Masa Hypocrisy

To add a little humility to my seemingly “I know how to live life correctly” entry below, let me just say that I’m humbled by my own realization that I have not been invited to nearly as many meals as I assumed I would’ve. I’m not normally the “I can’t believe I wasn’t invited” person, but this is supposed to be a culture of inviting everyone over, of spontaneous meals that come from nowhere for the guest who just popped in. And even my host mom commented that it was weird that none of the students I work with invited me to their house for one of the millions of holiday celebrations. Or my former partner (ever). But that’s the weird line between teacher and friend. I’m neither I guess.

I am perfectly aware of my hypocrisy; I want to be with my host family. Having spent so much time running back and forth to Chisinau, I like to just be at home, especially during the holidays, when we have family here as well. And there has been a friend of the family who has invited me to her village on innumerable occasions and I have turned her down repeatedly because of the rarity that I am actually at home and thus prefer to stay home. And the spontaneous “you need to come to my house to eat loads of food” hospitality can sometimes be stressful instead of flattering.

But now that I realize that I’ve only been to one spontaneous evening (which included two houses – and that was one year ago), well I feel a little disappointed. Am I just not warm with these people? Is my village just slightly less tied to this tradition? I do know that the various traditions of saying “good morning” also vary from village to village. In some villages I should only speak to women. In other villages, anyone older than me (as in my current village now). And the frequency with which young children (and teenage boys) say hello to their elders varies greatly. It is then my hypothesis that the “open doors, big table” attitude parallels the variations in “good morning” frequency.

And yet, I still feel a bizarre combination of rejected, guilty, and disappointed.