Bunica gazda (host grandmother)

I've finally had a conversation with my host grandmother that consisted of more than her asking me if I know Russian and me saying no, which has happened on several occasions. Don't ask me what the whole conversation was about, I'm not entirely sure.

The other day no one was home but me, and when my host family goes out they hide the key to the main house in a place I know so that I can get in. I went over to use the use the printer and get some dinner only to find the key not in its normal place. So I stood in front of the door asking the dog what he thought we should do (sometimes the dog is the only living creature that I will speak English with for days on end), when up the path came my host grandmother from her house waving the key at me. I took care of printing my lesson plans while she finished off dinner. Side note: the other day I noticed that we seemed to have fewer chickens in the garden than usual. Guess what we've been eating a lot of lately. Poor things were all butchered and frozen. But the roast chicken is really good, so I'm good with that.

Any-who, she started asking me what religion my family is and I told her we're Lutheran. Yes, it is kind of like Catholic, but Protestant. No, we don't take orders from the pope in Italy. No, we don't cross ourselves either. I asked her about the new church that was being built in our village which is really close to the house. She told me I need to go to church and that I should go when it is finished. I told her that I would love to go to a Moldovan church to see what a service here is like. She seemed to approve of this decision. Then we tried to talk about the family that lives near us that my host family has been helping (see below) because, apparently, they're an "American religion". She said that that's the reason why they have a lot of kids and don't drink alcohol. I asked if they were Baptist, since that's popular in Moldova, but she said no. Then I asked if they were Mormon, since there is an LDS church in Chisinau, but she didn't seem to understand what that was, so she told me to go eat chicken.

This is what I understood of the conversation. The whole thing took about fifteen minutes and we also talked about many other topics. When I say talked about, I mean we tried to, but couldn't understand each other. I've been told I have a strong American accent, and she mumbles a bit, which makes it hard for me to understand her.

It was chicken and boiled potatoes that night. They were really good. But I only took a small amount of potatoes because the Moldovan diet is very carbohydrate heavy. She then instructed me to take more potatoes, I had taken too few. It wasn't a suggestion. So once I had my food and was settled at the table, she had to go feed the pigs and reminded me to lock the house when I leave. By the way, the word for pig in Romanian is "porc". I think it is a little funny.

My new plan when she is in charge of feeding me is to take less than I really want the first time, so I get the amount I actually want after she tells me to take more.

Monasteries

As I promised, the post about our visit to three monasteries in Moldova. By now this trip happened several weeks ago, but I have pictures that are asking to be posted. Also, I should preempt this post with a short history lesson:

Moldova has their own version of George Washington, and his name was Stephan cel Mare or Stephan the Great (Prince and Saint). He lived about 1450-1500 and fought to keep Moldova independent of the many other empires in the area. As you can guess, he fought a lot of battles, and he actually won a lot of them. As I understand it, after each battle that he won he would build a church or monastery in Moldova. So as a result there are a lot of (very beautiful) churches and monasteries dotting the country.

This is the first one we visited:

There was a modern church with an older one behind it being restored. Some volunteers, myself included, went into the basement/sanctuary of the older one to find some sort of a service in progress. The nuns there were singing in a choir, the music was very beautiful, and people were lighting candles in the dim light under paintings of saints. I was able to catch a couple of pictures of the nuns. I'm not sure what the difference in their habits are, but I think it is the older women who wear the ones in the second picture.

Also, if you happened to forget to wear a skirt that day, you could borrow one from where they were selling headscarves. Our language professor said that women are supposed to wear headscarves in order to discourage them from wearing fancy hairstyles at church.


The second monastery we visited was very nice. Here we met up with some guys from the capital (that spoke English) and told us they biked out there that day. I'm not sure where this monastery was, so I'm not sure how long of a bike ride it was, but good on them. Here I was able to snap a picture of some priests or monks, not entirely sure which they are. This monastery also had beautiful art inside.





This is the last one we visited and was also the one with the least amount of reconstruction done to it. You can see some scaffolding on the right side of the first picture. The second picture is of a nun manning the shop. Most monasteries here has some sort of a little shop where people can buy candles to light, cross necklaces, holy water, pictures of saints and the such.




Outside the grounds were a little worse for wear. It looked like not much landscaping had been done in a while here, while the first two monasteries had very lovely gardens. There was also one lonely headstone; I can't help but wonder who it belongs to.
There was also a gazebo/well with some art painted on the ceiling. You can see Mary holding baby Jesus. Now what I think is interesting is that Renaissance painters would paint children with adult proportions (whereas in real life babies have giant heads, just ask any woman who has given birth, they'll attest to this). In this picture you can see that baby Jesus has these adult proportions. Also in the gazebo we were given bread by some random guy who then walked off (we did eat the bread, we were all pretty hungry by then) and got a history lesson from a random theology student, who confirmed that this monastery was from the Renaissance era.



A lot of the churches and monasteries in Moldova are under reconstruction. During the Soviet era they were either boarded up and left abandoned or used for some other purpose. I can understand how some aspects of communism might work in theory, but I'll never understand why some people think it is okay to strip others of their religions and individuality.

Alright, so here you have some gorgeous pictures. Enjoy.