Back in America

After three and a half months of being in Romania, I am finally back home in Massachusetts. The flights were fine, except for the fact that I hate flying and I had a 6 and a half hour layover in London when all I wanted to do was jump on a plane home. We drove to the airport Friday morning at 2:30 am, which is 7:30 pm at home. From that time until I finally fell into bed at home around 10, I got maybe 2 hours of sleep, but I honestly did not care because I was home. My parents laughed at me because pretty much the only thing I could say as soon as we left the airport was 'I'm in America.' I'm back in the routine of being at home at Christmas time. The first night I was home I went in to count money from the kettles and today is toy store day, my favorite day of the Christmas season. So this ends my need for a blog, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed my stories.

Last Day

Today is our last day in Sighisoara. We leave tomorrow morning. So I figured it was about time to post some pictures of the town I've been living in for the past 3 and a half months.

These are the ridiculous stairs that I had to climb everyday. They may not look it, but they are a killer and they wrap around the corner that's not in the picture. Also in the picture you can see that they were digging up the stairs, and everything else, for about 3 months

Casa de Dracul. I thought it would look a little grander than it does. It was a lot like seeing the Plymouth rock for the first time. You think it is going to be this huge grandiose thing, and then it turns out it's just a rock. Also, the restaurant inside is sort of pricey, but worth it.

The clock tower in the center of town-that is four minutes slow. It's great on a big tourist day they all crowd around it with their cameras waiting for the hour to strike when a puppet comes out and bags a pot-really not that impressive, especially at 1.

House on the Rock, where all of our classes were, and the computer lab. It looks pretty with the snow, but a couple of days after this picture was taken it rained, so now it's just really muddy outside again.

The outside of the house I've been living in for the past 3 and a half months. Ali was so excited the first day we pulled up in front of it because it's pink and green. At that point it wasn't hard for her to get excited about something here.

My sisters, who I will miss dearly. Anita is in front of me on my left, Timmy is right next to her. Rahel, Rachel in English, is next to me and of course in front of her is Ali.

I will definitely miss my family here, and my supervisor. But I am more than a little excited to get back to America where I can understand what people are trying to say to me, where I can read signs again. The girls and I joke that we'll probably just sit in a restaurant staring at the menu because we'll be able to actually read what the menu says.

Romanian home

I only have one week left in Sighisoara, the final two days before we fly out of Romania will be spent in the city of Bucharest. My mother has asked me more than once to post pictures of the house I've been living in, but I've never gotten around to it. So here they are. I don't have a picture of the outside of the house, but I'll probably post that later on in the week.

Here are Ali and my beds-I sleep in the little one-the one that has no frame and is simply one mattress stacked on top of another. Those blankets may not look like much, but cocoon yourself in one-don't move because moving causes cold air to come in-and you're toasty warm all through the night.

Ali and I have been pretty much living out of our suitcases for the past 3 months. There isn't a dresser, or drawers anywhere to put our clothes, so we sort of stack them. Sorry Ma, I know it's not the neatest.

This is the sight that greets us as soon as we walk through the door. Our room is immediately to the left, the door isn't shown in this picture. Down the hallway on the right is the bathroom I've already posted pictures of, and directly across the hall is the kitchen.

Ali and I spend a lot of time at that table, since we don't have a desk or anything in our room, of course this table is in the kitchen which usually means we feel the need to eat something while we do whatever it is we need to do.

Full view of the kitchen, where again Ali and I spend a lot of time. Particularly if we haven't enjoyed whatever our family served for dinner that night. We wait until they go upstairs and then we raid the kitchen.

That is pretty much the entirety of the downstairs, which is where I spend 98% of my time when I'm home. The upstairs is simply Mama C and the girls bedrooms. The stairs up and down are outside-no stairs on the inside. Which is always fun if the girls invite us upstairs to watch a movie or something Ali and I have to get all bundled up and put on our shoes, or just put on our shoes and make a run for it.

Budapest

For the first time in my life I wasn't with my family for Thanksgiving. It wasn't as bad as it could have been, for one thing I was in Budapest, Hungary, and for another I spent it with girls who have become like family to me. We left for Budapest Thursday morning at 3 am- it was about an 11 hour car ride-with stops and Hungary is an hour behind Romania so we gained an hour. Thursday night the students went out and found a place to eat Thanksgiving dinner. We found a place that was decorated like a submarine and if we had gone after 10 it becomes a dance club. Which explains the music in the background and my favorite quote of the entire trip which came from Amanda 'Nothing says Happy Thanksgiving like 50 cent' Friday we spent exploring-which pretty much means we just did a bunch of walking, but Budapest really is pretty. Saturday we went to a museum about the Holocaust in Hungary. Then immediately afterward we went to a mall to eat dinner. We left Sunday morning at 8 and didn't arrive home in Sighisoara until 9:30 that night. I always forget how exhausted you can get simply by sitting in a car all day.



All of the students before crossing the bridge over the Danube River.















Me at the Fisherman's Bastian, which has no real purpose, it just looks nice.


















Me with the Parliament building on the Pest side of the Danube River in the background.














Heroe's square at 4:30 in the afternoon-yeah the moon was out then.













Under no circumstances are you to hold a small child's hand.












One of the buildings we went into had different exhibits-this one was called the immortal blue jean. I wish I were kidding. There was also a back room that was almost completely dark, the radio was playing and all around the room were large blue jean bean bags.

What's Missing?

So I know it's been a while since I've posted but there is a Romanian television station whose slogan says it best 'I live in Romania and that takes all of my time' So I told my brother about the bathroom at the place I'm staying at and he told me I should post about it. If this is only interesting to him, I apologize.





















As you can see in the picture all we have is a bathtub with a shower head-no shower curtain or door of any kind around the shower. You may ask how we keep the water from getting on the floor-everyone I've told has asked that. The answer is...we don't, at the bottom of the picture you can see a drain on the floor. The floor is soaking wet for a while after anyone gets a shower so I don't even want to know what the floor would be like without the drain. The good thing is the towel rack that's in the right side of the picture is attached to the heater and therefore heats the towels on it.














Here is the toilet, it took me a second to figure out how I was supposed to flush it-there's a button on the top-not clear in the picture, but it's there. In the bathroom upstairs there's something that looks like a button on top, but instead of pushing it in, you have to pull it up. It's interesting.

Here is the German washing machine-it may look like a similiar to an American one. For the most part it is, but all of the words on the knob are, obviously, in German. So the first time we did laundry was fun.

Ali and I have our own sinks-on the left hand corner of the counter you can see the orange scented toilet paper I blogged about earlier.

For the most part this bathroom is nicer than the one I have at home. It was just really strange when we first walked in. I don't know exactly what I was expecting when I first got here, but it wasn't a nicely tiled bathroom with our own sinks. While I had a primitive idea in my mind I was still expecting some sort of cover around the shower.

Romanian Hospitality

I've gone on at least 6 home visits since being here in Romania. One of those home visits was when I did my very first real intake interview. I was nervous but I figured since I don't speak the language if I made a mistake my supervisor/translator would reword the question for me. But of course it turns out that the woman understands English, she just doesn't speak it, so the translator was completely for me. But I think it went pretty well considering it was my first time being the primary interviewer. But I've found while going on these home visits that Romanian people feel as though the weren't very good hosts if you haven't had, at least, something to drink. So while in Romania I've had more cups of coffee than I've had in my entire life-which isn't saying much since I've only had 3 full cups. It's sort of growing on me, it's not terrible if you put a lot of sugar in it. I've also had some sort of pear nectar juice and pink grapefruit soda. Since I never know what's going on at the home visit anyway-I can pick up a few words here and there but not enough to get the whole conversation- I usually don't know I'm being offered something until it's put in front of me. Then I sort of feel as though I have to drink it. But again, lots of sugar in the coffee has helped and the pear nectar and pink grapefruit weren't that bad.

Halloween in Transylvania

I'm well aware that this post is a few days late. On Halloween, which they don't actually celebrate in Romania, Ali and I decided we wanted to dress up anyway and go to Vlad the Impaler's birthplace-which is now a restaurant. We got just one other girl in our group to agree to go with us, although I'm pretty sure Ali and I would have gone by ourselves if no one else wanted to go with us. We didn't know what we should dress up as, since we didn't exactly pack costumes. We talked to our host sister about it and she suggested going as gypsies-she even let us borrow a couple of Mama C's skirts to put together the outfit. So Ali and I dressed up as gypsies and Amanda dressed up as a soccer player. We definitely got a few strange looks walking down main st. We went to Dracula's restaurant and it turns out that apparently a bunch of people decided to come into town for Halloween and eat there- so we didn't get to eat there that night-we did take a couple pictures in there. We also went to two of the American households we know in Sighisoara to go 'trick-or-treating' and they actually had American candy to give us, and that's really all that matters.
















This is us at the Nazarene pastor's house-we didn't actually think she'd give us candy, but we weren't complaining.














Ali wanted to go to a graveyard-thankfully they are closed after dark. Then she got the brilliant idea to jump into one of the many holes that have been dug all over town. Still have no idea how deep that hole actually was-but what kind of a room mate would I be if I made her jump in a hole by herself?