Happy Teacher's Day!

It seems that every profession has a holiday here in Moldova, and professors are no exception. Today we celebrated День педагога, or Teacher’s Day.

I was at first somewhat underwhelmed by Teacher’s Day, as it required that I pay 15 lei ($1.40) last week for the celebrations. I argued that if it was my day, they should be paying me, but to no avail.

Today, I was happy to discover that one of my classes gave me some pretty white flowers in honor of the holiday, which was quite touching. They are my literary analysis class, definitely one of my favorite groups to work with. The whole department also got cake and champagne from one of the groups, which I very much appreciated.

Then we went home and changed and then returned to the university for a concert and presentation. Several of the students sang and the rector gave a speech. Teachers nominated by their departments also got awards. After the concert, we had a fourchette, which is basically a banquet with lots of different small dishes for snacks. This being Gagauzia, we celebrated with champagne and homemade wine. After many toasts, the dancing began.

I certainly hadn’t danced that much since the Person-Rennell wedding! It took me back to the old days of dancing on Armenian buses. All of the professors got out on the floor and showed off their dance moves. My dance moves are a motley combination of Armenian, disco, polka, and hip-hop, with some skanking thrown in during songs with horn sections. I consider it my patriotic duty to dance the night away in order to represent America well. It’s also in the Hutchinson genes...we don’t let a dance floor stay empty for very long. At any rate, my colleagues all seemed to think I was sad any time I wasn’t dancing, so I didn’t have much of a choice. Natalia, Oxana, and Lyudmila were quite the troopers. Their dancing stamina was very impressive.

I think we danced for three hours! It was pretty hardcore. The only familiar songs were “The Macarena” (I remembered the dance in its entirety) and a weird Russian remix of “Mama Mia” by ABBA. I also had to give a toast in Russian and totally screwed up my prepositions. I’m blaming the champagne. I danced with the rector, which caused me to crack up somewhat embarassingly. (For those unfamiliar with the terminology, this was like dancing with Comrat’s Michael Crow.) I also danced with Maxim, a professor of European law. It was very junior high! Except for in junior high I wasn’t required to make small talk in Russian. Quite amusing.

We arrived home at 8:45 PM, a full 6 hours after we left the house. For $1.40, I think it wasn’t too bad!