So here it is, almost a week since I returned to Moldova from Americaland and 4:50am (I am battling a wicked case of jet lag) and thought what better way to use my early morning time than to update everyone-especially since there is much to update. Now, I sit in bed half under the covers (cause its a wee bit chilly) with a cup of instant coffee (mostly because I am too lazy to bring out the french press and make real coffee) and settle in for the next 20 or 30 minutes while I type and upload pictures. Also, you'll notice the new look of the blog-figured new year, new look!
Warning: this is unfortunately going to be text heavy and light on the photographs since at the end of October I had a problem with my memory card and subsequently was unable to take many photos, but I will include what I do have which will include some recovered photos and videos from Halloween day.
I last left you with a post about my birthday celebrations. But what I did not mention was how great the Halloween day at my school went. Our classroom was a revolving door of students (some who were not mine but heard of the good time that was going on) wanting to complete Halloween activities, bob for apples, get wrapped up in toilet paper, play pin the head on the monster and listen to my retelling of scary stories (with translation of course and my partner did a wonderful job of mimicking my scary voices and well timed whispering to add to the effect).
Some of my students participating in the activities
At the end of the day we moved the party outside for the Toamna Aur (Golden Autumn) celebration. Each class set up tables of food and crafts and sold them while a mini concert and for some reason a wrestling match took place in the center of the courtyard. It was great and I pleasantly surprised my students by being able to dance the Hora (traditional Moldovan dance). Sadly, I was not able to stay for very much of the celebration because I headed to Chisinau. Since Halloween was on a Saturday, PSN (Peer Support Network-a volunteer led group I belong to and am Events Coordinator for) put on a scary movie marathon at the Peace Corps office. It was a lot of fun and we actually had a decent turnout.
November was an interesting, bittersweet month (sweet: birthday fun, Thanksgiving with my Peace Corps family and students, and gorgeous weather / bitter: more sad news from home and a lot of time spent contemplating whether I would stay in Moldova or go home). Let me explain fully. I spent the first week (as previously mentioned in my last post) in Chisinau to facilitate training sessions for the new English Education (EE) volunteers. The weather was gorgeous and sunny and warm which is entirely unusual for that time of year in Moldova, but I relished it! And luckily that beautiful weather continued for about 2 more weeks. Regrettably, it had to end and winter came on with a vengeance with our first snow and the freezing temperatures decided to settle in for the winter. Shortly after returning to school after our holiday break, my last grandparent (my grandfather) died. This was only 2 months after my uncle's passing and was incredibly rough on me being over 6000 miles from home and my family. I took some time off from school and a good friend came to stay with me for a few days. My little Peace Corps family stepped up and gave me a lot of love and support. Not wanting to dwell on this, I will move onto the sweet of the month. Now enters Thanksgiving. Since I am counting everything this year as "my last" in Moldova, my last Thanksgiving was wonderful-I had 3 of them! The first was similar to last year. PSN puts on a big Thanksgiving feast either the weekend before or the weekend after Thanksgiving day for all the volunteers and staff in Moldova. Last year I was on a cooking team, this year I coordinated the whole thing and boy was that exhausting. But it went off without a hitch. This year we cooked 4 turkeys and enough mashed potatoes and stuffing for about 90 people. Let me tell you, that's a lot of potatoes and bread crumbs! The food was delicious and I was fortunate to have a wonderfully hardworking crew of cooks who prepared everything! Sadly the big difference between our T-Day dinner and a usual one back home...no leftovers. Everyone cleaned up! My second thanksgiving dinner came on the real Thanksgiving day with the sitemates. We made chicken instead of turkey (mostly because of cost and chicken being easier to get) along with the traditional trimmings. It was great just having our little Floresti family together (only we were missing Lindsay who couldn't make it from her village).
Thanksgiving Dinner Pose
My final T-Day dinner came in the form of a masa with one of my partner teachers and her 11th grade class. She is working on moving up to the next level as a teacher and wanted to do a special presentation about Thanksgiving for one of her classes and some colleagues who would be observing. I worked with her to layout the masa and to talk about the history (a semi nice glossed over version) and how the tradition has changed over the years in America. Then we enjoyed some delicious Moldovan food (no traditional T-Day food except for the apple pie I made). It was really nice to sit with a group of students I do not teach and have the opportunity to talk with them and share a bit of my culture.
The first snow on November 26
December was a blur of snow, celebrations, anticipation of my trip home, tests and finalizing grades. Most of the days were pretty normal for my Moldovan life and they mostly were just what led to my going home on December 23rd to surprise my mom for Christmas. She believed I was going on vacation with another volunteer Tom to Sweden for two weeks. All of my friends and most of the family knew otherwise. The look on her face was priceless. The story was that my best friend Staci had a package for them from me with their Christmas gifts. She delivered it Christmas Eve morning. While she was talking to my mom after bringing in one piece of my luggage she said she had forgotten one other thing. At this point I came running up to the house and stood in the doorway. My mom sat in the chair looking with disbelief at me simply saying "What? No! What? Really?" over and over. As I hugged her she asked if she was in heaven. I laughed and told her no and that I was really hugging her in her living room in Sacramento. After that moment, it was all happiness, love, lots of running around and general glee over the little things I have missed (e.g. driving, brunch at Tower Cafe, sushi, playing cut throat Uno with the girls, movies in English in a theater, sunshine in rain, only wearing one layer of light clothes in the winter, hugs from my family, my aunt's cheesecake-which incidentally is THE best in the world and kisses). The two weeks home went by too fast and I am sad that I was not able to see everyone I had hoped to see. However, I am grateful to those who I was able to see and especially to those who I was not expecting to spend so much time with. Coming back was really hard to do, but I am happy to be back in Moldova and even more happy to have been home. Going home in a lot of ways was a great way of seeing some of the changes in me that my new friends and family here would not necessarily recognize. And I came back with a new perspective about myself. More to come soon about the new year and what's coming up this year!
