Springtime Cometh

Last weekend I traveled west to Cluj for a VAC meeting with fellow volunteers and Peace Corps staff. While my site is not in the mountains, there is small string of mountains to the west of my site that must be circumnavigated. To get to Cluj, I took a 3 hour maxi-taxi ride over the mountains and then a 6 1/2 hour train ride across the countryside. The train ride was gorgeous, I felt like I could finally see signs of spring coming to the country. I saw a few herds of sheep and a lot of the fields on fire getting ready for spring plowing.

I left my site a little after 6am on Friday and was finally out and about in Cluj around 5:30pm with my friend and fellow committee member, Becca. We had delicious coffee (I needed it), caught the sunset, did a little shopping, and had Asian food!

Cluj is a university town and in Transylvania, which is very different from my region. Translyvania is the Hungarian region of Romania, home to lots of scenic architecture and interesting history.

Saturday was mostly taken up with Peace Corps meetings, I presented the results of a survey about community integration that I helped give my group during our December training event. We also discussed the new group of volunteers that will be coming into the country next month. I am excited at the prospect of meeting new volunteers. We got out of our meeting in late afternoon in time to get one more hour of daylight in the city.

St. Michael's Church

Church entrance

Although, I was really only there for a day and a half I loved the diversity and options in the city. I went to an art museum, visited a historic church, and had Indian food to boot. I definitely would like to come back again.

By Sunday afternoon, I was back on the train headed back to site. In the daylight hours of my return ride I enjoyed more views of the country side and saw more fields on fire. At first, I found this a little alarming, but I was assured it is normal for this time of year. I didn't get a great pictures of this, but you can see this in the upper right corner of the below picture.