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.