Wednesday Afternoon
So, I've tried to find out how safe the tap water is here and have come up with both "safe" and "not safe" answers. I may have to ask, but I don't want to seem like an American wimp...
I ate sheep meat (lamb maybe?) tonight as part of my dinner. Meals here at the center are interesting in that often many things (meat, pate, veggies, cheese...) are set out and eaten with lots of bread. I also tried raw onion and meat fat tonight at Diane's prompting. It was fine in terms of flavor (pretty good actually), but I'm not huge on the texture of fat. I like the sheep cheese and bought the chunk currently in the fridge.
They also tend to only buy a bit of food at a time. Anyone from the UK or US would be shocked at how few things are in the fridge. Pretty much just jam, cheese, meat, and leftovers.
We had a *lot* of kids this afternoon and I did my best to supervise a group and do drama while Diane helped others with homework. Unfortunately, my inability to speak much Romanian limits my management skills drastically. We did okay for about twenty minutes and then I lost the attention of several boys. I tried loudly saying "gata sau chou" (not sure about spelling) which roughly translates as 'finished or goodbye", because Diane generally tells them to go home if that can't participate. They didn't understand, so I need to come up with another way of getting that across. "Nu" is something I use a lot when fighting or hitting breaks out, but they usually ignore me, so I have to physically get between them. That only works for a moment...
I hate that I need someone to help me facilitate a workshop situation, but the language and rampant chaos make it pretty important. Today I had a girl (13 or 14) help me who knew a couple words of English and would listen and watch carefully. It worked to a point. We played a game where you partner with someone and then touch the floor at however many points (between you) the facilitator calls out. So, for instance, I would call out trei (three) and they could have one person standing on two feet and one person standing on one foot. You could use hands or whatever also, but they generally went with the obvious. It was fun and it let me practice my number pronunciation. ( :
And... now I've just had a long conversation with one of the other people living here (David) about countries, travel, jobs, government, politics, and travel. He asked about the electorate system and I :: blush :: had to look it up to confirm what I thought was true. I really should read up on our governmental system since people ask about it. It's been at least five years since I've seriously considered the details of how it works. Not something I'm proud of.