Anything goes

Yesterday was another Moldovan national holiday -- known as "Labor Day."  So this past weekend was basically Labor Day Weekend since no one worked Monday or Tuesday.  And there was no better time to see how Moldovans picnic.  As we headed to the park, I envisioned a relaxing space to play some soccer and quietly hang out with friends....  this was not exactly the reality.

Let's just say the picnic scene is rather different from what we're used to.  First of all, there is no such thing as reserving a picnic shelter here.  The closest thing is what we were fortunate enough to have -- friends who went to the park 6 hours ahead of time to stake out some space in the woods for our group.  They said that by the time they arrived, early in the morning, there were already several other people doing the same thing.

By the time we arrived mid-afternoon, it was very clear why this staking-out process was necessary:  the place was paaaacked.  People, cars, food, and campfires were everywhere.  Literally everywhere.  In these parks anyone can build a fire anywhere they want.  And they can apparently drive anywhere their cars can fit.

I wish we had gotten better pictures....

We were with a bunch of friends from the international church we've been attending here, so it was a lot of fun.... but if it wasn't for that, I think I would have been pretty stressed out with how chaotic and random everything was.  This was part of our group:

And here were the people right next to us (Strider took some of these pictures):

There were no public restrooms, so "find a tree" seemed to be the general policy.  Miles tried to utilize the tree in the picture above -- I caught him almost just in time.

The kids were going back and forth to a playground close by, but soon after we arrived I realized Miles was nowhere in sight.  After a few minutes of sheer panic (HOW would we ever find him again when no one would be able to understand us??), he finally wandered back in our direction.

Meanwhile, our eyes were collectively growing wider and wider as we saw what was passing for "swimwear" here.  Strider is convinced people were mostly just taking off their clothes and wearing underwear.  Some people were topless who should not have been, etc.

And, contributing to my growing sense of angst, there were sad-looking women coming around periodically to show us pictures of sick children and, from what we could tell, begging for money to help them.  How can you turn them down when you're indulging in all kinds of picnic food?  You can't.

But the kids had fun, of course.  Colsen and Miles were on the playground (when they weren't wandering off), and ended up playing fun games with some children they met there.  Colsen reported all of the rules of the made-up game to me, complete with Russian words for "stop" and "gate."

Needless to say, there was no space for playing soccer.... but some of the folks in our group were able to fit in a game of Blokus, so that's good I guess.

All the way around, it was a very unusual Labor Day picnic for us (including the fact that it was at the beginning of the summer instead of at the end like we're used to), and another interesting mark of our time here.