whats my age again

11-12-07 18:00

“……My friends say I should act my age … what’s my age again?…..”

Sundays over. It is now Monday. I spent Sunday in Chisinau. Picked up some gifts for my host family for what I am going to say is for Christmas but really its just for being such awesome hosts. I am told it is just part of their culture to be very hospitable to guests but I feel in a lot of ways they have gone out of their way to make my stay here comfortable and respected my space when I seldom needed it and when I was down found ways of bringing me up. Like a family should work and does work and they brought me into their home and after a bit of getting used to just how weird Americans are made me feel as if I was apart of their family. Last night my dad said I was like his son. I call my host parents mom and dad and veronica and tudor brother and sister, not only because its easier then saying “host mother!” or “host father” when I need something but because they have taken over those roles for me since I have come. As I said I spent the day in Chisinau with tudor and it was really cold. We waited for a autobus for about 30 min and I nearly said screw it, its way to cold out side lets go back about 3 times before one finally picked us up.

Nothing of real consequence happened there but I did find out where a lot stores were and reaffirmed my hatred of extremely busy cities. I am just not accustomed to having people on all sides of me shoving to get by in all different directions… and I hope never to have to get accustomed to it. After enjoying the fresh city air I retreated to the safety, warmth, and comfort of home. Once we arrived I hid the gifts, ate dinner and then was encouraged to head to the neighbors house to eat some chocolate chip cookies that some the other pcv had made. We talked we ate chocolate chip cookies we drank tea… it was a regular brewhaha :o).

After that adventure I came home to finish my homework and then chat it up with my returned father who had a fun day visiting all of this friends around town and who was in a fantastic mood. It took about 10 mins of him telling me I don’t understand what he is saying ( about half the time he was right but also half the time he was wrong and I just couldn’t convince him that I understand more then he thinks) before we began a somewhat decent conversation. He explained how I should just stay at the house this winter because he doesn’t really have work when its cold and he needs something to do. Also that when new years rolls around how I need to come to the house and travel around the city with him to each house toasting away and having a great time. I told him I could not commit on that but if I can I will and that seemed to satisfy him. I also listened to him as he talked about how he build each room in this house we live in. I inquired about how long it took and which was the oldest room and what order he built them in as we passed my distilled water bottle back in forth swiggin like it was whisky. We talked about how his brother has attained an Romanian passport but he is lucky because they basically put a 5 year hold on all Moldovan’s claiming a Romanian passport which would allow them to freely travel through Europe given that Romania will soon be inducted into the EU.

I am failing to capture the rest of what we talked about but mind you it was in broken Romanian with parts where I was forced to ask him to act out what he was talking about because I simply didn’t understand the word he was saying and my dictionary was really far away ( about 30 second jaunt upstairs that neither of us thought was necessary and gladly spent the time either miscommunicatating or acting out our points). My parents called me from the states!

Found out my grandma reads everything I write after my mom prints it out and mails it to her so I would like to say hello grandma june. But while im at it im sure grandma sac reads this as well so hello grandma sac! And thanks for that weird email about you being dressed up as a witch :o). I have yet to see it because the file is too large for dialup but my mom explained to me what it was so I had a good laugh. Also what up sam? My mom said you might be reading this because you are thnking about joining up in the corps. Send me an email if you have any questions kylestremme@hotmail.com .

Ok so now onto today which is not over but it is about 3 hours from being over so I think I can tell what has happened. I woke up… ate a great breakfast..went to school from 8-4 because I had to do some translation work for my up coming presentation in Romanian that is on Saturday. I have only one more week before I leave for my new family so that is a little saddening. I will miss my set up here with the fam and the food and just the city in general. I will not miss PST language classes. They are brutal and they begin to wear on a person. I’m looking forward to startin up the basketball team in my future site and in the spring baseball. I will need to find out how to aquire baseball equipment… so like 9 gloves a few bats and a few balls or where I can find those things here in moldova but I have time until spring.

Ok it looks as if I have written a great deal with really absolutely no content. I will look back on this entry in the future and sigh but I guess it served as a good distraction from doing Romanian homework and allowed me to listen to some music in my room while I typed it. Case and point im ending this entry now before I continue to ramble. Let me know if you are reading me blog though … send me an email if you haven’t yet. I love getting email.