IT EXISTS AND I HAVE PICTURES TO PROVE IT

Hello from Moldova!!

We all made it here in 1 piece (with the help of our intrepid summer helper, Mary). The trip was pretty uneventful although thoroughly miserable. The airlines were horrendous. Remembering kids meals/toys and good customer service on airlines is now something to be seen in an e-mail chain letter such as, "you were born before 1990 if you remember flying as an enjoyable experience." But, after 20 hours of traveling we were here and Mike even arranged for the VIP bus (yes, bus) to get us after we were dropped on the tarmac in Chisinau (pronounced keesh-nau).

The city is very small which, hopefully, makes it easy to navigate. Our house is in a small neighborhood and near a pretty large outdoor market. I think I have walked up to that market at least once per day (sometimes multiple times) for random groceries and for something to do.

The flowers here are gorgeous - here is a picture of the type of gardens people have outside their homes.

My initial reaction to Chisinau was love at first sight because waiting for me in our backyard was the biggest cherry tree I have ever seen absolutely dripping with ripe cherries. Those of you who know me will not doubt the fact that in the first two days I was here I prob. ate at least 300 cherries. Well, a day or so after I got here someone at the Embassy informed me that the cherries are fine to eat, but to soak them first because they all have WORMS!!!! Sure enough, I upon returning home I split open a cherry and there they were...each cherry had a little worm. Ugh!! I have been assured that it's just a little extra protein - nothing to be worried about. Perhaps, but it is totally disgusting to think about all the "extra protein" I ate the first few days I was here!! Interestingly enough, if you soak the cherries first in the sink for a few hours the worms burrow out and drown. You never know when that might come in useful. The cherry tree has now been picked clean and I have 3 Target bags full of cherries for later use. I welcome all good cherry recipes.

We have yet to explore too much because our car just got here last week - and the roads here have no signs so it is difficult to find your way around. There are 2 Mc Donald's here and we did manage to find one of those. There is a large warehouse shopping store here called Metro and that is where we have been going for groceries because our consumables shipment has not arrived yet. Food is EXPENSIVE here (exept for local produce in season). A small jar of instant coffee is $5, a small whole broiler chicken is $7. The worst so far was 2 (TWO) avocado's I bought for guacamole and realize when I got home that I paid $4.57. For 2 Avocado's!!! I'm going to savor that guacamole because it is the last I will be eating until I get home for Christmas. OK, some not expensive things so far have been; cabbage (yummy), onions, potatoes, rasbperries (buckets and buckets full of raspberries at the market) for $2.50 a Kilogram (that's 2.2 pounds, mom), cherries (but now they are gone), tomatoes are about 1-1.50 a kilo and they fresh from the field and actually taste like tomatoes, yellow wax beans and wine. Apparently Moldova has huge wineries and they are quite renound. A really good bottle of Moldovan wine costs about $3. The Ambassador just left here for DC and packed out 400 bottles.

I'll try and explain more about life here. There is not much for the kids here. I am trying to find ballet lessons and/or gymnastics for Sophia which is proving more difficult that you would imagine for a former soviet state. There are no parks/playgrounds. Well, I have seen some old run-down monkey bars or a slide surrounded by overgrown trees and broken beer bottles. The best we have done so far is the playground next to the McDonalds. Not bad....if you ignore the broken glass.

There is ABSOUTELY not an ounce of English spoken anywhere. Moldova has some strange division of Romanian (the official language) and Russian. It is assumed that everyone speaks both and they really do seem to. Addreses, building titles, etc are all witten in both Romanian and Russian. The biggest problem I have had is grocery stores b/c all food titles and ingredients are written in Romanian and I can't speak a word of it or make any sense of it. I can pick up an item and spend 5 or so minutes trying to figure out what in the world it is. Chisinau is pretty clean (compared to Nairobi, at least) but is run down. There are many Soviet era apartments that sometimes seem inhabited but are pretty nasty. The coolest thing is Chisinau's electric trolly busses which zip all over the city (who knew the Soviets were planning "Green" cities....or was that Gore's idea?)

We ventured out to the Zoo last weekend and it was actually pretty darn nice. They had some of the biggest bears I have ever seen in my life, a couple of zebra's, lions, a tiger, leopard, a sign for a kangaroo (but never did see one) and lots of goose like birds. Sophia got a horse ride and all the kids got ice cream so the trip was a hit for them.

Ok, time to wrap up this post as it is almost midnight here. I'll conclude with some misc. pix of the kids playing, me trying to bust a path through a herd of (mostly sleeping) goats, and Mary walking to the Embassy (through a park that you have to climb up about a million steps to get out of).

Miss you all. Hopefully my communications will be up to speed now that we are finally online.

Hope you all have a great week!!

~L