Since Moldova doesn’t celebrate Christmas until January7 today is just a normal day for most people. For volunteers, we get to celebrate Christmas twice! Today I went to a larger town about 30 minutes away for dinner on speaking English.

The menu was the most random assortment of food, none of which are traditional Christmas foods because the two people doing most of the prep kept a list of food cravings over the last several weeks.. It was really good through. The Moldovan food I’ve had is good but lacks the zing of the American cuisine. Most of our food was international I think we had American, Mexican, Japanese, and Molodan foods represented. My favorite was the brownies, with ice cream, hot fudge, and whipped cream. MmmIt wasn’t a White Christmas but is we did have a couple of snow showers which forced us to run outside and verify it really was snowing and take advantage of the brief opportunity to have a snowball fight.

After dinner and cleaning the massive amount of dirty dishes we all watched Chevy Chase’s Christmas Vacation which mom sent over. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to watch the whole thing as the last ruteara of the day leaves at 6:30.

All in all it was a good Christmas but I miss all my friends and family. I hope this Christmas has been good you. Time to call home and disrupt dinner…

I’ve uploaded some pictures from this month and Christmas at: http://picasaweb.google.com/elenbaum/2006December

PS. If you got a call from a strange number yesterday and a mumbled  voicemail message it was probably from me. If you didn’t sorry, I either didn’t have your number or didn’t think you important enough to call on Christmas Eve…  Sorry

On an unrelated note, check out the website of my friend Mark Rogers at http://fallingfifth.com/

I just got done discussing politics for an hour and a half with my host family. Now, I love a good argument or discussion, but I tend to avoid politics. I know just enough to know that I don’t know squat. I know that both sides of the table have valid arguments and it will be up to the history writers to to tell us who was right. Nevertheless, how do you answer questions about Bush, Clinton, and Iraq in another language to non Americans.

BTW, our conversation started out with a question of why North America is more developed than South America. I know just enough history of South America to have a general idea but not a good solid grasp. Anyone got any opinions?

Anyway, sorry for the delay in posting. I got a case or writers block knowing that there are people who actually read this thing. I guess my head hurts enough to make a post now.

Time for bed..