God, Pots and Violence

I'm an idiot. This morning I experienced some classic alarm clock mishaps. On Monday, things start an hour later due to the fact we go to the children's community center to do volunteer work. On friday we shoveled snow, at about a foot and a half deep, off of the community center roof for six hours as it continued to snow, which seemed a little counterproductive. It was not enjoyable. I feel this way about laundry as well. It too is counterproductive. Even as you are cleaning you are wearing clothes that are being made dirty, unless of course you choose not to wear clothing as you wash which makes me a bit uncomfortable. Laundry never ends. This is how shoveling the snow felt.
I digress.
Back to the clock. I had set my alarm for an hour later. I remembered this and set it back as I went to bed last night. Unfortunately, I did this in the dark and set both the alarm back and the time forward a couple of hours. I woke up at "7:30" as I was supposed to and felt absolutely awful. In reality it was 5:30. I wondered why it was still dark.
I decided I would be late. I would use it as a test to see if the guys knew enough to start working without me. They have done it before but it is always a risky move. As they began their test, I would stay warm and cozy in my bed as I tested my ability to snore and drool.
When I awoke, rested and refreshed, I went to fetch some juice from the fridge. As I began drinking from the carton, which I feel no remorse for doing, I noticed the clock on the microwave. It seemed to think that my alarm clock was wrong. I consulted an independant third party, my watch. It sided with the microwave. It turned out that I was right on schedule and that the alarm clock lied. For those of you who don't know me, I am very intolerant of lying electronics. I immediately chucked the petulant clock against the wall. It cries, no more.
Thus begins my adventure. I go to work, on time(side thought: shouldn't we say "off time" when we are late? "where's pete?" "oh, you know. he's off time again. he's always off time ever since he got that new girlfriend."). The guys show up, a tad off time, and they begin telling me they need to go to the office to pick up some money for the 8th of March. What? They begin explaining it to me.
Dima says, "happy birthday, girl."
Ivan, then joins the cause stating, "every girl, birthday, 8th of march."
Artur is asleep on his feet.
This confuses me more and I ask, "tomorrow, March 8th, is every girl's birthday."
Collectively they cheer, "yes!"
Eventually we call Dorel and he informs me that the 8th is a sort of Moldovan holiday for Mothers, women and the like.
I decide we must celebrate. We cannot work on the 8th of March-eve, it would be un-Moldov-A-merican. We also cannot work because we have no key. Raia, the key-master (hooray for back-to-back Ghostbuster's references), had to leave and wasn't going to be back for a while.
I didn't know what people typically did on the 8th of March-eve, so I figured we would eat. Pretty much every American holiday, and I mean real holiday, is anchored in gluttony. It seemed only right that we would eat. And eat we did.
Now what?
To the museum. Why not? I wanted to go to an art museum and the guys were all for it but wanted, instead, to go to the national history museum. Sounded good to me, so off we went.
We arrive at the museum and pay our entrance fees. It was 1 lei for each of the guys and 15 for me. Ivan told me that if I had kept my beard shaved, then I could have gotten in for 1 lei. This could have meant one or both of the following: a) I look older with my beard b) the people at the museum discriminate against people with facial hair.
As we go through the museum, I learned much about Moldova's history. Pretty much everything in the museum can be boiled down into one of three things: pottery, weapons, or religious icons/Bibles. Seriously, that is all there was. There was violence, there was religion and there was clay. Moldova History 101 is complete.
One other funny thing about the museum was that each room had a lady assigned to it. Basically, their jobs were to turn some, not all, of the lights on when people came in and to make sure people didn't touch things. Our guys touched everything they could get close to. "Hey, don't touch that. It's really old." This was my museum catch-phrase. Some time, I'll blog about some of my other catch phrases. Each one is special.
Well after the museum, we called it a day. It was, without comparison, the best 8th of March-eve I've ever had. Make sure to put it on your calender for next year. When it comes around you'll need to remember to do the following things so you can celebrate it to it's fullest.
1) mess up your alarm clock so that the whole day doesn't feel right.
2) eat something special. we had soup, bread, some sort of "meat" cutlet, what I think was potatoes and the best hot tea in the world.
3) go to a museum and learn about pottery, warfare, and of course God.

Enjoy! And happy 8th of March to all you Mother's, women and such out there.