Food, words, and MSN
So, remember when I said that food wouldn't be a problem here? I take it back... at least a little. The food *is* good and the veggies are fresh, but the range of other ingredients near by are kind of limited. At the moment the meals I can think of making (and have made) are: soup, pasta, tuna and veggies on bread. They eay bread with everything here in the center (possibly a whole country thing, but I'm not sure). Anyway, one thing I've found myself doing is eating almost anything offered to me, including red meat. I had a lunch of sausage and fried potatoes today because Monica offered them. Me! Sausage! Who knows? Maybe I'll return a pork eater. Amazingly, (again knock on wood) my stomach continues to behave.
I'm not, however, drinking nearly enough real water. I drink tons of fruit tea made from water, but I have yet to look up how safe the tap water here is and I don't like going to buy bottled. I'm for sure going to look that up tonight since I get little headaches in the evenings and am probably generally dehydrated.
Um, what else...
I tried teaching a little English today because Diane suddenly asked me to. It certainly showed me clearly how important a lesson plan is and cemented my intention to write one for the formal classes I'm supposed to teach.
The good thing about this informal time is that it's more of a sharing situation where I show them English words and then prompt them to teach me the Romanian ones. The children are generally very interested in sharing.
I also watched the rehearsal for an adaptation of "Heidi" that a few of the children are doing under the direction of a parent. It's very nice (what I can catch) and it includes dance. The director is very loud and can be quite stern, but it's clear that she cares for the kids and that they all have fun. The children clearly respect her. One of the players is a three-year-old and, if what she is saying on stage is memorized, then I'm floored. The amount of clear, confidant language that comes out of that tiny girl's mouth. And she can act. She was doing sad-edge-of-crying at one point and it was all I could do to keep reminding myself that she was acting. Whew. Three!
Other words today:
fish - peşte (the ş is pronounced with a 'sh' sound - pehsh-teh)
owl - bufniţă (the ţ is 'ts')
big - mare
little - mic
I'm actually getting a lot in the animal area because of my time with the little ones in the morning. Not really helpful to everyday speech, but hey.
Mostly my speech consists of the following in Romanian: yes, no, good, bravo (which is the same), come, finished... and then I stick in other words if I remember them.
On a completely separate note, I got MSN working on here (wasn't hard) and have been able to chat with Kate last night and tonight. This makes me all kinds of happy. ( : It also provides me some time with someone else who speaks fluent English... though Diane is really quite good.
Not much else to say tonight. I have a feeling I'm going to be very tired when the weekend rolls around, but it'll be a good tired.