La revedere

Tonight, I'm closing out my blog. Not from Moldova, but from Lincoln, Nebraska.

A lot has happened since my last post: a four-day camp in my village put on by several volunteers, a handful of Moldovans and myself; a spectacular week at the Peace Corps' national English-language summer camp; finishing up my work in the school's computer lab; a week-long crash course for the functionaries in my village's primaria; a trip to Milestii Mici, a wine factory and underground cellar that has won a place in the Guiness Book of World Records for its 55 km of wine storage space; and a visit to Transnistria, the breakaway republic that claims the eastern portion of Moldova. I might return to the blog and fill in these stories when I have the time, but I want to talk about the most important part; saying goodbye.

The first big goodbye was to the cleaning ladies at my school. I invited them to a small masa at the school one night, and served them a simple fare of salami, bread and ketchup. Of course, I also included a lot of champagne and wine. This handful of women clean the halls and most of the school's classrooms, including my own, every day, and they are rarely appreciated, monetarily or otherwise. Each of them makes less than $40 a month, with which they have to support themselves and their families. I gave them a small present as we parted for the night, and exchanged kisses on the cheeks with each of them. One of them, Doichita, a large, boisterous and hilarious woman in her 40s, picked me up off the ground and kissed me on the lips.

I had decided to leave my village a full week before my flight to America, meaning that Saturday would be my last night in the village before leaving Sunday morning. During the day on Saturday, I visited and said goodbye to some of the teachers with whom I was close, and that night we had a big final masa at my house, which included my host family, my host dad's relatives in the village, a set of neighbors with whom I was close, and the school's principal and her family. All told, there were 18 of us at a table with barbecue pork, salads, and a load of other foods that I can't remember but ate a lot of.

The next morning, I ate my last meal with my host family, including Maria and Dumitru, my host parents; Diana, my host sister; Sergiu, my host brother; Olesea, Sergiu's wife; and Gabriel, their one-year-old son. Ever since he was born, I had spoken only English with Gabe. He understood some of what I was saying, but he had never said a word of English back. Then, at the last meal with the family, he pointed to the fruit pattern on the tablecloth and said, "apple". I pumped my fist in the air and declared my mission accomplished.

After breakfast, I finished packing and loaded my things into Sergiu's car; I was going to leave most of my bags at his house and stay there a couple nights during the week. Once the car was packed, the seven of us stood in front of the house and passed around a final glass of wine. I teared up just making toasts.

"I've seen you more in the last two years than I've seen my real parents in the last six," I told Maria and Dumitru. "I remember how I felt when I said goodbye to my family in America two years ago. It feels the same now here."

After two glasses of wine, it was time to really say goodbye. Sergiu drove out the gate, and we walked after him. I kissed Maria and Dumitru goodbye, and I'm not ashamed to say that all three of us were openly weeping. I got in the car, and soaked in every detail of what would be my final drive through the village for a long time.

I said lots of goodbyes to other Moldovans not from my village in the following week, but I don't think I need to document each one of them here. Suffice it to say that there were many people with whom I would have liked to spend more time, but my two years had run out, and it was time to move on.

My flight back to America was scheduled for 8:30 a.m. on Sunday, August 5, and I almost slept through it. I had been out drinking until 2 a.m. with some of the volunteers who had come in 2006 and still had another year of service, and I was sleeping alone in a hotel room. I had set my alarm for 5:15 so that I could wake up, get dressed and walk a mile to the Peace Corps office. There I would meet with Shawn, my friend who was flying home on the same day as me and was going with me to Frankfurt on the first leg of the trip. Our plan was to meet at the office at 6, take showers, and be in a cab to the airport by 6:30. I woke up at 6 when my phone rang. I didn't answer in time, but I saw that I had missed a call from the Peace Corps and realized I was running late. I got dressed, hustled downstairs, and hired a cab to take me to the office. I got there, took a shower, and we got in a cab at 7.

"Hey, 6:30, just like we planned," I said to Shawn.

The flight was uneventful; in fact, Shawn and I both fell asleep almost as soon as we were in the air. Our conversations before and after sleeping centered mostly on the phrase, "We did it."

Our flights to AmericaÑhim to New York, me to AtlantaÑleft from gates that were near one another, so Shawn and I were able to walk around together in the airport, although I had to hustle to make my connection. I took time, however, to notice a drinking fountain.

"Whoa, hold on there, Shawn," I said as we both stopped in our tracks. "I think we've got something here." He laughed as I bent down and used a drinking fountain for the first time in years.

After I finished, we continued walking. "You know, Pete," Shawn said. "When you said, 'I think we've got something here,' there was a girl in front of the water fountain, and she turned around and gave you the dirtiest look." I laughed; obviously, not everyone can share my joy in the simple things.

When we arrived at the final security checkpoint, a Delta representative hurried me through the line because my flight was leaving soon. I said a rushed goodbye to Shawn, and then walked quickly to my gate, where two other passengers and I were running late. One of them was a tall guy with an American flag on the back of his hat, who told the lady at the gate he was coming from Kuwait and responded to everyone with "Sir" or "Ma'am". He and I found out the same bad news at the same time; our flight had been overbooked, and Delta had to put us in first class. We walked down the jet-way with big smiles on our faces, and we briefly introduced ourselves; I was coming back from two years in the Peace Corps in Moldova, and he was coming back from his third eight-month stint in Iraq with the Army's Special Ops.

Minutes later, I was sitting in a seat that I would later find out cost everyone else around me Û5,000. Evidently, another passenger had noticed that something was wrong with the headrest on my chair, but when a mechanic came onboard, I told him he didn't need to delay the flight in order to fix it. "I've been living without running water for the last two years," I said. "I can deal with this."

Soon, I had a gin and tonic, a four-course meal complete with chocolate chip coookies, on-demand audio entertainment (the video portion was broken, which I'm sure I could have complained about and gotten a voucher or something, but I figured I had gotten a lot more than what I'd bargained for) and an electronically-controlled seat that reclined waay back. I thought about how quickly my idea of luxury had changed from a Chisinau restaurant where I spent $15 the night before to sitting in first-class on a trans-Atlantic flight.

When we landed, I started talking with the soldier a little more. "Boy, Uncle Sam sends us to some shit places," I said to him, "but they bring you back in style." He introduced himself as James, and we stuck together as we cleared customs (me without my bags, which I would later find out hadn't transferred in time in Frankfurt), then we headed to the airport T.G.I. Friday's for some beer and burgers.

On a side note, I hadn't noticed in Moldova that the beer bottles there are half a liter, as opposed to the 330 mL bottles in America. When I picked up my first Heineken at the bar in Atlanta, I thought it was some kind of special airport mini-beer.

James and I parted ways after our early dinner, and I made my way to my gate for my flight home to San Jose. I don't remember much about the flight, because I think I slept through most of it. I woke up for the descent, though, and for the final 20 minutes of the flight, I was slapping my thighs and literally bouncing up and down in my seat in anticipation to finally be home.

My parents met me just outside the gate, and we went to the baggage claim area, only to find out that my bags weren't there. No problem. We started to walk toward the car, which my parents told me was parked in a new area because of construction at the airport.

As we walked toward the new parking lot, I saw a taxi stand with about 10 cabs. Cabs are very rare in San Jose, and I expressed my surprise to my parents.

"There are cabs in San Jose? What happened while I was gone?" I joked. Then I saw a white stretch Hummer limo, the ultimate sign of American decadence. "See, that I expect to see here."

"Why?" my mom asked.

"Because it's so completely ridiculous," I said as we walked next to it and the chauffeur.

"This must be Peter," said the chauffeur.

"Yes it is," my mom said.

I have no idea what sound I made at that moment or what look I had on my face, but I'm sure it was pretty entertaining.

Willy, as the chauffeur introduced himself, snapped a Polaroid of me and my parents, and then opened the door for me. Inside were about 20 of my friends and some of their parents. One of my friends had set up the limo months earlier. I sat, sipped champagne and sang "Easy like Sunday Morning" with my family and friends, all the while in a complete state of disbelief as Willy took us all over to my house. People stayed at the house until nearly midnight, and I stayed up past 1 talking to my parents.

After two years in Moldova, I came home flying first class and riding in a limo. It was the most grandiose, shocking and ridiculous way to transition back to America, but how I got back didn't matter.

I was home.

Un alt sat: Partea a doua

As I woke up on my second day in Rosietici, a small village in Floresti county, I had only two objectives: to see the village's second bridge, which is even less stable than the one I had crossed the day before; and to leave the village in the early afternoon so that I could be back home in Mereseni in the evening. Shawn, the volunteer I was visiting, was more than happy to help me with the first part of my day. No one, it seemed, was eager to help me with the second part.

Even the bus system conspired against my leaving. Normally, there are two buses out of Rosietici that leave on the paved road from the center of the village: one at 7:30 a.m. and the other at 10:15 a.m. If you miss these two buses and still want to leave the village, you have to walk 45 minutes to the highway and hitch a ride from there. Compare this to my village, which is on a major road and from which you can find a ride to the county seat or the capital city almost any time of day.

I slept until about 8 a.m., then prepared for the 10:15 bus. But when I woke up, Shawn's host family told me that there was no 10:15 bus that day because it was Sunday. Actually, I was glad to have a chance to repeat the 45-minute walk I had taken the day before, and I was happy to have the flexibility to leave the village any time I wanted during the day. Shawn and I agreed on a plan; first we would see the second bridge, and then in the early afternoon, we would walk to the highway.

Shawn and his family made it clear that I was welcome to stay a second night, especially because the 9th grade graduation ceremony was that night and I could be Shawn's guest. It sounded interesting, but I had no clothes for the occasion and I wanted to get home.

At 11, Shawn and I went for a walk through his village. We saw all three of the stores in the village, two of which had opened in the past month and had already taken large amounts of business away from the poorly stocked store which had previously enjoyed a monopoly. One night several months ago, the owner of one of the new stores was drunk and asked Shawn if he should add a second story to his building and put in a pool table. Shawn said it was a good idea, so the guy climbed up to the newly constructed roof and, in his inebriated state, tore it down to make way for the pool table. The next day, the guy realized that it was a bad idea, and he had to rebuild the store's roof.

We walked to the edge of the village and continued another 10 minutes through some fields until we got to a different bridge on the other side of the village from the bridge we had crossed the day before. This bridge was equal parts scary and hilarious; scary because of its construction, and hilarious because it's hard to imagine a place in the 21st century that depends on a bridge this poor as its connection to the outside world. The bridge was made from four 15-meter steel cables, two on the bottom to support the foot-planks and two up top to serve as handrails. On the bottom, two-by-fours spanned the cables every three or four meters, and those two-by-fours supported 20 cm-wide beams. Each section of the bridge had only one of these beams, creating what basically amounted to an unstable balance beam with handrails.

Shawn said that he had crossed the bridge plenty of times in the past two years, and that he wanted to see me try it on my own while he took pictures from the bank. I started walking across, more confident than I had been on the other bridge the day before because this time I could use my hands to balance. I had no major problems until I got halfway across and noticed that the next beam I needed to walk on was detached from the supporting two-by-four. Putting my weight on it would probably cause it to bend down a foot and cause me to slip backward. I turned around to look at Shawn.

"This board isn't even connected!" I shouted. "How the hell am I supposed to get any further?"

Shawn laughed. "Oh yeah. That just broke recently. Just walk on the cables." That made sense to me, so I spread my legs a meter wide, putting my left foot on one cable and my right foot on the other, and shuffled along for a few meters until I reached a stable plank.

I finished crossing, then got back on the bridge for a few posed pictures. After I crossed back over to the original side and we started walking back to Shawn's village, he told me that I was probably the third American to ever cross that bridge.

We got back to Shawn's house and I prepared to leave for the main road, but Stela, Shawn's host sister, insisted on us eating lunch before we left. In the middle of lunch, Shawn's brother called from America, so he left the table and Stela and I continued talking.

Stela is 28 and has her own tailoring business in Soroca, but has had to leave multiple times to work in Moscow in order to support herself and her mother. After finishing 11th grade, she went to a vocational school, where she learned all of the necessary skills to become a tailor. She then took correspondence courses at the state university in the same subject, but dropped out before her last year because the family didn't have the money to continue her education and she didn't think she was learning anything new that she hadn't already learned in vocational school. After that, as I understood, was the first time that she left for work in Moscow. It was odd seeing her photos from that time, especially because many of the pictures were with her neighbors who were Vietnamese immigrants. Even though I know Russia has the second-largest immigrant population in the world (only the U.S.'s is larger), I have trouble wrapping my head around the idea of Vietnamese immigrants speaking Russian and living in Moscow.

When Stela returned from Moscow, she started a tailoring and clothing rental business with a partner in the large town of Soroca. The first year, she told me, was good. They were able to make money and she enjoyed the work. The second year, however, the government began taxing her business at a higher rate and created a new law saying that businesses like hers had to also own arable land. Why did a tailoring business need to purchase farmland? Stela said she had no idea. She bought land, but soon the new taxes hurt her business too much, and she had to return to work in Moscow.

Only a stupid and corrupt government would make these kinds of regulations to hurt entrepreneurs, I told her. Stela agreed that it was completely non-sensical, but also told me how she copes.

Any time you don't understand how the government could function so poorly, how the system could have so little sense, she said, "just close your eyes, take a deep breath, and say to yourself, 'I'm in Moldova.' Then it'll all make sense, and you can move on."

Our conversation took place on a Sunday, and on Wednesday Stela would return to Moscow to work again as a shopkeeper. "She hates it there," Shawn told me, "but she does what she has to do."

After Stela and I had talked for a half-hour, Shawn got off the phone and we were ready to go. The weather, however, was now looking inhospitable. Clouds were starting to gather, and while I didn't mind walking a little bit in the rain, I didn't want to force Shawn out into the rain, especially because if it started to rain hard, he would have to walk back from the road to his village in the mud. I said goodbye to Stela, and Shawn and I started walking down the side of the gorge to the river. We stopped several times during the descent as the rain went through short spurts of intensity. Every time we stopped, we looked up the hill and saw Stela waving us back to the house. We crossed the same bridge that we had crossed the day before, but just after we had crossed it, it started raining more heavily. I stopped, looked at Shawn, and laughed.

"It's your call, man," Shawn said.

"Oh, screw it," I said. We turned around, crossed the river again and headed back to the village.

Un alt sat: Partea intii

Sometimes I think that my life in my village of 2,500 people is small and dull, with few people and nothing to do. I recently found a place in Moldova that makes my village look like Manhattan.

Last week I visited my fellow Peace Corps volunteer Shawn's village of Rosietici, in Floresti county. Shawn and I have gotten along since the day we met, largely because of our sense of humor and because we've both spent considerable amounts of our lives in Boston; I was there for college, while Shawn was born and raised in Southie until he joined the Air Force at 18 and later went to college in Oklahoma. Despite our friendship, I had never visited his village. The opportunity presented itself while we were eating lunch in Chisinau and he invited me. I went, carrying with me only a toothbrush, a hairbrush and a stick of deodorant.

Just getting to Rosietici was a challenge. From Chisinau, we took a rutiera north toward Soroca. After two hours of travel, Shawn told the driver to stop and we got off. We stood on the side of the highway, from which a long road turned off and led to a village. The village at the end of that road was not Rosietici; in order to get to Rosietici, we started walking in the opposite direction, where there were no buildings in sight. Shawn had told me about the long walk to his village, but I was finally going to experience it.

We had been walking down the country road for about 10 minutes, during which time we had seen a single horse-drawn carriage and no cars, when Shawn pointed to the horizon and said, "You see the new church over there?"

I strained my eyes and could barely distinguish a building that rose slightly higher than the others. "Yeah, I see it."

"That's my village," he said.

"It doesn't look that far away," I said. "How long will it take to get there? Maybe another 15 minutes?"

"It looks close, doesn't it?" he said with a smile. "You'll see how long it really takes."

The church, Shawn told me, was the idea of a young man in the village. Several years ago, he had had a dream in which he went to a church located at that exact spot in the village. He took it as a sign from God to build the village's first church, and after years of fundraising and construction, he finally fulfilled his vision; the first ever service had been held a week earlier.

After a few more minutes on the road, Shawn turned to the side and started along a worn footpath through the middle of a field. I had just left the last paved road of my walk. We walked toward the distant image of the church, following the path and gulping water from our bottles under the blasting rays of the sun.

"One time I was walking home from the bus at night, and I lost the path," Shawn said. "I was lost for about a half-hour."

We continued to walk, now crossing some rocky terrain and a well-constructed bridge that would be suitable for cars to cross. I felt safe crossing this bridge, and didn't realize that I had always taken safety on bridges for granted. That would soon change.

We walked along pathways for another 10 minutes, until we came across another village built into the walls of a river gorge. Only several hundred people lived in the village, and many of them had dug their homes out of the steep hills, so in essence they were living in caves.

"Just think about it," Shawn said. "People started living here 400 years ago, and it's pretty much the same as it was back then. Sure, they have electricity and phones now, but not much else has changed."

We reached the river, where kids greeted "Mr. Shawn" while they swam near the bridge. The kids didn't attract my attention, however, as much as the bridge. It stretched about 20 meters across and stood only two meters over the water. It was constructed out of wooden planks about 30 cm wide, placed in sets of two or three planks lengthwise across the river so that you walked along the same pieces of wood for about four meters before moving to the next set of planks. The bridge was held together by metal cables, causing the bridge to dip and sway as you crossed it. There were also cables on the sides of the bridge, conceivably as handrails, but they were so low that I would have lost my balance stooping to grab one.

Shawn led the way across the bridge with confidence, talking to the swimming kids as he walked. I followed more gingerly, laughing nervously and silently wishing that Shawn would slow down so that the bridge wouldn't shake so much. I got halfway over the river, looked down, and saw the water passing under the planks of the swaying bridge as dizziness set in. I stopped, regained my composure, and then continued across the bridge.

As I stepped onto the opposite bank, I laughed and said to Shawn, "I figured I'd do something like that at some point in my Peace Corps service."

"What's funny is that a lot of time, babas (old ladies) go across on their hands and knees so that they won't fall in," Shawn said.

"I thought I was going to fall in, but I got by."

"In the Air Force, we always used to say there are two kinds of people," Shawn said. "There are people who have puked, and there are people who haven't puked yet. It's the same with that bridge; there are people who have fallen in, and there are people who haven't fallen in yet." Shawn finished his military service without ever throwing up, but he still has over a month left to fall in the river.

After crossing the river, we went up the other side of the gorge and, after 45 minutes of walking, finally reached Shawn's village of 500 people. I thought I knew a lot of people in my village, but in a place one-fifth the size of Mereseni, Shawn really does know everyone, and he had stories about every person we passed.

We arrived at Shawn's house and I met his host mom, Emilia, a retired elementary school teacher, and his host sister, Stela, a 28-year-old tailor. Shawn bought some beer from the store and drew some wine from the barrel in the cellar, and we drank as we ate dinner with his host family and two neighbors, one of them also a girl in her 20s. I joked that Shawn, Stela, the neighbor and I should all go the village discoteca, but I pulled out of the plans when they told me that the disco was a 45-minute walk and two villages away.

The six of us stayed up late talking, and when the neighbors left, Shawn and I went to his room and talked more. If we were in my village, I would haven undoubtedly played a movie or something on my computer. Shawn is one of the few volunteers without a computer, though, so we just talked; nothing particularly profound, but living in a village makes you appreciate a long, un-rushed conversation between friends, especially with Shawn's picks of Irish music playing in the background. At about midnight, I went to the guest room and went to sleep, hours away from my own bed, yet feeling at home in a Moldovan village not so different from my own.

Vadul lui Voda

When my plane landed in Moldova two years ago, the last things I expected to do in this country were playing frisbee and drinking beer on a sandy beach, followed by eating pork and beef barbecue at a private camping ground. But that's what seven other volunteers and I did last Sunday at the closest place Moldova has to Martha's Vineyard.

To celebrate the beginning of summer and the end of two years of English teaching, seven of the volunteers I came with (plus the Ukrainian fiancé of one of them) went to Vadul lui Voda, a resort town on the bank of the Nistru River. None of us had ever been there, and we couldn't find a working telephone number to make reservations anywhere, but that didn't stop us from going, based only on the three pieces of advice we had received from another volunteer: take a 130 or 131 rutiera, there's a place with blue cabins named after some kind of flower that costs 70 lei (less than $6) per person, and you don't need to make reservations anywhere. Two years ago I would have wanted more information, but these days that's enough for me to green-light an expedition.

First we stopped by the central market in Chisinau, where we bought several pounds of meat, barbecue skewers, plastic plates, fruits and vegetables. Then we hopped on the rutiera, which took us 20 km away from Chisinau in 40 minutes for the price of 8 lei (try going 20 km anywhere in America for 65 cents). Miraculously, given the meager amount of navigational information, we found the exact camping location that the volunteer had told us about, and we rented two sparsely-decorated cabins with a table and grill between them for 490 lei ($40). After settling in and marinating the meat, we headed to the beach.

The beach at Vadul lui Voda is a small feat of Soviet engineering; tons of sand were dumped decades ago in order to create a beach that's wider than the river it edges up to. On the other side—which, upon checking a map later, I discovered was not actually part of the Transnistrian separatist territory, despite being on the left bank—stood scores of trees in perfect rows, creating a backdrop to the river. The river itself was split in half by buoys; the near side was for swimming and the far side was speedboats and jet-skis. Also on the near side was a large boat that blasted music and announcements in Russian, from which I parsed that they were conducting river tours in x number of minutes and they had пиво, or beer.

We had our own beer, which we had bought from a stand near the beach for 30 lei ($2.50) per two-liter bottle, an exorbitant price by Moldovan standards. We sat on the beach and poured ourselves ice-cold beer, which attracted some sort of small bugs that loved to jump inside our cups. After 15 minutes, a lot of the volunteers went swimming, but I passed, since I had recently cut my foot and didn't want to risk infection. Instead, I sat on the beach, drank my beer, and reveled in seeing hundreds of very attractive Moldovan girls wearing flattering swimsuits made of less material in the back than what would be considered normal in America.

We threw around a Frisbee, and were joined by an eight-year-old boy who spoke no Romanian and would always dive for the disc, covering himself in sand. After a couple hours and a few liters of beer, the wind picked up, creating a small sandstorm and clearing the beach in a matter of minutes. We went back, barbecued, drank more, made a late-night trip back to the beach (I can proudly say that I have peed in the Nistru), and returned to the cabins to get some sleep.

The next morning, we ate more leftover barbecue and then headed back to Chisinau, unanimously agreeing that we wanted to come again sometime before we leave Moldova. There's not much time left, though; as of that Monday morning, I had only 59 days left of Peace Corps service.

Calatorie in America

I flew back from America two weeks ago, and boy are my wings tired. (Ba-dum, shish.)

When I joined the Peace Corps in June 2005, I told myself I wasn't going to return to America until my full two years of service were up. I had a lot of reasons: I wanted to vacation in this part of the world as much as possible, I didn't want to experience the comforts of America for a full two years, I was worried that I wouldn't want to return to Moldova if I visited America, and I wanted the first time I stepped back on American soil to be filled with a feeling of accomplishment. I wanted to earn my American life back with two full years in Moldova.

After a year and a half of service, I had changed my opinion. I was no longer attached to the idea of returning home "a conquering hero," mostly because it didn't make a difference in my friends' minds back home; they just wanted to see me. I also was no longer worried that I would want to quit my job when I saw America again; I've become far too busy and have too many responsibilities and unfinished business here, so there's no way I could possibly leave. I also wasn't worried about experiencing the comforts of America, because I had experienced them in England during my summer vacation and, honestly, hadn't found them that appealing.

The biggest reason, however, was that my other vacation ideas fell through. My possible trip to Pakistan fell through first, when my Pakistani friend from college said that her job would keep her from taking vacation during my break. Then other ideas, which included Spain and Morocco on one trip and Romania and Bulgaria on another trip fell through because I couldn't find people to go with. So in early December I called my parents and asked "if it would be okay" for me to come home for the holidays. Surprise, surprise; they bought my ticket within days.

Flying from Chisinau to Frankfurt to San Francisco didn't take too long, especially since I had something to look forward to on the other end. As we flew low enough over California to see the cities, I noticed how many football and baseball fields there are in America. In the Bay Area, at least, it looked like there was one every few blocks. By comparison, the one sports field within six kilometers of me in Moldova is a soccer field with no nets on the metal posts and grass trimmed by cows and goats.

I arrived in San Francisco and claimed my luggage, very happy that neither the two plastic bottles full of house wine nor the glass bottle of cognac had burst in my bag. (Another volunteer during Christmas vacation broke a bottle of Jim Beam in his bag during his return trip to Moldova, making all of his clothes reek of whiskey.) I exited customs and saw my dad.

A funny thing happened when I saw my dad for the first time in over nine months; it felt completely normal. It was not the momentous event that I thought it would be. In fact, nothing about the drive home, seeing my parents, meeting the new dog (and calling her by the old dog's name), seeing some of my friends for the first time in 18 months or seeing my sister for the first time in six months felt out of the ordinary. I was home. End of story. I did, however, get a little overeager sharing my house wine with family and friends that night; the alcohol and my jet lag exhaustion combined to make life very interesting when my dad and I went to the airport later that evening to pick up my sister from her flight.

I had already gotten my family some Moldovan knickknacks for Christmas, but I had to scramble on the 23rd to get them something a little bigger. I went to a Barnes and Noble bookstore and picked a few books for family members. A sales lady was helping me when I turned to my friend and said, "Maybe I should get my sister the new O.J. book."

"They're not publishing it," the sales lady said.

"No? Oh, that's good," I said.

"Yeah, they decided not to about a week ago," she said. "Don't you read the papers?"

"Well, no," I said with a smile. "I've been living in Eastern Europe for the past 18 months and I got home yesterday." I had been waiting to use that line.

Christmas went smoothly, and on the 26th, my family and I hosted a welcome home party. About 15 friends came, and everyone had a shot-glass full of my house wine as they entered the party, just like at any good Moldovan party. I played my friends music by Zdob si Zdub, Parazitii, Ian Raiburg and Cleopatra Stratan, while they showed me a particular present-related Saturday Night Live digital short.

Being with family and friends seemed perfectly normal. Driving seemed perfectly normal, too, although I was more likely to take a walk somewhere around town than I would have been two years ago. Some things, however, seemed strange:

• When I went to the ATM, people in line stood nearly 10 feet behind me. In Moldova, I've come to expect nothing more than a three-foot bubble. Once, I even had to yell at two little girls to back off.


• The Department of Motor Vehicles was actually a pleasurable experience. My paperwork for renewing my driver's license was processed quickly, and there was a computer-based queue that everyone respected. The woman at the desk greeted me and smiled. She was also the only clerk who had car registration stickers to put on license plates, so my process was constantly interrupted by people coming up and getting the proper stickers. In Moldova, I would be expected to accept this. At the DMV, the woman apologized and said she was sorry I had gotten stuck with her.


• It took me a couple days for me to not automatically tune in to a conversation any time I heard someone speaking English. In Moldova, hearing English means you instantly have something in common with a person. In America, it means you've found one of the 300 million people in the country who speak English. Not quite as special.


• When I went to Fry's Electronics, I heard conversations in all sorts of languages, including Spanish and several Asian languages. I had gotten used to listening for only Romanian and Russian.


• My friend Ross and I went to a local burger joint and walked up to the outside ordering window. Another guy was waiting for his order, and he struck up a conversation with Ross about how much he had drank the night before and how much he needed the fast food to help his hangover. I couldn't believe how strange the guy was, just coming up and talking to us. After he left, I turned to Ross. "Do you know that guy?"
  "No," Ross said.
  "So why did you talk to him?" I asked, perplexed.
  "Because he started talking, and he seemed like a nice guy."
  I had forgotten that I had been like that two years ago, too. So open. So friendly. Not so much anymore.


• I had forgotten what it was like to be carded while buying alcohol. Just for fun, I attempted to use my Moldovan green card as identification nearly everywhere I bought alcohol. It worked in four of the five establishments where I used it. It was only rejected at the San Jose Arena during a hockey game. When I bought some beer (imported Baltica, of course) from a liquor store, the girl at the counter didn't even blink at it. After I had paid, I said, "That ID is actually a green card from an Eastern European country."
  "I know," she said. "I'm a security officer at my other job, so I know what these look like."
  "I'm impressed," I said. "So are these easy to counterfeit?"
  "OH yeah," she said with a bit of a laugh. "But I know all seven places to check it to make sure it's real."
  Молодеца девушка.

After a great New Year's party at which both of my hip-hop alter-egos, MO$' BLING and MC Saracie, performed, I got back on the plane on January 2nd. Little did I know that a huge storm had hit Moldova, knocking out power and phone lines to most of southern Moldova (including my village) and complicating landing procedures at the Chisinau airport. During my flight from Frankfurt to Chisinau, a stewardess announced only that there was "bad weather in Chisinau" and that we were landing in Bucharest. After she offered no other details, I raised my hand and asked her what we would do after landing in Bucharest. Were we going to sit on the runway? Were we going to get on a 12-hour bus ride to Chisinau? Were we going to stay the night in a hotel? The flight attendant told me that I shouldn't ask questions and in the course of our ensuing discussion, she told me that I had been poorly raised ("Nu aveti sapte ani de acasa," for you Romanian speakers). Even though we still had six hours of sitting on the Bucharest runway ahead of us, I knew then and there that I had arrived back "home" in Moldova.

Mesaje dintre doua autobusuri

Here is a sequence of text messages sent over the course of five hours several weeks ago, as I was traveling to Romania and another volunteer, Jess, was traveling to the Ukraine. The following is a window on the Moldovan bus experience.

November 1, 2006

Jess 18:13 I just got on the bus for Lvov and got comfy to relax and the driver, who keeps hitting on me, started blaring hora music. And wouldn't you know my seat is right under the speaker.

Me 18:28 At least your ride is short. I'm on a bus [to Bucharest] for the next 10 hours, with the exception of when I get to stand in the cold at the border.

Jess 18:33 Shut up jerk. I've got 18 hours ahead of me with a HUGE man next to me.

Me 18:35 Oh yeah. I thought "Ivov" was a strange shortening of Ialoveni. [Ialoveni is Jess's site, 15 minutes from Chisinau. Lvov is a Ukrainian city significantly farther away.] I forgot you were getting into a bad situation. Let's bitch until one of us leaves the country.

Jess 18:38 The driver keeps hitting on me. I told him I was meeting my boyfriend in Lvov and he said we could have 18 hours together. Eww!

Me 18:42 Describe the driver. If he's halfway decent, you should make out with him at a rest stop. No pressure, of course. I'll just be very disappointed if you don't.

Jess 18:45 He's tall, dark and handsome. Not overly creepy. I would make out with him but he smokes. Big turn off. I do have some altoids. Hmm...

Me 18:47 I'll give you all of my Romanian change when I get back if you take a picture of you two kissing on the lips in the driver's seat.

Jess 18:49 Interesting offer. I'll consider it. What about your driver. Is he a winner?

Me 19:05 Nope. He's a loser. Thankfully, loser drivers are only really bad after 12 hours.

Jess 19:10 True. My bus is hot and unpleasant. Like a dog's breath. There are creepy green lights that make everything have an X-Files like appearance.

Me 19:13 I have slightly creepy lights, but as I predicted, there aren't many people on the bus. I've got two seats to myself.

Jess 19:15 It's funny because our bus isn't at all full but we are all sitting in the front 15 seats. One woman tried to go sit by herself but the bus Nazi wasn't havin' it.

Me 19:17 Maybe you have to get to a second station before everyone's on the bus and you can move around. Or maybe the bus Nazi's just a real Nazi. "No comfort for you."

Jess 19:19 I think she's real. She made me salute her.

Me 19:20 Did you salute her back with the middle finger? Where's your rebellious spirit? It's time to stage a passenger revolt. Да ваи!

Jess 19:22 Why are these people always in the mood for hora music?

Me 19:27 My people are in the mood for Russian dramas with military men. It's on DVD, and it looks like there are at least eight episodes available. Thank God for my iPod.

Jess 19:30 It sounds lovely. Because of my future kissing partner's fondness for smoking, we've stopped already.

Me 19:33 After an hour? Impressive lack of endurance. He's probably not very good in bed, either. I picked a bus that goes south through Cahul, the long way to Bucharest.

Jess 19:35 Nice work. We'll see about that not good in bed thing.

[Message missing from me.]

Jess 19:39 Well honestly, who wouldn't?

Jess 19:41 I just looked at the man next to me and burped loud.

Me 19:43 That was his signal to the driver that the bidding war for make-out rights has begun. The bidding is entirely in Soviet rubles.

Jess 19:45 No need. It's a long ride and there's plenty to go around.

Me 19:50 An old lady just came from three rows back and asked me if the seat next to me was taken. Before I could respond, the middle-aged woman behind me told her it was occupied and shooed her away. Then she smiled, patted me on the arm and said, "Old people. They just want attention."

Jess 19:53 Haha! I am so jealous. Not only do you get two seats, but an army to defend them.

Me 20:10 How many times have you stopped so far to pick up packages or bags? I'm not sure if we've stopped two or three times.

Jess 20:14 We've stopped about eight times.

Me 21:01 Awesome. This Russian drama focused five minutes on a wide-angle shot of some woman and man flirting next to the pool. I'm totally lost. I'm gonna rest my eyes now.

Jess 21:12 Noapte buna.

November 2, 2006

Me 01:15 We've been at the border for almost three hours, and the Romanian guard just took our passports. Any better progress on the other border?

Jess 01:19 We've been here one hour and I think we're almost done. On the bad side, the woman in front of me just discovered her seat reclines. Real far.

Jess 01:20 How are you only at the border? I'm at the most northern border.

Me 01:23 Well it only took three and a half hours to get to Cahul, but we took an hour and a half on the Moldovan side and we're at an hour and a half hours now on the Romanian side.

Jess 01:25 Suckeroo. We were on the Moldova side all of 10 minutes.

Me 01:28 Which crossing are you at? Ocnita or Briceni or where? Romania's border is going to take longer and longer because they want to be strict and become EU.

Jess 01:30 Briceni. Darn that EU.

Me 01:33 Darn that EU indeed. Alright, since we're both at the borders and on our way out, I'll wish you a happy vacation. Don't forget to make out with the driver.

Jess 01:34 I won't. He's on break at 3. Happy trails my brotha'.

Drum fara sfarsit

Recently I had to take my Apple PowerBook to a repair shop in Bucharest (no one knows how to repair them in Moldova) and also take four students on a field trip, all in the same extended weekend. Here's how the schedule went:

Friday:
3 p.m. I finish lunch in my village and hitchhike to Chisinau. 45 minutes of travel.
7 p.m. I depart by bus for Bucharest. The bus is packed, allowing me to sleep very little. A Russian translation of The Nutty Professor, starring Eddie Murphy, is playing on the bus TV.
10 p.m. In the bathroom at the border, a Portuguese man is trying to talk to a Moldovan. I ask him if he speaks English. He does, and we talk during our time at the border and at a later rest stop.

Saturday:
5:25 a.m. We arrive at the bus station in Bucharest after nearly 10 and a half hours on the bus. The sun hasn't risen yet. I look for a bathroom at the bus station, and sneak into one that may or may not be reserved for the shopkeepers next door. I use the bathroom, brush my teeth and take some pills, then open the door. I'm greeted by a middle-aged female shopkeeper, already yelling at me for using the bathroom. I apologize. She demands 5,000 Romanian lei, the equivalent of about 15 cents. I hand it to her. She continues to yell at me. The other shopkeeper starts yelling at me, too. Then a man who evidently also works at the shop yells at me for standing at the wrong entrance. I tell the first woman that I've given her her money and that she should shut up (using the polite form, of course), then walk away, yelling in Romanian to the sky, "I love you, Bucharest!"
6 a.m. The sun has risen, so I begin to make my way into the city. I have no idea where I am, so I start asking people how to get to the center of the city. My inability to understand the Bucharest accent and my inability to remember spoken directions in any language complicate things. After a couple of kilometers of walking and two bus rides, I arrive at Piata Unirii.
8 a.m. I get some money from an ATM and walk into a McDonald's. I buy a quarter-pounder with cheese and a cup of coffee; I only drink coffee about five times a year, but I'm pretty sure I need it right now.
8:20 a.m. Having finished my burger and coffee (what a disgusting-sounding combination), I stare vacantly at the flat-screen TV at the McDonald's, then go to the bathroom to change clothes and wash my face. I'm impressed and pleased that McDonald's offers such clean facilities, and I marvel for a few seconds that life has brought me to stand naked in a McDonald's bathroom in the capital of Romania.
8:40 a.m. The computer repair guys have asked me not to call them until 10 a.m., so I have some time to kill. I buy some credits for my Romanian cell phone account, then go to a MediaGalaxy electronics store. I spend about 30 minutes looking at nothing in particular, then look at my watch and realize that I have even more time before 10 a.m. So I spend a little more time browsing.
10 a.m. I call Tudor at NouMax and arrange for him to pick me up in his car at 11:15. I walk to the nearby park, sit on a bench, and take a nap.
11:10 a.m. Tudor picks me up in his car and takes me to the NouMax office, a small, cluttered apartment with five rooms and dozens of computers and pieces of gear around. Tudor agrees with my diagnosis of the laptop; a jammed CD/DVD drive and a power supply fried by a surge. We discuss Moldova, Romania and America, all in English.
12:30 p.m. Tudor drives me to the Peace Corps Romania office and they allow me in. There are no volunteers there, even though it's a Saturday; Romanian volunteers don't need or want to come into the capital as much as Moldovan volunteers, of whom there are usually 20 in Chisinau on a given weekend. I talk with one of the security guards for about an hour, then ask for directions to the metro system.
3 p.m. After eating shaorma and drinking a beer for lunch, navigating through the subway system to the Bucharest Mall and buying a donut, I buy my ticket for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest at the mall's movie theater. I doze off during the first 20 minutes, but wake up quickly enough to understand the movie and watch all the cool fights.
6 p.m. I arrive at the Bucharest train station and buy my ticket back to Chisinau. I have some time before the train leaves at 7:45, so I buy a hot dog and some snacks to eat on the train.
7:50 p.m. My train pulls out of the station.
7:51 p.m. Adrian, another NouMax employee, calls me on my cell phone and tells me that the replacement drive I need won't be ready for at least three weeks, so if I haven't left the city yet, I might want to come pick up my computer before getting on the train. Too late for that.
7:53 p.m. After I finish talking with Adrian, the man sharing a sleeper room in the car with me tells me in English that I speak English very well. "I hope so," I say. "I'm American." We talk for several hours before going to sleep.

Sunday:
8:20 a.m. My train arrives in Chisinau after more than 12 hours, and I head to the Peace Corps office to take a shower. I watch some TV and eat breakfast.
2 p.m. I take a bus back to Mereseni.
3 p.m. I arrive at my house, unpack my backpack and pack another bag, because my traveling isn't even close to finished.
4 p.m. I meet up with four of my ninth grade students, whom I am taking to the southern city of Cahul so they can take the FLEX entrance exam. FLEX is a U.S. State Department program that allows hundreds of high schoolers in former Soviet countries to attend high school in America for a year for free. The most convenient test location from our village is nearly three hours away by bus, so we are going down a day early and staying with Krista, another volunteer who has her own house.
4:45 p.m. The bus stops at our village and the students and I board.
6:45 p.m. I send Krista the following text message: "We just entered Cahul raion. We should be at the station pretty soon. It's a good thing, since my kids are getting a little antsy; one of them is giving the finger to caruta drivers we pass." A caruta, for the uninitiated, is a horse-drawn carriage.
7:05 p.m. We arrive in Cahul. Krista greets us and takes us to her house. We go out to a pizza parlor for dinner, where Krista shocks my kids and me by telling them that they need to speak English around her. After dinner we stop by an outdoor gathering, where hundreds of teenagers and young adults are dancing the hora to live traditional music. By the time I study the local steps, which are different from and more complicated than the standard Mereseni steps, and am confident enough to try, the music stops and the event ends.
9 p.m. We come back to Krista's house and the kids watch a Russian bootleg of Bridgett Jones 2 on Krista's laptop with Russian dubbing and English sub-titles. Krista and I hang out in the kitchen. Denis, one of the students, takes an immense liking to Krista's cat and calls it with the same high-pitched voice and baby-talk that Krista does.
11 p.m. Krista and I begin to enforce the kids' 11 p.m. bed-time, which is a welcome relief for me, not having slept much in the previous two nights. Diana, the only girl in the group, sleeps in Krista's bed and Krista takes the floor. The boys' room is a little more crowded; Denis and Victor share a double bed, Eugen has a sleeping bag and a thin mat on the ground, and I sleep on the floor between two blankets. This is the third night in a row that I've slept with a Moldovan within a meter of me. I'm going to enjoy my sleeping space when this trip is over.
11:15 p.m. The boys have gotten into bed, and Victor and Denis have begun to fight for space, wrestling and punching each other in the bed. Moldovan boys tend not to wear pajamas in early October, so the two boys are pushing each other around while wearing nothing but briefs. Every once in a while, their fighting is punctuated by either Victor falling out of the bed and landing within a foot of mine and Eugen's heads or Denis saying, "Hey, where are you putting your hand?!" I don't tell them to stop, partly because they'll settle down naturally and partly because it's really funny.
11:30 p.m. The boys finally quiet down and everyone is asleep within five minutes.

Monday:
7 a.m. The alarm clock on my cell phone goes off, and it's as if the boys had been waiting for the starter's pistol. They immediately get up, wash their faces and get dressed. Krista and I force them to eat something for breakfast, and I make scrambled eggs. It's the first meal I've ever cooked in Moldova. Krista leaves for school, and the kids and I play frisbee outside until Samantha, another volunteer in Cahul, picks us up and takes us to a different school for the FLEX test.
9 a.m. FLEX registration begins. Since I'm American, people automatically assume I know what's going on. I find the American, Dan, and the Moldovan, Gabriela, who are actually in charge, and they put me to work. The biggest challenge in my job is cutting applicants' photos to the proper size and gluing the pictures onto their application form. Actually, that's my entire job. Other than that, I spend my time talking to any kids who want to hang out with a native speaker. Some of the kids are really impressive, and I begin to realize how outclassed my kids probably are in this competition.
12:30 p.m. My students' turn comes, and they have 30 minutes to take the 20-question test. They finish the test and come out saying that they hadn't realized there was a second side of the test until it was too late. My guess, which is confirmed a week later, is that the students were told about the second part in English, but not every student's English level was high enough to understand.
1 p.m. My students and I meet Sam again and get some lunch. Since results won't be posted until 3 p.m., the kids ask me if they can go off exploring Cahul on their own. Diana wants to stay with some girls that she met, and the boys want to use the internet. In America, I would never allow the kids out of my sight in a city they'd never visited before. But for some reason it seems okay in Moldova. I tell them to meet me at the school at 3, and Sam and I get some ice cream.
3 p.m. I meet my students at the school as they're walking away. None of them passed the first stage. I have done a good job of prepping them for something like this, and they already know before I open my mouth what I'm going to say; "At least you tried, there's always next year, and hey, at least you got to see a new part of Moldova you'd never seen before." Diana, the student who had the highest hopes for herself, says that she'll try again at the more difficult Chisinau test center a month later, and says to the boys, "Did you see some of the English fanatics that were here today?" I realize only then that this trip has served another purpose; my students have seen how seriously some students at other schools take English.
4 p.m. We board the bus home. The kids and I are much more tired than we were on the way down, and all of us nap at some point during the ride home.
6:45 p.m. The bus drops us off in Mereseni, and I say goodbye to the kids.
7 p.m. I arrive back home, this time for good. I make some calculations. In the past 76 hours, I have traveled in a inter-city train or bus for 29.5 hours. That means that 38.8 percent of my previous three days were spent in some form of mass transit, not including private cars, subways systems or rutieras inside cities. I eat dinner and go to sleep early.