February 15, 2009

February 15, 2009

We have had a very pleasant weekend. Friday afternoon we went to the college for Social Work Day. The director (president) of the college told us that every semester they have a specific day to feature each of their programs. The undergraduate social work students present a program consisting of a short play, the pictorial introduction of each of the students, some small group activity, a speech by a faculty member, and what seemed to be a debate between the faculty member and the director. Of course we couldn’t understand any of this since it was all in Russian. We didn’t think about asking our interpreter to come with us so we are just guessing at what it was all about.

We were surprised that the program was in Russian since all the classes we are teaching this time are in Romanian. Vitali said that since almost everyone in Moldova understands Russian (whereas not everyone understands Romanian) and there were central Asian students there who speak Russian that most general meetings are conducted in Russian.

Friday night we had another delicious dinner and then watched two movies with some of the family. We watched the 1963 film “Lilies of the Fields” and an old John Wayne, Robert Mitchum cowboy movie. The boys loved the cowboy movie.

Saturday Preston spent most of the day working on the statistics course to be taught this week. Saturday evening two of the interns came over for Valentine’s dinner. It was a delicious meal and beautiful table. Lucia, Inna, and their friend Nancy spent all day working on the meal. We had a salad, chicken cordon bleu, wonderful mashed potatoes, gravy, broccoli, and two cakes! We could not have had a better meal at any restaurant in Chisinau! We had planned to take the interns out for Valentine’s but Vitali told us the restaurants would be terribly crowded and you would probably have to pay about $50 just for a reservation. We all agreed that we would much rather be at the house and have Lucia’s cooking. It was a delightful evening.