Sitcom material

On our third day in Moldova, a colleague famously proclaimed that if things got awkward on his first night with the host family, then he'd just pretend it was a sitcom.

Lately, I feel like the writers need to visit my home and check out all the material I have for them. Here's a few examples of Romanian (as spoken in a home bursting at the seams with women) being translated back to English and just sounding plain ridiculous, or in turn, like one of those wholesome shows that gets cancelled after one endearing pilot season.

"Be healthy! Be a bride!"-Bunica (Grandma) Liuba's words every...single...morning.

"Laugh to live."-Bunica Liuba at the dinner table.

Me: "Maria, I had something I was going to tell you, but I forgot what."
Maria: "Okay, so go back to the last place you remember thinking about it and wait for it to come back."

...Maria calling from the kitchen to my room: "Melissa! Did you find that thing you needed to remember?"

Maria: "Are you sure you don't want me to make you fried toast before you leave on the bus, at 6 o'clock tomorrow morning?"
Me: "Yes, I'm sure. It's too early for me to eat."
Maria: "Hmmm...so you can't eat in the morning, huh. I can. No problem!"

Bunica Liuba, while interrupting her prayer to throw her hands in the air: "Look, Melissa is barefoot, again! I give up. She just must be one hot girl."

Meeting the in-laws

More than any other Moldovan/Eastern Orthodox tradition, I am particularly well acquainted with the praznic. I wrote about two of them previously (here and here), so I won't spend much time explaining this tradition.

A few things made this praznic different from others I have attended. Most obviously was the new people with whom I was meeting. I finally met Maria's in-laws. This praznic was held to mark the seven years since her mother in-law's passing. Since Maria's husband has also passed, it was host by her two remaining children.

The women in the room immediately greeted me with kind words and those imperative European cheek kisses. "Finally we meet you," they said. "Yes, Melissa. Like the tea plant, yes?"

After my host brother quizzed my Romanian skills in front of the whole table, he kindly informed me that his Uncle Galaction (pictured below in the suit, on the left side of the table) is the Secretary General for the Institute of Philology, at the State Academy of Sciences. He has a doctorate in Romanian! Doamne fereste! 

As with any family gathering, the good-ol'-days stories, lubricated by house wine and brandy, eventually dominated the conversation. It just so happened that I arrived that morning in the capital city from this family's native county. I spent two days there facilitating a youth experience exchange. Hence, village tales were interrupted to explain to me where particular stories took place in relation to where I had just been.

On the whole, the stories told about Maria's Mother in-law were gracious and endearing. Her memory was revered by another of her daughter in-laws, as a hard-working, constantly in-motion, and attentive woman. Though, the stories of her two sons drinking milk straight from the source without their Mother's permission were all the more entertaining.

Though, as every village does, theirs also has tragic memories. According to Galaction, their village was particularly affected by Stalin's deportations in the late 1930s. Galaction said many people from their village were taken away in trains, fed only salt-cured fish and denied any water. Those who died along the way were never recovered, those who made it to Siberia only arrived to find hard daily work in the labor camps. Modern estimates put the total number of deportation victims around 90,000. For more on this history, click here. As Galaction spoke I was captivated, these are the moments when I wonder why the world doesn't seem to learn from it's past. Trail of Tears. Balkan wars. Holocaust. Rwandan genocide. Sudan. And all those others I don't even know occurred.

So as not to end the post on such a low note, and to get back to the story of the party. I'll leave you with this photo of my host brother and his fiancée. Let the world know the date is set! October 14, 2011 these two will finally tie the knot, in Chisinau, on the same day as the city's hram. Felicia said she hasn't started looking for a dress yet, but will do so just as soon as the weather smartens up, in spring.

Meetings with new people seems to be my elixir of choice these days. I can't seem to leave one of these parties without a rejuvenated sense of my contentment in this place. 

Romanian: Two countries, one language?

Shortly after the arrival of 2011, I took a three-day trip to Transylvania with three Peace Corps Moldova colleagues. This is a shot I snapped from inside the infamous Bran Castle. Heard of Dracula, anyone?

The border crossings between Moldova and Romania are frequented by Peace Corps Volunteers with relative ease, since most (but not all!) study the Romanian language during our Pre-Service Training. I say we are taught Romanian during training, specifically, because once we leave training, some volunteers find it necessary (or more desirous) to deviate their studies from clean-cut Romanian to "Moldovaneste." Discussing language can lead to a rather political argument, but we'll leave that for someone else to un-pack.

Put one way, it's village speak. Put another way, it is a dialect that makes it easy for Romanians at universities and tourist spots to pick out the Moldovans. Moldovaneste tends to include Russian nouns, 'b' sounds dropped for the grunting 'g' sound, and words for fruits and vegetables that you will not find in a Romanian nor Russian dictionary.

My host family and neighbors will sometimes ask me to speak Moldovaneste for sport, entertainment for the crew painting a fence, or as a sort of 'party trick' that gets new acquaintances laughing. But for the most part, I work and live in a place that is perfect for the Romanian I was taught and continue to study every.single.day.

Thus, traveling in Romania is appealing because it's a foreign culture that I neither live in, nor rely on English for during my visit. This trip was the longest consecutive stretch of time I've stayed in Romania, and as the days went by, so too did my confidence as a "Romanian" speaker.

Menus with foods I didn't recognize. Signs I couldn't fully understand. Words necessary for our ski trip that honestly, I've never had to encounter in Moldova (and being the over-confident one that I am, I didn't bring a dictionary).

Okay, I concede to being a bit over-the-top....and almost everyone we encountered was fascinated by our group of American, Romanian speaking volunteers, from Moldova. Once, we found a cabby that spoke our language. The minute we mention Moldova, he abandons 'b' sounds for 'g' sounds and proceeds to tell us everything he knows about Moldova (a whole other story!).

I probably could have added 40 words to my Romanian repertoire, if only I'd had a Romanian dictionary on that trip. But then again, would those new words have been any use to me on this side of the border? Therein lies the Romanian question.

Eastern Orthodox New Year

According to the Eastern Orthodox calendar, I am obliged to wish you all a new year greeting. That makes today New Year's eve and tomorrow the start of the new year, marked on Saint Vasile's Day. The boys in this photo are my frisbee mates during the spring and summer. Tonight they came to wish us a happy new year in the same style as the boys in the short film from last year--by reciting one the poems that have memorized. It's called "urătura" (oo-ra-toora), and as you can see from last year, it's more of a chant really, and always accompanied by a bell. Also, as I mentioned before, this tradition resembles Halloween a bit, in the sense that after the children recite the appropriate greeting, the host/hostess dishes out candy, money, and loaves of celebratory bread (colac). They even come ready with bags to stow all the goods.

I read up on what all this sing-song is about in National Traditions (Capcelea Valeriu, 1998. Chisinau, Moldova: Evrica 70, 74.), which I received on my birthday. Below is what I learned, translated and summarized for your reading pleasure. If it sounds like an abundance of idyllic notions, it is. But imagine it full of rolling 'r' sounds and rapid-fire diphthongs and you have the Romanian language.

"The urătura is a new year's greeting extolling the homemakers, farmers, and livestock keepers. It is a greeting for those that love work, and for those that provide for the rest of us. It glorifies the work of the country people, who are charged with caring for the sanctity of the land. It is to celebrate him with  sweat on his forehead as he ensures us rich fruits and an abundance of everything. 


Modern verses may also include wishes for success in the recipient's village, and for those born in the coming year. The urătura always ends with a verse for the good of humankind, for everyone to have rich fruits, and to be happy and healthy in the new year."

Tomorrow morning, the children will come again. This part of the Moldovan New Year's celebration is called, "the sowing" (may the agrarian tradition continue as long as the soil will support it!). The children will recite another poem, and throw grain on our threshold as they do. Tomorrow's "sowing" may go something like the poem Capcelea included in my book:

To snow
To rain, 
To morning dew drops,
And for wheat to bud,
Rich with fruit!
To bring us hope
While passing through danger.
So children will grow,
And flower for many years
Like apples,
Like pears,
In the middle of summer
And in springtime.
Strong like stone,
Quick like an arrow,
Strong like iron,
Hot like steal.
To this year and many to come!


I'm sure most children will come deliver lines like this because their mothers compel them. But unlike why I can't tell you why fruitcake is an American Christmas item, I can tell you why the tradition of "the sowing" began, at least, according to Capcelea.

"In the old days, it was considered that children needed to learn how to plant the seeds necessary for bread--the source of life and joy--to love the animals, and now how to grow them." 


So how about a verse for the animals too?

For the lives of oxen and cattle
And your life also
To this year and many to come
With good health!
To be everything well!

Proud owner of a thesaurus

To explain just how compelling acquiring a thesaurus really is, let’s back up a step or two.

In Moldova, we celebrate “Our Language Day” in late August. However, the further you get from major cities, the stronger the sentiment gets that “Our Language” is not Romanian, but rather Moldoveneasca. Rather than enter my two-cents directly, I’ll tell you this: Peace Corps pays for my Romanian language instruction (thank you tax-payers!). But it is also no secret, that when I spend time in the village, ‘b’ sounds are replaced grunting ‘g’ sounds, and many nouns are called by their Russian names.

On the whole, Moldova operates as a bi-lingual country. Some people only speak Russian, some people only speak Romanian, and some people speak Russian in state matters, but an entirely different, albeit Turkish-descending language in their daily lives. But overall, most people speak both Russian and Romanian as first languages.

I have been to Romania, heard the difference between pronunciations in Romania and Moldova, but my short time in Bucharest was not nearly enough to help me understand my unanswered question: Does the Romanian language in Romania have a higher word-count than the Romanian language as it is spoken in Moldova? This is not really a question I want anyone else’s opinion about; rather I need to experience it for myself. Too often when this question is discussed, political and historical opinions fester in the responses.

I started asking this question a few months ago when I grew increasingly bored of the word “interesting” as buy-in-bulk response to anything. Someone tells you about his or her day, “that’s interesting.” Someone describes a new fashion/recipe/experience, “how interesting!” Someone discovers a new store/product/way to get even cheaper mobile service, “Oooh, interesting.”

So, in July I hunted down some synonyms for this pesky adjective. However, the only one that truly gathered support in any true conversation was “captivating.” Now, it too is growing a little old. Thus, when I discovered the thesaurus, I immediately dived in and found the following synonyms: captivating, attractive, nice, bizarre, strange, and unusual. This week, I’m going to make some honest attempt at substituting “interesting” with “nice” and possibly “unusual” to see what the response is.

But if I haven’t lost readers completely, I’d like to explain just one more challenge in my attempts to express my thoughts and feelings as accurately as possible in this language. Since I found the thesaurus and started using it, nearly every adjective in the book that I searched for a way to strengthen lists “unusual” as a possibility. Synonyms for unusual: interesting, captivating, abnormal, eccentric, fantastic, hard-working, rare, remarkable, unused, mixed-up.

What does this say about the thoughts I am trying to express and my attempts to express them more accurately? Probably that I am trying to strengthen my vocabulary in all the wrong places…but curiosity is a pleasure and a poison. 

Jen's village

Upon returning from Odessa, we hopped off our transport in Jen's village, greeted by mosquitoes loving the flooded Nistru River, her host parents, and the Romanian language (which at this point I hadn't heard for about a week).

In-between three hour naps and eating, we had some really great experiences with Jen's host family. Fulfilling one of my wishes, Jen's host mom showed us how she makes her homemade brinza (like feta cheese). This is one of the last things I needed to learn, in order to recreate a Moldovan masa back home. Now the trick is to have my dad find someone with a dairy cow, because I'm pretty sure that pasteurized Dairy Gold wouldn't quite do the trick. Jen's host mom has seven cows right now (probably triple the average). In the spring she could hardly keep up with the milking, but now the heat is getting to the animals and they are eating less. Now she averages about 30 liters of milk a week.

In fact, the last night of our stay she invited me to milk the cows with her. I am not going to bother describing this in detail, all you need to know is that my tenure lasted less than ten minutes since my pour aim seemed to spray the milk directly down my leg instead of into the bucket. Opa!

From that fresh cheese, we helped Jen's host mom make dumplings. This is a really labor intensive job for one person, but for a team of four, it took less than an hour. Above, Jen is whipping up the potatoes for the second batch. When you eat this dish, you can't decide if you like the cheese or potato ones better, so you just keep testing them out until you can't remember how many you have eaten. Sneaky little things!

I really enjoyed spending time with Jen's host family. For starters, she has a host mom and a host dad. I don't have a host dad, and hers is a character. I guess he is quite the midnight snacker, and when Jen started figuring it out, they started referring to the pisica (cat) that got into the refrigerator at night. But I guess if every host family had Jen making fresh peach cobbler for them, they would all have that problem too.

The three of us (Craig, Jen, and me) are quite a team, but among us Craig is the sole Russian speaker. That came in really handy when Jen's host dad's Moldovaneasca started taking on Romanian verbs and Russian nouns. Also, Craig said her host dad speaks Russian with a Romanian/Moldovan accent. Add to this mix that the wine glass was being passed around during these conversations and you have three rather mind-blown volunteers. Off Doamne!

GLOW Day Seminar #1

This is Melissa, a Volunteer in a village near my town who teaches health to middle-schoolers. She invited me out to co-facilitate our first GLOW Day seminar in 2010! GLOW is a worldwide Peace Corps Initiative that stands for Girls Leading Our World. Here in the 'Dova, we've decided to not only offer the traditional one-week summer camp, but also a serious of day seminars to shed a glimpse of light on the curriculum in smaller settings.

As you can see, Melissa's village is swanky. This lake is much larger than most in Moldova, combined with a late breeze, it almost reminds one of a shoreline. Almost. It was so much fun being back in a village where everyone on the street was either one of Melissa's students, former host families, relative of her partner teacher, or neighbor.

Melissa is one of our single living Volunteers. But unlike most who live in apartments in small towns, she literally has a villa. Nice house, huge garden, sun porch, a trusty little alarm system that eats just about anything (see photo). After a great curry dinner that she cooked for us on her soba (fireplace), we got to work planning the GLOW seminar's activities. The next morning we were so glad we spent that hour doing so because we sort of forgot about daylight savings--BIG SHOUT OUT to Jen Flannery here for her text that saved us from being late to our own event!

Six girls from grades seven and eigth came to the seminar where we discussed diversity, leadership, and the correlation between health and beauty. The participants were active, eager, and incredibly fun to listen to. When one of the girls literally said, "Oh, I get it, you have to be healthy before you can be beautiful" I almost did a personal equivalent to the touchdown dance. The best Sunday morning I've spent in Moldova yet.

I also really appreciated Melissa's invitation to co-facilitate the seminar for the sake of my language development. Volunteers from different programs have different sets of technical vocabulary and I learned quite a few new things just simply listening to her. I can't wait to do more of these seminars around my district and look forward to the summer camp in August!

Moldova and Me

I am on "The Dating Game" and I just chose bachelor number two. For the sake of the story, let’s assume bachelors number one and three were graduate school and an entry level government job, respectively. But Bachelor number two found a way to be both intellectually stimulating and adventurous. Let the courtship commence!

You see, coming to Moldova, I understood about as much as one can about one strange man among three behind a semi-translucent screen. I knew how old it is (at least the modern system of governing), what languages it speaks, and what religion follows. But that’s not exactly enough to buy a bridal magazine over.

The past couple of weeks I’ve been trying to do that thing that most Type A personalities do after the first few dates—define the relationship. This has literally consumes every spare second. Moldova and I have been together for five months now, but the last few mornings have felt like blind dates all over again. What do I have to offer Moldova? Ce noi putem sa facem impreauna? What can we do together?

Work with my primary partnership has slowed down considerably, though we did have our first English club session. The youth have been clamoring for this. I am not a teacher, but I’m doing my best. The rest of my time has been divided among some more centralized Peace Corps projects among volunteers, and working at the children’s center.

Talk about blind dates! The director of the children’s center and I thought we were going to see some playground equipment the other day. To get to the manufacturer, a small furniture factory, we rode a bus to a village neither of us had ever been to before, crossed some really big railroad tracks, walked through a vodka factory, stopped to look at some ostrich and deer—no joke, just some ostrich and deer hanging out in a vodka factory attached to a furniture factory in Eastern Europe—and finally arrived at the correct office to find out that the man we wanted to speak with wasn’t there. At least that’s how I think the story should be interpreted, it all happened in Russian. But is that not how most relationships go? Some days it just seems you and your partner don’t speak the same language?

Aşa e viaţa! This is the life!