Week 1 Day 4

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 a fan of soup, but I tried it, and it wasn’t too bad. However, the sour cream was pretty good, so that made up for it.

We also got some iced drinks, which was awesome because it is hard to find cold/iced drinks in a lot of places. It was a blend of grapefruit, orange, and lemon (and probably a bunch of other things), and it tasted really good.

For our main course, we had some chicken along with several other smaller dishes. I liked it less than the Moldovan restaurant, but it was still pretty good!

After lunch, we walked over to the main University in Chisinau, which had a small park inside the grounds, so we took a few minutes to relax there before going on our afternoon field trip. 

Some of the university buildings.

The church on the university campus with some fellow NSLI-Yers in the foreground (Amaya & Renee).

Our field trip was at the historic water tower, also one of the tallest building in Chisinau (although only five stories high. It doubles as the Chisinau city museum, which is very small but had a few interesting artifacts from the city’s history (it is over 500 years old).

An old wine press in the Chisinau museum.

The main reason we came to the water tower was to visit the top floor, which has a great view of the whole city. 

From there, our host families picked us up and I went home with Elizabeth. Her host family has eight pets—three cats (maybe four?), a dog, and four puppies. I got to meet the puppies, which were even cuter than in the picture she had shown me.

One of the two-week-old shih tzu puppies.

Once I got home, Vera asked me if I wanted to go to a concert at the theater. We left home a little bit later and got to the theater shortly before six, only to find out that it was actually at seven, so we had about an hour to walk around. 

Our Resident Director, Elliott, had told us earlier that we should avoid city hall and the areas around it because of protests after the Chisinau Mayoral Election, but when I agreed to go to the concert, I didn’t realize that the theater is right next to city hall... I didn’t manage to get a picture of the protest, but it was mostly just a crowd of people waving the E.U. Flag, and the Moldovan flag. 

Since we had an hour to kill, my host mom and I walked through a market, where we saw some odd-looking матрёшки (matryoshky, Russian nesting dolls):

My mom asked for one, and I might have to go back and buy one for myself...

After that we walked around the Central Park and stopped by the church in the middle of it. I don’t think I had ever been in an Eastern Orthodox Church before, but this one was really beautiful, and also (thankfully) cooler than it was outside. When we entered the church, there were some people singing (what I assume was) church music behind a panel, and it sounded gorgeous. The combination of the music and temperature and smell just made everything really peaceful, which was nice. Unfortunately, photos were prohibited.

When we got back to the theater, the protest had expanded so there were protesters on the steps of the theater and around it, and although it was still peaceful, I couldn’t help but feeling a little bit guilty since I knew I was supposed to steer clear of that whole area.

The concert was the result of a partnership between affiliates of the French Embassy and the Moldovan Orchestra, so the program was all French music: a pavane by Ravel, a Saint-Saens piano concerto, some movie music the conductor had composed for French films, and Bizet’s Carmen Suite. Overall, it was just a really nice program.

Since Vera and I didn’t have seats together, at intermission I was kind of left to fend for myself. The two people next to me, a mother and son, started speaking to me in Russian, which was kind of stressful, but I managed to explain that I didn’t speak Russian very well. Fortunately, the woman thought to ask if I was French, (since it was a French conductor and program, there were a lot of guests from the Embassy), and once I told her that I spoke French, everything got better. Apparently, her son was studying French, so he was able to translate her questions and we had a pretty good discussion once I got used to his accent (Russian-French is an odd combination), and with the help of google translate. His mother even said that I looked Russian, which I guess I’ll take as a compliment?

After the concert was over, Bepa and I headed out to the lobby of the theater, where they were serving complimentary ice cream—take note, America: Moldova has some things that we don’t and they are GOOD IDEAS! 

We got on the trolley bus home and had dinner at about 9:30 P.M. I finished up my homework from class and then headed to bed because it was getting late!