Orheiul Vechi

The next day, we headed to a 13th century monastery cut into a Moldovan hill. We hired a cab to take us there, but he would only wait for 1.5 hours for us. Hmph. We climbed the hill, looked at the monastery and lay on the grass watching the sun pass by. Sheep in the distance looked like little dots. There was a circle of stones arranged in a rudimentary circle, which acted as a crude clock/calendar. Outside it was very hot but inside the church was damp and cool.

There was a beautiful stone cross overlooking everything. Every so often, people would come over, touch the cross and walk around it in a circle, almost like a dance.

Walking back, we saw two little boys eyeing us curiously. I said "Hi!" to them and they shyly said "Hi" back to me. They crept after us, fascinated by the strange foreigners. You could tell they were listening to our strange language, trying to figure out what we were saying. Soon, they grew bored of us and ran off, arm in arm. There was a steep hill covered in sand that led down to the parking lot. They surfed down in their sneakers, laughing as their showed threw up big dust clouds. Melissa and I got into the act, surfing down as well. The boys climbed up again to slide down, watching us girls, taller and heavier than them, trying to master the art of sand-sliding.