Haidem sa sarbatorim ca ar fi anul 1999!

After several weeks of depression and homesickness, I got the remedy
I needed; a week-long vacation, one day of school on the following
Monday and then a huge party to celebrate Mereseni Day (it sounds so
much cooler in Romanian, "ziua satului" or "hramul satului").
Mereseni Day takes on an even large significance in my host family,
because it is the Feast of Saint Dumitru, whose name is shared by my
host father, who turned 56 just a week earlier. Because of these
abundant coincidences, my host family celebrates Dumitru's birthday
on the same day as Mereseni Day, making an already big party into an
even bigger one.

It was three years ago to the day that Dumitru surprised the entire
family by returning home from 15 months of working in Portugal, as
they were all gathered at the house celebrating his birthday without
him. This year was made especially joyful by the presence of Costia,
Dumitru's brother who is visiting from Vladivostoc this month after
19 years without stepping foot in Moldova and 16 years without
speaking to Dumitru or their sisters. Dumitru had never seen Diana,
my host sister, until he met her at the train station last month. At
that point, he called her Maria and had to be corrected.

But before I could focus on Dumitru's birthday, I wanted to see what
went on for the entire village on Mereseni Day. The centerpiece was
at the stadium (a.k.a. dilapidated soccer field), where a large truck
was converted into a stage with live music. In front of the stage,
hundreds of people danced in the dark, mostly of the circular hora
fashion of which I have written in previous posts. I took my first
pictures with my new insurance-company-reimbursed digital camera, and
so in the Mereseni section of my WebShots album, you can see plenty
of my students dancing around me as I squatted in the center of a
circle.

At the stadium, I also danced with my buddy the gym teacher, Doamna
Elena, and met her husband, Oleg. Taking the full range of dancing
partners, I also danced with one of my fifth grade students, Irina,
who could only be listed at 4 feet tall while wearing skates. She
tried at first to mimic adult dancing and reached to place her hand
on my shoulder. It was a stretch, to say the least, until a lady next
to us laughed and told her to put her hand on my elbow. It was an
easier hold, and after I instructed her on which way we needed to
turn as we danced, she did pretty well.

In Moldova, each village's day is a very large event, much larger
than any of the national independence days. It's not hard to see why;
Mereseni is first noted in historical documents 384 years ago, before
most of North America's Atlantic Coast was colonized. Hincesti, the
county seat, is 505 years old, and proudly displays that fact on a
hillside as you enter by car from Chisinau. Trace back 505 years in
America, and a guy named Columbus still thought he had landed in
India.So compare the history of these villages and towns, centuries
old, with the actual country of Moldova, which is younger than nearly
every high school student, and you have an idea of why village days
are more important than national holidays. When my sixth grade
students were happy, and maybe slightly shocked, to discover that
their village was older than the U.S.

After some time at the stadium, I returned back to the house to eat
what I calculate to have been my third dinner of the evening. I
managed to stay sober—that "I have to mold young minds tomorrow
morning" line, although not exactly what I say in Romanian, works
every time—but danced with Maria, Dumitru, his brother, his sisters
and their husbands, along with one nephew and his wife. All the
dancing took place in a small hallway measuring eight feet wide by 11
feet long, although the hallway, like my dance partner, would require
skates to measure that large. That's why the pictures I have are from
me standing on a chair in the corner, and that's also why they're not
outstanding pictures.

I'm going to allow the new digital pictures online to speak for
themselves now, and head off to sleep as quickly as possible. Got to
mold young minds tomorrow, doncha know.