Riding through the fields

Yesterday was really cool, so I'll give a quick recap: At school we had a verbal language assessment for the teachers to monitor our progress. Basically, we sat at a table with a native speaker and carried on simple conversations. We were given four grades on a 1-5 scale. I received all fives, so I'm keeping up to par on my language study so far. In three weeks, at the end of my pre service training, we have to be speaking at a Intermediate Mid level. There are low, mid, and high levels for each of the three categories: Novice, Intermediate, and Advanced. Once I get to the Advanced Low level, hopefully next year, Peace Corps will let me change from a Romanian tutor and start learning Russian.

After school, I came back and drank some wine with the family, and then we went out to the fields to pick some peaches. The peach orchard is beautiful. There are rows of trees as far as one can see. My family went with our neighboring family, and I was told that my neighbor owns two rows of peach trees at this field so we could eat anything from those two rows. Two rows of peach trees is enough to feed all of Wal Mart's employees. Not really, but it's a lot. This was suprising, because we don't have this type of land ownership in the states. I asked why did he only own two rows (there was hundreds of rows all around us), and I found out that the mayor distributed this out in the past: for example, some people received peach trees, some apple, some cherry, etc. Our conversation got too lost in translation for me to fully understand the details, but I think that maybe my neighbor received these two rows when Moldova became independent from the Soviets and most of the land was privatized. Anyways, the peaches are incredible and keep me in a good mood. As I'm typing this, my host mom is downstairs boiling a pot of water with peaches and sugar to make "compote." Compote is an old traditional drink in Moldova. You drink it hot, and you drink it with every family. I think of it as a natural Kool Aid.

After the peach trip, I went with my brother and about 15 of his friends to the woods to have a picnic. There's no charcoal, so we gathered sticks from the woods, burnt them, and cooked beef ribs on top of the wood coals. We ate the ribs with ketchup, which doesn't come in a plastic bottle. The ketchup comes in a pack simliar to a Capri Sun and is spiced with pepper. When we were done eating all 15 of us walked to a community well, wrenched up a bucket of water, and freshened up.

As an American, you never know what to expect in Moldova, and that's the fun of it all. There are certain things I get used to, and there are certain times when I can't help but to step back and just soak it all in. For instance, yesterday I was riding in a 1980 model tan Russian car, windows down, with my host brother and three other Moldovan dudes. We were shirtless, as are most of the dudes in the village. We were riding through the fields listening to Moldovan music, speaking in Romanian, and as far as you could see were rolling hills of nothing but orchards and wine vineyards. More and more things are starting to feel natural because Moldova is now my home. However, there are still times like this where I laugh to myself and realize how different this culture is.