8/24/2011
In the meeting various people talked, including some kids that role played a classroom situation. The meeting was also opened by two teenagers. After the meeting, we headed back to my village on a bus. We then hitchhiked from a nearby village to mine since there weren't any buses that went directly to my village at that time of day. I think there might have been one at 5, but we would have waited for 3.5 hours to catch that one. Here, hitchhiking seems to not be a very big deal. Every time I have had occasion to do it, someone else has been in the vehicle with me doing the same thing. Although the meeting was boring, it was nice to experience more of Moldovan culture.
08/25/11-8/27/2011:
Thursday was a pretty normal day. I went to school in the morning at about 9am. Around nine there was a teacher's meeting that lasted a really long time because the school director read from a report that I imagine probably came from or was inspired by the previous day's meeting. The mayor also spoke at the meeting.Apparently teachers are upset about class sizes in schools. Some problems transcend cultures. After the meeting, I went home and relaxed.
On Friday, I woke up a little bit before 6 and headed to Chisinau. I got there around 11:30. It takes a while, but at least the bus I was in was not very crowded for much of the time, at least once we got past Balti (pronounced Balts). Balti is referred to as the northern capital of Moldova. Cahul, another city, is called the capital of the south. From what I could see, Balti is smaller than Chisinau but has many of the same stores, including some of the major chains. I haven't been to Cahul, but I am sure it is similar.
When I got to Chisinau, I pretty much just hung out at Peace Corps for a while. At about 5, I walked over to the newest of the malls. It is called "Malldova." It resembled pretty much any mall in the US, but definitely had a European flavor. Unlike malls in the United States, this one had a large supermarket on the ground floor. The mall is not very long, but is about four stories high. On the top floor is the food court and the movie theater. There was a Mcdonalds, a KFC, and a Sbarro inside the mall. I expected the Mcdonalds, and another volunteer had told me there was a KFC. What I really didn't expect was the Sbarro. As a pizza chain, Sbarro isn't even that good. I ended up eating at one of the restaurants that were also on the top floor. I had Mexican food. It was okay, although not sufficiently spiced. I had a quesadilla that was too bland even for a quesadilla. Oh well, at least I know what to expect if I go there again. I also went to a fruit juice place in the food court. I ordered a lime juice thinking that maybe they would sweeten it, but they didn't. Although it was very fresh, it was too sour for me to finish. After I ate, I walked over to the nearby hostel.
The hostel was nice, although simpler than others I have been to. It was a three story building with a bathroom on each floor and a couple of rooms. There was a kitchen on the ground floor. Supposedly there were computers to use, although I didn't see them. There was internet though. I stayed in a six person room. Something unusual about the hostel was that the guy working the reception was from Montreal. I know now that many Moldovans move to Canada, but I didn't realize there was much of a tourist industry to Moldova. I really should have asked him what brought him to Moldova. Anyway, in my room there happened to be two other Peace Corps volunteers, one from my group (M26) and one from the group that arrived in Moldova in 2009 (M24s). The person from the M24 group has extended her service for an additional year. At around 10:00 I went to bed.
The next day, I woke up at 6:30 and headed to the bus station. I left early because I wanted to try to catch an 8:10 bus to the village near mine. The bus went all over the place, and I ended up missing my stop because I expected to come after the stop that ended up being the last one. When I got to my district center I had been travelling for about 5.5 hours. It would have been less if I had seen my stop. I was in the back of the bus and couldn't really see much. I finally got home around 3:30pm. That evening, my host sister and her family arrived from Chisinau.
8/27/2011-8/30/2011:
Saturday was Moldova's independence day. Since I was travelling all day, I don't really know what my village did to celebrate it. Apparently there was a parade in Chisinau. Anyway, when my host sister and her family arrived in the evening at about 8:30, we at roast goose. It was pretty good. It was even stuffed like we do with Turkeys on Thanksgiving. There was a lot of talking fast in Romanian. This was only the first of several gatherings that have taken place this weekend. Some other people came over on Sunday, and last night one of my host sister's friends came over with her family. Today there was another gathering. I enjoy meeting the people, but it is hard in a way because they tend to only speak Romanian when they are in a large group. They talk Russian to me, but not when a bunch of people are together. I understand more of what they say than they think I do, but I still only understand a word or sentence here and there, and I am never quite sure what they are talking about. Luckily, tomorrow should be more of a normal day since I will go to the school to work and hopefully plan for the first few days of classes. I haven't had to work the last 4 days so I feel like I have had a short summer break. Summer vacation ends and school begins on Thursday.
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