It has been an eventful couple of days in Moldova. My adventures this week started on Thursday with the food preparations leading up to Paste (pronounced pash-tay), or the Orthodox Easter. Thursday night we prepared the traditional Colzonac, a sweet bread a lot like the Jewish Challah. It takes an hour of kneading, so we worked in shifts on a huge vat of dough.

This is my first attempt at adding video, so see if it worked. If it did, you can see me in the "uniform" for the kitchen making the dough for the cozonac!

This is the finished product. Who said I couldn't bake?

On Friday all of the volunteers in my group (Officially the Molodva EE and Health 20s!) were invited to the home of our director, Jeff Kelley Clark. He is moving on to a job in Seattle and will be leaving us in another two weeks, so the evening marked the first in a long string of good-byes... It was a great evening with great people, great food and fun conversations. The guy in the back with the beard is our leader orchestrating things in the kitchen. Eric is in the middle with Jimmy in the forefront! Great people one and all!

Speaking of great people... Here are Brad and Matt on potato duty. They believed the line that only the greatest cooks can handle peeling 100's of potatoes.... Matt is truly one of the finest people I have met in a long time. He has saved my sanity this past year and provided a lot of comic relief in my Peace Corps life.

Some more of our fabulous volunteers.

Friday, after Jeff's shindig, Matt and I (and Emily, a volunteer who is now working in Chisinau!) took off to the airport at about midnight to go and pick up Andi, a friend of ours that finished his service last summer and is now working in Moscow. He came back for the holidays to see everyone and to spend some time with his host family. He is truly one of the funniest people I have ever met. He also randomly dispenses a huge amount of wisdom in his humorous diatribes. (How was my vocabulary usage on that one Andy?)

Finally, at about 4 am, Andy-the-mighty called it a night, so we finally got some sleep. Four hours of sleep later, I headed out of Chisinau for the 3 hour ride back to Cahul so that I could help out with the preparations for the holiday on Sunday. I made it just in time to help out with the Sarmale rolling (my specialty-stuffed grape leaves!).


So today (Sunday) was Orthodox Easter and, although I am winding down my time in Moldova, my first! (Last year I was in Turkey for the holidays!) This morning we were up at the crack of dawn (2:30 a.m. to be exact!) to head for the church. Every family brings a basket or bag with the traditional cozonac , some wine and water to be blessed, colored eggs, and some candles. Other things are in the basket to munch on after the wine is blessed and then shared with the people around. They spread it out on a little towel in front of them and this is all done in lines around the church. The people basically make concentric rings around the church to make room for everyone. It is unbelievably beautiful, with all of the candles burning and the people ....

Tante Elena (Unchi Nikolai's wife!) and her sister in front of their spread.

Sandu (in the front) Nicholai and our neighbors. The candles that are burning were lit in the church from a special flame and must stay burning until you get home. Carrying them through the streets without blowing out the flame is not as easy as you might think...

The ghostly figure in the middle is me! (Left is Nikolai and right is Angela.)

Basket with all of the goodies brought to the church.

It was a fun, beautiful and eventful three days for me. I hope that your holiday celebrations were a time for being together with friends and loved ones. See you in three months!