"Caroling"

Loyal readers of this blog may recall my "caroling" experience from last year. Well, I did it again this year, and I'm pleased to announce that this time I made it through the entire evening. We started to don our cross-dressing costumes and face paint at 7pm on Christmas Eve (Jan 6) and I was asleep in my bed by 6am on Christmas Day (Jan 7). In between, we drove to all the houses of workers in the mayor's office and other VIPs and basically sang and danced and made lots of noise until the inhabitants came out, no matter the hour.

When they came out - and they always did - they brought food and some form of alcohol. Last year, in my desire to be culturally sensitive during a festive holiday, I for the most part accepted any drink that was offered (read: forced) into

my hand. This year, I decided to put self-preservation ahead of cultural sensitivity and only sipped from the communal wine/vodka/cognac/champaign glass when it came my way. This "sipping" is very different than the typical "all in one shot" Moldovan style of drinking any kind of alcohol. To slightly alter one of the great Tom Hanks film lines, "There's no sipping in Moldova." It's all or nothing. But my plan worked, providing enough cultural adaptation so as to not offend the hosts while keeping the brain and liver functioning quite well.

It's also tradition for the hosts to put some money into the mouth of a wooden goat carried by one of the revelers. The goat's mouth opens and closes, and the host has to try to put the money into the mouth without getting his fingers caught. As a well-trusted outsider, I became the "American bank" and kept all the money that we collected from each household. Whenever kids were present, Santa gave 5 or 10 lei (40-90 cents) presents after making a small withdrawal from the bank - which was quite a leap of faith on the bank's part considering Santa had no identification and was wearing a fake beard. When work resumes on Tuesday, I'll bring all the money to the office and we'll decide what to do with it. We actually collected over $100. I don't know how this money has been used in past years, but I'm hoping that it will be spent on something to improve the efficiency of the office - like a new printer - instead of booze and cookies for future office birthday parties. We'll see...