Swear-In Ceremony (round 2)
Trip Start
Jun 01, 2005
1
3
9
Trip End
Sep 01, 2007
Zarnesti,
Romania
Thursday, August 4, 2005
2 PC staff
*sigh* I will miss the other 16 volunteers here in Zarnesti very much...as out of the 65~ or so trainee's living around Brasov, these are the ones I was able to get to know the best. I love the peacefulness that exists in this town. I love sitting on my balcony and watching carutsa's (horse drawn wagons) go by with huge stacks of hay from a long days work in the fields near the magura (hills). I love the sound of the church bells ringing for just about any occasion in town....funeral, wedding, change of the hour. I love watching the wedding parties leave the church down the street from me and in procession the wedding party will walk out onto the street with a band accompanying them and proceed to take over the street and in a world of their own dance to Romanian cultural wedding music. I love the bunica's (grandma's) hanging out their windows waiting for the next person to walk by to strike up a conversation with. I love walking down the street and exchanging the "Buna dimeanatsa", "Buna ziua!", or "Buna Seara" that is the respective Hello for morning, afternoon, and evening and the fact that everyone is polite enough to say it! I love the sound of my host mom yelling to me "Ambherrr, hii la masa!!" (Amber come to the table!) implying dinner is ready....and usually I really love her meals. However, lately Forest and I have been cooking some in our kitchen here and have been trying to make some non-fried meals, usually pasta, but somehow something always does get fried! Anyway, I digress, but wow, how I long for baked foods.
A better pic of Sinia from above
In this respect I can't wait to have my own place at site. But as I say all this, part of me wants to cling to my life here in Zarnesti and only leave kicking and screaming...but the other part is excited about the next new adventure just around the corner...So, what do you know about my new site? It's a city of about 82,000 and the name is Resita (prounounced "Reshitsa" in Romanian) and it's located in the Southwestern corner of the country very near the Serbian border! I'm only a few hours away from Belgrad, which I hope to visit. Resita is very beautiful and I know I'm going to like it there. It's nestled in a valley, surrounded by hills and not far from the mountains. The city itself is very photogenic and I'm looking forward to attaching pictures to show you. The organizations I will be working with center on youth activities and development and I know the vice-mayor is already interested in having me conduct some human resource development seminars with the city employees. Anyway, in a nutshell, I have my work cut out for me! I will tell you more about my job after I get to site and my objectives become clearer. Back to the town and region...I will be living in a region where I can go mountain hiking, biking, rock climbing, canoeing, caving, see amazing cultural festivals, visit neighboring countries like Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria...all in a days trip! I know, it's a rough life...and I guess I'll take the burden of living it...ha! So, I'm definitely thrilled about my new city, region, and organization and assuming no problems with Visa's...I should have plenty of stories to tell over the next 2 years.
A wedding amongst us?
Speaking of stories, I have to tell you this one...So I mentioned I went camping this past weekend, right? There were about 10 of us on this trip and we only had 3 tents between all of us. Anyway, so we arrived late afternoon, set up camp, started the fire and cooked dinner, during all this one of our Romanian friends Danny came by on his dirt bike and since I would never break PC rules I didn't take a ride with him...ANYWAY. We actually had marshmallows (can't spell this!) from Switzerland so we were glad to have picked up chocolate bars and Romanian style gram crackers earlier and we were all able to make....you guessed it....smores! It was awesome...we ate smores and then sat around the campfire for the next several hours just hanging out, talking, playing silly games, looking up at the stars...it was great. I have seen more stars since I've left the states than I have in my life leading up to that point. It's amazing. So we finally all decide to crash around 1am and retreat to our tents. About 1:30 roles around, and I'm almost asleep and we start to hear some drunk Romanian man walking down the road singing at the top of his lungs some crazy song. Keep in mind that there are no houses around here. Well, I thought this was a little spooky especially when he stopped right outside our camp area and just stood there for what seemed like 5 minutes and gave us our own little serenade! It totally freaked me out, b/c my tent was closest to the road I thought this could be some singing axe murderer who was coming to pay us Americans a visit. Okay, so yes I get spooked easily, and yes, he did go away, BUT he started to come back later but then turned around again. For the rest of the night my only concern became the bugs crawling over me...hoping none would bite! Luckily only mosquitos got me....the usual!...okay so that story was much funnier when I was thinking of it...but you all know I can't tell stories worth a flip!
Well folks, for now this is all I have for you. I hope to be able to add more pictures very soon. My internet access has been extremely limited and as I always say, I hope it will improve when I get to site. Gee, have you heard that line before? Wish me luck in getting to site, I already need to replace one of my luggage pieces...so I'm gonna have to break down and buy a new large duffel in the next few days, argh. Oh, and by the way, we don't have "visa problems" here in Romania...thank god.
Much love to everyone, take care...and as always: Keep in touch!
Amber
