Ziua Victoriei

In case you were unaware today is the 67th anniversary of the end of WWII as celebrated in Moldova and most of the former Soviet Union countries (although in the rest of Europe Victory Day was celebrated yesterday). To truly mark this day as a celebration we had the day off from school and there was a ceremony in the center of town at the WWII memorial. My host mother and I left the house at about 9:00, which is when the ceremony was supposed to begin and we weren't very surprised to find that by the time we made it to the center at 9:15 it still hadn't started yet. We spent the next 15 minutes or so discussing punctuality by Moldovan standards while we waited for everyone to get organize and for it to start. When about a 100 people had gathered the ceremony began with the mayor saying a few words and handing out envelopes to some of the more elderly villagers, which I'm not sure but I believe is because they themselves are veterans of the war. Which if that is true would make them near 90 years old. After the mayor was finished the priest took over and lead a small service. At one point he read off a list of names which I assume was people who died while fighting in the war, but the way he read them was in rapid fire sing-song voice which came out remarkably close to how an auctioneer calls out bids from the auction block. Next the students from my school sang a few songs and at one point in the middle releasing a few birds back into the air with great showmanship. Lastly a group of older villagers sang a few folk songs with the accompaniment of an accordion, which is the instrument of choice outside of audio recordings, and the ceremony was ended. This will be the third week in a row in which I haven't worked a full 5 day work week, which is not something I am complaining about but it is unfortunate to me that they are spread out a little more evenly throughout the year. It was a very long wait of monotonous 5 day work weeks to finally make it to this oasis of vacations and now I'm not sure how I will be able to readjust in order to finish out the 3 weeks we still have left in the school year.