Holidays, cont.

We celebrated Christmas (by the Orthodox calendar) on January 7 here. In the villages, this is still a lot of traditional celebrating, which means 3 days of eating, drinking, and visiting family and friends. I think I could not eat for a week and I’d still feel full!

Christmas morning I woke up early and had some coffee and a light breakfast by myself while the rest of the family slept in late. Eventually, one by one, everyone got up, and around 11:00 Sasha found me in the living room and invited me to breakfast. When I walked into the kitchen, I couldn’t believe the feast on the table! I joked that if this was breakfast, I was afraid to see what lunch and dinner would be like — little did I know how prophetic my words would be! If only someone had warned me to pace myself a little better.

In the Orthodox church, traditionally there are many days during the year designated as ‘postnii’, which is often translated as ‘fasting’ but really means in this context to eat a vegan diet: no meat, fish, eggs or dairy products. The most devout, like our Babushka, eat a ‘postnii’ diet every Wednesday and Friday all year long, and on the many religious holidays. The 40 days before Orthodox Christmas are also all ‘postnii’ (although fish is allowed on Sundays) and the 50 days before Easter is called the ‘Velikii Post’ or ‘Great Fast.’ Thus, Babushka has been eating an even stricter vegetarian diet than my own for the past 40 days (I eat eggs and dairy). On Christmas morning, though, it was a meat-fest for her. The rest of the family do not follow these older traditions anymore, but all the same, being meat-lovers, they partook of the meat-fest as well.

Traditionally on Christmas Day, young boys will go house-to-house throughout the village, carrying decorated icons and singing a type of Christmas carol. In the past, the boys would be given candies or small trinkets or maybe a few coins. Today, Anna told me, the boys only want the cash. 🙂 I got a picture of our first ‘carolers’ on Christmas morning, and later we were visited by a trio of older boys in traditional Bulgarian dress playing traditional instruments and signing up a storm. It was a great treat, and very uncommon these days. My camera can record short (5 minute) videos, and I was quick enough to get a few minutes of their performance. It was spectacular, and Anna rewarded them not only with a money but also with wine, bread and smoked duck. We watched them for awhile as they moved up the street, on to the next houses.

After breakfast, Anna and Georgii invited me along on for the first ’round’ of the 3-day festivities, and we went first to Anna’s brother Kirill’s house. Their older brother, also named Georgii, was visiting with his wife Nadia from a village in the area known as Transnistria, a northeastern territory on the Ukrainian border that has sought independence from Moldova for 10 years or so. Although Transnistria is primarily populated with ethnic Russians, Georgii and Nadia live in a small village of mostly ethnic Moldovans. I would have loved to talk to them about the politics of the situation in Transnistria, but that will have to wait for another visit. There was a full table at Kirill’s house, as well, plus of course the house wine. Eating, drinking and family visiting made for a full agenda.

We were at Kirill’s house for a few hours, and then headed to Georgii’s uncle’s house, Zakhary. There were 20 years difference between Zakhary’s father and Georgii’s father, so although he’s Georgii’s uncle, Zakhary is only 6 years older than Georghii and they grew up more or less like brothers. We visited there a few more hours, and I politely insisted they didn’t need to scrounge up something vegetarian for me since there would be no room to put it! Nonetheless, a giant piece of cake was deposited in front of me, and you know I must have been REALLY full if I passed up some good lookin’ cake. We were there several more hours, put our coats on and STILL stayed another hour. I mentally checked out, as it was just too draining for me, and fortunately Anna recognizes now when I’m going into overload, she jokingly says my ‘computer’ is overheating. We had a 3 km walk home in the dark, and I was ready to go straight to bed. They all seemed pretty shocked that I was going to bed at 9 pm, without eating again no less! I slept like the dead, and needed it ’cause we would be the hosts the next day.

Saturday morning Anna was up early cooking up a storm. It was a beautiful day, spring-like actually. It was 10 degrees Celsius, which is in the low 50’s, with a clear blue sky. I decided to take advantage of the nice weather to make a short video tour of the ‘farm’ with my digital camera. Combined with the videos of the musicians from the day before, these ‘movies’ were quite a hit with the guests the next couple of days. Most adults in the village have never even seen a computer, and they are quite fascinated by my laptop, all my photos, and the short videos I’ve made.

Anna’s family arrived in early afternoon, and Round 2 of the festivities began. I was prepared this day, and had saved up my appetite. It was a feast beyond comparison. I enjoyed listening to their conversations, and I’m starting to understand Bulgarian a little bit, so I can get the gist of things more often now. I sat with them a few hours, and then was able to excuse myself before I reached overload. Sasha and I retired to the living room and watched the Russian program ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’ (yes, they have that here too!). I had hoped to make it an early night again, but was asked to show the ‘movies’ again.

Sunday was again a beautiful day, 15 degrees Celsius (60’s?) and I went for a couple long walks. I had arranged to meet some local teenage boys in the morning who are interested in practicing their English with me (they are quickly becoming my informal English Club, I think). We walked through the park and around the village center, and they gave me a nice tour in English. Back at home, Georgii’s uncle Zakhary and his wife were visiting. Another impressive feast, but this time I managed to get away with only a gross amount of food, instead of an obscene amount. Went for another long walk by myself to enjoy the incredible weather and to hopefully work off a few of those calories.

Monday was ‘back to the grind.’ Well, sort of. Friday, January 14, we celebrated ‘Old’ New Year, that is, New Year by the old calendar. You’ll have to check your history books for more about the calendar change, as I won’t explain it all here. But I think changing calendars was a brilliant excuse to get to celebrate all the holidays twice. 🙂

Getting the hang of things

I had my first moment this week when the thought of living on my own in Moldova didn’t scare the living daylights out of me. I think I’m starting to get the hang of things! Well, I don’t want to jump the gun, or jinx anything, but let’s just say I am beginning to feel a difference, beginning to have more days that aren’t completely overwhelming and exhausting. Granted, it’s the holiday season and I haven’t been doing a whole heck of a lot; in fact I didn’t even leave the homestead for four days, but nonetheless, I figure just getting the hang of things around home counts for a heck of a lot.

One day last week I decided to face my old adversary, the hand-washing. It wasn’t so bad this time, and I did it again by myself a few days later. It definitely helps to do just a little bit at a time, but whoever invented jeans clearly never tried to wash them by hand. I joked that if it rained on me, I would turn into a giant soap bubble. But, my clothes are more-or-less clean.

I also ventured into the kitchen a couple times, and not only just to be fed but to actually cook something myself. I used to really enjoy cooking, and made a lot of stuff from scratch. I tell ya, I got spoiled fast here; it’s awesome to sit down at the table and food appears in front of you! It seemed like I instantly and completely forgot how to cook a single thing, and can hardly remember recipes I’ve been preparing for years. Well, I dusted off my brain a little bit and made Eggplant Parmesan, Moldvan-style, for New Year’s Eve. I’d actually made it a couple times in Ialoveni, so already had it more or less figured out with the available products, and in general it’s hard to mess up. Fresh vegetables are in short supply now, in the heart of winter, so I used preserved tomatoes to make the sauce, and preserved eggplants. I’d also forgotten that I’d need tvorog, a kind of cheese very close to ricotta, so I made due with grated cheese for all the layers. I thought it turned out pretty good, and everyone else politely ate a little bit. I hope to impress them a little more next summer/fall when I can make it with fresh products. I also made chili this week, which again, tasted great to me but clearly didn’t make the strongest of impressions on everybody else. I put in a lot of cumin, ’cause that’s the way I like my chili, and I think that flavor was a bit too unfamiliar for my host family. Also, they are just real meat-and-potatoes kind of people, so anything vegetarian on the table is primarily for me. Anna told me they wouldn’t have even had anything but meat for the New Year’s Eve meal if it wasn’t for me!

Wednesday I went to Taraclia again, our beloved regional center. This was the first time I’ve returned from there, from any trip outside of the village in fact, when I wasn’t completely exhausted and in a foul mood. It’s hard to get anywhere from Tvarditsa, as our village is relatively remote, not along any particularly important route. We have one bus every day at 6 am to Chisinau (which is incentive enough for me to stay put in Tvarditsa!), and one bus a day at 7:30 am that goes to the nearest town, Ceadr-Lunga (pronounced Cheddar-Lunga), about 15-20 kilometers away (30 minutes). The bus returns from Ceadr-Lunga 5 days a week at noon, and 2 days a week at 2 pm. On those 2 days a week (Wednesdays and Fridays), he goes on from C-L to Taraclia, another 30-40 kilometers (about 1 hour). The catch is that he will only go to Taraclia if there are at least 10 people going, so if you are one of 9 who has business in Taraclia that day, you are out of luck with the bus. However, there haven’t been any days lately with too few people, as everyone has to get a new international passport in order to travel out of Moldova now, so the bus to Taraclia has been bursting at the seams each week as folks need to go there to the passport office. Why doesn’t the bus go more often, you may ask? Ah, you learn quickly not to ask “Why?” about anything here. That’s for another time. If you want to get a seat for the 90 minute bus ride, you’ve got to get there pretty early to fight for one. If you don’t get one, you get to stand on the freezing cold bus, squeezed in like sardines. And if you’ve got 5 minutes of business in Taraclia, you’ve got 4 hours to kill in a town where there ain’t 5 minutes of stuff to do; if you don’t get everything done by the time the bus leaves at 1 pm, you are again out of luck. He’ll leave with or without you, doesn’t matter to him.

Anyway, this week the prospect of the cold, uncomfortable ride didn’t drain all my energy in advance, which was a development in and of itself. The ride was particularly horrible, with at least 70 people, maybe more, crammed into a bus with seats for 40. I was standing (or suspended between people, you might even say) parallel with the first row of seats. How many people do you think could be standing between the first row of seats and the front of the bus? I counted at least 15. Look at that space next time you are on a bus and try to imagine 15 people in it; trust me, it’s not pleasant. I had one of my usual incomprehensible and inexplicable post office experiences in Taraclia, did some other errands, and headed back to the bus at 12:30 to get a seat for the 90 minute ride home. On other trips to Taraclia, when I got home around 3, I’ve collapsed straight to bed, grumpy and completely whipped from the experiences of the day. This week, though, I was pleasantly surprised to notice that I was neither irritable nor tired! I think I’m getting used to some of this stuff!

I knew I’d have culture shock here, but I guess I didn’t realize what form that culture shock would take. I knew it would be hard to function in a second language, to get the hang of business and work here, and stuff like that. I just hadn’t expected the day-to-day living to be so damn different, do damn complicated, and so damn exhausting! I understand more and more why Peace Corps service is at least 2 years, as it really takes a LONG time to become functional in a different culture, much less useful and productive.

Starting a new year

I know it’s been awhile since my last essay. Internet access hasn’t been very reliable lately in Tvarditsa, and I’ve been focusing on responding to emails during the few minutes I have been able to get online. But, I’ll try to get back into the swing of things in the near future, starting with my first post of 2005.

The holidays were nice here. It didn’t really feel like Christmas, I have to say though. Moldovans celebrate New Year’s, a secular holiday, more the way many Americans celebrate Christmas — the family holiday, with a decorated pine tree; Father Frost brings presents; and throw in the familiar “count-down to midnight” fun and you’ve got a pretty darn festive time! Orthodox Christmas is on January 7, so we are now in the week between holidays. Christmas here, as I understand it, is more of a religious holiday, and kids might receive presents but adults exchange gifts only on New Year’s.

My host family, with two grown sons, hasn’t done the traditional New Year’s “thing” for a few years now, but I served as a good excuse to do it up the old-fashioned way. Sasha, their younger son who is in his last year of college in Chisinau, came home on the 28th, and we set up the New Year’s Tree (it’s so hard to not call it the Christmas Tree!) Thursday night. They have a small artificial tree, and as we assembled it, he reminisced about the many years of searching out the perfect live tree to cut and put up at home. As we hung up the decorations and strung the lights, he shared his memories of the different ornaments, the ones his mom brought home one year from the kindergarten where she worked, which the kids had made themselves, the ones that are heavy and go up last to balance the tree and keep it straight! It reminded me of our family’s stories, the ornaments Scott always had to put up himself, the ones I had to put up myself, searching in the box for our favorites, remembering which trip we bought that ornament on, or who gave that one on year or another. It was nice to share some familiar, family-like moments with Sasha at a time when I felt very far away from family and the familiar.

Wednesday night was the “office celebration” at the Primaria. The ladies prepared a feast seemingly for the entire village! We ate, drank, made toasts, played games, and danced for hours and hours. I finally, grudgingly, had to tell Anna that I was going to fall asleep on my feet, and we walked home around 10 pm. It was a lot of fun, and boy can those Bulgarian-Moldovans party!

Friday night was the big celebration on the plaza near the center of the village. A huge tree had been put up, decorated and strung with lots of lights. A DJ played traditional Bulgarian music as well as a wide variety of holiday music. There were games for the little kids, and of course the all got a prize! People danced, lit fireworks and sparklers, and you got a cup of champagne almost everywhere you turned. Ded’ Moroz (Father Frost) and his sidekick Snegurichka (roughly, Snowgirl) made an appearance, which of course was the highlight of the evening.

Interestingly, Tvarditsa gets better television reception from Moscow than from Chisinau, and thus the TV countdown was on Moscow time, which was 11 pm here in Moldova. We had planned to go home for the TV countdown, but in the end stayed on the plaza until 11:30ish, when most folks started to head home to toast the New Year with their families. At approximately midnight, we had a champagne toast, and Sasha set off a fireworks “salute” with a cool firework he’d been saving.

Saturday I sat down with my diary, pen and paper, to reflect on the past year and to set some goals for 2005. I had an incredible year, full of change and excitement. A great vacation to London, France and Luxembourg; a phenomenal and spiritual experience in New Mexico; lots of great times with lots of great friends; quit my job; sold my house — and all that in only the first 8 months! It may be hard to top 2004, but I think Moldova will bring me plenty of interesting adventures to keep me on my toes.

Back to where I started with this post, though — problems with internet access. I’m sad to say, I had my first really bad public moment at the internet cafe. I usually keep my frustrations in until I can vent at home or on the phone with other PCV’s, but I lost my cool on December 24. It was the last day of school before winter break, and the kids must have gotten out early. The cafe opened at 11, and was full of little boys by 11:10 wanting to play their gorey video games. I got a computer, and really wanted to send some Christmas emails, but after 15 minutes the internet connection still wasn’t working well enough to access my email. The guy working there really didn’t know anything about the systems himself, and kept insisting I was doing something wrong or that it would come up in just a minute. Well, I finally decided to call it quits and walked out. The worker was outside smoking a cigarette, but rushed back in when he saw me leaving. Then he rushed out after me and said I had to pay. “For what?” I asked. “For the time on the computer,” he said. “But it didn’t work. You want me to pay for nothing?” He gave me some lame BS about it didn’t matter if it worked or not, I’d taken up time on the computers and had to pay for it; that the owner would know the computers had been used and would want his money, blah blah blah. I asked who was the owner (thinking it was maybe the other guy I’ve seen there more often), and said I’d gladly call him to explain why I wasn’t going to pay. We went back inside, to this room full of pre-pubescent local boys all staring at us. The guy dials the phone, talks to somebody (or at least pretends to talk to somebody) in Bulgarian but I can catch a few words (like “American”), hangs up and says the owner says I have to pay. By this point, I’m so furious — angry that this guy is cheating me, angry that I can’t think and speak fast enough in Russian to argue with him, and angry at myself for making a scene about 5 stupid lei. It felt like a no-win situation, where I am either a sucker “rich” American who can be scammed for money, or I am an ugly cheap American quibbling over 40 cents with a poor Moldovan. I finally threw down the 5 lei, walked out, and heard all the little boys laughing behind me. I sure felt like an ass, knowing that those kids would tell their friends, maybe their parents, that the American made a scene at the internet cafe that day. I know that everything I do, everything I say, is a reflection on America, Americans, and Peace Corps, and not just on myself. So, I spent a good chunk of Friday afternoon beating myself up about it. I later asked Sasha, my host brother, how he would have handled the situation. He said he wouldn’t have paid. So, I’m not sure if the guy did that to me because I’m female, I’m an American, or what, but nonetheless, he suckered me, and I’m paying more than just money for it.
Since I don’t want to end this post on a down-note, I’ll tell you about our tour of the “winery” on Christmas Eve. I’ve jokingly renamed many of the rooms on my host family’s farmstead, and the cellar where they keep their barrels of wine is now called the “winery.” We now call the other cellar the “grocery store” (as they have enough preserved and pickled food to feed a small army for an entire winter), and the summer kitchen which is now the “refrigerator” since it’s basically a walk-in fridge during the wintertime.

Anyway, back to our tour of the winery. Like most Moldovans, my host family grows grapes and makes their own wine. These folks, though, make an extra large supply and are known for having good wine, so selling it in the spring provides a little extra income. They have 8 barrels of wine, ranging in size from 200-some liters to over 600 liters. We sampled a glass from each barrel, and discussed why they are different in color, aroma and taste. The first four barrels are most similar, coming all from the first pressing of the grapes. The next three are a combination of first, second and third pressings, and become increasingly dark and sweet. The most special barrel was saved for last, a very tiny barrel in comparison to the others. The last barrel was hand-made by Georgi’s grandfather, as opposed to the other barrels which were made by a master craftsman. His grandfather carved the wood, forged the iron, everything by hand. Inside the barrel is also a special wine, produced from a strand of grapes that their ancestors brought with them from Bulgaria over 170 years ago. These grapes have been grown by Georgi’s family all these years, kept separate from the other strands, and the wine is made separately. I call it their Heritage Wine, and it gives you a very special feeling to drink it, I think.

Happy 2005!