Week 3 Day 3

Wow...I have a lot to update since the WiFi was kind of spotty for the last few days.

Wednesday was the 4th of July! (Happy belated Independence Day!)

We didn’t do anything special in class to celebrate, but we did get an independent lunch, which was nice!

After class, a few of us took the trolley bus into the city, and there was a...peculiar situation. On the bus, there was a man standing next to a woman (who looked younger than him and they were not related), persistently asking where her husband was (gender roles 😕), trying to offer her some money (which she didn’t take), stroking (??) her arm oddly and in a distinctly creepy way, and then (once he noticed a few of us looking at them), saying that she was “his sister”. She moved away from him but he kept staring at her and when he didn’t get off at the next stop she said something to him (I assumed she was asking why he was still on the bus), and although they didn’t speak for the rest of the time that we were there, I could sense that there was still something going on...

At orientation, we had been warned about sexual harassment and such situations, but it was still really startling to see it happening. However, the most shocking part to me was that when we got off of the bus, none of the boys in our sub-group had even noticed the two people, much less the situation (they were all standing next to the harasser, or at least closer to him than I was), while every single one of the girls had been watching carefully. I guess this just emphasized the difference between how girls are told to act when they are alone, versus how boys act, since they are not constantly on the lookout for potential sources of sexual harassment and/or assault, either towards themselves or others,.

That aside, we went to lunch at a place on Pushkin Street called Meat House (what could be more American?) and got ourselves some burgers, fries and ice cream.

My cheeseburger.
Chocolate ice cream!

After that, we walked over to the American Councils building, where we met at 2:30 and headed over to the botanical gardens for some community service instead of an excursion.

Once we got there, we split off into pairs and started clipping the dead flowers off of rosebushes, which wasn’t too physically taxing, but was actually pretty challenging given the heat and large amount of thorns on said rosebushes.

Me (left) and Sara (right) in our patch of bushes, 
with Miette in the background.

We stayed there for a few hours, and when we were done, we drove back into the city and met in Stephan cel Mare park to play Mafia with Devin’s Russian deck of cards, which was really fun (except for Alex, who was always killed in the first round).

Because of all the actual work we had to do (and yet to do), most of us decided to head home early, I had dinner, and got to bed as soon as I could.

Most importantly, I did hear some fireworks, and I did listen to In the Heights while they were going on, so all was well.

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