Over the weekend I went to Orhei (a city just a 45-minute drive away from Chisinau to the North) to visit Melissa. We were going to go to a soccer game on Saturday but it was raining and unfortunately the game was canceled. I got to meet her Russian tutor though and she had made some delicious pumpkin bread so we hung out for a bit to chat and then went to Melissa's house where I got to meet her host family a little later on. Her host family is adorable. The dad is short and very jolly and is a handyman. He was building a doghouse when I got there and was helping a neighbor working on a car when I left the next day. He also makes tea out of twigs that tastes surprisingly good. The mom seems like a really sweet person too. She lived with a host once; a gypsy (aka Romani person). She had a long conversation with us about how there aren't that many good people in the world and we need to always treat others like we want to be treated because it all comes around in the end. I had a very similar talk with my host mom in Russia at least 3 times. So she kind of reminded me of her. Especially in the way that she kept insisting for us to eat more and more at every meal. She even got me to eat cake at 11 am. Ok I guess this is just what all Eastern European hosts are like. I had blini and borscht and I was very happy. It was reallly warm in Melissa's room because she has a big wall stove situation in there. Pretty nice for sleeping in the winter I bet.
So I'm back at work today and it has been busy because we had a small forum here about the anti-trafficking program (GTIP) that I'm helping out with. A political officer from the US Embassy came, as well as a couple of ladies who work for the GTIP program in Washington, DC. I wish I could have talked to them but they came late and left early. There were also several Moldovans here from Transnistria who run Winrock's resource centers in that region. They gave presentations on the work they have been doing and that was interesting for me to hear more about. I learned a couple of new things, including that one of the centers has arranged trainings for police offers on trafficking issues and it seemed to go over well. It's hard to organize something like that and gain any interest but it seems like a really good idea if the officers would be receptive at all to the information. It seems unlikely since the Moldovan police are so corrupt, but you have to try to train and educate in order to make a difference. The resource centers are also trying to create a referral system/database in Transnistria so that when people call their helplines they can easily refer them to where they should go to have their specific issues addressed.
Oh and on an even more important note, I forgot to say anything about Chisinau Day. The concert at night was nuts. There had to have been thousands of people on the streets. I went with my host sister and her friend and they sang along to a bunch of the pop songs like the happy teenagers they are. I thought Dan Balan was great. On the big screen I could see the joy in his eyes and how proud he was to be performing in front of the people of his native land who were going crazy for him. I'm sure he doesn't get that much attention in the US. Although he has as many pantsless women on stage with him live as he does in his music videos so he must do pretty well. Anyway, apparently the next day there was a scandal all over the news about him being embarassingly drunk at the performace. I watched a couple of the youtube videos and he did seem pretty out of it but I couldn't tell at the concert at all; sounded great from where I was. Oh Dan Balan. The highlight was probably getting to hear the Numa Numa song live and see all the people dancing and singing along to it and I knew the words too which was not the case for any of the other songs except for "Chica Bomb" in which the words "Chica Bomb" make up 95% of the lyrics and 100% of what DB sings himself. It's nice that he writes his own lyrics (I think) but you can definitely tell because his English songs don't make a whole lot of sense.
No comments:
Post a Comment