Blogs from Galati, Galati, Moldova, Romania, Europe

Bonjour à tous, Ce soir je voulais vous mettre à l'épreuve. Pour les mots croisés, pour le scrabble, ou encore pour briller dans les soirées. Qu'elle est la langue officielle de la Moldavie?. Si vous avez la réponse, je vais être impressionné. Réponse: le gagaouze. Je n'avais jamais entendu ce mot, ni même que la Gagaouzie existait. La langue est un mélange de turque, et d'ukrainien. Les gagaouzes sont un peuple turcophone, venu de Bulgarie s'installé en Moldavie, ils sont de confession, chrétienne orthodoxe. Comme vous l'aurez compris, ce soir je suis encore en Roumanie. En partant ce matin je programme comme prévu, Chisinau en Moldavie, et je suis à environ 70km de la frontière, que je vais faire, d'une part pendant 50km sur une route très encombrée de camions, et ensuite les 20 suivants plus ... read more

Morning came early, as usual and thankfully mama had a modest offering for breakfast. The coffee is what I call 'camp-fire-style' because its just grounds tossed into a small pot of water and boiled, like my mom did when camping. It's rather novel to me, but at least I was expecting it, so I could drink around the grounds. They are perplexed that I water it down and add my milk/cocoa mix, but quite forgiving. Aurelia took me to her school and I spoke to some 9th and 10 graders. The older ones were like talking to a set of stone figures. A. said they just don't participate unless words are dragged from them. I saw she told the truth. Yikes! At least one of them did thank me for the books I sent to the ... read more

Had a bad start to an interesting project. After hours on the bus to Galati, we were dropped off in a big city, at the side of the road, next to a restaurant. I tried to ask Romanians where the bus station was, but all they said was the general direction and take a taxi. We walked about half an hour in freezing cold to the end of the road which only went to right or left. We called Dana to come pick us up and after a 20 minute delay, we were told to wait another 20 minutes... 45 minutes later, Dana showed up to collect us. We were standing outside of a large electronic clock that also tells the temperature, which was -9C! It was so cold and the wind didn't help, so we ... read more