty sure that I haven't yet posted – it's taken from across the lake that I usually walk/run around and in the distance you can see the village I live in. It's one of the best pictures I think I've ever taken and it's one of the images I'll use in the future whenever asked to describe my village.