Easter in my host fam's village

I just got back from my first orthodox Easter experience and thought I should post about it right away since I'm leaving for Albania soon and will want to write all about that adventure when I get back next week. I took a small bus up north with my host sister Saturday afternoon and arrived at the village, Temeleuti, around 7:30 pm. The population of the village is 1,780. Not so different from my hometown. A little bit bigger. We went to my host mom's brother's house and started celebrating around 9 with an impressive spread of food. We went to bed a little after 11 and woke up at 4 am to go to the church. There's a tradition to stand out all night in or around the church but apparently not many people do that in this village because it's one of the smaller ones. When we got there though just about everyone from the village was standing in a circle around the church with candles and food laid out on the ground including sweet bread, candy, meat, and eggs that are painted red. After a while the priest walked around with his incense burner and not long after that he came around again with a small group of women singing. At that time he splashed everyone and all the food with holy water. After everything was blessed we packed up and walked home. Here's a picture of the village church at sunrise.

Once we got back to the house at 6 am we broke out the wine and cognac to really start the celebration. After a little while my host mom left to visit some people and I was able to take a short nap before going around to visit other relatives with my host mom's brother's family. Basically the whole day consists of visiting lots of people, saying "Hristos a inviat" (Christ has risen) and eating and drinking all day long. Before we left the house I got to watch the wedding DVD of the couple whose house we were going to first. We had to fast forward through a lot of it though because it was on 2 disks and very long. It was cool to watch because most of the traditions were the same as what I experienced when I went to the wedding in Gagauzia and the main difference was just that everyone was speaking Romanian instead of Russian. One additional tradition they had was for people to dance around with sheets and blankets. They also cooked all the food themselves whereas the wedding I went to was catered and a bit more extravagant.

Another thing I had to do before we left the house was go see all of their animals because I accidentally said "yes" when someone asked me if I had never seen a pig before. I should mention that not many people in this village speak Russian because there hasn't been any need to since the collapse of the Soviet Union. This weekend was great for practicing my Romanian but I could only understand about 60% of any given conversation. One person also mentioned that she can't understand pure Romanian so given the fact that I'm studying the Romanian language as it is spoken in Romania rather than in a small village in Moldova you can understand how following a conversation might be difficult. I had never heard the word "geeny" before (the g pronounced like in girl) but everyone used it in literally every sentence. It's clear that it means something like cool or awesome but I'm not sure if it's even a word in Romanian or what. Anyway, you can look at my Facebook photo album for pictures of those animals.

I'm running out of steam writing this because I'm still pretty tired from the weekend so I'm going to wrap up but might add some stuff later. The best part of the day was going down by the river and having a picnic out in the sun. I'll definitely be going back to the village before I leave Moldova. At one point people were getting pretty worked up over who I was going to visit first. One couple has a son that couldn't make it for Easter but according to my host mom is "an interesting guy" so we will go visit them when he's around for sure. The husband also brought the best homemade wine I have ever had so that's more incentive. At one point someone mentioned how lucky I am that I can go around to different villages and just pick any guy I want. At another house one of the grandmothers (who has Parkinsons and can barely walk but managed to cut some tulips for me and another girl) thanked me for coming, crossed herself, and then said may God grant me a good husband. This is all standard. I had such a nice time yesterday that I was starting to think I could see myself settling down in a village with a handsome Moldovan guy. Then I remembered that I'm not at all skilled with cooking, taking care of animals, or housework so I would almost certainly be the worst Moldovan housewife in history. My host mom's sister-in-law said that the next time I come to visit they'll give me an apron and put me to work though so we'll see.

Spriiiing

Spring is finally here and it's not going anywhere. Babushki are crouched over all the little trash cans in the park painting them a shiny new coat of green. The benches are also under repair. The bottoms of all the tree trunks will be covered by white spray paint by the end of the week to protect them from insects. The leaves are popping out rapidly and it appears like the general population has come out of hibernation. Last week only 2 people showed up to my negotiation skills class but today we had the highest turnout ever. I think this is more related to the fact that one of the professors definitely yelled at them all last week for ditching class. It was great to have them all there though and the lesson went really well. It's hard to believe we only have a few classes left before the end of the semester. Next week everyone has time off for Easter. I'm heading to my host mom's village on Saturday to experience the holiday there.

Conference & Guess Who

The conference on Friday didn't disappoint. I got on a bus with professors and some students at 8 am and got back to the city center around 10 pm so it was a long day. The conference took place at a hotel in Vadul lui Voda which is a place where people go to relax and get out of the city. There are little cabins you can rent out and the complex is near the river in a very pretty location.

The professor in charge of the event opened the meeting by introducing the guests. The first person he mentioned was the young American who looks just like one of our Moldovan students and whose name, Raspberry, even shows that she is basically one of us. Everyone turned to look at me and I gave a little wave. Then he went on to introduce the ambassador from Russia.

To my surprise, the entire conference was conducted in Russian. I guess this is because they didn't want to hire a translator and some of the guests did not speak Romanian. Most of the roundtables and meetings I have been to have had simultaneous translation but this event was a bit less formal and more like a discussion most of the time then presentations with powerpoint and all that. I was expecting at least a few of the talks to be in Romanian though since the agenda was all in Romanian and of course most of the professors there are publishing their work in Romanian. Not to mention this was a conference about Moldovan identity and the official language of Moldova is Moldovan/Romanian. At any rate, I was glad everything was in Russian so that I could understand the talks.

I have way too much to write about since there were at least 25 talks over the course of the day so I'll just highlight a few points that I thought were interesting. One discussion touched on the fact that Moldovan history is taught in Transnistria but not in the rest of Moldova where the subject is Romanian history and that it is very difficult to find journals that will publish articles about Moldova rather than Romania. One speaker said that his grandson was told he was wrong when he claimed that Stefan cel Mare (The Prince of Moldavia from 1457-1504) was Moldovan, not Romanian. Another speaker said that his granddaughter told him one day that she is Romanian; he asked how that could be since he and his wife are Moldovan as are her parents.

Someone from Transnistria mentioned that 18% of citizens in a poll consider themselves to be Soviet people which is even more interesting than responding that one is a citizen of the world seeings as the Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore.

A professor proposed the idea of creating a separate term for people who reside in Moldova (including Russians, Bulgarians, Ukrainians, etc.) that distinguishes them from ethnic Moldovans. This system is used in Russia where ethnic Russians are "russkiye" and citizens of the Russian federation are "rossiyane." This sparked some debate among the participants but I don't think the guy was able to explain himself as well as he wanted to and it will be interesting to read his paper when it's published.

The most interesting topic of discussion for me focused on migration and Moldovans living abroad. One of the professors has conducted a study of Moldovans living in Portugal. He conducted interviews and found that the migrants there feel that if one wants to integrate into the culture she should let go of her Moldovan identity. He also found that Russian and Romanian speaking Moldovans abroad are divided and if they do meet they tend to speak in Portuguese rather than Russian. Another interesting point he made is that Moldovans who have been living/working abroad come back to Moldova when they are pensioners because they have managed to be able to receive pensions from both countries and it is less expensive to live here.

That's all I have to say about the conference for now other than that we had a nice banquet at the end and I gathered up the courage to give a toast in Russian. I talked to a lot of the students who were excited to meet me because they have either worked in the US or will be going there soon.

On Saturday night I went to a Romanian rap concert with Melissa. While we were waiting outside a guy sitting near us asked if we were speaking English and it turned out that he is visiting Moldova from LA as an aspiring Russian rap artist. He was born in Chisinau; his mom is from Odessa and his dad is from Cameroon but studied medicine in Moldova. I saw that one of the Moldovan rappers who would be performing that night, Guz, was just hanging around outside so I told this guy to go introduce himself to see if they could collaborate on something. Here's one of Guz's videos; it even has some English subtitles. The concert was pretty good overall. There weren't as many people there as I expected and Guess Who, the main act, only performed shortened versions of his songs which was kind of lame. It was a different crowd then we were used to since we usually end up running into Russians but, other than the guy from LA, most of the people there were Romanian-oriented.

East-West Conference

As I've mentioned before, I have been co-teaching a course on negotiation skills with a Fulbright Scholar at the Institute for International Relations of Moldova. It turns out that I can thank my affiliation with this institute for a pretty awesome opportunity this week to participate in a conference with the title "The Evolution of the Moldovan National and Political Identity: The Essentials and Characteristics of Internal and External Perceptions." It turns out a professor at the institute is also involved with the "East-West" Center that is hosting the event.

I knew very little about this event before I agreed to go but a professor from the university just sent me a program and everything about it looks like fantastic preparation for my master's program in Eurasian, Russian and East European studies. The schedule on Friday is packed. I'll get on a bus at 8 am in front of the Russian embassy and be bussed to a hotel in some area on the outskirts of Chisinau. The speakers include the ambassador from Belarus to Moldova, former ambassadors to Romania and Spain, and professors of history, sociology, psychology, and philosophy. Many other ambassadors and high-level government officials including the President of the Parliament and the Minister of External Affairs were invited. Topics will touch on the genesis and evolution of Moldovan identity, European integration, ethnic minorities in Transnistria and Gagauzia, migration issues, and a lot more. I'm really looking forward to this and hope my Romanian skills will be sufficient to understand most of the material because I think I might be the only English speaker there. The organizers of the event wanted a couple of Fulbright scholars there to make the event more international but due to the fact that the agenda is only in Romanian and Russian I kind of doubt that many of the presentations will be in English. Maybe they will translate the Romanian lectures into Russian if some of the people from Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine do not speak Romanian. We'll see. More on this event later of course.

In other news, I went to an OSCE Anti-Trafficking and Gender roundtable meeting today and it was one of the most interesting that I've been to so far. The OSCE Representative on Gender Issues is visiting this week from Washington, DC so I think they were trying to share as much information with her as possible and many more people were present this time than last month in general. The Moldovan government's 2010 report on trafficking in persons was distributed and it shows a decrease in identified cases but there was once again a discussion on the difficulty of producing accurate statistics. The prosecutor from the Causeni region always poses some tough questions and constructive criticism. He mentioned that the roundtables should consist of fewer presentations on the successes of the various actors and more on a discussion of actual problems that the participants are facing and how they can make their projects more effective. As of now, the meetings consist primarily of powerpoint presentations by 1 or 2 NGOs or government actors that give overviews of their projects and some statistics on how many beneficiaries they have helped and so on. It's essential for the participants to have an idea of all the projects that are out there so that overlap can be prevented and coordination can be improved, but I would say that about 75% of the group is the same from month to month and the regulars already know the basics of the projects being presented, unless they are brand new of course. The meetings usually run short on time so the question and answer section, which is always the most interesting and productive part, is limited.

I also went to the US Embassy today to have visa pages added to my passport. It looks a little sketchy now because I have an old passport and the pages they added are from the new version so they look completely different and are just taped in there at the end. The consular officer assured me that it's legitimate though. I'll be going to Albania in a couple of weeks with Liz so it needs to work. By the way, check out Liz's blog because she has a great new video about Transnistria.

http://moldovamoldovamoldova.wordpress.com/

Fulbright Seminar in Sofia, Bulgaria

The Academic Enrichment Seminar for Fulbright students that took place in Sofia, Bulgaria at the Hilton was a great success. The Bulgarian-American Commission for Educational Exchange organized the program with the title "Social and Cultural Integration in 21st Century Europe." The two-day seminar was packed with lectures by Bulgarian professors on topics of diversity, Balkan minorities, cosmopolitanism, Bulgarian culture and more. Solomon Passy, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, gave a lecture titled "Internet: From Cultural Diplomacy to Culture of Democracy" that focused on his metaphor comparing running a government to flying an airplane. His talk was a little odd but entertaining and he's clearly a very intelligent man.

The best part of the trip was meeting the other Fulbrighters and hearing about their research projects in Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Macedonia, Greece, Croatia, Cyprus, Romania, Slovenia, Turkey, and Bulgaria. 14 out of 32 of us presented during the panel discussions on topics ranging from the loss of textile traditions in Macedonia to translating forgotten languages in Slovenia to shifting ideas of masculinity amongst Croatian men. All three of us from Moldova presented and in general were very excited to share a little bit of information about Moldova with everyone else who was present since no one there really knew much about the country. The worst part of the trip was that we all wished we had had the opportunity earlier on since now we all want to visit each other and we're running out of time.

The commission really pulled out the bells and whistles for our stay. The hotel was posh to say the least and you could tell who the Fulbrighters were in the dining room at breakfast by how overwhelmed we all looked by the selection. I don't think any of us are really living in luxury in our host countries so we were easily impressed. They took us out to dinner at a great Bulgarian restaurant on Friday night that had traditional food, dancing, and music and arranged a trip to the city of Plovdiv on Saturday.

It was great for me to be able to go on this trip because I was able to revisit the city I lived in during the summer of 2009 when I interned at the US Embassy in the capital. One of the Bulgarian employees who works in the political section and helped me as a translator when I was interviewing a prosecutor of an organized crime case came to the seminar the second day and was there for my presentation. It was great to catch up with him afterward and he introduced me to one of the new political officers whom I chatted with for a little bit about NGO competition and corruption.

I'll leave you with a photo from the traveling "Buddy Bears" exhibition that is now in Sofia. There is a bear representing each country and Moldova's is obviously the best.

Humor Day in Odessa

Melissa and I decided to take a last minute trip to Odessa this weekend after finding out about the April Fool's Day festival that promised to be quite a scene. After going to the opera to see Madame Butterfly with my host family and Fulbrighters and having a couple of my host mom's boyfriend's signature Bloody Mary shots we headed to the north bus station to try our luck at getting a seat on a bus around midnight. The two big buses in the parking lot were full so we had to get on the one mini bus. We got worried for a second because I thought the driver was this old man standing near the bus who was clearly wasted. Melissa demanded to know who was driving though and it wasn't him so we were in the clear. Of course he was on our bus though along with his enormous bag full of branches and another bag full of what sounded to be quite a collection of bottles. He passed out as soon as he got on the bus and didn't wake up again until we got to the Ukrainian border where he had to show his passport. This was impressive because the driver blasted a Russian gangster show on the TV for the entire 5 hour trip. While we were waiting to cross the border the driver came back on and said "Grandpa" (with the meaning "Hey old man," not that he was his grandfather) and motioned for him to get out of the vehicle. It turned out he had to pay a bribe to cross the border for some reason. The 3 twenty-two year-old guys that were partying in the back of the mini bus got this info out of him. Soon after they all became friends because the old guy pulled out a bottle of vodka and offered them some. They asked if it was good, to which he replied, "There are two kinds of vodka: good and really good." Their eruption into laughter served as agreement and they went through the bottle pretty quickly.

All in all, it was an entertaining trip to Odessa through the middle of the night. We arrived at our hostel at 5 am and the girl working was super nice and let us go into the room to sleep right away. We were expecting that we would just be able to leave our stuff there but they didn't even charge us for sleeping there that morning. We got up around 9:30 and the American guy who is co-owner of the hostel gave us a map, a schedule of the festival, and told us of good places to go to breakfast. We walked around for hours on Friday and saw quite a bit of the city. The downtown area has some really pretty spots and we got to go to the famous Potemkin stairs down by the water. The festival consisted of tons of people walking around in weird hats and costumes if they were really into it. We got matching sailor hats that say "1st of April" and "Odessa" and we looked legit. There were also concerts, a parade, lots of street food and games. Standard festival. At night we went out with the owners of the hostel and a couple guys from England to check out the gala concert. After that we met up with a couple other people, got food, and went to a bar. We were supposed to go to the Detroit Club which was rumored to be "as ghetto as real Detroit" but it was closed so we went to a different place close to the hostel that was nice but low key.

The next day we splurged on a lunch replete with fresh juice, pizza, delicious salad, and milkshakes in the prettiest area of Odessa. (Not splurging by US standards considering that cost us about $10 each.) We got on the bus to head back to Chisinau around 3 and had a quiet trip back. It only took 4 hours this time because the driver was nuts. Quite a bumpy ride because the roads are in disrepair to put it mildly. I liked driving through a bunch of villages to see some of the houses and people shepherding, doing other kinds of work, or playing outside. When we got back to the city we had dinner at the mall and saw the movie "Limitless" dubbed in Russian. Great end to the night.

Festival of Languages

Another busy weekend in Chisinau. On Friday night I went to the Bach Festival at the organ hall with Fulbrighters and listened to some great music. The prime minister's wife was a patron of the event so he was there with her and as a result there was a lot of security. The German, Polish, and French ambassadors were also there and they all gave speeches to kick off the concert.

On Saturday morning I went to Winrock to check out a training for new Moldovan and American volunteers who will conduct trainings on business and entrepreneurial skills for students in the villages. After that I met up with a student from my conversation group for tea and headed to a photo exhibition that was taking place at an old abandoned museum near my house. That place is extremely creepy. Here's a link to some more info about the event that opened the exhibit. http://chisinow.blogspot.com/.

The final event of the weekend for me was the Festival of Languages that took place on Sunday at the Jewish Community Center. The festival was organized by the Tolerance Club to celebrate the International Day for the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination. There were 20 languages taught in 40 minute sessions over the course of the afternoon. During the first cycle you chose one European language to learn (French, German, Turkish, Finnish, Portuguese, etc.), in the second a language that is spoken in Moldova (Romanian, Russian, Gagauzian, Bulgarian, etc.), and in the last cycle some more exotic languages (Urdu, Chinese, Swahili, Japanese and more.) I attended the lessons on Turkish, Gagauzian, and Swahili. It was very cool that they found native speakers of so many languages to attend and teach basic phrases as well as share information about their cultures.