Daca nu te inteleg pe tine, nici tu nu ma vei intelege pe mine

Wednesday, a handful of men from the neighborhood, including my host dad, worked to deepen the well near our house. This well serves the entire neighborhood, but had recently dried up. In the evening, with the men done with work for the day, they came to our house for a very late lunch. I joined them, and was both amused and slightly bothered by a man in his 60s, Dima, who kept trying to speak to me in Russian.

"He doesn't know Russian," my host dad and the other men told him repeatedly.

"He understands чут чут," Dima said, using the Russian word for "a little".

The fifth time he tried speaking entire sentences to me in Russian, I stopped him. "I've been living here for two years, learning Romanian," I said. "Let's speak in Romanian. If you keep speaking in Russian, I'm going to start speaking in English, and we're not going to understand each other at all."

Everyone at the table laughed, and Dima switched to Romanian for a few minutes. Then he started speaking to me again in Russian. I switched to English.

"OK, you decided," I said in my native language. "You want to keep speaking Russian? I'm going to speak English. No more Romanian. No more Russian. I'm speaking English now."

The entire table cracked up. Minutes later, Dima apologized. I think he thought I had said something awful about him in English. Or maybe he hadn't thought twice about his language choice, and was instead apologizing for the wine he had spilled on the table. Either way, it gave me a little bit of entertainment for the evening.

Nu mai scriu nici o singura nota

Monday, 2:30 p.m. I walk into my school's vice-principal's office, hand her the 5th grade class register, and with a smile and over-dramatic timing, declare, "Never again in my life will I write another grade in this country."

It's been over a year since I've written about The Catalog, the pale blue grade book for each class that must contain a detailed listing of every lesson taught in every subject and every grade given to every student. The Catalog, which was mysteriously renamed The Register this year in a change that only I seem to have noticed, must be written in with a particular pen and must be constantly updated with handwritten entries. Failure to constantly update The Catalog, I have discovered, is the fastest way to alienate your coworkers and get everyone at the school ticked off at you.

But it doesn't matter any more. On Monday, I finished writing all of my grades—I needed to write them for about 140 students in two subjects in eight classes for a total of 12 sections to complete. That included pulling some of my failing informatica students out of their classes to complete an assignment so that they'd have a passing grade. There were also several students who were in The Catalog that I didn't even know, but their homeroom teachers begged me to give them a passing grade. I protested for a minute or two with both of the teachers who asked me, but I caved in. After all, what do I care if a kid with a tough situation at home gets a 4 or a 5 in my class?

I could complain more about The Catalog. I could praise the American system, in which teachers provide progress reports to the school, students and parents every six weeks and don't need to detail every lesson that they teach and every grade they give. But what's the point? Instead, I can stay positive, because never again will I have to write another grade in those stupid blue books.

Deschiderea sezonului sportiv

Even though the 250 lb man who had finished his fourth and final wrestling match was more tired than I, I was dead tired after just watching a day full of soccer, cycling, wrestling and, thanks to me, some frisbee on the side.

Sunday was the opening of the sports season in Mereseni, a day full of different competitions on the village's soccer field. I couldn't go last year, but this year I came with two Canadian tourists, Ziggy and John, and my frisbee.

Ziggy, John and I came from Chisinau in the morning, and I gave them a short walking tour of the village. Ziggy had been to many villages in east Asia, and John was born and raised in a small town in Newfoundland, but this was their first experience in an Eastern European village. They got a good sample right away, as an old lady and her middle-aged daughter called us across the road to serve us wine and candy. It is a Moldovan tradition for a family to mourn the anniversary of a loved one's death by serving wine to anyone they see in the village. I understood the situation and began a conversation with the women and a man who later joined us. My visitors had no idea what was going on, and after seeing me drink my glass of wine in one gulp, assumed that they were about to drink grape juice; needless to say, they were surprised when they tasted something stronger.

After quick stops at the cemetery, culture house, pasture, my house and the school, the three of us went to the field with my frisbee in hand. We were there early for the festivities, but there were a couple dozen kids hanging around the field, so we started a game of ultimate frisbee. I had taught my English students how to play the week earlier, so they knew not only how to play, but also how to say, "Here!" "Nice defense!" and "The score is 3-1," in English, among other phrases. Knowing that the soccer game wasn't scheduled to start until 2 p.m. and that that meant it wouldn't actually start until 2:45, the three of us left the frisbee with my students and went back to the house to have some lunch.

After lunch, we returned to the field to watch the soccer game, which had just started. There was a lightly contested match between Mereseni and Sarata Mereseni, the small Russian and Ukrainian village that shares a mayor with Mereseni. But the real match was between the adults in the village and the boys in the village under 18 years old. It was well played, and I'm not sure what the final score was because we were drawn away multiple times to throw the frisbee in a circle of kids.

The 90-degree weather had us constantly going to the nearby store to purchase, at various times, water, lime soda, ice cream and beer. With the heat not showing any sign of stopping, the soccer game ended, and there was a brief cycling race among the kids. Then the crowd of hundreds gathered around some gymnastics mats that had been laid together on the grass. It was time for wrestling.

Moldovan wrestling, "trinta," is a simple form of wrestling based solely on takedowns. The purpose is to put your opponent on his back as a direct result of the takedown; if he lands on his stomach, the ref blows his whistle and both wrestlers return to standing positions without any points being awarded. The two most common ways to achieve this are with a fancy but easy to escape head-and-arm throw or by gaining position on your opponent's side and sweeping his leg. Throws are made easier because both competitors wear a belt. In my opinion, it's a lesser form of wrestling than the folk-style and freestyle wrestling that is prevalent in U.S. high schools and colleges because there are so few possible successful moves, but nevertheless it's exciting.

The competition was divided into three age divisions, the first of which featured boys up to 14 years old fighting to win a rooster. At this age level, the wrestling was simplistic and focused mostly on head-and-arms. The winner, Mihai Brinzeanu, was clearly more experienced and used a larger variety of moves to take down his opponents.

The second division was for boys up to 18 years old, who wrestled for a lamb. There were more close matches, and many of the boys were using strategies they had adapted from the judo training that they receive in Hincesti. Denis Mititelu, a tall, slender and muscular kid, used excellent positioning and fast hands to win, and he put the sheep on his shoulders and paraded it around the mats.

Then it was time for the adults, who wrestled for a ram. I had thought of entering in the competition, but was happy that none of my students had mentioned it to me. Then, as men were signing up the competition, some acquaintances of mine in their 20s asked me if I was going to wrestle. I demurred a couple times, but then said, "Okay, I'll try." I told the mayor to sign me up, but he refused to put me on the list. Then I told him to sign up Bill Clinton. He still refused. I'm not sure what his reasons were, but I'm sure he wasn't afraid of me winning it all. After five minutes, the other men and I stopped asking him.

All in all, 26 men from the village entered the tournament. Most of the matches were pretty good, with much better defense than the boys' matches. Several pairs of shorts were ripped during fights, which added a lot of amusement for the crowd and a little bit of skin for the girls. In the end, a boy remained to fight a man: Denis Mititelu, the boy who had won the lamb, was matched against Victor Cucereanu, a 250 lb man in his mid-30s who, although shorter and with blond hair, had a similar muscular build to Zangief from Street Fighter II.

For the first few minutes, neither fighter had a clear advantage. The boy was more active and aggressive, but the man was immovable and was directing movement around the mat with his hand on the back of the boy's neck. Middle-aged men exclaimed to their friends, "Uite la patanul acela." "Look at that kid." After five minutes, the timekeeper yelled, "Time!" but instead of going to a contrived overtime, several men in the crowd said, "Let them wrestle." The match continued.

Minutes passed. Denis continued his assault, sometimes getting a leg and knocking his opponent over, but Victor always able to recover to his belly. Victor, although flagging from the heat and a lack of conditioning, continued to show flashes of power, reminding the crowd and his opponent that he was twice as old and nearly twice as large as the juvenile challenger. Whereas Denis rarely came close to putting Victor on his back with his takedowns, Victor used his weight and power to his advantage, and Denis barely escaped several times by bellying out.

As the sun beat down and hundreds of villagers looked on, the man and the boy continued their battle. After one burst of activity, Victor grabbed a water bottle out of the crowd and doused his face. After another, Denis sprung up from the mat and stood ready to fight. Victor stumbled up and smiled at him in disbelief. The crowd laughed; momentum was on the boy's side.

A minute later, Denis took Victor down to his stomach again. Denis stood up quickly. Victor rose up wearily, looked at the referee and waved his hands in front of him; no more.

The crowd erupted. The boy jumped up and down, pumping his fist in the air before collapsing in the center of the mat. His friend came to give him a high five and a bottle of water. After 30 seconds, Denis stood up, grabbed the rope that was wrapped around his new ram's horns, and led it on a short trip around the mat before passing it to his father. Later, as according to tradition, he would butcher the ram and hold a feast for the winning soccer team.

After the final match, the crowd lingered around the field. The evening air had cooled slightly, and everyone continued to socialize and revel in the uncharacteristically summer-like day. The day's events, especially the final, had electrified us all, and no one was eager to go home.

Ziua mea, un seminar si o frizerita

On May 12th, I celebrated my 24th birthday. Unlike last year, I didn't want to do a big feast in my village with my teachers and my host family, nor did I want to gather a bunch of volunteers to invade a Chisinau restaurant like I did a week after my birthday last year. Instead, I spent my birthday weekend in Cahul, a major southern city, with a handful of other volunteers and over a dozen English-speaking students from the local university.

Sam Parkes, a volunteer in Cahul University's English department, is helping her colleagues and students start the first university alumni association in Moldova, and she had asked me to conduct a seminar about how to create an alumni magazine. So on Friday afternoon, I flagged down the Cahul bus that passes through my village and started the trip.

At first, I had to stand on the bus. This is normal if you pick up a bus in a village; you just wait until other people get off at their villages, and then you can have a seat. An aisle seat freed up once we got to the next village, and I sat down next to an attractive girl in her early 20s.

The girl was playing with her cell phone, and I had a book to read, so I didn't rush a conversation. After all, female volunteers often complain to me about men hitting on them on public transport, so I didn't want to be "that guy" for some girl who was just trying to visit her parents over the weekend. Plus we would be sitting next to one another for another two hours, so I could take my time. Instead, I took a few nonchalant glances out the window, supposedly looking past her but making full use of my peripheral vision.

After about an hour of sitting next to one another, the girl started dozing off. Comfort is hard to come by while sleeping on a bus, and her head was bouncing with every bump in the road. Several times, her head would rest on my shoulder for a few seconds, but then she would raise it back up in semi-conscious self-consciousness. The third time it happened, I said, "If it's more comfortable, you can use my shoulder."

"Thanks," she said, and put her head back without hesitation and slept for another half-hour. Warm fuzzy feelings filled my heart, and I knew we had gotten off to a good start.

When she woke up just outside the Cahul city limits, we chatted about Moldova and America. She told me she was a hairdresser in Chisinau who was originally from Cahul, and she was coming home for the weekend to visit her family. The bus stopped in the center, and even though I could have gotten to Sam's house faster by staying on the bus until the last stop, I got off and walked with her a little more.

As we parted ways a few minutes later, we got each other's names; Oxana for her, Petru for me. She said she'd like to talk to me more this weekend, so I gave her my phone number and told her to call me. I had two reasons for giving my number instead of taking hers. First, as I said earlier, I didn't want to be seen as a creep trying to pick her up on the bus. Second, Moldovan women in general are much more passive than American women, so asking her to call me was a test.

I continued walking to Sam's house, where I finished planning the seminar and she baked some cupcakes and cookies for the next day. Sam shared my excitement about the possibility of Oxana calling, and we were both thrilled when a missed call showed up on my phone. I called the number back, ready to invite her to my birthday dinner the next night. Instead, I got Dumitru Minzarari, a Moldovan whose English-language article I have been proofreading. Dumitru's a great guy and all, but I would have much rather gotten a call from a cute girl in her early 20s than a male Columbia-educated former Moldovan military officer. Sam and I continued to hope for a call from Oxana, but didn't receive one that night. No problem; that night I slept in a double bed for the first time since I was home for Christmas, so I was content enough.

The next day, the seminar went well. The students and professors that I met were all really good English speakers, and I repeatedly praised them during the six-hour seminar for the fact that they were working to improve the situation at their university and in their country.

Four more volunteers came to Cahul during the day, and in the evening we went out for my birthday dinner, a relaxed affair at a Moldovan restaurant, eating mamaliga and barbecue and washing it down with a beer or two. When we returned to Sam's house, we continued with a little more beer; Scott, Sam's boyfriend and my cohort in running the basketball league, got tipsy enough with me to start talking about classic cable advertisements. Scott would randomly shout, "Look! It's Eagle Man!" and we sang, "588-2300, Empire!" together in both English and Romanian. I soloed a New England classic, singing, "1-800-54-GIANT," for Giant Glass. Oxana still didn't call, which at that point in the evening was probably a good thing.

The next day, I took the bus back up north with Meg, another English teacher from my group. The trip included several highlights. One was a frumpy middle-aged woman standing in the aisle who would reach inside her skirt and then rest her guilty hand dangerously close to Meg's head. Another highlight was when a woman got on the bus with her two-year-old grandson, who was gripping her leg and crying as she tried to make her way down the aisle; a man loudly called out, "Do you see what happens when you have a child that you don't want?" The final highlight was when a woman started complaining to the driver from her seat that he was stopping too often to pick up passengers. Rather than respond, the driver simply turned up the music in the bus, which caused the woman to start screaming and the rest of us to start laughing.

I much preferred the casual approach to my birthday this year, and so far I've had a good time being 24. My only regret is giving Oxana my number instead of getting hers. It's been more than a week, and she hasn't called. Sure, I can say that I was testing her and that she failed the test. But honestly, if a cute girl puts her head on your shoulder, that's no time to test her. It's the last mistake I'll ever make as a 23 year old.