First Weekend at Site!

A lot has happened since I last posted!  I have been sworn in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer and moved myself and all my possessions to my permanent location for the next two years.  My new host family gave me a ride to our town which is only 1 1/2 hours away from the capital city, Chișinau.  I must admit I was exhausted from the heat and the early morning wake up.  But my family was gracious! 

En route to site, my host mother, Natasha, said that we will stop to "buy fish."  To buy mancarea (food)… fish…  I  then continued to tell her how I liked to eat fish and that my last host mom cooked it quite often.  As we walked through the busy market place north of Chisinau, she tells me how fish are expensive to buy at site but cheaper here in Chisinau.  And then we pulled up to the animal pet stand.  Ohh- we're not buying fish to eat.  We're buying food for the fish and an additional 10  little guppies for the aquarium.  And so it goes… I'm close to understanding, but actually I've got a loonng ways to go.

Take 2 of communicating and understanding conversations in Moldova.  I already appreciate my family, because they seem to know a lot of people around here AND they welcome friends and family with open arms from one hour to the next.  It's great!  And overwhelming.  My host mother puts together a splendid barbecue on such short notice for those that spontaneously (so it seems) welcome themselves through our front gate (or sometimes the back gate).  As  my parents introduce their friends to this quiet, foreign-looking young woman who they now call their American daughter, I hear new names that I can't seem to keep in my head.   Galia?  And her husband, Voda?  Or is it Boda?  Or is that other guy Voda/Boda/whatever they said?  But then it gets even more complicated.  I wish to understand just a little ("un pic!") of the rapid chatter around me, but the entire conversation that I wish so badly to piece together is spoken in yet another language.  Not Romanian.  Russian.  Two months of studying Romanian, and all I hear is Russian.  Sigh. 

Continuing in this unfortunate vein, most people can be called by two formal first names, plus any nicknames.  For example, I'm Laura.  But in Russian, I would be Larissa.  My father is Mihai.  In Russian and what he is called most often, Misha.  And so it continues from names to objects and verbs and so on.  The garden is the gradina in Romanian but my host mom, Natasha (or Natalia if you will) can't even recall this word.  She only knows the Russian word for it...which unfortunately has quickly escaped my mind shortly after the conversation about it.

If you aren't aware, Russian is based on the Cyrillic alphabet, not the Latin alphabet where my exiguous language skills are based.  It will be a long while, if ever, that I gain a grasp of Russian here.  But for now, I will smile, laugh, joke about things that I can understand- this weekend it included English phrases/words such as "a glass a wine please", "Good morning, Mr. Dennis", Michael Jackson, Michael Doo-glaws, & George Washington.

All that being said, my host family and I get along quite well!  They speak mostly in Romanian now.  (When they were growing up, they learned Russian and spoke Russian often and in school.)  On the first evening in my new home, my host brother inquired about the aerial view of Nebraska via Google Maps.  The big circles in the squares.  What are they?!  Great first lesson in American agriculture, particularly the type with which I am familiar.  Those big circles within the squares, Valentin, are irrigation circles!  They hold probably the only crops that seem to be doing all right in the awful heat stroke and drought conditions that hit the Midwest and West this summer.  (It's also very hot in dry in the south of Moldova, so they can empathize.)  I then showed him online what pivots look like and also zoomed in on my family's farm.

I included a picture just outside my casa in Moldova.  A very pleasant place- a swimming pool, a porch swing, a serious barbecue pit, a covered picnic area (it's some Russian word that of course I don't yet remember), and also a few things you don't see- watermelon, house wine, a guitar, and a ukele.