Five months down (almost)
Meat in the kitchen
From my own experience and what I’ve heard from other Volunteers, in Moldova people in a household tend to eat when they are hungry and don’t usually place much emphasis on sitting down to meals together regularly. This works just fine for them as they spend time together drinking wine, watching television, or doing chores. I’ve noticed, however, that in my house, my host parents would wait until I left the kitchen to start eating and would sometimes eat at the same time as me but in another room.
The other night we sat down together to eat dinner and I, hoping to make a point, said “for me is nice we eat together as if we were to be a family”. To which my host father replied “this is a good meal without meat”. After a little questioning I found out that my family thought I couldn’t even watch them eat food that had meat in it and had been eating when I wasn’t around. I felt awful and explained that it did not matter to me what they ate or where they ate it and that although I really appreciated their concern, I would much rather spend my dinners talking to them!
As it turns out, there will be a few long stretches of vegetarianism in my house in the near future as my family observes пост, which is two or three long periods of time over Christmas and Easter during which no meat and only certain dairy products can be eaten.
It’s dark now
Anway, the days here have become grey and short. My host mom yelled at me the other day for coming home at five because it was already dark and there aren’t any street lights besides the few along the main road in town. The darkness, my endlessly flexible schedule, and Russian have made it hard for me to shake the surrealness of this experience and I’m beginning to wonder if I’m going to spend the next 21 months living in a dreamworld. The fact that I notice fewer and fewer superficial cultural differences on a daily basis simply makes the ones that still stand out (the ones that are perhaps bigger or fundamental) harder to deal with or brush off.
Long story short
November is well under way. On November 8th (five months in country), all probationary restrictions on the M24 COD and AgriBusiness Volunteers will be over and we’ll be able to travel outside the country, use vacation days, and visit other Volunteers in Moldova. I’m contemplating a trip to Turkey in December to visit my friends Emily and Hesham. My friend Sinziana is also coming home for Christmas to Romania and it would be great to see her while she’s nearby. So much time, so much to do.
As Vince would say, “Craig, you’re looking jazzy in your jazzy hat and sweater vest.”
2 weeks ago | Tags: cold family food peace corps photo travel vegetarianism jazzy fashions | Comments
