Everybody in the casa mare

One of the most popular bands in Moldova, and a nice example of some good Moldovan music

Don't even think about it...

For an assignment recently for the 11th-graders, my partner teacher and I wanted the students to write an essay about someone they think is a genuis. As I was writing it up on the board, I decided to add a small bit of clarification.

For those readers who unfamiliar with the cultural scourge that is 50 cent, you should consider your self lucky, and I would hate to ruin that for you by introducing you his musical stylings. All I will say is that he is the No. 1 cause of the world's misconception of our country as obsessed with guns, guady wealth, violence and brute thuggery. Unfortunatley, he's quite popular here with the male students.

Why I have faith in the future of the Moldovan Youth

This is a photo I took of a kid after my own heart. He's in the middle of the picture opening the door to a supermarket in Chisinau. I don't know if you can see it, but there is a skate board in his hands. And on the bottom of the skateboard, he has written in black electrical tape: "EMO SUX"

A few minutes after I took this, the kid was chased back out of the store by a security guard. Whatever he did, I hope the gaurd can forgive him, because at least his head is in the right place.

Forget about late fines

One of my friends told me an interesting story about life in the Soviet era.


As we were walking by one of the local government offices, he pointed out to me that it was surrounded by evergreen trees (spruce, I think), a kind of tree that's not very common in this area.

He also told me that if I cared to look, the local police station, the boarder gaurd's office and all the other government building in town were the same (including the library, shown at right). They all have an unusually large ratio of evergreens to deciduous trees.

It's easy to see why, I thought to myself. Government bureaucrats are paperpushers who spend too much time in the office. If I were in their position, I'd want to look out at a but of fake forrest, too.

I was curious to see if my theory held up, so I asked.

It doesn't.

All of these trees were planted during the early years of the Soviet era as a form of keeping the people from causing too many problems. The way my friend tells it, all of these trees were brought from Siberia. They are there to remind people of where they go if they start to make trouble.

Seriously, hint taken.

And from the placement of the trees outside the library, I'm assuming "causing trouble" includes returning your library books late. So all of you who complain about that 10 cents/day fee you have to pay, you should feel lucky.

That's not my name

One of the biggest difficulties I've had to endure since coming here is not something that I necessarily would expect. It's not the language, it's not the job, it's not the food, it's not even the being away from friends and family. Turns out it's something a lot more trivial:

My name.

Yeah I know, right. Well, as it happens my name is really hard for a lot of people in Moldova to say. They usually hear my name as (for the sake of anonymity, we'll say "Harold"). I have to write it down or spell it before they can say it correctly.

This happens about 25% of the time.

At first, I didn't mind it, I thought it was kind of funny. But now, it's really started to grate on me. It's interesting how intensely you can identify with something as superficial as a name.

The worst part is that my own host family, the people who supposedly know me the best in the entire country, can't remember.

My host father, who is otherwise a great guy and super generous, is apparently unable to understand the difference between my name and "Harold". He always calls me "Harold", no matter how many times I try to correct him. (On average about twice a week)

Even when I try to write it for him, he just chuckles jovially and nods his head in patient bemusement like "haha that foreign kid sure is funny, what the hell is he going on about now."

The worst part is that he talks about me to the other teachers at my school as "Harold", so even though they were pronouncing it correctly at first, now they have reverted to calling me "Harold", too. When I correct them, they just get really confused. Honestly I think it maybe a loosing battle. As a last resort I may switch to the longer form of my name (which sounds nothing like "Harold"), but it might already be too late for that, too.

Once, when I was so exasperated by being called "Harold", I found a Romanian Bible and showed them the chapter with my name in it and told him he could call me by the Romaian version of my name, but again my host father just kind of laughed a bit and went about his business.

Who knows, maybe he thought I was trying to preach to him.

Ice cream

This is the old soviet ice cream "shoppe." Back in the time before capitalism, there was only one place to get ice cream in the entire town, and this was it. My friends who grew up here say they remember having to wait in lines all the way down the block on hot summer days. Since glasnost hit the ice cream market, you can find it in pretty much every store, restaurant or bar, and this little place was, unfortunately, boarded up. (The fence was apparently to keep the rioters at bay, that, or decoration)

Recycling, Moldovan style

In Soviet Russia, you still have to recycle all by yourself.

Money

Some of you have asked what the Moldovan currency looks like. This is one of the bills (a 100 lei note). It is roughly equivalent to $10. Unfortunately for me, it is almost indistinguishable from the 1 leu bill (10 cents) when reaching in your wallet in a rush.

Moldova in the news

Recently saw this article in the BBC. It's a pretty accurate depiction of one of the biggest problems the country is facing at the moment. In my classes alone, I would say 40% have at least one parent working abroad.


Moldova lives off foreign earnings

By Oana Lungescu
BBC News, Carpineni, Moldova

Moldova, Europe's poorest country and one of its smallest, has earned itself a dubious distinction - since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, it has become the world's most remittance-dependent economy.

It is estimated that about a quarter of Moldova's 4.5 million people have left to work abroad. The money they send back home makes up more than a third of the country's gross domestic product.

But more than half of the migrants to Europe are women, who are often forced to leave their children behind.

The reasons for this unprecedented exodus are easy to find in the Moldovan countryside.

Geese waddle noisily across a dry river bed, with a flock of sheep and a few bay horses grazing contentedly in the distance. On a nearby hillside rises a blue-domed Orthodox church amid small white houses, gardens and vineyards.

In the early autumn sunlight, it looks like a rural idyll. But many here still draw their water from a well and drive around in horse-drawn carts.

Welcome to Carpineni, a village on Moldova's border with Romania and the European Union. Population: 11,000. Or maybe 8,000, or 6,000. No one really knows how many have emigrated from this village. ...

Please continue reading at the BBC's website

Musings on a dying goose

Seeing a dying animal isn't something you ever get used to, I don't think. (Well not if you're from the kind of family I'm from.) But here in Moldova, it's something you see a lot, and it's something you have to take as part of everyday life.

You see the chickens and pigs you eat for dinner all the time (and if you're in the wrong spot at the wrong time you get asked if you'd like to have the opportunity to take the axe to one of them. ) It's just a part of life here, that how it goes.

I had one incident in particular that helped me put things in to perspective.

I was walking down a neighborhood street with one of my friends the other day, when we came upon a pack of roaming geese. These geese are everywhere in my city (especially in the residential neighborhoods), and it's best to give them a wide berth. They're a lot like those groups of kids in high school who'd hang around the halls waiting for somebody walking by to do anything out of the ordinary (like make eye contact) and they'd all pounce on him.

Well anyways, we had successfully navigate getting past the geese, and we notice that another ten yards farther down the street there was one goose that had clearly been hit by a car. It's neck was completely preztled, and it was trying to stand up but having little success.

It was obviously in pain.

My friend and I stopped to look at it, we both knew without talking that we had a choice. We could either let it be, continue on our way and grumble something about the fragility of life; or we could do the humane (although more savage) thing and put it out of its misery. We stood watching it for a minute, both of us trying to work up the courage to suggest the latter choice to the other, all the while looking around for a suitable blunt object to do the deed.

Then, out of nowhere, came our salvation.

A girl of about 15 came running up the street and knelt down at the goose. This girl obviously knew this goose because, without even hesitating, she picked up the poor thing by it's wings (it's head lolling) and ran off down the street where she came from and back into her yard.

My friend and I were dumb struck at what had just happened. One second we were contemplating the ethics and physics of bashing in the head of a dying goose, and the next second we were standing by ourselves in the street looking at a small puddle of blood and and a few muddy feathers.

We walked to our destination without saying anything about the curious incident. Usually when I see an animal in pain or being carried off to the chopping block I have a tinge of empathy and guilt for the creature at it's unfortuante fate, but I noticed this time I was unexpectedly without that feeling and for a while I couldn't explain why.

But going over everything a little later on, it occurred to me: Considering the circumstances, everybody came out a little better off.

We were saved from having to commit cruelty to animals and the possible difficult situation of having to explain why to people (in a foreign language) why we were mutilating a goose on a public thoroughfare. The goose was saved the agony of hours of a slow, painful death. That or an amateur (and probably unsuccessful at first) euthanasia. And the girl's family probably got to have a nice fresh goose for dinner a week or two sooner than they originally had planned on.

Yes, sure it was a sad thing that an animal died. But in talking with my Friend, we agreed that in America we are so removed from the everyday task of killing our food. It's so easy to just go to the store and pick up a four-pound bag of chicken breasts without blinking an eye. In a way, the true cost of our food is hidden from us (you might say it's subsidized). We don't have to actively participate in the extinguishing of one life for a snack.

Now, I'm not a vegetarian, and I don't think I ever will be. There's no reason why people shouldn't eat meat. But I think it would be an interesting national experiment for us (if I were made national dictator) that everyone be required to slaughter their own meat. Just think about what that would do. I for one know that I would have a hard time working up the courage to make a hamburger.

Making wine

Today, after classes, I spent all afternoon in the vineyards working with my host family. We spent about 4 hours collecting grapes, crushing them and putting them in a giant barrel. My family has both red and white (or black and white as they're called here.)

This week and last have been grape-harvest time here in Moldova, and it seems every family is working. And in fact they are. During the soviet era, all the vineyards were owned by the People (by which, I mean the state, of course) where wine was made and distributed through out the soviet countries. When it all collapsed and Moldova became independent, each family (or person over a certain age in an an area) got a number of rows in the vineyards spread around. So when I saw every family has grapes and makes their own wine, I mean it literally.

The work was fun and relaxing, and I got pretty dirty. It reminded me of my youth when I would help out in the vineyards and my grandparent's in California. There's nothing quite like the smell of fermenting (re: rotting) grapes to get the nostalgia flowing.

As I seem to always say, I have some photos, but you'll have to wait until I find a computer with a flash drive. that is unless, of course, you know somewhere I can buy 1 GB floppy disks.

(Update: photos added)