Здравствуй, Кишинев

On Thursday, I was (unfortunately) running a bit late. Despite the fact that I didn’t get up until almost half an hour past my alarm and left for the bus ten minutes later than usual, I still managed to get to class on time. In class, most of the day was spent reviewing grammar for the test that was scheduled for the next day. In our phonetics class, our teacher Galina called on us randomly to recite a text we had for homework the night before. She then wrote our grades on the board. Here, instead of percentages, they grade us on a scale from 1 to 10 (ten being the best). I got a 9/10, which I was fine with since I had been the first to go and definitely could have spent more time reviewing the exact wording of the text at home. After class, we had three and a half hours before our afternoon activity, which was a cooking class. We split into a few groups, and I went over to Pushkin street with Devin, Amaya and Greg to get some food to go, which we ate in the Central Park. We talked...

Since I’m so behind on my writing, I’ll probably try to keep these posts comparatively short. I got to school on time on Wednesday (no more protests), and classes went on as usual. Originally, our plan was to go to the Ethnographic Museum after school, but they randomly decided to close for a cleaning day, so we had to switch this excursion to another day and change our lunch plans. We walked over to Andy’s Food Market, where we had a tomato soup and блины (pretty much moldovan crepes) filled with potatoes, chicken and mushrooms, and topped with sour cream. It was really good! We also got to order our food for the next time we go there in a few weeks, and I made sure to get as much food as I possibly could for 110 lei (our price limit for group lunches, and about 6 dollars) which included a main course, side and dessert—impressive considering you can’t even get an appetizer for $6 in the U.S. Our tomato soup with garlic bread. After lunch we walked back to the university t...

What. A. Day. When the day started off not so well, maybe I should have taken the hint: my alarm rang at 7:02 as scheduled (I’m very peculiar about these things), but for some reason I didn’t get out of bed until 7:29...so it was a pretty slow (and then rushed) start to my day. Since I had gotten up late, I was running a little behind, and Elizabeth got on the bus before me. I got on one of the next busses, a little nervous to be alone since I had never gone to school by myself (always with Elizabeth or Vera). Luckily, about a stop into my ride I noticed that Mattie was also on my bus, which turned out to be VERY useful. About halfway through my first bus ride, I got a call from Elizabeth saying that there might be some issues with our commute: since there was a protest going on in front of city hall (on the same street where we changed buses), the #22 (what we needed to get on) wasn’t running, but she was looking for a stop that it might have been re-routed to.  Su...

Today was a pretty uneventful day. I had to dress a bit more nicely than usual, since we were going to visit the American Resource Center (technically part of the U.S. Embassy) after class. Classes for the day went pretty normally, mostly learning conjugations and vocabulary, and it was cooler than last week, which was really nice since the classrooms don’t have fans or air-conditioning. The view from our classroom window. After class, we had lunch in the courtyard, which had been ordered from Andy’s Pizza (apparently it is a local favorite), which was actually pretty good. This was mainly since we didn’t have much time before we had to be at the A.R.C., so we couldn’t go to a restaurant. Once we got into the A.R.C., we had to go to security (which proved more difficult than it should have been, since there wasn’t enough space for everyone to put their bag in a locker, so we had to go through the contents). After that was out of the way, we sat down in a large room that ha...

Short post today! Since it was Sunday, we didn’t have class and there were no excursions planned, it was a pretty relaxed day. My host mom is a Protestant Christian, so she went to church in the morning and I slept in. I decided that since it had been a long week, I hadn’t gotten too much sleep the night before, and I was really tired I wouldn’t go to church with her, but I might go next week or at some point before the end of the program. I slept in until about 9:30, and headed to the kitchen, where my host mom had left a big breakfast on the table for me. There were some cucumbers, some bread with butter, a sausage (looks like a hot dog, but actually really good), a cake of some sort made with berries, and the last of the zucchini блинчики. Breakfast! After that I mostly focused on doing my homework for class and getting some summer reading done, as well as updating myself on U.S. news (ugh). Bepa got back from church at about 1:30, and then I had some soup for lunch. T...

Once again, I didn’t have time to write yesterday, so I’m a little behind. One of the best things about yesterday was that the temperature finally came down! The high yesterday was 66 degrees Fahrenheit, more than 20 degrees lower than the past few days. There was also a lot of wind, which made it seem even colder than it was. Our excursion was to Old Orhei and Curchi, two of around 50 historic monasteries in Moldova. Elliott had told us the day before that we should be sure to wear pretty modest clothing, and that girls had to have headscarves if we wanted to go inside. I had read on the group chat that several host families were insisting that the girls wear skirts (even though we were told there would be a good deal of walking), but I had not yet encountered this issue. As it happens, once I was dressed in long pants and a shirt, my host mom asked if I had a skirt. I showed her the one I brought with me, which she glanced at and said “нет” (no) to. She then returned with a Ver...

Already Friday! It’s hard to believe I’ve been here for almost a week! In the morning, I got ready as usual and headed out to school with Elizabeth. For breakfast, I had a variety of porridge that my host mom said was каша (I think?), but it wasn’t like the one I had eaten the day before...it was good though, and tasted slightly of coconut. The mystery dish. At school, my host mom talked with the other host families for a little bit. The night before via group chat, some people in the group had made plans to go ice skating at an indoor rink and go to Tucano (a coffee shop) after class. I had not yet asked Bepa for permission to go, so I asked her before class and she gave her consent. Our classes were similar to the other days, mostly learning vocabulary, some grammatical functions and how to properly pronounce everything. After class, we all walked to a cafe called Rozmarin, which was only a few minutes’ walk from the university. They mostly had western/American-style fo...

This was probably my most *interesting* day so far. In the morning, I had some каша for breakfast along with an egg and then headed out to catch the троллейбус with Elizabeth, who lives down the street, and my host mom. We went into class, which was about the same as the day before. Unfortunately, I also ran out of water towards the end of the day, and as there are very few places to refill water bottles and I had not yet exchanged my money, I was a little bit dehydrated by the time I got to the restaurant. The restaurant was decorated with a lot of soviet-era posters and other decorations, including part of a wall made entirely of soviet books. We sat on the outside terrace, and it was a pretty warm day (high of 89 F), which turned out to be problematic as there is almost no air-conditioning (I have encountered one place with it, and even there it was not set to a cold temperature) and few fans. For our first course we had borscht, a traditional Russian beet soup. I’m not at all...

Unfortunately, I did not have time to write yesterday, so I will just keep it short so I can stay caught up and go to bed at a reasonable time. Wednesday was our first day of classes, and I had to wake up at 7:00 to catch the троллейбус (trolley bus) at 8:00 and get to school before 9:00. I had some leftover zucchini pancakes for breakfast, along with some каша (kasha), a type of grain made into porridge. We left the apartment and got on the #24 trolley bus just around the corner, and then switched to the #22 once we got into the city, which took us straight to Ion Creanga University, where we have our classes. It costs 2 MLDs (leu/lei, pronounced “lay”) for a bus ticket no matter how far you go. With the exchange rate, this is equivalent to about 8 cents. A trolley bus ticket. We got to the school and waited in the courtyard for the other students and host families to arrive, and we figured out that two girls, Sara and Elizabeth (both graduated seniors) lived really close...