Cucumbers and Mayonnaise

Hi all,

Sorry it has been so long since I've posted. We (the PCTs) are so busy that it is hard to find time to go to someone's house to use their internet. Luckily, like a lost puppy, I followed my friend Kaylee home today.

For this post I wanted to give you guys a glimpse of what life in Moldova is like but because I have to get back to class soon I'm going to give it to you in segments. You're excited, aren't you?

The food
The food in Moldova is very much dependent on the season. Everyone has their own garden and right now the fruits and veggies that are ready to eat are: cucumbers, tomatoes, vegetable marrow (like zucchini but bigger and white), raspberries, cherries (sweet and sour), carrots, cabbage, potatoes and green beans. Unfortunately, we don't get to eat the raspberries and cherries fresh because most families harvest them and then make a canned juice with it called compot. This stuff is delicious. I just had a glass of apricot and raspberry compot - like heaven.

Now, when I say that the food is seasonal I mean that at every meal you have something from the garden. This sounds great however, after you've eaten approximately 5000 cucumbers for breakfast, lunch and dinner the novelty of garden fresh veggies loses some appeal.

Every family is different on how they season their food but Moldovans LOVE salt. Everything has salt in it and a ton of it. I told my host mom that I can't eat a lot of salt and I think it confused her, but she's amazing so she just rolled with it. They also put dill in almost everything, which is delicious. My favorite meal so far has been a chicken soup that is made with chicken, salt (obvs.), carrots, potatoes, onion and dill. The other herbs they use are one that my dictionary translated to savory, parsley and celery leaf. I haven't seen any actual celery stalks here yet though, just leaves.

Moldovans also love their oil and mayonnaise. To fry an egg there is at least a half cup of oil in the pan. I told my host mom that you can still cook it the same but use less oil and I think she's going to try it. Mayonnaise is eaten on everything. Yesterday, my family took me to a lake where we had a bar-b-que and they finished an entire thing of mayo. Not to mention it was just sitting out all day in the sun. I have no idea how they don't have major bathroom time after I see things like this. They also use a lot of sour cream which in romanian is called smantana (there are some accents in there too but I can't figure out how to make them on the blog). Anyway every time someone asks me if I want any sour cream I get really excited because I hear "montana" and think they are asking about home.

Loves and Challenges of Moldova
I only have a few more minutes so I wanted to give you a quick picture of the great things and the things that are challenging for me right now.

Loves:

• The landscape. It is beautiful here, rolling hills covered in lush flora.
• The people (for the most part, or those that I can understand). My LTIs, the admin staff and the families and community members I've met are wonderful people. Extremely hard working, generous, hospitable and family orientated.
• The language. This is really a love/hate relationship but Romanian is a beautiful language.
• My family's indoor, flushing toilet.
• Hearing birds every morning (also love/hate as the roosters I want to murder - Mom, Cedar, Connor you know what I'm talking about)
• The goats on the road
• The pride that people have in their country's traditions

Challenges:

• The dogs. Dogs here are pretty much strictly used as doorbells and guard dogs. This is something I can live with (I made friends with my family's dog so give him some love when he's off the chain- when he is on the chain he is too scary to go near). However, the fact that they bark non-stop is something that drives me nuts. Connor, it's kind of like that dog the Smith's have that we wanted to introduce to the bb gun..but times 1000.
• The serious issues. Last week was pretty rough. We talked about the extreme prejudice against the LGBT community here and it was very bleak - I will go into that more in later posts. I also had a frank discussion with my host mom about alcoholism, suicide and domestic abuse in Moldova, all of which are prevalent and visible here. 
• Buying anything. This is a small challenge and will get better as my language improves but it is so confusing buying things here. You walk into a store and you tell the clerk what you want (extremely difficult when you don't know the word for what you want) and then half the time the price is different from what is listed because of random taxes. 
• Traveling in anything that goes over 5 MPH. It is terrifying. More on this later.

Thanks for staying in touch with me and I'll try and get some pics up soon!