Sun, Spinsterhood, and Odyssey of the Mind...Bring on Spring!

I hope that by saying this I am not jinxing myself, but I think that SPRING just might be on the way here in Moldova. I don’t have to wear long johns 24 hrs a day and have actually seen the sun about 3 times in the past week! The snow and ice have almost entirely melted, which is nice except for the fact that I had to do laundry today because every item of my clothing was covered in mud. Speaking of laundry…today marks the first time since December that I have been able to dry my clothes outside without them freezing solid. I was only able to take a total of 3 showers in the first 5 weeks that I was back from my trip to Turkey because our village was without running water due to all of the pipes being frozen. Luckily we were still able to get water from the well outside our house, but I was definitely happy to get running water back (most of the time…it still comes and goes randomly) a couple weeks ago. It is definitely the little things like wearing one less layer of clothing and being able to take showers (still only every 4 days or so) that are getting me through the last days of my first Moldovan winter.

Since my last entry, I got to experience another milestone in my service here…I celebrated my first birthday here in Moldova, and let me tell you, these people know how to have a good time! My partner teacher’s husband’s birthday was the day before mine so they invited me to a masa (party) at their house. Moldovan celebrations always start with a few toasts (champagne, vodka, or cognac) and then continue with more drinking (house wine, beer, and more of the hard stuff) and lots of eating. This particular party was no different…my partner teacher and her husband still had some left over cognac and vodka from their son’s wedding so the drinks just kept on coming! After we ate, the party moved into the next room and the dancing began. I have to say that the dancing is always my favourite part of every Moldovan celebration. Before I was allowed to leave, I got to experience another Moldovan birthday tradition. Usually this particular tradition is reserved for youngsters, but since I am the crazy American, my Moldovan friends decided that I needed to participate anyway. I was sat down in a wooden chair and then hoisted up into the air by everyone 25 times (ps, the fact that I am now 25 definitely marks my entry into spinsterhood, especially in the eyes of the people in my small village here). The next day, on my actual birthday, I didn’t have any lessons to teach but I went to the school anyway for another tradition. At my school, and at most schools across the country, it is traditional for the person celebrating a birthday to bring food and drinks for all the other teachers. Since my school has two separate schedules (one from 8am-1pm for the older kids and one from 1:30pm-6:30pm for the younger ones) we usually have these celebrations in between the morning and afternoon lessons. My host mom made sarmale (cabbage leaves stuffed with meat and rice) and brought some of our house wine and my partner’s husband (who is also a teacher at the school) brought some cookies, stuff for sandwiches, and some cognac. While we obviously don’t allow alcohol consumption on school grounds…especially not in the middle of the school day…in America, Moldovans have absolutely no problem with a celebratory beverage or two. After the shindig at the school was over, I headed home to continue my birthday celebration with my host family. My host brother bbq’ed some chicken and my host mom fixed some Moldovan chicken tacos. She found a recipe for tortillas in a really old Russian cookbook and I have to say that they were delicious! She also made a cake for the occasion. My host family really treats me like a member of their family and they made my birthday truly special.

Ever since I got back from my winter trip, I have been extremely busy with work. In addition to my regular lessons, I have been coaching two teams for the Odyssey of the Mind competition (one group of 7 8^th and 9^th graders and one team of 7 11^th graders). Odyssey of the Mind is an international critical and creative thinking contest for students around the world. The national competition took place last weekend and in the weeks leading up to the event, I was staying at school until nearly 8pm every night with my students. While being at school for about 12 hours every day got a bit old, I think that this competition offers a great opportunity for the students and my kids were extremely motivated and excited about it. Both of my teams did very well at the national level of the competition on Sunday. Two of my students received 2 of the 4 individual awards for creativity and the younger team earned the highest score in the Spontaneous Problem portion of the contest. The younger team came in 2^nd place over all and the older team in 3^rd…both teams have been selected to go to the EuroFest competition in Belarus in April. Now I just have to come up with the money and the travel documents for all of them to go by April (neither will be easy since nobody here has extra money laying around and getting travel documents for Moldovan citizens is an extremely complicated process). I was under the misguided impression that things would get a bit less hectic after this weekend’s competition…I guess I was wrong…Opa! I am so excited for the kids and proud of their hard work and achievements.

Next week is our spring break and I get to spend the majority of it in another training for Peace Corps. The training is for “project development and management” and I will be going along with a member of my community. My school director asked our village librarian (who is also the Mayor’s wife and mother of one of my favourite students) to go with me and we will learn about grant writing and other long term project possibilities. It should be an interesting training, but I can’t say that any of us are too thrilled about spending our break from school in a workshop. Oh well.

That is pretty much all for me right now…Keep your fingers crossed that the weather here stays sunny!