Familia Mea Gazdă

I love my host family. We seem to have a good balance with each other. Despite my poor Romanian, I think we communicate well with each other and we are a good fit together. I started to realize this recently. They were in America visiting their son (who married a Peace Corps volunteer, for those who don’t remember). They were there from October 11-30. And then I had training with Peace Corps in Chișinău from October 30 – November 5. So I really haven’t seen them for 4 weeks. It was a long 4 weeks.

I really care for them, and I enjoy living with them. So, I want to tell you a little about them, and I think today sums Parascovia and Roman up pretty well. Be ready…this is a long entry.

I’m getting over a cold right now. It’s nothing serious, just annoying. But I have a little cough. Anyways, this afternoon, I was coughing some, and Parascovia came up to check on me. She was saying how she heard me coughing and she was worried. And later, when I was going out to the bank (side note: I was typing this after I had been drinking with Roman, and I typed the Romanian translation for “bank” instead of the word “bank”. Maybe I’m not as bad at Romanian as I think I am) and Parascovia didn't think I had a big enough coat. So she gave me one of hers. She’s very motherly, and it’s kind of nice.

Then later tonight, I was eating with my family. Well, not really “eating with my family”, but rather eating “with my family”. Basically, they were in the kitchen while I was eating. First it was just Parascovia and I. She was preparing for tomorrow’s dinner, and she kept talking about her trip to America. I didn’t understand everything, but I was listening attentively and trying to understand all I could. I tried to contribute to the conversation as best I could, but I really didn’t say more than 2 or 3 sentences total. I love that she just kept talking to me.

Roman just makes me laugh. Right as I finished my dinner, he sat down with me and poured me a glass of wine (a real glass of wine, not a shot like usual). He insisted that I eat something while we drink (very Moldovan). So he kept handing me food while he was refilling my glass continuously.

At one point, I went to put food away in the fridge and Parascovia walked out of the room. So Roman took this as a chance to refill my glass before Parascovia or I noticed (I had already had 2 glasses with him at this point). Sneaky man.

Our Ukrainian and American “conversation”, which may seem a bit ADD…because it kind of is: Roman likes to smell dried fish (I don’t understand this yet; hopefully I’ll have an explanation soon). But he quickly understood my distain for it made evident by my face when he pulled out his dried fish to smell. After he got his euphoria from smelling the fish, he took the giant bowl of basil that Parascovia was preparing for dinner tomorrow night and smelled it as well. He continued to pick up the bowl of basil every 5 minutes throughout the rest of dinner, occasionally insisting that I smell it too.

Roman taught me the word ‘bug’ in Russian, which I promptly forgot as soon as he shook my hand and told me I was weak. He then noticed Parascovia cutting up carrots, which she had been doing the whole 20 minutes we had been sitting there. He pulled out a giant shank for her to use. She rolled her eyes at him and kept using her knife (Roman didn’t notice).

Next, Roman offered me tea or coffee. I told him tea, and he told me to make him some too. I couldn’t help but laugh. In Moldova, you can’t drink tea without eating something. So he told me to cut myself a piece of cake. I made my tea (and his) and cut my piece of cake. He was sweetening his tea and offered me the sugar. I declined, so he decided that I could use sugar on my cake instead. He took a spoonful of sugar and spread it on my cake. I reacted, and he quickly pointed to Parascovia and made a shhing face, implying that she must not know about this.

I find it quite humorous how he “sneaks” behind Parascovia’s back. Usually, it’s with the alcoholic beverages. And tonight, it was with the sugar on the cake as well. But I have a feeling that Parascovia knows exactly what is going on, and I think she finds his “sneakiness” just as humorous as I do.

I swear, you could make a sitcom out of our interactions. I don’t think I can do justice to the hilarity of our interactions with my writing. But honestly, after hanging out with my family, my abs hurt from laughing so much at our interactions.