Giving Thanks
Trip Start
Jun 01, 2005
1
7
9
Trip End
Sep 01, 2007
Resita,
Romania
Thursday, November 24, 2005
I hope this finds you all doing well and in good health. I'm at the office this morning, as no, PC Volunteers do not get to take off on American Holidays. No big deal thou, as I'm leaving tomorrow for a Thanksgiving celebration that several of us volunteers are putting together. I will be traveling to Zalue, which is a city in the northcentral part of Romania. I'm making No-Bake Cookies to take with me, and everyone has to bring something to accompany the large amounts of Turkey and mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce that I'm sure we will be having! There will probably be around 50 people there and my journey will take about 11-12 hours. yes, i know....ouch. Oh well, we just get used to the travel times. I'm sure if I were to be driving it would only take a few hours.
Anyway, so life is going well here. Luckily I have been able to continue my City Hall project, which is going great. We finished our interviews with the Directors and now we are going to start on some of the staff employees. The responses and feedback we have received from the interviews so far is helping us to figure out what type of training is needed. If you remember, the problem brought to our attention was customer service, but as we expected, it goes beyond that.
The work with my colleagues has been very good lately as it seems more trust is being built and an atomsphere of collaboration is being formed. The Cogito organization I work with focuses on college age students and they have had a lot of recruitment activities lately which have involved movie nights, a caving trip, and trips to Baile Herculane which is a hot-springs resort town very near here! I'm enjoying getting to know these volunteers better and they are helping me with my language barriers.
I'm finally in my own apartment! I moved last week and love having my independency again. I love being able to cook for myself again in my own kitchen, sing in the shower, turn up the music and dance in my room! When I look out the window i see the hills on both sides of the small valley this part of town is in and just love my view. It started snowing Saturday morning and continued thru Monday. It is getting very cold here and I can't imagine how much colder it is going to get. I'm so glad my heater works.
Last week the Minister of Youth was here from Bucharest to check out our Mansarda youth center, in which they (the gov't)are a partial sponsor. Most all of my colleagues were out of town so it was up to me, one other colleague, the regional Director of the National Authority for Youth, and the vice mayor to host this Minister and his accompanying staff. It was pretty cool showing him around the center and he was very impressed with all that we have done and are doing now. kudos for us! Now that he has "blessed" the center we are hoping the computers will arrive soon for the computer lab section of the center. Oh, that would be 9 computers, by the way. (Wow, huh?)
When i was living with my gazda (host)family here I met a neighbor who was always asking me to come visit his family's apartment. The neighbor's name is Mihai (Mike) and he speaks English very well. I had not gone to visit him yet and of course started to feel really bad about that when last week he walks up to me and say's "Amber, i have a business proposition for you!" and I said, "Mike, you know I am a voluteer and am not allowed to make money!", he said, "oh no, I it's more like a trade. You will come visit me and my family and speak english with us, and I will give you guitar or piano lessons. What do you think, are you interested?" I told him that I was interested in visiting his family even without the lessons, and that I promised to come see him soon. So, this Sunday I decided to finally pay them my overdue visit. His family was so endearing. His 3 grandchildren were there, who all spoke a little english and were full of questions. They asked some, then I asked some. I learned that they are a Christian family and were very eager to play me some Hymns that they knew. That's when the fun really began, for the next few hours, these kids played Hymn's, classical masterpieces, roaring 20's music, and several pop songs for me and some were even turned into singing and dancing routines they had mastered!! It was so cute. At one point I had to get up and sing and dance with them! We had such a lovely time together and I promised to return after the holidays. Mike and his wife are a retired couple and live very modestly, but like my gazda family, music is their passion. Mike has taught his grandchildren all of this music and I learned that he even composes music too! So impressive.
Well, I have to go for now. I hope you are all having a lovely Thanksgiving with your familys and are thinking about what you are thankful for. I have to say, that when you are so far away from family and friends and life that I have known for 29 years, I think often of the things that I'm thankful for. Of course, I'm thankful for you!
Happy Holidays...and as always...stay in touch!
Peace and love,
Amber
