All around, today was a great day to follow a rather dreary week. Today I traveled to my soon-to-be permanent site, Criuleni. The day started out positive with me successfully going to the magazin and selecting a box of chocolate to give to my host family for letting me stay this weekend. The reason this was so exciting was because it was not a scripted conversation like those practiced in class. Mind you, it was only about a 60 second conversation, but it involved her showing me choices and me selecting the box of chocolate I wanted. So for those of you interested in traveling to Moldova and needing help buying a box of chocolate, I’m your girl!
I proceeded to go to language class, in which we had a progress report. It was an interview conducted with one of our LTIs, so it was testing our speaking and listening skills. Despite my nerves and self-consciousness of my Romanian ability, I didn’t do too badly on the interview. If I were to convert their ranking to grades, I would say I got a B. Svetlana was the one who interviewed me and she said that I’m doing great for where I am. It was nice to hear.
Team Cojusna then traveled into Chisinau to meet up with our directors/representatives from our schools. Veronica was the representative from my school, and she teaching Romanian at my school. She does not speak any English, so it was a real test of my Romanian skills.
I was able to successfully tell her that I had taught before, I currently live in Cojusna, and I’m the oldest of 2 sisters and a brother. I learned from her that Svetlana (a different Svetlana from my LTI) was my partner teacher, that there are 3 English teachers at my school, the younger grades (I didn’t understand how young) were in a different school, and that I have big shoes to fill because a previous PCV married a man from the community. It was somewhere in that part of the conversation that I started to get confused, and I think I might have accidently implied that I had a baby. Luckily, a current PCV was walking by and straighten the whole thing out (I hope).
Veronica then took me to Criuleni. She showed me where to catch the bus that goes to Criuleni and told me it was about 40 kilometers from Chisinau, so travel there is easy. The bus ride took a little more than an hour, but it didn’t feel like it. Now, I’m not one who really believes in signs, but I felt like the fact I was pretty much smiling the whole way to the Criuleni can’t be a bad one. The view the whole way was gorgeous, and I loved seeing all the animals everywhere. But my favorite part was the fields of sunflowers at the entrance of the raion. I fell in love!
Veronica and I got off the bus and met up with Svetlana. We walked to my host family’s house and had dinner together. My host mom’s name is Parascovia and my father is Roman. It was then I learned that the previous PCV in the town who married a man from the village is named Sarah, and she is their daughter-in-law. I’m pretty sure there will be pressure for me to marry someone here.
My host family is really friendly. Neither of them speak any English except a couple words, and my father only speaks Russian. Hmm, not prepared for that. But my host mom speaks Romanian, so it’s likely I will be mostly communicated with her. However, I didn’t catch on most of the night that he was speaking Russian (I know, sad, especially after I was feeling so pound of myself from my interview this morning), and I understood a lot of what he was saying (or maybe I should say what he was miming).
This is right.
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