The Nutcracker

On Saturday we went with a group of friends to see The Nutcracker ("Щелкунчик," in Russian). It was fantastic!
First, we met for dinner at a new Italian restaurant. It's owned by this little Italian guy who only speaks Italian and bad Russian. It's the type of place that serves bruschetta as an appetizer, and has real oil and vinegar on the table for your bread and salads. Here's a pic, you can see the owner/chef in the middle. Joni had a fettucini alfredo that came with ham, and Justin asked for the chef's special and got one of the best penne dishes in tomato sauce he's ever had (also with ham). For desert we had homemade tiramisu, which was incredible! The prices weren't bad, the place was packed with Americans, and we had a great time! Then, it was off to the ballet!

The show was packed and the audience was really into it, applauding a lot. When they really get into it, everyone starts clapping in unison to the beat of Tchaikovsky's music. We were really impressed by the stage props and the orchestra. In a neat twist, the Nutcracker was a real person from start to finish, no toy props were used.Apparently, several of the dancers also perform in plays (like Romeo and Juliet) at this same theater. Quite a bit of work and rehearsing for only one performance per show.

A great Saturday evening with good friends and fun culture in Chisinau!

Andy's Pizza (Justin)

We've mentioned Andy's Pizza on here before, but a post in honor of the restaurant chain is long overdue!
You can learn a lot about Andy's from their website, which has an English translation. Recently, they introduced a "Mexican Menu," complete with Chili con Carne and Fajitas. Now, the burrito is more like Mexican Pizza (have you ever had a burrito with veal and eggplant?) but it's also quite tasty. (On the prices listed on the website, divide the Lei price by 11.6 and you have what it costs us in dollars today).

Andy's also serves an interesting breakfast, "gourmet coffee," excellent deserts and milkshakes, and of course, pizza (with your choice of thick or thin crust!).

Supposedly, Andy's was started by a Moldovan who worked for a pizza chain in the U.S. He apparently realized you can attract customers by providing quality service, playgrounds for kids, delivery, and catering especially to ex-pats. The result is that there are now 13 Andy's in Chisinau alone, and several more in other parts of the country. Here is the one that is a 5 minute walk from our house.
"Together with your family and friends you will have a wonderful time in our pizzeria picnicking among sunflowers, forest grass and children’s’ laugh. It is an ideal place for all your family, children and friends to have a rest because here, every customer will find all that he/she needs: a comfortable separate area in any hall, terrace to have supper in the open, and a playground for children."

Every Andy's has a playground for kids so parents love to go there. The food is relatively cheap, even by Moldovan standards. Many just go for desert. The service is fast, we always have our food within 30 minutes. Every item on the menu is written in English, and accompanied by a picture so you can see what it is. Every ingredient is translated into Russian and Romanian as well. So, many ex-pats and tourists practically live there.

I actually prefer their lunch menu because the selection is more national (borscht and usually something more Moldovan). We've never used the delivery service, but I'm told that they store your phone number (a la Papa Johns) and you can just tell them "my usual, please."

Imitation is the highest form of flattery. Other restaurants in town offer delivery, have similar playgrounds, and I imagine are simply trying to copy Andy's success. But none offer the same high-quality service or the great website. Andy's blows McDonalds way out of the water!

Lovely Day for a Wedding (Joni)

Saturday was definitely a lovely day for a wedding! Sasha, the lawyer at our office, got married on Saturday, and we had the privilege to attend! They held the wedding at a camp about 45 minutes outside of Chisinau, so we got a ride from Ghena & Alina. Apparently traditional Moldovan wedding ceremonies are REALLY long, so Ghena & Alina decided to arrive late on purpose to not have to sit through several hours of ceremony. The wedding was supposed to start at 2 in the afternoon. We arrived at 3, and so we sat through a lovely 20 minutes and then it was over! (And from what we hear, this was a short one!) The couple are both believers, so it was moving the way they used Scripture and prayed together. Their parents also got up and prayed for them during the service, which was very special. So this was definitely not your normal Orthodox Moldovan wedding.It was neat to get to see all of our coworkers dressed up for the occasion and outside the office. Below is a picture of all our coworkers. From left to right: Kelly, Victor, Alina, Ghena, Sasha & his bride Nelly, Roman, me, and Justin.
Another thing that was different about this wedding was that since the couple are Baptists, there was no dancing at the reception, which is apparently a big no-no among European Baptists. So instead, there was a 4-hour long feast. And I mean a feast! Upon walking into the reception room, the tables were already loaded full to bursting with all sorts of delicacies - meat & cheeses, pickled vegetables, fried chicken, crab cakes, fish, fresh vegetables, fruits, bread, etc. So we ate and enjoyed ourselves. The only problem is that I didn't realize that was just the first course! I filled up on those thing, and THEN they brought out big plates of stuffed pork and potatoes! So we managed to get down some of that, and THEN they brought out plates of cakes and pastries! And THEN they brought out ice cream! It was unbelievable. Even more unbelievable is that we managed to eat it all. :)In between these courses, there would be breaks - you could go out and wander around the camp, which was lovely with trees and pretty scenery. There were also some musicians playing who kept us entertained. It was all in Russian, but Justin said they were singing all Christian love songs, which seemed appropriate to me. Occasionally someone would go to the microphone and say a few words to the bride and groom, who would stand up to hear what they had to say and acknowledge their kindness. Several children got up and quoted poetry.
It was definitely a fun evening and we at least got a glimpse into Moldovan Christian culture if not Moldovan tradition. Congratulations to Sasha and Nelly!

Rye Chili (Joni)

WE'RE ONLINE!!!!! As I type this, I'm sitting in our living room! Praise God for a friend of a friend who works at our internet company and graciously came to our house and fixed our wireless router for us. So hopefully our blogging and emailing will be more consistent now that we can access the internet from home. Sadly, though, I do not have a picture to post for you as Justin promised. We're going to a wedding tomorrow, so I'll have a lot of pictures of that for you!

Instead of pictures, though, I'll post a little story for you, which is where I got the title of this post. The weather is turning colder here, and I decided to make some chili for dinner. However, at the grocery store, I just couldn't find cumin, which is a spice I like to add in my chili. I did find chili powder, so I decided to make it anyway. But then I was at a different grocery store today and found a spice called chimen in Romanian. Most of the other spices' names are similar to the English names (piper, oregan, rozmarin, tim, etc.), so I thought this must be cumin! I joyfully bought it and this evening put a large amount of it in my chili. I noticed when I added it that it smelled kind of strange, but I thought maybe it had just been a long time since I'd smelled cumin and I must've forgotten what it smelled like. However, when we sat down to eat it, Justin took a whiff and said "This chili smells... different." Then he took a taste of it and said "Did you put RYE in this chili?!" (Side note: We do NOT like rye bread, and that is a very popular bread here, so we always have to be on our guard when purchasing bread. So the fact that my chili tasted like rye to Justin was NOT a good thing.) I said "No, but I think that the cumin I put in it wasn't really cumin." So I pulled out my Romanian dictionary and looked up chimen, and lo and behold, it's caraway (a spice commonly found in rye bread)! Why in the world would all the other spices have similar names to the English, and this one is just there to trick me?! So I'll definitely leave the caraway out of my next batch of chili... Ah, adventures in Moldova!

The Promised Photos

Here are the pictures I promised! First of all, this is Justin and I with our anniversary dinner. We are in our dining room at home, the flowers Justin bought me are on the left, and you can even see my infamous pot roast on our plates! Happy two years, my dear!

And this one is a tube of ice cream like I was describing. This is actually a kilogram (2.2 pounds), and it cost $2.25. What a yummy deal!

And this is just a random picture of Justin with a wax figure of Leonardo da Vinci. (You can see that Justin was taking meeting this great man very seriously...) Sunday afternoon we went downtown because we had heard that there were some wax figures that had been brought in from St. Petersburg on display at the Museum of History and Ethnography. I'm a little creeped out by wax figures, but it was just $1 each to get in, and this display was pretty cool. It was a pretty random collection of figures, including several Russian czars, Rasputin, Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Yuri Gagarin (the first man in space), Ghengis Kahn, King Tut, and Shrek, among others. We would've had to pay another $1 to take photos, so we just took the picture of da Vinci, who they had standing outside. It was definitely a fun experience and well worth the $2.

Two Wonderful Years (Joni)

My sweet husband of two years bought me some lovely flowers yesterday for our anniversary. I cooked him dinner (I attempted to make my first pot roast in the oven... Not so good. Thankfully, he is understanding and kind and ate it anyway - just another reason I'm glad I married him!), and then we went out for dessert. We're learning that ice cream is our dessert of choice here in Moldova. We've been out twice now for other desserts - they sell cakey-type confections that look really good, but just don't taste quite right. For example, one of the things we tried last night had prunes in it! Um, ok. The other place we went, we're pretty certain that the confections we bought had been sitting in the display case for at least 3 years... The other thing that has us convinced that buying ice cream from the store and just eating it at home is the way to go is that the ice cream is SO GOOD here! You can buy Moldovan-made ice cream in these plastic tubes for just about $1.50 a liter. The ice cream here is nothing like the ice cream in the States - here it's really light and fluffy, almost like frozen whipped cream! My favorite so far is the chocolate chip!

I'll post a picture of the ice cream tubes soon, as well as a picture of our anniversary dinner! I just forgot to bring my camera cord to the office with me today, and we don't have internet access at home yet. Check back tomorrow, and hopefully I'll have some pictures posted for you!

Third Time was a Charm (Joni)

After three days and a total of about 6 1/2 hours waiting in lines at the clinic, we FINALLY have our medical approval for work permits in Moldova! So we won't have to go back to the clinic, but this is still not the end of the road for us. Now we'll have to go to other offices and wait in lines there to get all the paperwork submitted. Please keep praying that God comes through mightily in providing this permit for us. I think it will still be a couple weeks before we know for sure whether or not we get the permits.

On an entirely unrelated note, I wanted to give you all a few pictures to let you know what our life looks like here.

This is Justin standing in front of our house! At the moment, we are living on the third floor of the building behind him - that balcony with the flower boxes is off our bedroom. It's nice to be able to sit out on the balcony and look out onto the street. The weather has been really nice until yesterday when it started raining - and it's still pouring now!

The building on the right side of this picture will be our new house once it's completed. You can see on the right that there is a step underneath a window. That used to be a porch for a door connecting the house to the courtyard. Now they've walled that off and made it a window, so the only entrance to the house is from the street. That gives anybody staying in the house a little more privacy, and also the family doesn't have to be disturbed by our coming and going. I haven't been in the house yet, but Justin has seen it and he says it's going to be great! A bedroom, living room, kitchen, and bathroom - all we need! They're working hard to get everything in the house completed this week, and they're hoping we'll be able to move in Sunday.

Finally, I just wanted to post a picture of a fine eating establishment here:
Yes, we have 3 McDonald's in Chisinau! This is the main location on downtown's main street. We ate at one of the different branches on Sunday after church, and I was surprised with how popular it was with the Moldovans! The place was packed! The prices are about the same as they are in America, but that's kind of expensive for food in Moldova. We probably won't eat there much, but it was tasty!

So those are a couple of pictures for you to get an idea of what it looks like here. Check back tomorrow for my long post about transportation!