Hramul Cotavei

Fall is here, but winter is coming quick. We finally started burning wood in our sobas to heat the house, so I am going to sleep like a powdered baby tonight.

Harvest is mostly done. Here are corn stalks stacked to dry out.

Road through my village with a big stack of corn stalks to the left.

A World War II statue in my village with Cyrillic writing.

Another pic of the statue of Lenin from my neighboring village of Cotova. There are lots of Soviet and Communist statues still standing all over Moldova.

Yesterday was "Hramul Cotovei" (Cotova's hram). Every village has a "hram" once a year as a day to celebrate the village. Another PC volunteer lives in my neighboring village, so I went with him to celebrate his village's hram. Basically, each family prepares tons of food and all the relatives and friends come into the village to stay for a few days. We pretty much hopped from house to house to visit everyone, which required us to eat and drink at every house we stopped at. Here's a few pics and videos from my first hram:

Table full of food. Every house has a full table.

Me, Justin, Vlodie, and Vlodie's daughter.

Grapes that were offered to us when we first walked in the door.
Cool looking old truck outside of Vlodie's house.

Chickens, geese, and the mighty dog that protects them from being eaten by foxes.

Most of the corn that is grown is stored for winter to feed the animals.



One room full of food and drinks, another full of people dancing the hora.



Everyone singing at the table. We sounded really good, but the microphone on my camera didn't do us any justice.

One of the songs we sang through every month of the year. When they call your month you stand up, everyone wishes you many years in life, and then they sing for you to sit back down for the next month.