|
|
Things at home are great. My host parents, Natasha and Vasile are very nice. Since I have my own ‘casa mica’ (like a apartment on their property) I have tons of privacy and space. They understand that this is something Americans really value. TG! I also have a great advantage over many of the other PCVs here in Moldova…I live in a rayon center and not in a village. That comes with some general (but not always) plus’s:
- greater likelihood of having paved roads
- less likelihood of having to avoid cow dung on said roads
- less likely to be stopped in traffic as the cows or geese cross the road (really, it shouldn’t be “why did the chicken cross the road” it should be geese…they do this a lot here)
- more likely to have a sitemate
- we have a few restaurants and 2 discos in the rayon center
- we have a Fidesco (think Moldovan interpretation of a corner supermarket.)
- there is an autogara (bus station) to go to Chisanau, so I don’t have to wave down a rutiera
- there is a greater possibility of having running water, electricity and gas lines in the rayon center (my host family has all three)
- AND – the newest addition to this list – a greater likelihood of being able to get DSL installed at home.
Yes ladies and gentlemen, I decided that the $25 a month for DSL is definitely worth the cost (remember – I’m a ‘volunteer’ and have a stipend of like $200 a month) especially considering how much it costs to call the states and then to use an internet café. However, it’s not DSL like you may be thinking. Lets talk numbers here, shall we:
- dial-up connection in my PST village – 20mbps (since 2006, available on any land line in Moldova)
- dial-up connection in my rayon center – 35mbps
- DSL in my rayon center – 100mbps
- General dial-up in America – 56mbps
BUT – I’m not complaining…I have internet. Its fast enough for me to Skype people and to do webcam calls. (usually). I can also do research for school now without waiting for an hour to load one page.
Other things…
I have a sitemate. Her name is Drea and she is awesome. We sometimes have dinner or watch movies. I walk right by her apartment building (she lives alone) every day on the way to school. She works, literally, within spitting distance from my gate (its directly across the narrow street). On my site visit (after being in country only a month or so) a PCV from an older group told me that he would give his left foot for a sitemate, and that I was so lucky. I didn’t doubt him by any means, however I thought this was a slight exaggeration. Turns out, its not…He cut off his foot….no sorry, it is an exaggeration, but not by much. The last two weeks Drea was out of town on vacation to Bulgaria and doing work-type stuff in Chisinau (the capital). I totally understand the comment now. Man it was boring not being able to hang out with someone and really be able to talk and understand and all that jazz. Gosh – I’m so freakin’ spoiled sometimes.
On Saturday, all the PCVs in my group had to go into Chisinau to pick up some immigration documents from PC HQ. It was wonderful to see everyone again. I hadn’t seen most of my group mates since ‘swearing in’ a month prior. It was like a mini-reunion. (We are on ‘lock down’ for the first 3 months we are at our permanent sites to allow us to ‘integrate’ into the new community. We can only leave our villages on official PC business and with permission.)
I must make a side note here…PC Moldova is very unusual. We have perhaps the highest concentration of PCVs in any single country. There are 120-ish volunteers in country at a time (come Jan 08, that number will go up to 160). This is pretty average in the world, however Moldova is an extremely small country. There are about 4 million people in country (probably less considering how many people work abroad) and its about the size of Maryland. So, everywhere you go, you run into PCVs. Many PCVs in other countries only see each other a few times a year, if that. Also, they generally never get to go to the capital b/c it is frequently too far away and takes literally days to get there. However, in Moldova, you can get from the northern-most part of the country to Chisinau in about 6 hours and from the south to Chisinau in about 4 hours. I am 45 minutes NW, so it is quite easy for me, and most PCVs here, to go in for a quick daytrip.
Continuing…So, on our mini-reunion of the M-20 TEFL and HE PCVs, we went out to eat. We wanted to go eat this Greek restaurant, so we started walking. We got there and the place was closed. A woman in the restaurant came to the door and said to us in broken English, “Sorry, we are closed. We should be open in a week”. Then her daughter came to the door and said the same thing in a bit better English. We were disappointed, but understood. Then, as we began to walk away, this big guy comes up to the door from the back of the restaurant. He begins to speak with us quite well in English. At first we are all surprised that this Moldovan’s English is so good. Then it slowly dawns on us, as he is using ridiculously American slang, this is a Greek-American, probably from NYC…in Moldova of all places.
Later, back at the PC HQ, we watched “Black Hawk Down”. Some of the M-19s were there for a training and had watched the movie like 6 times in 3 days. They were throwing out lines like you would in “Rocky Horror” (however the material of BHD is a bit more harsh than RH.
After the movie and printing off some ppwrk for school, I decided to go for a swim. WHAT??? Yeah, I went for a swim.
To tell you the truth, these past 3 ½ months have probably been the longest time I have ever been away from a pool in my whole life…well at least since I was 14 and was on swim team and then lifeguarding year round
Anyway, we are somewhat limited in our swimming options. We are not suppose to swim in any lakes or rivers here due to the Soviets contaminating the underground water with bad storage containers of various chemicals. Also, it is rare for there to be swimming pools in the towns/rayon centers much less villages. In Chisinau there are a few pools. I was informed by an older PCV that there are 3 decent pools. She gave me directions to the mid-price one, but had good chemicals.
I walked about 25 minutes from the PC HQ towards the center of town. I got to the Gym and then went to the pool. It cost me 30 Lei (just less than $3) and they gave me a lock for my stuff. The pool was outdoors. I was a bit worried that it might be too cold b/c it was like 60 degrees outside.
Well, when I got on the pool deck, I realized the pool is more like a semi-indoor pool b/c there are walls and/or bleachers on all 4 sides but there is no roof. The temp was great…probably about 89 degrees (all those lap swimmers at Offutt should be jealous). The water was mirky, the CL was low and the PH was high, but these are not complaints…just comments (after lifeguarding for 10 years, you can tell if the chemicals are off by the taste of the water).
The pool was set up for laps; however there were tons of kids swimming through all the lanes. There were people swimming laps too. Man did I feel slow and low in the water, but that’s what I get for being out for nearly 4 months. It felt great to be able to swim. I can’t wait to go back and swim again.
However I will need to moderate this b/c it’s expensive. 30 lei to get in, 16 lei for the 45 minute ruitera ride each direction. If I do nothing but swim, that is at least 62 lei for one day. Ouch!
As many of you know, I lived with my parents before joining the PC, so I didn’t have a NEED to cook my own meals. In fact, like many young people, I only cooked an ‘actual’ meal (or dish) about once a month. Sometimes it was a prepackaged thing or used something that was packaged (like a homemade meal, but using microwavable instant rice as a side). Also, a lot the annoying small steps had already been done by manufactures. (For example, I like to cook with garlic, but we have already minced garlic in the fridge, ready to go, back home.)
So, the other day, I went to the piatza and decided to buy some good stuff to do some cooking b/c I was sick of having soup (my host mom’s favorite thing to make). I bought some eggplant (b/c its in season) some onions and garlic. And no, I didn’t really know what I was planning on making at the time. I was gonna ‘wing it’.
So, I got home and began to chop up some onions. I have done this before and it was no big deal (besides the crying. Lol). Then I got to the garlic. I’ve seen people on TV (Rachel Ray) talk about how you just take the clove and can ‘pop’ it open with the flat part of a knife and pressure from your palm. However, I wasn’t quite sure how to get to the clove. Hmmmmm……
I decided to just try cutting it in half. That didn’t work so well b/c my host mom doesn’t have good knives. When I finally got it cut open, I realized that probably wasn’t the best idea. I took another thing of garlic and tried to unpeel it like the outer layers of an onion. This was harder than I thought it would be.
Finally, I got the damn garlic out of the ‘pods’ or whatever people call them. Then I just had to do the Rachel Ray-inspired thingy to get the actual clove out. I did that, and it worked (not well at first, but after a few tried, I had the technique down).
At this point, I had been in the kitchen for damn near 45 minutes and hadn’t done squat. I had cut onions and cloves of garlic that I had no idea what to do with. I didn’t know how to use the garlic in a dish. Should I chop it up, or leave it as a whole clove, or is there a particular technique? Goodness, I gave up…and I didn’t even get to the eggplant.
The really great part about this adventure in the kitchen is that my hands stunk like garlic for the next day and a half. Now I really understand why my mom buys the pre-minced garlic. It sucks to do that by hand.
I’ll keep you up to date as more amusing adventures in Moldova and in the kitchen occur.
Miss you all!!!
Colleen~ I was laughing out loud reading about your cooking adventure. If Birol knew he would just die! He’s a garlic peeling, eggplant making fool! He has some tricks he can show you when you get back. Rub your hands with lemon (if you have some around) to get the garlic and onion smell off of your hands. ;o)
~Kristine ;o)
Kristine Krambeck () - 18 09 07 - 14:44
You will need to enable javascript to generate a trackback link
