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Dec. 9 Part 2: Bowling in Moldova

After the tour, Boris dropped Sandu off at daycare, dropped Diana off at work, and dropped me off at the house. I went up the street for lunch at a café. I had mamaliga (a semi-soft dish made from cornmeal, similar to Italian polenta) with brinza (Moldovan goat’s cheese) and sour cream and grilled beef, plus a “shopsky” (chopped vegetable) salad. After lunch, I waddled back down the street to the house, where Boris picked me up with Diana and Sandu already in the car to take us to the bowling alley.

When we walked into New York Bowling, I again had the feeling I was seeing Chisinau for the first time. I was sure when I’d seen the place the first time as a resident of Chisinau, I had been impressed. This time the place made me feel like I was almost in America, but not quite. Maybe it was too small or didn’t have enough games. Maybe there weren’t enough people or lanes (I recall maybe 6 lanes at the most, as opposed to 30 lanes in American bowling alleys). It may also have been questions from Diana such as, “why do we need to rent the bowling shoes?” That was a tough one for me to answer. I said it was tradition, then I said something about the wooden floors and the throwing technique.

Neither Diana nor her 5 colleagues who were with us had ever been bowling before. After we all got our shoes on and the front desk entered our names in the computer, the women just started walking up randomly and throwing the balls whatever way they could down the lane. Some were barely even waiting for the machines at the end to clear the pins. They were having fun, but it was total chaos, like some kind of colorful ball-parade-race. Eventually I was able to explain to the ladies that one person gets two turns, and that each person has a name on the board and therefore a time to bowl.

Not being a very good bowler myself, there was not much I could do for them in terms of throwing technique. I gave up on telling them not to put their foot over the line. Nevertheless, everyone managed to knock pins down. Several people even got spares. When one bright woman got a strike I had to explain why she didn’t get a second turn and why this was a good thing. Explaining the scoring system with strikes and spares was even more difficult with our limited Russian and English knowledge but somehow I managed to get it across. In the process I learned the Russian word for pins (kanofky). The most difficult thing of all in my opinion was explaining to Sandu why it was not nice to run up and try to “help” someone throw the ball down the lane.

Despite these little hiccups, the ladies were clearly having a good time. They enjoyed throwing the ball and hitting the pins. They enjoyed watching the different cartoons that came up on the scoring screen after someone bowled. It felt like we all were enjoying a leisurely life in the American way. And it felt good to see that that was possible here.



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