Weekend with Fulbrighters

Liz and Melissa came to visit me this weekend and it was great to get to know them better. They are both Fulbright ETAs, which means that they are teaching English in cities/towns outside of Chisinau. Liz is at a university in Comrat, which is in the South in Gaugazia where everyone speaks Russian and also Gaugazian which is similar to Turkish. Melissa is closer to Chisinau in Orhei and she's teaching 6th grade.

Liz came and stayed with me Thursday night because she wanted to check out the Flow Festival that was taking place in Chisinau. The website made it seem like this "festival of conversation" was open to the public but in reality the discussion sessions were meant for people who were nominated by their countries to participate in this event. There were 5 or 6 people from each country, including Bosnia, Ukraine, Moldova, Hungary, and some other places. I met up with Liz in the afternoon to see what it was an I was glad I went because it was pretty interesting. Getting there was a bit of a challenge though. On the website it said that it was taking place on this beach, and when we looked up the location on Google maps it looked like it was going to be right next to this big lake. However, this lake has completely dried up so when Liz went in the morning and was asking people for directions they had no idea what she was talking about. She finally found it though and told me how to get there from work so it wasn't a problem.

Anyway, so I got there and people were set up in groups and each group had a different topic to discuss. They let us sit in and listen even though we weren't participants, and everything was in English so that was good. We listened to the group that was discussing identity, and it was really fascinating especially to hear people from the Balkans talk about their life experiences. Most of the people there were professors, and one guy was a Bosnian refugee living in Germany. After the discussion section, the entire group was going on special tours of Chisinau and Liz and I managed to get in on that too. There were three options, and we went on the tour that was about the underground culture of the city. It was kind of sad because the guide would take us to some place and be like oh this used to be an open-air book market where people would come and exchange books and sit at this cafe and talk about interesting stuff etc. and well now it's a parking lot. Oh and here there used to be this amazing theater where artists would come and perform original works but it was shut down and now it's a restaurant. The last stop was at a cafe that's literally underground and still hosts concerts so it's good to know about.

Melissa came into town Friday night, and on Saturday we met up with this guy Isaac who is in the Peace Corps and lives close to her town. We also ran into a couple that I had met at the labor day bbq at the marine house and some people Isaac knows so it was kind of an American overload day. Melissa, Liz and I cooked dinner together at night and looked up some clubs to go to. We really wanted to go to the one that was rated the best in Liz's guide book and online but we found out later in the night that it doesn't exist anymore. Before that disappointment though we went to a place that Melissa had been to before where there's this big bus in the middle of the room and the bartenders serve through the windows of the bus. That was pretty cool. Then we went to the club "Decadance" where there was a laser light show dance party kind of thing that was fun. We got to dance to some euro house music and that's all we really wanted so it was a good night. I'm looking forward to visiting their towns sometime soon because I really want to get outside of Chisinau and see what life is like in other parts of the country. We're all having very different experiences so it's great to be able to get together easily and hear about what's going on with everyone else.