Last night I met up with Matt, the volunteer coordinator for Winrock, and some of the Moldovan university students who volunteer for the organization. We went to "Andy's Pizza" which is a Moldovan restaurant chain that looks very, very American. The new menus are all just color pictures with names in English and they look like they could have come out of a Denny's. The food was good, there was a lot of it, and it was inexpensive. There were six or seven of us there in total, and it was really nice to meet some new people. I spoke to the girls near me in Russian, and Matt spoke to the students across and next to him in Romanian. Then we spoke in English too, of course. So language wasn't really a problem at dinner.
After dinner, Yulia invited us to her apartment for a birthday party because her birthday had been the day before. We took taxis there and had some Moldovan salads and different appetizers that she had prepared. She also had some really good tirimasu for dessert. Yulia's older sister was there, and we started to encounter some language difficulties around the table because Matt speaks Romanian but no Russian, I speak Russian but no Romanian, and Yulia's sister doesn't speak any English. We made do talking in different languages and someone would translate once in a while, but that was a situation I hadn't been in before. I guess that's what happens when you have 2 official languages. I enjoyed hearing them talk in Romanian though and I was able to pick up a few phrases.
At any rate, I'm glad that I met some people who work with Winrock. One of the girls, Olga, is a project assistant and will be working right next to me in the office during the afternoons. Matt's last day is this coming Tuesday so I'll be taking his desk. Should work out well!
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