The town I live in is not so bad. When I go to Chisinau I usually make a stop at the supermarkets for the products I can’t find here, which are basically peanut butter, (ethnic) foods or spices, and cream cheese. While others come to Chisinau and load up on dairy products, cereals, and juices, I can simply walk to any of the small magazines (shops) across from my apartment and buy pasteurized milk, yogurt, corn flakes, and any variety of juice I’m interested in. I was having a conversation with Nate (the other volunteer who lives across the hall and who’s apartment I shall nab when he goes back to the States in February) about the American concept of strip malls when we both sort of realized that by definition, the street we live on is basically a strip mall. All on the same street we have five food & liquor stores, three bars, a cell phone store, an internet café and a small meat and dairy shop. I’m not even counting the Baba’s who stand outside the stores selling fresh sour cream, milk, and brinza cheese. I have a feeling the woman at the store I stop at most often for juice, milk, or two oranges, now know me as the girl who never has small change. Today she offered me a pack of sunflower seeds in addition to what I was purchasing to “bring it exactly to 25MDL.” I obliged, and now am happily snacking away on ‘em.
I was in Chisinau over the weekend on official business. After power-suit meeting, Michelle, Tia, and I went out to eat at a German-themed restaurant that, to our relief, had good service and food. In Moldova, the service industry, as I’ve noticed, can be inconsistent. It’s usually a toss up from a waiter being friendly, patient with our lingual fumbling, and prompt, to being utterly annoyed and disgusted by our presence and reflecting the sentiment in the service. One never knows which of the two types of server one may encounter, and for this reason I avoid dining in large groups of Americans, and often go straight to speaking Russian so to not delay the ordering process with my choppy Romanian. Luckily, our waiter was really interested in practicing his English on us as we practiced our Romanian with him. Three courses, dessert, and two bottles of wine later, we made our way back to the hotel, bellies full. That night I would’ve slept so well if Tia and I weren’t sharing an extremely tight, twin bed at the luxurious hotel. Even spooning wasn’t helping the fact that mattress springs and things were jutting into our backs.
The next day Tia and I were running errands around the capital and were riding transportation all day. On one particularly crowded and warm trolleybus a man seemed to take interest in us and asked us in Romanian how we liked the heat. I responded something about how ridiculous it was and from there the man continued to talk to us, ask questions, and insist on holding our bags. As I usually do when I travel, I make up facts about myself as I go, so I told him, in Russian, we were from London studying out here. I think he was a little disappointed we weren’t American because he had been to L.A. before and his son is moving out there. He asked what the difference in language was between U.K. and U.S.A., and I responded accent and jargon, like Moldova to Romania. Igor, our new friend, is a musician and plays in orchestras all around Europe. His son, apparently, was one of the Moldovan performers in last year’s Eurovision. (If you don’t know what Eurovision is, it is the most beautiful, cheesy, and amazing spectacular that happens to European television once a year. Worth Googling. Kellan and I were lucky enough to catch it in France a year ago. I think it changed our lives, well mine anyways.) Igor asked for our numbers, for his son of course, but ‘oops, unfortunately we don’t have any cell phones,’ though I did scribble out my email for him. He was such a nice little highlight of our day, as I’m sure we were for him, and he kissed us both on our cheeks when we parted ways.
That night I stayed with Tia in her pimped-out house in a village. I made her and her host mom dinner, and played translator, answering all of Tia’s host mom’s questions about Tia’s food preferences and habits. Her host mom is a super nice, religious, simple woman with humongous boobs (and coming from me you know that means they’re seriously ginormous) who says things like, “men only want to fuck and leave you” and “a woman’s got to eat so she can have something to show off” while motioning to her chest and then to mine, but NOT to Tia’s, because we’ve already established Tia is a picky eater and therefore not busty like us. Tia and I watched DVD’s all day, and drank mediocre wine that put us right to sleep, but this time in a comfortable queen-sized bed. But of course we spooned anyways. (Spooning with friends is this new creepy thing I do out here, like when Annie wakes up with me curled up close behind her. She didn’t like it at first, but now she sends me text messages about wishing she were wearing my underwear.)
The last few days I’ve been listening to my music in alphabetical order of the songs. I’m still on A’s and just now A-M-Y by The Plus Ones just came on to remind me of high school and whom I was hanging out with. Which is suiting because I have just spent my daily hour of dial-up internet reading old livejournal entries of mine, friends of mine, and old crushes. Which lead to reading current journals of friends and ex-crushes, which of course lead me to feel like the creepiest girl ever, as if the spooning jokes weren’t enough.
So with all this creepiness and the like, I am going to church tomorrow morning to clear my sins. It’s a big Christian-Orthodox holiday over some Saint named Nicholas and I asked my host mom if I could join her because I have yet to actually experience the ever-so-popular religion out here. I have to wear a skirt and cover my head and maybe if I close my eyes and not really pay attention tomorrow, I can pretend I’m at temple.
Speaking of temple, it’s Hannuka! Totally one of my more favorite family-time holidays if only for the who’s-candle-will-burn-the-fastest contest Jackie and I always play. Because I so absentmindedly forgot to pack a menorah when I was stuffing the next two years of my life in two bags back in August, I have made a somewhat ghetto, yet sufficient, menorah out here for myself. When I was in the large German supermarket in Chisinau, called Green Hills, I found some chocolate gelt, and even though imprinted on the chocolates is “Happy 10th anniversary Green Hills! Multi Ani!” they came in that netty bag thing, are coin-shaped and wrapped in gold foil, and damnit that’s good enough for me. For the first night of Hannuka I went to the Jewish Community Center in Chisinau that was also celebrating its one-year anniversary. There was praying and candle-lighting, and there were performances of barber-shop-quartet-style prayers, jazz-dancing, musicians, and a grand finale with pyrotechnics! I am so happy I attended the ceremony and I noticed that being around Jews in Chisinau for the holidays was just like being in West Bloomfield, but in Russian and without all the plastic surgery. Happy Hannuka!
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