Jana and I returned from Balţi (pronounced Belts) this morning after attending The Halloween party of the North, and seeing some of my favorite friends here. A brief list; The Ruckers, Joeinmoldova.wordpress.com, Jen Ianuzzi, the mighty Demmel, Thomas Richman, our hosts, Matt Stahlman and David Smith, to name but a few.
So as usual, we got stuck in Balţi and hired a cab to take us the 70 km or so. It really wasn’t that costly, and took only 45 minutes, rather than the 2 hours a bus sometimes takes. Since this happens every time we go there, I’ve stopped pretending to be surprised.
Today was beautiful and warm, so we took a walk with the two girls our host mom watches while their mom works in Russia, Sabina, and Andrea. We saw a squirrel (which is really rare here, and actually beautiful) and played on the playground equipment at the Russian school.
A brief departure about this equipment. Remember how in the cinema classic, “Rocky 3”, Ivan Drago is this unstoppable Slavic killing machine, determined to singlehandedly wipe out capitalism? Well, you should remember, it’s a great movie. Anyway, looking at what eastern bloc kids have to play on, I realize that he was not an anomaly at all, just a guy who spent more time on the jungle gym than most. And every other kid has a broken back and a raging case of tetanus. I am not using hyperbole when I say that these rusted steel contraptions are a million times more dangerous than the playground equipment of my youth. Imagine a huge swing sets with no swings, and angled ladders welded to the sides, and the odd broken pipe set in the ground below. And that’s it for fun. These are some tough kids.
Anyway, we went after that to see “Reef 2” at the local cinematograf, which is our movie theater. I will try not to spoil it for you but, whatever you do, avoid this movie. It is a terrible waste of the oceanic/talking mollusk subgenre, which I mentally improved by pretending I was listening to my 6 year old nephew Cooper making fun of it. At least avoid the Russian dubbed version with 20 screaming Moldovan kids.
The Russian style of dubbing is to leave the original dialogue intact, but record over it in Russian, slightly louder, a single voice for all the parts, with all the passion people usually reserve for double paned window seminars. Add to this the unsupervised kids who were really proud of the English they knew, (Halloo, my narm is…) and repeated it to me every 9 seconds. Suffice it to say, I won’t be going back, until next week anyway, when they are playing “Tangled 2!” The theater was really nice though, about 30 seats and a screen slightly smaller than a regular multi-plex screen. Not to shabby. And it was free, I tried to pay, I really did. I guess regular shows are 10 lei, about $.80. The non kid movies seem to lean towards the slasher b-movie genre, which I am not at all into, but maybe I will check one out to see.
Oh yes, before the movie, my host mom had said she was buying 2 goats, which to a rational person should have been a red flag, and I clearly remember thinking to myself, “huh, I wonder where she will keep them?” In hindsight, my naiveté is shocking.
About 7pm as I was literally tucking my napkin into my shirtfront before beginning to eat my soup, she knocked on my door. (The napkin bib part isn’t true, although I did run away from home once with a stick and a bandanna tied to the end of it, containing the obligatory peanut butter sandwiches.) Maria asked me to cut some goats, so I change into my goat killing uniform and head over.
Fortunately, the goats came pre-killed and skinned, so I just had to reduce them to meal sized portions on her kitchen floor. I would have preferred to stand, of course, but she didn’t want to get blood on the walls. So much for my dinner. Anyway, I really enjoy talking with her, now that I have a decent vocabulary, and am super happy to help her with these whimsical little projects she comes up with. And she has pledged to help me find a turkey for Thanksgiving of the North! in Balţi, although the prospect of transporting a turkey alive or dead on a ruteria doesn’t sound appealing, at least it will be an adventure, like so many others…
This equipment is at Jana’s school and is much nicer than at the Russian school, or at least much bluer.
lostpaddle 