Improvise Quintet and Trip to Cahul

It was another eventful weekend here in Moldova. On Friday night I went to dinner with Rod at an Uzbek restaurant I’ve walked by a bunch of times and have wanted to try. The atmosphere there was really nice and the food was great. We both had pilaf with mutton and some of the traditional bread and a salad. The pilaf (Plov in Russian) reminded me of my host mom in Vladimir because she used to make that too and it tasted just about the same. After dinner we went to an underground bar I’ve been to several times to see the Improvise Quintet perform. The Facebook page said it would start at 7:30 so we got there at that time and didn’t realize until about 8:50 that we were in the wrong room because I guess they have changed the setup. We had to go through the door that is labeled as the bathroom and then there was another room where the band was performing. We only missed about 15 minutes so it wasn’t a big deal but it was still fairly confusing. Somehow these Russian girls that were sitting at our table realized that we were there for the concert and told us where to go. The band was good; the lead singer is a girl with a really pretty voice and she plays the saxophone in the group as well. In addition there was a classical acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass guitar, and electronic drum kit thing. Here is the website for the band so you can check it out http://improvise-quintet.com/.

On Saturday I headed to Cahul to visit Rebecca since Liz, Melissa, and some Peace Corps Volunteers were there as well. This was the farthest I’ve been from Chisinau. I managed to get on one of the express buses to Cahul so it only took 2.5 hours. It took about 4 to get back yesterday. On the way down the bus was pretty empty so that made the trip much more enjoyable and I was able to get some reading done. When I got to Cahul they were all downtown so Rebecca met me and we got some food at Andy’s Pizza. Cahul felt very different from other places I’ve been in Moldova right away because you don’t see or hear Russian nearly as often. It’s a nice town though and the university where Rebecca teaches is beautiful. We hung out at her apartment, Rebecca made delicious soup, and Liz taught me some moves from her strip tease exercise/dance class she takes in Comrat. This is very popular in Moldova apparently. Later a few of us went to the disco in town which was pretty swanky. Melissa and I rode back to Chisinau together the next day and when I got home my host mom’s dad and cousin were there so we had a nice dinner together with champagne because I guess we were still celebrating the old style New Year in which the beginning of the year starts on January 14^th like I mentioned in my last post.

In other news, later this week I’ll have a meeting with a lady at the International Organization for Migration (IOM) who should be able to provide a lot of useful information for my research. On Friday I think I am heading back to Congaz for my friend’s brother’s wedding. The Fulbright scholars who will be teaching in Chisinau for spring semester should be here soon too.