Political turmoil once again

The Communists seem to have done really well in the election on Sunday. I'm not surprised at all; they ran an awesome campaign. They are much more cohesive than the other parties and did a lot to get the youth vote. I went to an incredible free concert out on the main square on Friday that was put on by the Communist candidate for mayor of Chisinau. He got a Grammy winning DJ, Benny Benassi, who played his most famous song (Satisfaction) to the best fireworks show I've seen in Chisinau this year. There was also a laser show to go along with his performance and a bunch of dancers on another stage. The square was packed with teenagers and people in their 20s. The show must have cost a ton of money to put on and the Communists definitely put a lot of money into all their banners and people walking around with flags and passing out flyers for the past month. Where all this money comes from, no one knows, and several people mentioned that it would be better to share some of that with the pensioners who can barely survive on the money they receive from the government. I've heard mixed reviews from people I've talked to about the Communist party. One lady I talked to broke into tears remembering what the communists did to her family during the Soviet Union and said she can't understand how people in Chisinau can consider themselves communists today even though the communists were responsible for sending their grandparents to Siberia to die. Several people have told me that all the communists are criminals and none of them can be trusted. Others have told me that the communists aren't associated with the ideology of communism at all anymore and are really just like all the other parties.

The communist candidate for mayor of Chisinau, however, ended up with only 48% of the vote so there will be another election in a couple of weeks. The communists are accusing the other parties of fraud and the other parties are accusing the communists of buying votes. In the meantime, a car exploded in the center of Chisinau killing the president of the tennis federation who was also the chief of staff for another candidate. There aren't many details yet but of course there is a ton of speculation.

In other news, I traveled up north to the historic town of Soroca on Sunday with a Peace Corps volunteer. He showed me around the fortress that was established in 1499 and we walked up 500 steps to see the Candle of Gratitude. It doesn't seem to be widely known what this was built to show gratitude for but it quickly became another important site in Moldova when it was built in 2004. Soroca has a large Roma community so there are a bunch of gypsy palaces in the town but we didn't really get a chance to check those out, I just saw them from a distance.

Largest wine cellar in the world

My time here in Moldova is winding down. Melissa left for the States this morning and Liz left a few days ago. I had a nice time with Melissa in Orhei this weekend at her goodbye dinner Saturday and picnic with her tutor's family on Sunday. My host family insisted on calling her last night and putting her on speakerphone to say a final goodbye. This consisted of Grigory telling her how great she is, wishing her happiness and success and most importantly wishing her luck in finding a good man. Naturally, everyone we have met in Moldova will be invited to her wedding.

Last week we finally made it to Milestii Mici, the biggest wine cellar in the world. I'm not just saying that; they have an official certificate from the Guinness Book of World Records. You have to get a taxi or have a car to do the tour because you drive through the cellar. It's enormous. There are street signs with the names of the types of wines that are stored in the barrels on each specific row. I think the most interesting fact we learned on the tour was that at one point during the time of the Soviet Union Gorbachev went on a campaign against alcoholism and wanted all the places like Milestii Mici to be destroyed. There's a secret room in the cellar where they hid all their best wine in case this were to happen. Another tidbit was that there's a very small door on each barrel so a tiny woman has to be the one to go in there and clean them. Maybe I've found my calling.

Domestic Violence and Trafficking Seminar in Cenac

Yesterday I went to a village about 80 km south of Chisinau to give a domestic violence and anti-trafficking seminar for 7th, 8th, and 9th grade girls. A Peace Corps volunteer set it up for me with his colleague. I was a little stressed about it because it was the first time I would be leading this kind of an event and I had to do it all in either Russian or Romanian. I ended up doing a little bit of both languages. I spoke primarily in Russian but the girls answered questions in Romanian and I had a lot of materials (handouts, brochures) in Romanian as well. Almost everything I did in the first part came from previous Winrock trainings. At the beginning of the class I had each girl (there were about 30) come to the front of the room and something she is good at. Common responses were dancing, drawing, writing poetry, and singing. Then she had to write something on the board under the heading "Good thoughts about women." After that I had one girl read a story from the "16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence Campaign" that Winrock participated in back in November. The story was a pretty shocking retelling of acts of domestic violence. The idea behind putting these 2 activities together is to give the girls a sense of pride in being a woman from all the positive thoughts they gathered about women and then to show how distressing it is that so many women endure this kind of violence. Next, I had printed out statements about domestic violence and the girls were split into groups to discuss whether or not the statements were myths or realities. They then read their statements to the class, gave their opinion, and then read a paragraph that gave reasons for whether the statement was true or false.

The second half of the seminar focused on domestic violence. We watched a very powerful film, "Lilya 4 Ever" that has often been used for trafficking awareness and is also just a great movie. We stopped halfway through for them to answer questions and then had a discussion at the end as well. The seminar continued for over an hour after the end of the school day so I was really pleased that most of the girls decided to stay even though they didn't have to. It was great to go to a school in a village that is so remote and difficult to get to because they don't get the attention from NGOs and government projects that other areas receive. I wish I had started doing trainings like these earlier on in the year because they are a bit difficult to set up logistically and I probably won't get around to doing another one in the next month.

To give a better sense of how difficult it is to get in and out of the village, I wasn't able to get back to Chisinau last night because there was no transportation. The only bus out of the village to Cimislia (a bigger town where you can get buses to Chisinau) leaves at 7 am and is always full. It's a huge bus from the era of the Soviet Union that has an exhaust pipe on the inside that blows exhaust into the face of one unlucky passenger in the seat in front of it. It took 45 minutes to go 7 km because the road is so bad from Cimislia to the village Cenac where I was staying.

There is no high school in the village so if you want to continue your education you have to do so in Cimislia. Since there is no viable transportation, your family has to be able to pay for you to stay in dorms during the week. This means that a lot of young people in Cenac stop their education after the 9th grade. I was really impressed with the middle school though. They have a nice building and some great projects and activities for the students to participate in.

Albania: Best trip of the year

I had an awesome time with Liz in Albania. I mentioned in one of my previous blogs that Madrid tried really hard to swing me over to team Western Europe and failed but Albania is definitely holding my interest. I would love to make a more extensive trip across the Balkans in the future. Anyway, I'll start from the beginning of our trip.

We took a night train from Chisinau to Bucharest on Monday night, leaving at 5:30 pm and arriving in Bucharest at 7 am. We met a couple of Americans on the train who are on a faith-based program that sends them around the world doing mission work for 10 months. We also got trapped out of our wagon for 2 hours in the middle of the night when we wanted to sleep because we made the mistake of going to use the nicer bathrooms that were in the dining car. Other than that the trip was unremarkable.

The weather in Bucharest was beautiful and we sat by the lake in Youth Park all day because our flight wasn't until 7 pm. We had a picnic and watched people jogging and biking. This is something you would never see in Moldova.

Our flights went on schedule and we arrived in Tirana at 11:30 pm. We stayed at a hostel the first night because we were getting there so late but we met up with another Fulbright student the next day and stayed at his apartment for the next two nights. His place was really nice and it's located right in the city center so we could walk just about everywhere. We had quite a bit of time to explore the city and were lucky to have beautiful weather. We took a cable car up to the top of Mt. Dajty and had a gorgeous view. Liz was pretty terrified on the way up and we probably wouldn't have gone if we'd known what it was going to be like but in the end it was worth it. There's a hotel/restaurant at the top of the mountain that has a rotating bar on the top floor that gives another nice view. That night we went to another rotating bar on the top of the Sky Tower and got to look out at the Tirana city lights.

Something we really enjoyed was the fact that food is so inexpensive in Albania. You can get a huge, delicious meal in a nice restaurant for $5. There are 10 cafes with outdoor seating on every block. Both the Americans and Albanians we met said that you would think people never work because these cafes are always full in the middle of the work day. The salaries are comparable to those in Moldova but living expenses in general seem to be a lot less. Before this trip I had maybe had 2 cups of coffee in my entire life but I had at least 8 over 3 days in Albania. I cappuccino would be about $1.50 and they always bring a glass of water with it for free too.

On Friday we took a mini bus to Vlora, a beautiful beach town in the south. We met two students, Semi and Marsela, on the bus and Semi said she would invite us to her parent's house. We spent the first day on our own walking along the beach and taking in the scenery but the next day we met up with those girls and they took us all around town in their cousin's car. At night we went to Semi's house and met her mom, dad, sister, brother-in-law, cousin, grandfather, and some others.

A couple of the guys spoke English well because they had worked abroad so they told us about Albanian life and politics which was really interesting. They cooked us traditional food that included a spinach, egg and cheese dish, rice pilaf, pasta, salad, and homemade bread. We also took a walk to explore their huge expanse of farmland. Semi's brother-in-law said that if I want they will give me a plot of land so I can build a house there with my Albanian husband.

We spent the next day with the family as well and went around to the houses of some other relatives. One house was way up on the mountain and had a gorgeous view of the ocean.

I wish we'd had more time to see other places in Albania but Semi's mom already invited Liz and I to her son's wedding that's coming up in two years so maybe we'll be back in the near future.

Click here to see more pictures.

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.