And then there were 184 more holidays...

So I reported on my two thanksgivings. Well then I had 2 Christmases, 2 New Year’ses (I’ve never tried to make New Year’s plural before...), and 2 Saint’s Days. Let me just say that it’s a bit of a miracle that I’m only a little bit fat right now. The Christmases and New Year’ses were pretty standard; I spent them in the village with extended host family, which was nice and relaxed. I cooked dinner on my Christmas, and helped out with food on their Christmas. Saint Vasile Day (the last of the holidays!) was probably my favorite. I have the fortune of knowing 3 Mr. Vasiles, so I got to go to 3 celebrations. (The tradition is that if you are named after the saint whose feast day it is, you are supposed to put together a meal for your family and friends). Well Saint Vasile is the largest feast day of the year, so these celebrations were all a bit over done. Especially on the eve of the feast day, because this is also Second New Year’s. The tradition on Second New Year’s is for the high-school aged kids to go around the neighborhood dressed up in weird clothes and painted faces, yelling poems and in general just making noise. The idea is to be thankful for the harvest and the year that has passed, and to wish people well for the year that is coming. So on the eve of Saint Vasile/Second New Year’s, I started at my host dad’s brother’s; about 20 people, 3 hours of eating and drinking and (loud) singing. As soon as I got home, I walked down the path (falling down once due to the ice) to my counterpart’s house. Her husband’s name is Vasile, and she always has good parties. I’ve met most of their relatives now; they always come from other parts of Moldova for various celebrations at my counterpart’s house. There were also some neighbors that I know, and the village choir director. So I knew almost all of the 25 or so people, and it was a pretty jolly atmosphere. A few large groups of students came by to yell poems at us, so we would all push and shove to get outside and watch their merry-making. The dad of one of my English boys told me that he likes it that I run, because when I run past when they are working out in the fields, his son works harder. Hehe. So anyhoo, the next day I had barely recovered from the evening’s festivities before we were off to another Uncle Vasile and 5 more hours of eating and drinking. Whew. They tell me it’s all over now, and yes, it has been about two weeks since I’ve stuffed my face.

Since things have somewhat gotten back to normal now, I have been quite busy. We had a lot of reporting to do for Peace Corps, and my two counterparts and I had a brainstorming session to evaluate the previous year and discuss what we want to do this year. I gave my second business lesson, on entrepreneurship, for the beekeeping project. We’ve had more English lessons than usual, and I’m working on updating the English manual that we currently use, which is available to all volunteers. This week I found out that one of the girls in my class, an 8th-grader, has been in turn using her free time to teach English to some of the 4th-graders! She always surprises me with how much she goes above and beyond, and how much she manages to learn on her own. Good for her.

I’ve spent a very large amount of time lately working on a rabbit-farming project. The idea is to train 20 unemployed or under-employed village women in all aspects of rabbit farming and to provide them with a few high-quality rabbits, known for the quality and quantity of meat, in order to start their own small farms next to their homes. We will also be working with them on the business side, especially on marketing and financial management. The idea is that even small farms will be able to provide supplementary incomes, as well as give the women something to do and feel pride in. I’ll be going with host mom tomorrow to Chisinau to present the project to the grant committee and convince them that it is a good idea to fund us. I’ve also been working individually with 3 people from the village who would like to start or expand their own businesses. I’m hoping at least one of them will get off the ground. Finally, I’ve also started working with the ‘Youth Eagles’ group at school, to help them improve their volunteerism/community involvement program. Oh, and of course, there is always women’s empowerment camp stuff to do! We’re currently searching for a new Moldovan NGO to work with this year, to which we can eventually turn over the reigns of control to on all aspects of camp planning and implementation.

So the weather here is a bit ridiculous right now. While those of you back in the midwest are experiencing blistering cold and extra-normous amounts of snow, we are experiencing temps in the high 30s, even low 40s, and extra-normous amounts of mud. I have never in my life experienced a January like this one. One of my fellow volunteers joked that we should make mud-walking an official sport, with points for speed, amount of mud on shoes, and cleanliness of pants. And I’m pretty sure Romania hates me. While I was there in September to go hiking, it was too cold and we were snowed out of the mountains. Now, I had planned a trip for this week to go skiing, and it is too warm and we we will ‘mudded’ out of the mountains. Seriously?

Just for fun this month I thought I’d pass on some Moldovan superstitions (I am making no judgments on said superstitions, but simply putting them out there):
-If a girl sits at the corner of a table, she will never get married
-If you sit on the floor your ovaries (if you have them) will freeze
-If you stand in the ‘current’ you will get sick. In fact, most sickness is caused by the current
-If you forget something you can’t turn back to get it or you will have bad luck
-If someone doesn’t recognize you as you approach them, you will have a good-looking spouse
-50 grams of vodka cures anything

In other news, I’m still singing with the village choir. Rehearsals are a stitch because the 8 or so ladies are always arguing and yelling at each other and gossiping. Generally, we don’t actually start rehearsing until about 45 minutes into rehearsal, and then they start arguing again about the grammar of the song or whether there should be a pause after the second verse or not, or if we’re really going to sing that at the upcoming concert or not. I have to say that the actual singing is a bit of a challenge. This next week we’re going to Chisinau to sing at a large 20th anniversary celebration of some TV (that I’ve never seen) that broadcasts from Chisinau. We are singing two songs, neither of which I had heard before last week. But of course the 8 women know them by heart and have sung them a million times. There is of course no music, so I copied the lyrics out of one of the lady’s notebooks, listened to them sing it once to learn the melody, and then tried to sing. But it was really fast, and the vocab is rather strange so I wasn’t that familiar with it, and my tongue just got all jumbled up. I get eyed with disdain from one of the older women, but the rest just told me to shake it off. I’ll know it all just fine by Thursday. Might take a few private lessons, but I’ll get it....

Funniest thing I saw this month: at one of the many celebrations, forgot which one, there was a bowl of mini-marshmallows sitting on the table. They were left over from when I had made sweet potatoes on Christmas. My two-year-old baby cousin tried one. And then another. Nice, she likes them, but I didn’t give it much thought. Well, we turn our attention back to her two minutes later, and the entire bowl is empty, and her cheeks are stuffed with mini-marshmallows, just as if she had been playing ‘Chubby Bunny’! HAHAHA! Ok, maybe you had to see it, but trust me, it was hilarious.