Language barriers...still

So Tina, my neighbor told me immediately when I got arrived home to my apartment yesterday, that a lady of age 42, got a sponsor. She said "o fata a fost sponsorizat." Which...means, a girl was ..I thought "sponsored."

Romanian is a latin language, if I don't know something, I can usually get clues from the roots. Economy = economie, crisis = crisa, foundation = fondatie, etc...

So, after a 10 minute conversation of me asking who sponsored that lady and for what? A marathon? college?....and Tina telling me that she didnt' know why that woman was sponsored. I finally just nodded and gave the *that's cool* shrug.
____________ the next day after work____________
Someone drops me off at the main road and I see my neighbor standing with 4 other momish looking ladies at the entrance to the cemetery. I asked them "what are you doing?" and they answered "we're watching" and I asked "what are you watching?" and they answered "other people watching a burial, " and I go "oh, another person died? or is this the same body I saw 5 minutes ago?"

Turns out that they were watching the sponsored lady of 42 years old get buried.
Clockwheels turned in my head and I understood that "sponsorizat = suicide" at least that's what my neighbor meant (I tried to google translate suicide and it does not = sponsorizat!).
So ...the lady committed suicide..and I asked why, and they told me it's because she's a concubine.......

Which I understood to mean she's an adulteress, or a slut, or a prostitute...and at the time I didn't want to assume the air that I was judging her (she was dead and needed respect, not judgment).

The ladies see my all too familiar face of confusion and tell me that her boyfriend of many years (she's not married to him, so she's a concubine?..odd choice of words) would beat her all the time, so she hung herself 2 days ago. She had no kids.

Which made me recall my meeting last week of a brother-in-law who was caring for the 3 children of his sister-in-law who's husband also drinks a lot and was taking a liking to electricuting his wife (while drunk) with smashed but plugged in light bulbs, on the head.

It's a touchy subject here, a very sensitive one, but it's scary and I would never ever ever stand for any kind of domestic violence. I actually have had guys here, young guys my age tell me that they of course would beat their spouse or girl friends to have them behave!!!

That's a dealbreaker! Not all guys are like this! here! lots of them don't hit any women or children! Granted, the domestic violence in my village (that I've recently been aware of) have all been under the influence of alcohol. eh.

So....my day: got a shipment of wood because it's started snowing (again) and the truck got stuck in a pit of mud in my yard, so we spent 30 mins shoving the car out of the mud and using my new wood blocks to prop the wheels, then I went to teach Chinese for 2 hours at a school (only 5 kids showed up..oh well) with my clothes splattered with mud, then I went to the mayor's office to find out that I got stood up...and my person didn't think to call me and save me the journey thorough the snow, and then I got dropped off and met the ladies...then went home to start my fire, and clean clean clean cause there's mud EVERYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYWHERE!

I saw 2 funerals today, one in front of my work and one next to my house (I live..300 meters from a cemetery). It reminded me of when our co-worker Vicktor died. He had a stomach ache at age 60, and he thought he'd fix it by drinking a shot of very strong Romanian whiskey (tuica) and then he vomited blood and didn't make it to the hospital and he died. I saw him Thursday at work, and he died on Saturday, and we had his funeral on Monday.

I kissed his cold dead hand and forehead, cause all my other co-workers were doing it too. He was a co-worker, but we weren't that close, but it's sad he died while I was there. Here I got to participate and observe a full on Romanian funeral. His co-workers were his family, so ergo, I was a part of his family during his funeral. Not a lot of pictures were taken by me because I felt uncomfortable doing so. Just a few in his memory:




There's never really a boring day in Mastacani. My story went on a tangent...but it's because there's so much to share still, that I want to share, but that I haven't shared yet.