Long time, no update
October 30, 2006
This weekend was a full one, and while it wasn’t exactly fun, it was very productive. On Thursday, I went to Cluj to meet up with Jim and Lynne, an older, married couple in Group 21 with me. Lynne made us Chinese food for dinner-simply amazing! Lynne is my new hero. At 10 to midnight the three of us got on a train and slept while being transported to Bucureşti. Well, I slept but Jim and Lynne didn’t really. The car we were in was soooooooooo hot. I felt like it was a hot night in August. And I was on the third bunk, so the highest up. Lynne said she woke up in the night and thought I was going to be withered like a prune or something.
We got to Bucureşti around 8 or 9 AM, I can’t remember when. And we walked to the Peace Corps office. We chilled out there until around 11, when we met up with Gogoaşa (John). The four of us went to the hotel where PC puts us up and dropped off our stuff and grabbed something to eat. At 3:00 PM John, Jim this girl from Group 20 named Jenny and I met up with Dr. Dan to work on our Peer Support training. We were there until about 5:30.
Lynne, Jim, John, Jenny and this Group 20’s Rosemary and I went out to try and find someplace to eat, but restaurants in Romania are very small and none that we went to could handle a party of six. So Rosemary knew of a grocery store that sold pre-made sandwiches, not to mention Dr. Pepper and peanut M & M’s (neither of which I have seen in the five months I’ve been here). So we stocked up on food, most of it being junk food, and vegged in John’s room until 12:30 when he kicked us out so he could sleep.
Saturday morning, before meeting with Dr. Dan, I checked my e-mail at the PC office. I’m going to be an (sort of) aunt! Bretta Jean is pregnant. I’m so excited. Her due date is July 1st; she says she’s excited that she might be able to get the 4th off for once. I’m going to be the coolest aunt ever. This kid’s going to have random toys from all over the world. I’m just really bummed that I won’t be able to be there for her. I’ll miss the baby shower, her being all fat and then I won’t be able to see the baby until s/he’s about one. That’s sad, but what can you do, eh?
Saturday we met with Dr. Dan for some more training. We were at his office until about 5:30 again. The training was surprisingly draining. That night, even though there were friends in town to work a Halloween party, we didn’t go out with them. Jenny fell asleep in her room right after dinner, and John and I just sat around and watched some movies that were on TV. I was in bed by 11:00 PM. Sunday we met with Dr. Dan again at nine and trained until around noon. At that time John and I had to go to the train station. We hopped on the 1:30 train from Buc to Oradea, which is where John lives. I got off in Cluj.
Because John and I had gotten our tickets at different times, our seats weren’t together. We didn’t think it would be a problem, as normally the trains have enough empty seats where you can move around a bit. That was not the case Sunday. So John and I went to the dining car and got a table. Only we had to keep ordering stuff in order to keep the seats. I felt bad because I didn’t have much cash on me, so most of what we got John paid for.
We bought a pack of playing cards from a beggar and played some games, mostly Rummy. John won the first game, but it was close. I lost by about 30 points. The second game I dominated! The final score (I kept the piece of paper, so in about a month I’ll just randomly sent it to him…he, he, he, I’m evil) was Kate: 1140, John: 470. I particularly like that we played 13 rounds and in round four, John had 410 points.
Once in Cluj, I called Steve and Scott to see if I could crash on their couch. I was hoping to catch a ride back to Zalău but at that time there weren’t anymore Maxi-Taxi’s and I wasn’t going to hitch hike in the dark and the rain. So then, this morning I woke up and came back to Zalău. And that was my weekend. Like I said, uneventful but productive.
November 6, 2006
Well, I last wrote about Peer Support Training. The word has spread; Kate can call you for free! I spend about three or four hours a week on the phone, talking to people about their problems. That’s a lot for someone who, back in the States, wouldn’t even order a pizza because it meant using a phone. I enjoy it though, I feel like I’m actually doing something worthwhile.
Anyway, this past weekend I went to a village just outside of Braşov for a Halloween party. There were about 20 of us PCV’s (all from Group 21) who were there. I was dressed up as an iPod. One guy, Chris, taped his PC issued water filter to his chest, wore some goggles and used a towel as a cape and was “Filltron!” He won the costume contest by far. Another girl, also named Kate, came as the currant. She wore all blue and had made herself a blue cape thingy. She would go around waving at people with paper fans and then giving them a disease (she had a bunch of diseases written out on sticky-notes and stuck them on everyone.) During the course of the night I had food poising, schizophrenia, and some weird disease that I had never heard of before that makes hair fall out. That darn currant is getting stronger too…it made Jon pregnant.
It was a fun weekend, but without much newsworthy happenings. Next weekend I’m going to Oradea for a Habitat for Humanity project. Maybe I’ll have more to report then.
On a completely different note, my sister Megan called me last night. She and my Aunt Amy were at a resale shop in Colorado (where they live) and Megan saw a guy wearing a U of M hat. She asked him if he was from Michigan, hoping to find another Michigander to talk to. He said no, he was, in fact, from Romania. Megan told him that I was here working as a PCV and he said good, because towns like his really needed help. She asked him where he lived and he said “Zalău.” The guy didn’t believe that’s where I am until Megan showed him my address, as her next stop was the post office. Talk about a small world. His mother still lives in Cluj. Weird.
This weekend was a full one, and while it wasn’t exactly fun, it was very productive. On Thursday, I went to Cluj to meet up with Jim and Lynne, an older, married couple in Group 21 with me. Lynne made us Chinese food for dinner-simply amazing! Lynne is my new hero. At 10 to midnight the three of us got on a train and slept while being transported to Bucureşti. Well, I slept but Jim and Lynne didn’t really. The car we were in was soooooooooo hot. I felt like it was a hot night in August. And I was on the third bunk, so the highest up. Lynne said she woke up in the night and thought I was going to be withered like a prune or something.
We got to Bucureşti around 8 or 9 AM, I can’t remember when. And we walked to the Peace Corps office. We chilled out there until around 11, when we met up with Gogoaşa (John). The four of us went to the hotel where PC puts us up and dropped off our stuff and grabbed something to eat. At 3:00 PM John, Jim this girl from Group 20 named Jenny and I met up with Dr. Dan to work on our Peer Support training. We were there until about 5:30.
Lynne, Jim, John, Jenny and this Group 20’s Rosemary and I went out to try and find someplace to eat, but restaurants in Romania are very small and none that we went to could handle a party of six. So Rosemary knew of a grocery store that sold pre-made sandwiches, not to mention Dr. Pepper and peanut M & M’s (neither of which I have seen in the five months I’ve been here). So we stocked up on food, most of it being junk food, and vegged in John’s room until 12:30 when he kicked us out so he could sleep.
Saturday morning, before meeting with Dr. Dan, I checked my e-mail at the PC office. I’m going to be an (sort of) aunt! Bretta Jean is pregnant. I’m so excited. Her due date is July 1st; she says she’s excited that she might be able to get the 4th off for once. I’m going to be the coolest aunt ever. This kid’s going to have random toys from all over the world. I’m just really bummed that I won’t be able to be there for her. I’ll miss the baby shower, her being all fat and then I won’t be able to see the baby until s/he’s about one. That’s sad, but what can you do, eh?
Saturday we met with Dr. Dan for some more training. We were at his office until about 5:30 again. The training was surprisingly draining. That night, even though there were friends in town to work a Halloween party, we didn’t go out with them. Jenny fell asleep in her room right after dinner, and John and I just sat around and watched some movies that were on TV. I was in bed by 11:00 PM. Sunday we met with Dr. Dan again at nine and trained until around noon. At that time John and I had to go to the train station. We hopped on the 1:30 train from Buc to Oradea, which is where John lives. I got off in Cluj.
Because John and I had gotten our tickets at different times, our seats weren’t together. We didn’t think it would be a problem, as normally the trains have enough empty seats where you can move around a bit. That was not the case Sunday. So John and I went to the dining car and got a table. Only we had to keep ordering stuff in order to keep the seats. I felt bad because I didn’t have much cash on me, so most of what we got John paid for.
We bought a pack of playing cards from a beggar and played some games, mostly Rummy. John won the first game, but it was close. I lost by about 30 points. The second game I dominated! The final score (I kept the piece of paper, so in about a month I’ll just randomly sent it to him…he, he, he, I’m evil) was Kate: 1140, John: 470. I particularly like that we played 13 rounds and in round four, John had 410 points.
Once in Cluj, I called Steve and Scott to see if I could crash on their couch. I was hoping to catch a ride back to Zalău but at that time there weren’t anymore Maxi-Taxi’s and I wasn’t going to hitch hike in the dark and the rain. So then, this morning I woke up and came back to Zalău. And that was my weekend. Like I said, uneventful but productive.
November 6, 2006
Well, I last wrote about Peer Support Training. The word has spread; Kate can call you for free! I spend about three or four hours a week on the phone, talking to people about their problems. That’s a lot for someone who, back in the States, wouldn’t even order a pizza because it meant using a phone. I enjoy it though, I feel like I’m actually doing something worthwhile.
Anyway, this past weekend I went to a village just outside of Braşov for a Halloween party. There were about 20 of us PCV’s (all from Group 21) who were there. I was dressed up as an iPod. One guy, Chris, taped his PC issued water filter to his chest, wore some goggles and used a towel as a cape and was “Filltron!” He won the costume contest by far. Another girl, also named Kate, came as the currant. She wore all blue and had made herself a blue cape thingy. She would go around waving at people with paper fans and then giving them a disease (she had a bunch of diseases written out on sticky-notes and stuck them on everyone.) During the course of the night I had food poising, schizophrenia, and some weird disease that I had never heard of before that makes hair fall out. That darn currant is getting stronger too…it made Jon pregnant.
It was a fun weekend, but without much newsworthy happenings. Next weekend I’m going to Oradea for a Habitat for Humanity project. Maybe I’ll have more to report then.
On a completely different note, my sister Megan called me last night. She and my Aunt Amy were at a resale shop in Colorado (where they live) and Megan saw a guy wearing a U of M hat. She asked him if he was from Michigan, hoping to find another Michigander to talk to. He said no, he was, in fact, from Romania. Megan told him that I was here working as a PCV and he said good, because towns like his really needed help. She asked him where he lived and he said “Zalău.” The guy didn’t believe that’s where I am until Megan showed him my address, as her next stop was the post office. Talk about a small world. His mother still lives in Cluj. Weird.