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    Here is a short and very low-quality clip of the hora satului - the big dance in the village center at the end of hram (or village day) yesterday.  Every  village has its own hram - it is set on one of the most important days of the Orthodox calendar.  On this day, no one goes to work and instead attends a marathon of masas. I cannot speak for other villages, but I can certainly tell you about Taraclia’s hram.

    After sleeping in a bit after my usual 6:15 am school alarm, I woke up and had masa #1.  Because it’s hram, we can’t just have eggs for breakfast - it’s gotta be proper Moldovan.  So for breakfast I had sarmale (stuffed cabbage rolls), bruterbrod (this is the presumably misspelled Russian name for a kind of Eastern European style garlic bread with mayonnaise), and a beet/garlic/walnut salad.  Oxana also suggested wine, but I had to pass at 9:30 in the morning. 

    After chatting around the table, it was time to get frumos and merg to masa #2, at my partner teacher Viorica’s house.  I walked to the outskirts of the village and was greeted with more delicious food - three kinds of placinta, roasted potatoes, salad, and compot (boiled fruit juice)… and this time I said yes to the gin (which, as I learned the awkward way, is not gin but the colloquial version of the Romanian word for wine, vin).  After relaxing and talking for a while, we ate a little more (masa #3) and then I left for some festivities at the Casa de Cultura.

    I just caught the end of these, but it seemed they saved the best for last so I lucked out.  There were several rounds of shirtless men wrestling.  The second place winner received a live rabbit, and the first place winner received a live sheep.  Uhm.  Okay.

    On the verge of exploding, I moved on to masa #4, at Cristina and Lilian’s house.  Then we went to the hora in the village center.  Everyone was there, and I mean everyone.  For once I wasn’t left clutching to Oxana’s side like a lost (first place prize) sheep.  I danced with my students’ parents, my fellow teachers, some random people I’ve never seen in my life… and, though I did all I could to avoid it, some of my students (they just crept up on me in the penguin dance, what could I do?).  Some famous singer whose name I can’t remember played some of the classics, and eventually, all danced out, it was time to go home.

    And this, my friends, is hramul satului, Taraclia edition.



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