I am really lucky to be in Moldova and celebrate two Christmases and New Years. Most of the Orthodox church uses the old calendar which means they celebrate religious holidays on different dates. Today was Christmas. Under communism much of the Christmas traditions were moved to New Years to down play the religion. For example, Santa came on New Years eve (Their big new years celebration is the new one, Dec 31.)

For Christmas we went to Chisinau last night and stayed with my host Dad’s brother’s family. It was a lot of fun. The center of Chisinau is pretty lit of and it was a lot of fun. This morning we went to an orthodox church where my host cousin was singing in the Choir. Now, I don’t know much about music, but they were really good. I was really impressed. I think they sang for a good three hours with only a couple of breaks. Standing for the whole time wasn’t as much fun. After this we had a big delicious rabbit dinner and played games. I took a ton of pictures that I will try to upload when I get a chance.

I also found out that my host cousin is webmaster for the telephone and  internet company. She speaks English quite well so it was nice to talk in my own language. And, maybe now I will be able to get an inside scoop on when we will be getting DSL!

Time for bed, Crăciun fericit