Halloween Partiess 2008! in Romanina

So I'm off to my 4th party this year...strange because this country doesn't actually celebrate it. It's when there's an American representative available it's an excuse to throw a Halloween party. It's the only time kids get to wear costumes! and kids love it.

I have a whole bunch of pictures, but I'm leaving to go to a party, and I don't have much time to blog, So here's what I was this year:
Little Red Riding Hood

Most of the parties are kids parties so I wanted to be kid friendly, Plus my whole costume costed me maybe $3 in material

Hobby for Winter - not sweaters, FIRE!

So I need to burn wood for warmth.







And it's different because it's not the fire nor the coals that keep me warm, but this stone ceramic thing that gets hot from the wood and stays warm for about 1 day and 1/2.



I go into the shed and take large logs and small pieces back into the apartment and do the fire. Lighting it is easy, but keeping it burning is harder.
My neighbor showed me using paper and cardboard. Other neighbor showed me using a paste of gasoline, ash, and woodshavings.

I see this as a Winter hobby =) How many ways can Cynthia start a fire, using what tools to start it. Also a: what can Cynthia cook in her soba fun too!!

Due to smoke, the neighbor upstairs and I have to light the fire at different parts of the day and I got evenings!! It's night at 6pm now =( No more riding my bike =(
We fell back an hour this Sunday so there's a 9hr difference now between here and California.

Pretty fire....
-an exothermic reaction, combustion, oxygen, blueness, cell walls, mitochondria...

FAVOR/HOMEWORK from the US

A teacher wants to do a quick webcam/penpal exchange with people from the US.

I was thinking of exchanging letters first, and them seeing each other face to face, but she has an idea of maybe just 5 kids (ages 8-15) who are American who will talk with kids here.

So instead of searching out a school or organization to help me with this, I thought I'd just use family and friends. To do this, you need access to a webcam at maybe 11pm-1am at night =/

Just 1 night!! and please be nice and have patience of course. The kids and teachers here would love it!! Maybe you could talk to the teachers here too (they're about 24-50).

I'll prep them in some English before hand.

Please let me know if you can do it, or you know someone who can. We're thinking the week of November 10th or the week after.

Thanks!!!
-Cynthia

(addition: Those of you willing to help, thank you!!! I think for little kids it would be more fun for them to see other little kids speaking to them, but thanks for letting me know, and if it turns out that it will work better if they speak to more mature Americans I will ask you guys! I think the Romanian-English accent is pretty (as European accents tend to be).
p.s. what's the time difference from Japan to Romania Lyle? It's 9:45pm in my time now, 12:45pm in CA.

Part 1: The Journey to Miercurea Ciuc

Also known as the coldest city in Romania.

I left my village on Sunday and spent the night at Emily and Nils' since we did have to leave at 5:30am (and there's no train from my village to where we were going). Not too bad of a ride, and our compartments were heated =)

Guess what I bought for 1 lei on the train! I needed those band aides for my shoes and for my scrapes from that bike incident. Tiger Balm!!!!! It's made in China and smells like the real thing. I've not used any since I was a child. I think it's for anything that hurts (except eyes).

I took these pics trying to get a good one of them two sleeping, but later I looked through them and thought they were pretty funny. The scenes are so different in every shot!


Yes for the next pictures. They're soo pretty! One is of the small villages nestled in the hills as we got closer to Transilvania/the mountains/the Hungarian villages in Romania. The next is a river shot.


Romania has oil too.

AND we arrived at the hotel! 7 hour trip = not too bad at all. We had a niiiiice hotel. There were weird Romanian tweaks, but great food, warmth, etc... some high profile people stayed in the same hotel with us that week. Weird hair dryer/US outlet adapter device to the left.

After I took a nice nap (there were no plans Monday except traveling), a few PCVs and I went in search of food. We found an Italian Restuarant!!! I ate Ravioli!!! Yay!!!!

Then back to the hotel we went. It was a chilly night: -1 C probably. We had the whole 1st floor to us, and part of floor 3. I said I felt like I was in the dorms again probably because I got to pad about from room to room in my fuzzy socks =D

And vola!! Sometime in the evening we saw the schedule in the lobby. It was jam packed with fun from 9am-6pm..and over, every day!

So dark bad week..s into IST (In-service Training) Conference

I was/We were warned that PC volunteers go through depression bouts which is normal. I went through a week and 1/2 one where everything seemed to be going ..yucky, but I mean, I was aware of it, so it wasn't too bad. I tried not to talk to too many people.
Kitchen leaking:

Landlord coming and cleaning my whole apartment...rearranging furniture...coming and cleaning when I wasn't home..Oh! and having to boil water for bath still due to stupid electric bill problem.

I fell off my bike, but due to martial art classes in college, I fell correctly and suffered 2 scrapes and a bruised knee. There was a spider on my handlebar and I left go...while still going.

Kids and cleaning lady didn't understand compost pile as well as I thought they did.

My electricity went out, BUT I got to use this gift someone in Romania gave me.
It's very pretty when lit and it was warm.

On the last 2 days I was in town, I slept in!! and woke up happy!! IST adventure to come! with lots of pics!

Sorry!! and I will be gone next week

This is a quick post while the computer is working: I will be gone to Miercurea Ciuc (the coldest city in Romania) for about a week: Monday-Saturday for a Peace Corps conference. To my knowledge, it's to check to make sure people in my group are healthy and if we're lost or confused/upset at our sites, our staff will give us ideas on how to make things go easier.

I'm ready to go, I had a hard 2 weeks (maybe ~ 1 1/2 weeks). I was pretty down about all the complaints I listed and etc...

There have been excited and fun things that I've done, but my computer isn't realiable enough right now for me to post. Like it's 10% reliable now.

I ask this now: WHEN I GO BACK TO THE US IF YOU HAVE A DEPENDENT LAPTOP YOU DON'T WANT ANYMORE I'LL TAKE IT.

I love my computer, but it's been over 5 years...and I need something for me to work from, to communicate from. ALSO IF YOU HAVE A SURGE PROTECTOR... Nothing could have saved the computer during that lightning surge, but having one might save the next laptop for my sketch electricity too.

(UPDATE): GREAT IDEA FROM A CONVERSATION....THINKING ABOUT IT THERE ISN'T REALLY ANYTHING I WANT AT ALL EXCEPT A BETTER LAPTOP...SO MAYBE FOR CHRISTMAS NO ONE GETS ME A PRESENT, BUT HELP ME A LITTLE AND I CAN BUY ONE.

Talk to you all when I get back!!!
Again, I will be in the US from 12/23-1/1/09 and I'll mostly be in SJ. We're having a Christmas party at my mom's newly remodeled house on Christmas day.

I suggested having a "gingerbread (not gingerbread, maybe snickerdoodle, or granham) house" competition. Why? cause it's fun and yummy! but it will be Mom's call I think.

Later =/

More details later but: I was at a...lunch where you eat to celebrate the dead. My neighbor's father died and we had a large meal to celebrate him 20 days after he died. There will be another bigger one after 40days. More later.


When I had no electricity and I brushed teeth by wind-up flashlight.



With Mihaela (teacher of Physics) (I know lots of Mihaelas: Mihaela of the public library, Mihaela teacher of Romanian, Mihaela of PE, Mihaela of kindergarden...etc...)
Anyway, we didn't just talk we did!! We remade the compost pile from what it was, to new. There's some positives about it: kids are using it1! but I am also sad cause ..some people didn't know how to use it and I found plastic and someone burned one of my recycling bins...=( Oh well. My vacation is Ciuc.


Again, later!!

List of Complaints as of Today:

So....I admit, I am a bit frustrated about a couple things, but there are lots of happy things too: like this full box of semi-melted Trader Joes chocolates next to me.

At first my bathroom ceiling in was leaking. It war resolved by the person upstairs putting a stopper in the pipe leaking.

Next the pipe under my sink started to flow and go all over the floor, and when people came to fix that the shower was leaking.

After that, the people upstairs and my landlord determined that the old water system must be stopped and that my hot water boiler is not working because of this old system, so men came last week: 7 construction men, and put new piping in and took stuff out. They kindly left dirt, wood grains and platic everywhere for me to clean up.

That same evening I noticed a leaking on the kitchen floor. I called my landlord and told her...and they said they'd fix it the next day. 8 days later...it's softened the frame of my kitchen door and it's seeping into the hall. I'm using towels to soak up as much as I can, but...I did what I could. I've told them every other day the whole week: my landlord and her husband. Ground in kitchen = "water bed" floor right now

Other topic: I have a Peace Corps conference next week called: IST or In-service Trainging where I'll be attending workshops on how to make me a more effective volunteer, a language test to see if I've grown more fluent, etc... It's from Monday - Saturday and on Friday and Saturday our counterparts are invited to attend.
This is exciting for me! To see other volunteers after about 5 1/2 months of being seperated, BUT it's really not all that exciting in terms of listening to presentations about Everyone's experience, reassurance from our staff, blah blah blah.
Fun part is: my countpart was ..more or less forbidden to attend the conference with me because the Mayor of the village doesn't want him to go. He wants to go, which is super flattering! I was the only person in our group with a Mayor as a counterpart (in the US I didn't really think much of mayors...but maybe cause I'm from the huge city of SJ) Anyway, you may all remember that my counterpart WAS the mayor, and now is the vice-mayor. It's flattering...but from what was a nice PC week has turned into a political situation. The mayor wants to go, or someone else to go, my counterpart wants to go cause I think it's personal and partly political, ...and the Mayor next door is joking now that he wants to go too.

1 week of this, with me trying to be diplomatic too, I tried!!! and I didn't insult anyone, but I didn't settle the issue either. PC is telling me to be flattered and take this funny..it is, but I also feel like a trophy right now too. (Asian trophy, trophy wife, trophy American...really I'm flattered but...)

Other complaint: My bug bites, I really think they were bed bug bites are not puffy, but they're big and bold and obvious on my body, they are also dry and they itch. On top of that, I think I have a food allergy too cause every day more spots appear on my body: maybe 3-7 every day: on arms, legs, back, neck, eyebrow, etc... For the bug problem, I bug bombed my bedroom and hall, switched rooms for 2 weeks, and sanatized Everything. For food allergy problem, I have been taking allergy medicine and I have been eating super plain foods: boiled potatoes, boiled carrots, PB and J sandwhiches, PB and J sandwhiches, Butter and J sandwhiches, and coffee. I did that for about 6 days and quit after I didn't get better. I have an appointment with our doctor at IST now.

Anyway: housing complains, work complaints, health complaints...yeah, don't get me wrong, still Love Peace Corps and my work and the people here. I'm just a little fed up with some things. Oh! and it's pretty cold and I have wood, but they're not chopped! cause the mayor and vice mayor are too preoccupied to get people here to chop it for me to use!

Going on vacation to a hotel in Mierciurea Ciuc next week...I hope all problems will be over when I get back!

I also have this bottle of Must [moo-st] I got as a gift: it's wine before wine and tis' tasty. I didn't know it existed and it's really popular here. If this bottle looks familiar, people re-use water and soda bottles here for milk and wine.

Wwarmth for Winter..or now

So the mayor had delivered to me 2 horse carts of wood. (sorry for being so quick about this, but my hands are very very cold and I want to go to bed). I think it's about 3 meters cubed of wood.
They unloaded the trees and then worked on chopping it into smaller chunks.
My neighbor's brother in law came to help with his chainsaw, which I imagine made the work so much faster. I was just wandering about in my yard while they worked.
Here's the finished work. NOW I need men to come and axe them into small enough parts that I can shove them into my SOBA for warmth. I have no idea how to start and warm a room...it's not like a fireplace. Something about using woodshed and gasoline...takes 2 hours to get a room warm??
Here's me collecting 6 bags of saw dust...I thought my neighbor was telling me to Add, to continue, but she was telling me: Enough, that's too much. *sigh* It's been over 5 months...but oh well, it was a l

Okay, old post, but: Learning from making a mistake

What I learned here: Milk from a cow MUST BE BOILED ON THE FIRST DAY!!

Here is milk I tried to boil 2 days after receiving it. It was all stringy and thick and after being boiled I got cheese stuff and sour water?? Ergo! Boil milk from cow on first day!!! even refrigerated!!

Another thing I learned too with milk: do not put vanilla extract in milk when trying to make yogurt (refer to older entry about yogurt making). I did that...in my attempt to make vanilla tasting yogurt, and after 1 1/2 days, I still had milk...and no yogurt.
Fortunately, I decided to immediately boil the stuff (1/2 already boiled milk, 1/2 pure from the cow milk, and vanilla extract) and I ended up with perfect vanilla tasting milk. I think I killed all the bacteria with the alcohol in the extract.















Here is my knee when I SLAPPEd the mosquito While it was sucking my blood. I killed it in action and it was very satisfying....unfortunately I think I made the mosquito panic and inject or not inject what was normal. From now on: lesson learned: let the mosquitoes do their business and deal with the problem afterwords.

That thing lasted a few days longer than the normal bite. It's gone now...but I've got these bedbug bites to deal with instead.

Who wins a metal for most eaten? In Romania? which is in Europe, which is not Africa? Who'd a thought there was such a mosquito threat here?!