Exploring my Neighborhood (Part 2)

In August, much of Europe goes on vacation, Romania is no exception. Thus it has been hard to meet people in my community as since I have arrived at site, both my potential Romanian tutor and community mentor have been on vacation. I finally was able to meet my school director (the equivalent of a principal) for a few minutes the other day as he had been away in the beginning of the month. Luckily, I got an invite from Mil, a fellow volunteer in my group, who lives about an hour and forty-five minutes away from me.

Julie, a volunteer who lives about an hour from me, and I went to visit Mil last Friday. The floods that ravaged Romania earlier this summer destroyed part of the train track that runs beyond Mil's site so in order for me to get there I had to go to Julie's site and spend the night so we could take the only morning train at 7:00am that goes to Mil's site. Normally there should be many more train options, but a couple stops past Mil the track has been damaged. Julie and I woke up at 6:30am and walked to the train station that is conveniently about a 3 minute walk from Julie's apartment. Below is Julie's gorgeous old station.

We arrived bright and early at Mil's site which runs in a valley between two mountain ranges. The air was quite crisp compared to the heat of my site and I had goosebumps for the first times in months. It was delightful! We walked through the village of around 3,600 to the house Mil lives in with a gazda (the widow of the former town priest). We were greeted by the flowers in Mil's front yard.

In one of the sheds in Mil's yard braided onions and herbs are hung in preparation for winter.

After some restorative coffee we walked to Mil's school. On the way to the school we saw some girls herding some ducks.

Hay coming from the fields.

We had a picnic by the river that flooded earlier this summer.

Julie, Mil and me.

One of the kindergartens in Mil's community.

The school restroom.

The playground!

A few more houses and barns in the community.

Home is where the heart is! (or the gate)

Work being done to restore the river to it's original route after the flooding in June and July.

Sadly, we had to take the train home in the afternoon (there was only one train option out), but Julie and I vow to come back and visit Mil again soon. It was a lovely day!

Exploring my Neighborhood (Part 1)

Getting to my site has been a pretty overwhelming experience. I have a little studio apartment so I have been able to keep somewhat busy cleaning and getting it set up, but moving to a new place where I don't speak the native tongue and only know two people in town has been challenging to say the least. However, I have been very lucky to have really great Peace Corps neighbors. There are two volunteers in my area, Megan and Monica, who are third year extendees. They have both been amazing, inviting me to see their sites and sharing their knowledge and experiences.

Monica invited me and Vicki (another new volunteer in my group) up to her site which is about 30 minutes away because her town was celebrating it's 600th year! Most short distance local transportation in my region stops at 7:00pm so Vicki and I visited Monica for a sleep-over. We took a maxi-taxi up in the afternoon and explore the piata and grocery stores in town to buy provisions to make salad, roast veggies, and bake chocolate chip cookies. Monica showed us how to make the Romanian approximation of chocolate chip cookies, it involved cutting up some chocolate bars, but it tasted very close to those at home and was delicious!

After dinner and baking, Monica took us to see her town and the little fair. At the fair there was a booth making Kürtőskalács, a traditional sweet bread from the Hungarian region of Romania. The bread is roasted over coals so the outside is just done and the inside if doughy. After it's baked the bread is rolled in cinnamon, nuts or coconut. It's then knocked off the roller it's baked on and wrapped up. When eaten warm, it's quite delicious!

After walking through the fair, Monica then took us to the abandoned Armenian church in her community. I guess there is a caretaker in the town that looks after the beautiful old building and once every year or so an Armenian priest comes to give services in the church. My understanding was that all the Armenians that lived in the community fled the area during the Communist era.
After looking at the church we walked back to the fair and saw some traditional Romanian music and folk dancing (I posted a little video of the dancing on Facebook).

The next day we went with Monica to visit a Catholic orphanage that she has been working with. The orphanage had 18 children, ranging in age from 2-14. Many of the children have parents, but the parents simply can't provide for them, so they have given them to the nuns to look after. Some of them get to see their parents occasionally. Others do not have any parents and the nuns are looking for families to adopt these children. The facility was very well maintained and very warm. In the same compound there was also a kindergarten, the nuns had quite a passion for their work with the children. It was a lovely visit.

Swearing In

Last week was a big day for group 27, after 11 weeks of training we were sworn-in as volunteers. We represent the 44 newest volunteers in the Peace Corps. We had the swear-in ceremony at the Ambassador's residence in Bucharest. Ambassador Gitenstein and his wife were kind enough to host the event and invite all of the gazda families that had hosted us for our training. It was a hot, but lovely day!

We are all headed to different locations across Romania. It's a bit scary as we leave the safety and security of our training regime and fellow volunteers. However, I think we are all excited to start the process of trying to integrate into our communities and to get to know people at our schools.

All of the volunteers in group 27 are TEFL volunteers so we are being dispersed to teach English in schools for students from 2nd to 12th grade. As previously mentioned, I will be teaching at an industrial (trade high school) in the country of Bacau in the Moldovan region of Romania. School starts for teachers on September 1st to start planning and then opens for students on the 15th. I am both nervous and anxious to get started. It will be an interesting adventure for someone who has not taught before!

Cooking for the Road

Before leaving our training site and heading about to my permanent site. My gazda, Maria, wanted to arm me with recipes for a few of the dishes that I enjoyed most during my 11 weeks staying with her. Soup is very popular in Romania and Maria always had a pot or two of homemade soup that she served me as a first course at dinner. One of my favorite was supă de gălușcă, dumpling soup, which tastes very similar to matzah ball soup. Although, the dumplings are more dense. So the day before I left, we had a cooking day.

First, it seems that when you buy a chicken from the store in Romania that they are not fully plucked of feathers. So after Maria pulled all the remaining feathers she could find, she seared the outside of the bird to get them all. This also made it easier to remove some of the excess skin. She then rinsed the chicken and cut it up. She then cooked it for a few minutes, poured out that water, rinsed the chicken again and finally began cooking.

While the chicken began to cook, carrots, onions, and potatoes were cut up for the soup. Then fat was skimmed off the top of the broth.

The potatoes and carrots were then added along with a little salt and pepper to make the broth. After the broth is made the chicken was removed and the actual meat was used for two other recipes. The onion was also removed from the broth and thrown away.

Maria then made the batter for the dumplings out of eggs and a substance that would be most closely related to cornmeal. You have to add the batter to the soup quite quickly, otherwise the batter gets very tough.

The batter was then added spoonful by spoonful to the broth to make the dumplings. After about 45 minutes of being cooked with the lid on the soup is done and ready to serve with parley. Yum!