the REAL way to make coffee!

So I began the day by oversleeping my first American Councils meeting. That was embarrassing. I guess jet lag has more effect than I thought! I was able to sleep through an hour and a half of my alarm going off. Impressive. However, my supervisor was incredibly understanding about it. She came to my house and walked me through everything, setting me up with a phone, telling me when the next meeting was, etc. Everybody is so amiable and welcoming here and I am blown away by it.

The weather is also great at a comfortable 70-ish degrees and sunny but pleasant. Chisinau is beautiful, with many tall trees and colorful flowers planted in all the streets. Lots of small shops and restaurants line the roads, as well as street vendors with a myriad of goods. A popular table holds an IQ test through a puzzle. Multiple young people were clustered around to try and solve it.

I met my coworkers, Raluca and Tomas, this afternoon at a quiet restaurant called Propaganda (I also wondered after the name). We had a sweet tea with sour cherries and strawberries in it; very refreshing! Gero, from the Austrian Embassy, joined us later and he invited me to visit him there sometime so he could show me around and explain what he does. Raluca joked that it would only take two minutes for him to explain everything haha.

I am now living with my host mother Vera, and her young daughter Amelia. They have an adorable cat named Maysa. I am petting her right meow. Lera works at the US Embassy, while Amelia goes to school. She plays piano very well and loves taking pictures! She’s already taken about fifty of them of me, Maysa, and her on her ipad, using all sorts of filters I don’t know anything about. #allllthefilters. She got a kick out of the backdrop effect on my photobooth app!

On a final awkward moment, after I missed showered this morning, I decided to make some coffee. Grabbing the tasty German coffee we had bought yesterday, I proceeded to look for the coffee filters. Well, I searched EVERYWHERE, and I couldn’t find them!! Turns out, we’ve been making instant coffee wrongly –the REAL way to make coffee is to boil water, then add the grounds. After the grounds settle to the bottom and release their flavor, pour the coffee into your mug. Who knew?