I woke: Snow Surprise! and last day of school!!

Tuesday morning I awoke to snow. It was snowing; soft bits of dust.

All over...

That morning, was the beginning of a long but festive day.
The day before, I went and saw a class give a Christmas presentation to their parents. They dressed in the appropriate Christmas apparel and presented about the history of Christmas in Romania and sang carols.

Then I went to another school and saw more caroling, and dancing goats dancing to the beat of a drum...and they were tall and were made of trash bags...or they can be made of hay.

The next day! That LAST DAY OF SCHOOL! (okay, not my last day, but the kids')
I saw little kindergartners sing and dance!! So cute! and they had to say a poem too but some can't speak well yet, so it was way cute. P.S. That little girl is a goat, and she was a sad sad little goat who wanted out of the costume. Awww. I give her credit for keeping it on (a brave face) until the very end.



Then scary Santa was bashing on the window from outside and came in to give all the kiddies their gift from Santa. In Romania, there's Saint Nicolas who comes and leaves a gift in your boot on the 6th of December, and then there's Santa Clause who comes and leaves a gift under the Christmas tree on the night of the 24th. Ergo, you need a Christmas tree. In general, people here have sobas/ceramic stoves or a heating unit in apartments (no chimneys).

Those were the small kindergartners ages: 3-4.
THEN: I went to Mastacani and I watched 8th graders read an epic poem about Christmas, and I took lots of pictures. More like I gave "trained" students my camera so I could be in the pictures =)


Muahahahah

Then we were playing in the snow =)

I don't even know if the kids had class...maybe it was recess, maybe not, but oh well, I'm not their teacher.


See! Not the photographer! I'm being photographed!


When it got too cold: Run to the Soba! Warmth warmth!

Pictures pictures with all. What would we do without my digital camera?
,

Kapow! In the head! But I still love the kids.

To top it all off:
The teacher's van slid backwards when at the intersection to the highway.

Instead of lending then a hand, I decided to take pictures. Watching teachers and school principles push a van is funny. I'm terrible.

Let the good times begin! -11C tonight! But there's snow!! Hurray!

My soba has a Hoooole

I am frig (cold) [fr-eeg].
It was leaking smoke and CO out the front.

Someone came to fix it.

He made a hole in the top.

And declared it broken. Now I get to use my electric radiator...
Really though, he said the foundation was gone and they're going to smash it down and rebuild it this Summer. In the meantime, let's hope Spring comes quick!

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

My hands are cold - Apartment!!!!!

The moment of anticipation: I was anticipating for a long time, cause it's my home!

You'all ready? To see the living place of Cynthia? Do you want to come visit me, after seeing these picture? Remember this: this place may be free, but I am going to work for it.


Here's my bloc, the yellow one. It's one of 2 in our comuna. This is the main road and my apartment is on this road, which makes it easy to get around and no dark allies.


Here are pictures of the inside of my apartment. Basically me spinning in circles taking pictures.
When I saw it first, it had paint buckets, I saw cement, spider webs, broken glass, and it was dull, and there were loose wires exposed.
I was informed that the mayor's wife lived in my apartment for a week cleaning it. She burned her wrist too, cleaning this place.
This was the mayor's wife's home. She lived here with her first husband, but he was sick and he died. I think her son, who's older than me, lived here after she remarried and moved in a house next to her parents a few miles away. She lives with the mayor in a house now, where I stayed at on my site visit.
I had low PC expectations, so I was very surprised....


Brand new door, with a built in ringer, repainted walls in my hall.

Here is my bedroom:



She washed the sheets, and put stuff animals there too (my gazda dad gave me a stuffed winnie the poo as a fairwell gift).



Here is the living room:


The second picture is the guest room:



Here is the bathroom. Notice how I have a shower and a working toilet.

I get a washing machine too!!
But she did get me a bucket, so I can handwash my clothes when I want to.


There is the amazing water boiler, and my gas stove. People use wood to cook here, but gas stove exist too for most people. I have no idea what to do when it's empty and how to refill the gas tank after....oh well. There is a water filter, and it's hooked up now.


Where I store my pots/pans and food. It's a walk in. There's my crazy fridge. It's my size short, but it's crazy powerfull. I keep trying to make it less cold, but it's freezing Everything! My veggies, my eggs! It's good, just tooo good.

Here is my garden. I asked on my site visit if I could plant things here (thinking about small carrots and tomatoes), and today, the mayor had people work on loosening the soil in the yard and they're going to plant lots of things there I think. Here is my neighbor Tina's yard. Tina s the dark shirt, red pants lady, the other lady is Sarita [S-ah-r-eee-zah], my landlord, the mayor's wife (my counterpart's wife).

Here is a cherry tree in my..the garden I have. It's weird because none of this stuff is mine, or at least I feel really guilty about calling it mine cause it's so much! and so nice!

Here is how they take care of garbage here I think. Food left overs go to dogs and cats. I'm not sure how it's done though. It's day 3 of living here, and hopefully I'll get an example before my place starts to smell. (kidding, I'll ask tomorrow).

On why the title is called cold hands: My apartment is really nice, but it's big, so it doesn't hold heat well and it's cold at night. It's as cold as camping, and though other people here don't think it's That cold, I'm from central coast California, and I wore 3 pair of socks, a sweatshirt, sweatpants, t-shirt, and my undergarments, and a scarf and gloves to sleep, under 3 blankets (heavy ones) and I was okay.

As my princess treatment goes, when asked how I slept (I get asked "ce faci?" (how are you?/how do you feel?/what are you doing?), "cum ai dormit?" (how did you sleep), just about every morning). I said I was fine, I slept fine, but I was a little cold last night, and the mayor was at my door with a space heater.

Peace Corps = you think Africa, dirt floors, wells, etc...While I have a very rural setting, and I am in a place where people have never seen an American, nor an Asian, I feel like a princess.
I am ...not sure about this. I feel guilty cause I didn't do anything to deserve it, but I understand that my counterpart is the mayor and he's a "very important man" and I'm just going to go with the flow and do the best I can to do what the community wants in terms of projects and in teaching English. *sigh* If only I could learn my Romanian faster.

I don't want to teach English a lot, until my Romanian is better, but....we'll see.