Life

So this is a picture of the sign on the back of our hotel room door. "If there is a fire RUN!!". I found it amusing at least.

Happy belated Thanksgiving everyone! Hope you had a great day of food and family. We folks here had a big dinner at the Hotel National. All 140 volunteers gathered at the hotel, along with the Moldovan Peace Corps staff and a group of ex-pats from the embassy.
We were given one of the old kitchens in the hotel to work with, and spent two days prepping food for 200. Who had turkey, cranberry sauce (imported from the states), pumpkin pie, and all the other fixens


Turkey day shots of the kitchen that we used at the Hotel National in Chisinau. We prepped dinner for slightly over 202.

The silver lump in the foreground is one of our 10 -20lb birds. Yum!

It was definitely an experience. Not only did we have the fun and excitement of using 50 year old Soviet cook gear, we also had interesting challenge of explaining what we wanted to do, and what we needed to the Moldovan staff there (who don't speak English). You would think that this would be fairly easy, but the concept of roasting a turkey is completely foreign to them, and things like cranberry sauce are alien. They also don't really ever do buffet style dinners, thus large serving bowls are non-existent. This meant that we served up mashed potatoes for 200 in vessels slightly larger than a cereal bowl. Good times.

It really was a great dinner though, and everybody seemed to have a good time. It is the only time of the year that all the volunteers are in one place, and thus you end up meeting all the other folks that are outside of your sphere of 20 or so in your specific program. It was definitely a great surrogate for the typical US experience. Hanging out with the Peace Corps family.

Pictures of my village. One was taken during harvest season, and looks back from the former collective farm up in to the village's apple orchard and tree line alley leading into town. On the right is a fog covered view of my village before a snow storm. You can just pick out the church spires in the background.

This was after the first snowfall we had. In between classes the kids made "foot slides", skooting down the hill on tramped down snow and ice.

Our town church, which is actually a landmark of the country. On the right, a shot of one of the traditional horse carts going down the tree lined street through the center of town.

Strangely, despite the fact that my village is less than a degree of latitude from the capitol, the weather is drastically colder. Thus we have already had our share of snow and ice. This resulted in a 9 hour bus ride one night trying to get into Chisinau, and some very muddy clothes and boots. Despite some of the drawbacks, my village definitely has a Norman Rockwell quality to it when it snows. The kids take advantage to the upmost, making foot slides in between classes and having "lupte de zapada" (snowball fights). One difference though is that they make "Babe de Zapada" (snow grandmas), dressing them up in head scarves and aprons.

The horse carts also lend an old world feel. The muffled hoof clops breaking through the silence of the falling snow, and the breath of the horses encircling the drivers head as it slides back through the air.

Our profusion of lakes nearby should make things interesting once the weather turns consistently cold. I will be hanging out with the kids on the ice, hopefully avoiding breaking my tailbone.