Badiceni Hram

8/28/30: Hram In Badiceni

Hram day translates to village/town/city day. On this day, family members travel to the village/town/city whose Hram it is to see their relatives. There are also sometimes concerts in cities. My host mother's mother and brother live in Badiceni, a nearby village, so we traveled there to see them. We got up early in order to catch the 7am mini-bus from our village to a neighboring one. There we hopped on another mini-bus that was going to a village near our destination. When we got to that village, my host mother flagged down a car which drove us to Badiceni. The driver didn't take us very far into the village, so we had to walk a ways to my host mother's brother's house. We got there early so we hung around for a couple of hours waiting for the other guests to arrive. Then we sat down at the table to eat. There was sausage, small fish, homemade champagne, sarmale, fresh cheese, and other food. The sarmale was brought out after we had eaten the cold food that had been set out. When we had finished eating the sarmale, candy and cookies were placed on the table. After sitting at the table for a little while, the three of us, myself, and my host mother and sister, headed to my host mother's parent's house.

                              I relaxed in a chair after eating, but some people remained at the table

                                              A couple other people relaxing after eating
It was a short walk from the brother's place. When we arrived, I took advantage of some down time to take some pictures of the house.

                                           In the summer, they wash their hands outside

                        The kitchen was in that building which was partly obscured by grape vines.

A closeup of one of the vines

The main house was also obscured by them

While the houses were both fairly small, the property was not

There was a backyard where some animals were. Past the gate was a medium-sized garden

After looking around. I went into the smaller house to help move food from the kitchen into the dining room which was in the main house. While waiting for the food to be served, I was able to talk in English with my host mother's 22 year old cousin. She lives and goes to college in Chisinau, but was back in Badiceni because of Hram. Compared to most people I have met in Moldova, her English was pretty good. After talking with her, food was served. The spread was similar to what I had eaten earlier so I didn't eat that much. A pleasant addition was a chocolate cake for dessert. We ate and chatted for a while before it was time to leave. My host sister wanted to get somewhere, so we only stayed for a few hours. We walked to the edge of town to wait for a car to come. After a short while, we were able to catch a ride to a main road. We hitchhiked there too. This time, because we couldn't get a car to stop, we caught a ride in a caruța. A caruța is a horse-drawn cart. We took the cart to the next main road, and there waited for yet another car. This time one came. However, it was only going part of the way we wanted, so when we reached another main road we got out. It kept going in the opposite direction from where we wanted to go. Unfortunately, we had to wait at this intersection for 45 minutes before a mini-bus finally came and took us back to our village. My host sister just managed to catch the bus that would take her where we wanted to go. Overall, it was an eventful and somewhat exciting day.

8/29/2012: At school again.

School, having not started yet, was empty, so I took advantage of the opportunity to photograph my classroom. The most interesting find was probably a text book that was in Romanian, but not in the Latin alphabet.

The classroom, from the doorway

Some of the many grammar posters that hang on the walls

More of the grammar posters, and one about vowel sounds

The one bookshelf we have int the classroom along with the tables I use for my things

This book is in Romanian although it uses Cyrillic. It says in romanian "dezvolarea vorbiri la lecție de limbă franceza,," or in English "The development of speaking in French Lessons"

 

After photographing the room, I sat down to organize some of my papers from the past year. Then, I went home.