The next day, the bells rang at the church. They had told me just the day before that they ring when a villager dies (they have rung three times this week - I'm not sure if that means three different people died or what), so I think this time they were for Grandpa. (I mean, they weren't, but I interpreted it like they were.)
I wasn't really in the mood to do anything that day, but I was at work anyway, not doing much of anything (so, the usual) and the mayor asked me if I wanted to go somewhere with him. I said yes; he said 10 minutes; an hour later we hadn't left. Eventually we did, and I figured out that we were going to a winery across the road to get a bottle of wine for him to bring to Germany. The mayor is very passionate about this center he wants to establish for the village, for the elderly and disabled. He was going to Germany the next day to ask for funding, I believe, so he planned to bring a bottle of Moldovan wine! Always a good gift.
I briefly mentioned before that Divergent has become kind of an important book to me. I really identify with the main character's struggles, and one of them is Dauntless initiation. Which I sometimes feel like I'm going through, too - it's really hard to be brave and "dauntless" all the time and occasionally you're not completely sure you're going to make it! Two weeks ago my partner gave me a book about the history of the village. I was reading the section about the village's name - it comes from the Turkish, and it means "tiger." So that's cool. But the village just across the main road was also listed in the same section and also got its name from Turkish - only its name, Crocmaz, means "dauntless." At first I thought I was inventing that, because how could that coincidence really happen. So I tried to translate it a slightly different way, and it literally means dauntless. I obviously felt it was fate and I didn't know if I would ever get to this village, but I sure wanted to.
The winery we went to was in Crocmaz. On a day I probably needed some bravery, we went to Dauntless.
It was a cute little winery called Et Cetera and the owner was very nice - he gave me a bottle of pink wine as a present (I really didn't think pink was very popular over here, since I hadn't had it yet!) and then the three of us sat down and shared a bottle of it with bread and spreads.
We went to the raion center after that to do some more things the mayor needed to do, including getting a tire fixed.. While I was in the car. Nobody told me to get out!
Then he said, we're going to Purcari! Which was confusing to me, because that's a winery too, and we'd already been to one winery that day! But we went there too! It was really pretty, and an old and big winery.. Much more of a tourist attraction than Et Cetera. The mayor said we'd come back sometime when we had more time, but he took my picture there and bought me a little bottle as a present.
We went back to Caplani and he took me to his greenhouses where he gave me a bunch of cucumbers (oh, we'd stopped on the way back and he'd gotten me a bunch of fruit, too - I think they're very concerned about my eating here) and took my picture with them again.
It was a very eventful two days.
Today we got a call from the mayor (I think he's still in Germany) who said (I think) that we got a bunch of funding for the center! So that's really exciting! Hopefully I'll get to work on this a bunch with them, because it seems very important to the mayor.
So.. I'm doing okay. Moldova keeps having her Moments.
No comments:
Post a Comment