Summer in Moldova, an entirely new experience.

It is summer in Moldova and we were freed up to leave our village during our free time which many of the younger volunteers took advantage of to travel to Chișinău.  We were happy to spend the afternoons doing language homework, reading or trying to talk with Iulia and Sasha.  We were finding that we were understanding a bit more of the language and were feeling pretty good about this part of our training.

Culturally we are “integrating”, we are accomplished “bucket bathers” but will use the summer shower any chance we get.  The summer shower is a lovely contraption that consists of a shower stall in the garden with a big plastic 100 litre barrel on top.  A tube runs from a hole in the bottom of the barrel straight through a hole in the roof, there is usually a valve attached just inside the ceiling with a shower head just beneath.  You reach up and turn the valve on and have a great gravity shower.  The water is filled from the well in the morning so that it sits in the sun all day, if the weather turns cold or you have a few days of rain with no sun you just go heat a bucket of water on the stove and add it to the barrel (by climbing the ladder in the chicken coop to reach the roof of the shower) so you can have a warm shower.  It is heaven compared to a bucket bath!

We have dinner at home every night and depending on Iulia’s work schedule, we have Sasha or one of the grand-daughters for company, or we have Iulia and Sasha.  We love the homemade wine and enjoy the food that Iulia prepares for us.  We had our first experience with “racitura” and like many other volunteers found it very difficult to eat, it is a jellied meat dish (usually pork or chicken) that takes a lot of time and effort to prepare, it is a specialty here and they make it for special occasions. I am afraid we may never acquire a taste for it.

We had the opportunity to attend a birthday “masa” for Lilia, Sasha and Iulia’s daughter.  She is the mother of Daniela, the 17 year old English speaker, Iuliana, age 11 and a new baby boy named Bodgan who was just 8 months old (at the time of this writing in summer 2013).  Lilia and her husband Valeri have a new home on the other side of the village.  It is more modern and has an indoor bathroom with an actual hot water heater and working shower.  Valeri works in the Cricova winery not far from Ciorescu and his job, we think, has something to do with the manufacturing of their Champagne.  The birthday dinner (or masa) was, as usual, way more food than any of us could eat.  We all gathered around a big table with family and friends talking a million miles a minute, in Russian or the local dialect known as Moldovanesti. 

Dani made a point to try to talk with us a bit and translate a little, then she went off to tend the baby and we found that these lovely folks would switch to Romanian to try to talk to us.  We know it had to sound like baby talk to them and we are sure that we are very difficult for them to understand but they asked us simple questions about the U.S. and in particular about our family, things we could answer, somewhat anyway.   The choice of beverages was cognac or champagne….for several hours……good thing everybody was walking home!

Late June through early July is cherry season in Moldova.  There are loaded trees everywhere you go, two varieties are very common and everyone seems to have access to both, a sour cherry similar to a bing, and a dark sweet cherry that you could easily eat enough of to make yourself sick if you are not careful.  Lilia with Daniela and Iuliana came over one evening to pick cherries for bottling.

  We all picked until we couldn’t get to any more cherries and then Iulia made some compote, the Moldovan version of juice made by cooking the fruit in water for about half an hour and then letting it cool overnight before bottling.  She also made preserves from some of the cherries and we had them on crepes for breakfast, the cherries in Moldova are absolutely wonderful.

The huge garden behind the house is producing onions, garlic, cucumbers, potatoes, beans and herbs of all kinds.  The grapes on the vines are beginning to ripen and the carrots, cabbage, beets, corn and tomatoes are just coming on.  We have never lived anywhere else that you could literally walk out and pick your dinner.  The chickens provide fresh eggs and occasionally meat for the table.  Rabbits are in hutches at the bottom of the garden and provide the staple meat for the house, and every year Sasha and Valeri buy a pig and have it slaughtered and each family takes half of the meat to freeze and use throughout the year.  The food is simple, fresh and nutritious during the summer.

We are starting to better understand when and who to greet and interact with.  This is particularly difficult for me as a woman because my normal behavior is to greet and talk to everyone.  In Moldova, it is very common for men to greet each other and shake hands but they do not normally greet women unless they know them very well and they very rarely shake hands with a woman.  In more formal situations when we are introduced to men, I generally find that the men kiss my hand if I extend it rather than shaking it. 

We can competently order beer or wine at the local bar (of course) and get a bag of chips if we want it.  We are slowly making friends with the bartender; she now smiles at us, (our first few times in the bar she was definitely scowling).  The local drunk has joined us once, uninvited of course, and he spoke to us in uninterrupted Russian for about 10 minutes.

Our language instructors have changed up the classes and we now have different teachers.  It is probably a good thing to have put us in separate classes; I guess they got tired of asking us what we did the day before and getting the same story twice using only the “we” personal pronoun.  All three classes are studying the same material but each teacher has a slightly different style.  We are really enjoying the language learning even if it is incredibly difficult.   For our technical training they have had some of the volunteers who have been here for a while come in and talk with us about the projects they have going and the experiences they have had.  If there is one thing that has become abundantly clear already it is that the “Peace Corps” experience is unique to each volunteer.