One Year in Romania

Yesterday was my one-year anniversary. Amazing. I haven't left this country for one year. The things I have learned. Hard to believe.

Anyway, they lifted the quarantine on Codlea, so I'm here right now. It's Saturday and the weather is quite nice. By the way, I threw out a hint in the first May blog post about something important. Not sure if you may have caught it. I'm moving to Codlea! PC has granted me a site change. I'll be taking the place of the current volunteer here after she leaves in July. I'll live with Victor and Ica and split my time teaching between a junior high and high school. Life in Romania is about to get a whole lot better. I am very lucky and very thankful.

Life in Piatra Neamt just wasn't pleasant. School was fine, but I am very isolated there. Living in the school got to me. Not being able to live in the community hindered my ability to integrate. I don't know many people there and the ones that I do are very busy and or have decided to leave themselves. I'll be sad to leave some of the students, but my life here is more important than my job. Plus, I'm sure I'll have a nice experience at the schools here in Codlea. Bottom line is that I wasn't going to last too much longer in Piatra Neamt and PC knew this. I thank them for giving me "new life".

So, as of right now there are three weeks left at school and five weeks until I come home for vacation. Sarah's old roommate Kristen is coming to Romania next week. I'll pick her up in Bucharest on Friday and take her to Codlea. We'll go to Brasov on Saturday and then head up to Piatra on Sunday afternoon. She's going to be able to experience a lot here in a very short period of time. I'm excited that I'll have a visitor soon! I enjoy playing interpreter and tour guide.

I'll post some new photos next time. Can't do it here at the internet cafe. I'm trying to think of something else to say, but I'm drawing a blank. I feel like my blog was more interesting in the past. Anyway, I'll see what I can do to spice it up a little. Bye!

Down On The Farm

We had a little birthday celebration "down on the farm" this weekend. I was in Bucharest to see Dr. Dan and then I headed up to Codlea. On Saturday Victor, Ica and I went to Ica's brother Tavi's farm. It was Tavi's wife's birthday (Vali) and we had a really nice time. The weather was beautiful and we did a little grilling - Romanian style (Mici, Chicken, mmmm).

That's Tavi in the second photo. The baby horse is about three weeks old. The baby cow in the first photo was born that day; just hours old and already walking! Tavi's farm is really cool. Lots of dogs, cows, sheep, goats, pigs, horses, etc. They even have bees to make honey. Tavi and Vali make awesome cheese as well. Sheep, goat, cow and mixtures. Cascaval and telemea are the names of the cheeses. All natural. I love it. I hope to visit the farm a lot this summer.

Something interesting has developed in the past couple of days. An Avian Flu outbreak was discovered on a chicken farm outside of Codlea. As a result, I cannot go to Codlea for the next three weeks. As of right now, they haven't identified it as the "dreaded" H5N1, it's just H5 (whatever that means). As the bus crossed the border from Brasov County to Covasna County yesterday, we came upon a roadblock. There was a team of people there that were disinfecting all of the vehicles leaving the area. Little did I know that it had anything to do with bird flu, let alone that it was in Codlea. Too bad I didn't get quarantined in Codlea...heh heh.

I'm sure that the situation will be resolved within three weeks. The authorities here are attending to the problem. I heard that they might have to euthanize about 500,000 birds. Apparantly, the company that owns the farm was not attending to their responsibilities and was dumping bags full of dead birds in a local garbage dump during the past month. Nice. There's going to be some heavy, heavy fines coming their way. This company produces chicken and turkey for sale in the Brasov area and other domestic markets. There's a lot of meat being pulled from the shelves right now. There are some other towns and villages in Brasov County that are having some issues at the moment as well. A few of these places have been quarantined. Let's just hope that this doesn't happen in Codlea.

So, looks like I'm not going to be seeing Ica and Victor for awhile. I'm going to try to go to some other places and visit some friends instead. Maybe Bucharest. We'll see. Weekends in Piatra Neamt are pretty lonely and boring. As you all know, I try to get out of here on the weekends as much as possible. I'll be soliciting some people this week for a visit....

We're definitely in countdown mode here at school. Only four weeks to go after this week. I'm pretty much set with what I'm going to be doing, so it should be pretty low-key and low stress. C'mon time and fly for me! U S of A six weeks from Sunday!!!

Signing off from the (as of right now) bird flu free zone of Piatra Neamt....

Scott

6 and 8

Welcome to Ica's Easter table! This photo was taken a couple of weeks ago when we had our Orthodox Easter Sunday meal. An overview of what's presented: Painted hard boiled eggs, Cotnari wine (from Iasi, Moldavia), Salata de Beouf (an awesome potato salad with carrots, peas and pickels...Sarah's a big fan), Drob (a sort of lamb meatloaf made from internal organs with egg in the middle...it tastes better than it sounds), Ica's cheese dip in the shape of a fish (in honor of Jesus), and some sweet cheese bread (special for Easter, with the cross). We also had some baked lamb and other assorted goodies. What a spread!

So, 6 & 8. Six weeks left of school and exactly eight weeks to the day that I'll be coming home for vacation. Man oh man I hope that this time flies. Everybody here is about done with school, the teachers and students. Attendance is bad enough as it is and will continue to decline. I'll be lucky if half of the kids show up by the time June rolls around. Oh well, not my problem.

I'm hangin' in there in terms of how I'm feeling. It's up and down. However, I'm a lot better than I was, let's say, 5 weeks ago. I'm just trying to focus on July. I'm pretty sure that I'm going to be headed down to Bucharest on Friday to see Dr. Dan. We'll talk and I want him to take a look at my back. My back has been killing me for some weeks now. I think I may have done something to it while playing basketball a while ago. Maybe I need some chiropractor (spelling?) action? We'll see. I just hope he doesn't keep me overnight until Saturday, as I want to stay in Codlea on Friday and Saturday night before having to go back to Piatra. However, if I have to stay, I have to stay. Health comes first.

I'd like to report a couple of success stories here at school. First, the pen pal project I started between the 5th grade here and Sarah's Mom's 4th grade made the local paper in the SW suburbs of Chicago. It was a nice article with a photo of Barbara's students. Everybody here was excited to see the news article. I'm hoping that I can get a reporter to come to school here and do a similar story. I've got a friend who works in the PR Dept. in the city hall and he may put me in contact with someone from one of the local papers.

The other story is about Animal Farm. My 10th graders finished the book a few weeks ago and are now watching the animated movie on DVD. When I asked some of them what they thought of the book they said that they enjoyed it and it helped them better understand communism, and as a result, created a better understanding of what went on in their country before they were born. Most young people here don't have a very good understanding of the period between 1945 and 1989, nor do they know much about the '89 revolution. The topic is not frequently discussed in school and the information available in print is scarce.

I'm proud that I was able to facilitate a better understanding of things on their part via literature. Also, there are a lot of good non-fiction books available in English about the events in '89, but for some reason they're not printed in Romanian. It's a shame. Many of these kids are curious about the past and should be able to access such information. It would be nice if a publishing house in this country took it upon themselves to make these texts available in English and Romanian. I can think of at least four books I've read about the communist era and the '89 events that I know would sell well here.

So, that's my report for now. It's Sunday afternoon and I'm gearing up for tonight's Rapid match. Rapid has a good chance to win the championship right now and must win tonight to help their chances. It's too bad that I can't watch the game with Victor. However, there's a possibility that I may not have that problem in the near future. More on that later.....

Scott