Tot se duce in interior

It's that magical time of year in Moldova; the harvest has ended, the rain is starting to fall, the night temperatures drop as low as 40 degrees Fahrenheit, it's comfortable wearing four layers in the house because my host family has yet to buy wood for the furnaces, and yes, theВ apparatusesВ of daily living that were outside just last week have migrated indoors.

As many as three weeks ago, I was already putting on long underwear, sweatpants, a sweatshirt and a winter hat to use the phone outdoors. With the exception of one or two days in early October, it has only gotten colder. Thursday afternoon, my host brother, Sergiu, will move the phone inside for the winter. The only unfortunate side effect of this is that, as I explained to Maria, having the phone outside was a good way to make all my calls shorter and cheaper. Sometimes, warmth costs you in more ways than just the heating bill.

Saturday afternoon marked what was definitely be my last outdoor shower until springtime. Hot water that was heated on an outdoor stove just wasn't warm enough to compensate for the 55-degree air as I stood naked in front of the conveniently—yet awkwardly—placed small mirror in the shower. I watched my goose-bumps rise, my lower lip shake and my nipples harden (believe it or not, I'm stopping short in my description) as I patted myself down with water as quickly as possible and got back in the house with only a semi-thorough application of soap.

In the next few days, however, my family will finish building the indoor shower. It is in the casa mica, orВ "small house," which consists of one bedroom, a kitchen and the new bathroom and is used in winter by the family because it is easier to heat than the real house (I will stay in the big house, with my own heater for my room). The new shower room will have a wood-burning water heater, tile walls and a large reserve tank of water on the roof so that you can pour water in from the well any time you want, rather than just before taking a shower. The shower also has a drain, which, like our toilet and the hole in the back yard in which I dump used laundry water, seems to drain into the underground ether. I have no definite evidence of where the waste water flows to, but my house is uphill from the pond, and there's a reason why Peace Corps tells us not to swim or eat the Moldovan fish. The sink, which was until Wednesday outside on the patio, is now in the room leading into the shower room. It was a joy this morning to shave and not have the wind instantly whip my wet face.

In other news, Dumitru's brother comes in on a train next Wednesday night from Vladivostock, on the Pacific coast of Russia. He has not seen his brothers and sisters in Moldova for 20 years, and until this summer, hadn't talked to them for 15 years.В  He has never seen Diana, his 18-year-old niece. This is an amazing story, and one that I feel may not be incredibly uncommon across the former Soviet Union. I plan to make a documentary about the visit (which will be several weeks long) and make it my next Pete In Moldova Productions video. In the meantime, I'm sure I'll be posting little bits of the story on this blog.