Happy 4th of July!!!

It's a new meaning this year (because those of us overseas, in general, are feeling a new sense of pride this year).
I didn't host a giant bash, but I did go out of my way to organize a small BBQ that involved Bull's Eye BBQ sauce on ribs (which were hard to find, but we found some) and hamburgers =)
We also got some watermelon because WATERMELONS ARE AMAZING IN ROMANIA!

Preparation of meat outside.

Bogdan the Great was in charge of the grill because he's Great at it (apparently an expert on the grilling of all foods and clatites too). We took the table outside and it was nice.

I cut my hair again cause my bangs were bugging me and I messed up =(
I look ugy, but oh well, it will grow out.

I remembered I had something in my apartment, that would be awesome and American and perfect for a 4th of July BBQ = marshmallows!
The older people were confused, but the girl: Simona was a pro cause she had seen it done hundreds of times on TV. =)

I like Dan's marshmallow campaign picture: "Only you can prevent marshmallow fires."


Yes, this hamburger was the first for many of the guests. You can see the apprehension in Bogdan's expression, but then he took that bite and he smiled. Maybe in the first picture, it wasn't apprehension, but maybe the hamburger was talking to him.


Nuti seemed to like it too. Here's the close up: beef and pork mix, Romanian tomatoes, and iceberg lettuce with mustard and ketcup. (Buns were hard to find! We found some "American buns" but they were 10x the cost of a pack of bread the same amount!!!)

And we bought a Romanain Watermelon off the side of the road to complete this National Summer celebration.

I also managed to find some ribs and we used some BBQ sauce katie brought me and it's a bit blackened due to the sauce, but it was Yum yum tasty!

Someone came by to visit our table and then decided to nap 10 feet away, then 8 feet, then 5 feeet and then soon....

Then 2 feet away... (the chickens decided against attacking the humans and tried for the unguarded grill).

Silly cat. He was very friendly to all my guests though. He's a very agile cat too, and Dan doesn't have very swift foo

Then we cleaned up and we were all done. Dan left a bit early to catch his ride (which we found out he missed, but VERY LUCKILY he did make it back to his place before mid-night).
He's leaving for the states very soon (within 3 days), so I'm glad he could make it here to visit before his trip home.

HAPPY FOUTH OF JULY!! Hope you guys all had great weather!!!

Staying warm livestyle changes

Food my neighbor gave me. She gives me free food and I say: B-oo-dah Pros-tee. It means something in terms of blessing the soul of someone who just died. It kinda goes with the tradition that: if someone in your family or a close friend dies, you need to be giving and give away food and items such as clothes and furniture to people. This giving of material stuff is good for your deceased loved one's spirit. Yay for yummy foods! It's mamaliga (corn meil boiled) and curca (a female turkey boiled) cu soc de ustori (with garlic sauce).

So, I mean I am in Peace Corps, and I do live in the country, but I wonder...are some of these hobbies really normal? to me it's like same old, do what I have to do now, but that's how most of my thinking goes now these days. Maybe these things aren't that odd and I just assume they should be.
Anyway, here's how my village looks like during the Winter. It has snowed maybe 2-3 times now, and the biggest snowing was during Christmas (while I was in the U.S. of course). The river where I played with the kids has frozen and I think I can ice skate, but dang it, it's just too cold outside! How East coasters in the US do it, I don't know! I may try next year?

At the mayor's office a lady was heating up her lunch in the soba (the source of heating for us at work). I have tried potatoes and surprisingly, I did burn about 1/2 of my attempts, but I didn't think about cooking meat. I do have marshmallows now, from my vacation in the US, so I may bring those out on a festive occasion. (Is it weird people are BBQing meat for lunch in our heating source in the mayor's office?, cause I want to recall that in SJ, CA, USA this would be not normal)

So to dry my clothes on the clothesline outside not only takes FOREVER, it also tends to freeze the clothes = breakable if dropped (though easily stackable). Drying them on the bathroom line over the tub does work too, but since it's still cold enough to see my breath there, usually, it takes about 4-5 days for things to dry. I've learned, ON the soba it takes maybe a few hours (but there's the danger of burning/melting your clothes, so I build this clothesline between my wardrobe and my soba! For those larger load days, I use chairs.

So drainage problem STRIKES BACK: the sequel. I've you've been following along with news of my apartment then you'll have heard that I don't have hot water because it wasn't connected correctly and I paid a small ransom for electric last Summer. My landlord has been hiring people to look at the boiler and to do things to help repair it. Such an inspection resulted in a "water floor" for 10 days that spread into my hallway and resulted in lots of wet socks. I told my landlord the first day I saw and tried to do damage control, so I felt like I did my part.
Okay, now part 2:
My water all backed up and was coming OUT the ground of my bathroom and getting thus More socks wet. I could bath and do dishes, but I had to dump the water outside and not down the drain. The toilet is on a separate system (thank goodness!!) and I sometimes cheated and dumped waste water down that drain.

What has so far sucked the most: doing laundry by hand with ice freezingly cold water and then trying to wring them dry and then having to hang them on lines over your soba and having water drip on your head while tossing in more wood to heat the room.
I can't say it was fun, but now I have a response for people who ask me why I wasn't placed to Live in the city, and then commute to work. AND MISS ALL THE FUN OF EXPERIENCING HOW PEOPLE IN THIS COMMUNE LIVE?!?!
Nope, I'm glad I live here because I think now I can understand their problems better and I'm more driven to helping them overcome them. I talked about this problem for about 5-6 days before people came to unclog the drain. The whole system was blocked for the block, but the backwash only happened to ME, of course.

Look, a main pipe has a water fall of ice. The picture is 90 degrees in the wrong direction.



I am also soooooo glad I don't have to take care of these kind of problems myself. SO glad!
We have a small septic tank for the normal waste water and the feces water (one system in front of the block and one behind). I hear that a truck comes 2 times a year to empty it. A lady across the street said they have a septic area now too, but it's not enforced by cement. I told her that's not good especially since she's so close to a well.

BBQ picnic for Iuliana's name day

For my neighbor's name day: her name is Iuliana, but we call her Yulla [You-lah] we went out on a BBQ, it started at 11am Sunday and I was home at 7pm. I didn't expect that we'd eat breakfast, lunch and dinner there.
I reminded me a lot of camping, without the sleeping outside part.

Her family from the city came, we got into cars, drove not too far and found a spot in some trees out where there wern't houses but there were forests. It's random how there's patches of forest off the main road of houses.
We just pulled over and had a BBQ, we brought our own wood and ax, and the men prepared the fire.

We ladies laid out the blankets, and those two girls are my neighbors and the older lady is the grandmother to the tyke. His parents are in Italia, like soooooo many families of Romania.
We had yummy mici's [meee-ch]. They are pork...think of hamburger meat, with garlic. Just a mix of meat with spices, we grilled. That was breakfast and lunch.

We dipped them in mustard and ate them with bread. I think I ate about 7, and I had a very full tummy for the rest of the afternoon. The little kid reminds me of Dudely Dursley, but my neighbors are in love with him. Yes, he's drinking mustard, and they are in the correct order.

I was the only girl to play football. I can't aim in flipflops, but I think I impressed them with my powerful kicks with my thighs of an elephant. I have huge stubby thighs, as of the people of my race, but most Romanian females have long thing legs and I'm semi jealous, if not just self concious.

I tried to make a game for the little guy. Here's me trying to sit in a tree, it didn't work very well.

Dinner was grilled chicken and more bread. We had watermelon and cakes, and sunflower seeds, beer and soda. My neighbors are super giving and gave the random sheepherder and his two kids a full meal too. =)


My neighbors, as in the whole family = giving. The girls always have a candy for a little kid, or an ice cream, or a toy (if they're on the way to a small shop in the village). The mom and dad are the same way too.
I told the girls about how we're more hesitant about giving in the US, especially in CA since we're mostly afraid of being sued. They think it's odd. I would love to give someone a cupcake if I had two, but I don't want to get in trouble. Maybe I'm just paranoid.

4th of July, which was 12 days ago

So to celebrate the only holiday we have in the middle of summer, Emily and I decided to have a BBQ for the 4th (but to celebrate it on Sat. the 5th.
I was inviting Em and Nils up to my site to spend the weekend, and decided, hey why not Go Big and share our culture with other people. They invited people, I invited all the other PCV in the area, and neighbors, and people from the Primaria. I always worry that everyone will show up, but people never do.

We had plenty of food, and people enjoyed it! Em and I came up with the all-American menu that we hoped would appeal to the Romanian pallet. We made: beef hamburgers, marinated pork patties with onion burgers, marinated grilled chicken drumbs, chicken hot dogs, macaroni and salad, corn bread, fried potato chunks, a dip for the potato, and corn flake crispies! We had grapefruit soda and cold sweet fruit tea. I took care of the meat products (it took a trip to the city to get), and Em made a lot of the side dishes and they were soooo yummy!

Some of the material we used came from a PCV who left; like the marshmellows for the crispies, but all else was makable here.

People who came were my counterpart and his wife, he is the ex-mayor but now the vice-mayor (I'm glad he's still with us, but he's sadder I think cause he's got more work and less choice on community topics), and his wife is my landlord. My landlord's friend across the street (who gives me fresh veggies once in a while) and her hubby, and Em and Nils are the ones in the picture. My neighbors were invited too, but they would only eat the stuff that was given to them at the end.

My neighbors = very giving, but don't always like to accept things in return. I'm super lucky to have them. Sometimes, actually almost every week I eat in their kitchen with them, and one weekend for every meal a weekend, but I told my neighbor that was a bit much. Great neighbors = very hard to find and it's great having them!

Em and I cooked almost all of it, Nils fried the fries (and super-saturated them in salt), but he was a champ and did all the dishes!! I hope my husband (to be) washes dishes willingly!

Men and BBQ's

I asked a Romanian man this:

Why is it around the world, that women are expected to cook in the kitchen, but men always insist on cooking when it comes to BBQ's?



This is my gazda dad: Mihai, in the blue.
His friend, also the translator, Ulian was helping him with BBQing pork for dinner. We have a parking structure thing close to our home (casa), so we stepped over the barbed wiring and had a BBQ.
Apparently beer is used to dose the fire (foc [fooo-ck]).
(Just as a disclaimer for when we go home, and yell this out during a fire).



end of pauza again....

This is Ulian's daughter, Stefi. She's 10 ani (years old) and is as tall as I am. She can speak Romanian and French, so trying to communicate with her is difficult. Thanksfully she's learning some English so we can talk. I'm working on meeting her half way.