Wahoo!

My family is here! I am leaving Galati! I am traveling Europe for a month. Talk about a crazy life!
Last Thursday I went to the airport in Bucuresti and met my family and brought them back here. For the past few days we've met a lot of the people who have been in my life for these past two years and eat a lot of really good food. Tomorrow morning our official trip begins at 5 am as we head to Bucuresti and I will no longer be a Peace Corps Volunteer. I'm feeling so many different emotions right now, I can't even begin to sort them out myself. I'm sure you can imagine. For now, I'm just concentrating on enjoying being with my family and seeing the various sites we'll be seeing.
In the meantime, my internet connection has been kaput ever since last week. Combined with the craziness of getting ready for everything, I want to throw out a universal apology to all who have emailed me and I haven't had time to respond. I promise, it wasn't intentional, I'm not ignoring anyone intentionally, and I'm sorry. I will respond as soon as I am able.
I hope to be able to keep this up and post pictures so you can see some of the places my family and I have been. Enjoy!
M

Catching up

I know many of you will identify with this, but the closer I get to leaving, the fast time seems to be going. So much has happened and I am doing my best to document everything. I have taken to carrying my camera with me in my purse everywhere I go, just in case there is something I want to take a picture of.

In the last two weeks I have had tons of experiences I would love to share with you, but just have so much to say. So instead, I posted all the pictures with captions to somewhat explain what is going on. I hope you like it.

To see what a traditional Romanian wedding is like with all the customs, please click here

To see what the end of school is like for a lot of Romanian kids is like, please click here

To see the odds of ends of me wrapping things up and getting ready to leave, please click here

Top 10 things I will miss about Romania

The Top Ten things I will miss most from Romania

(in no particular order)

________________________________________

• Sarmale, ciorba, sarmale, and other Romanian food

• Pink toilet paper

• Lighting candles at the Orthodox Church

• Using public transportation to get around. Aka: trains, maxi-taxis, trams, etc

• Not having to be qualified to do a job

• Being close to bunch of other cool countries

• Seeing beer on the menu at McDonalds

• Being the exotic American girl

• Pink, red, and purple hair on old ladies

• The many friends I have made here

To all you chefs

Greetings all!

One of the many little projects that some of our Romanian Peace Corps Volunteers have been working on is a cook book. It is something I have really appreciated because they put recipes in there that don't require ingredients you can't find here. (Like for example, shortening or corn syrup.) However, one of the awesomest sections has been the section for traditional foods. It has all the traditional foods I have come to love here; from Eggplant salad, to Mici, to Sarmale.

Recently they published our cookbook online. (My huge thanx to all of my fellow Peace Corps colleagues who were involved.) So here is the link if you would like to check out the kind of food I have been eating for the past two years. I hope you enjoy, or should I say, Pofta Buna!

Romanian Peace Corps Cook Book

My latest crush

I have a confession to make. When I watch a movie I really like, I can watch again, almost immediately as soon as I am done watching it. Of course, it is even better the second time because I know what is going to happen I can fast-forward through the parts I don't like and get right to the good stuff.My most recent obsession is the movie, "p.s. i love you". In the last three weeks I have watched this movie no less than fifteen times. It is so cute! And I love that it doesn't take the easy way out and give the happy-ever-after-ending. Not to mention the incredibly sexy Irish accents. I think everyone I made watch this movie with me thought that Jeffery Dean Morgan really was Irish until we looked it up and discovered he is in fact American. His accent and mannerisms are dead on.

A wholesome weekend of wellness

This weekend was so fantastic. To start, June 1st is Children's Day. (Not just here in Romania, but internationally. How cool is that!?) So most of my activities some how revolved around that. It all started Friday when I went out to the village like I do every week and took my English Club students who are in the 5th and 6th grades to visit the kindergarten. The kindergarten isn't in the main school but a separate building about 15 minutes walk away from the main school in the village. It also has over 60 children attending this year. (Talk about a hand full. There are only three teachers.) So my and my students got everything packed up and walked there. As we were walking up the road, we could see little heads poking out around the gate to see us coming, and then they would disappear and we would hear screams of excitement. It was so cute. My students performed a play for the little ones, "The Three Little Pigs" in English. No, the little ones don't speak English, but afterwards we were quizzing them to see how much they understood and it was pretty impressive how much they got. Afterwards my students passed out candy to them and played on the play ground with them. I am so proud of them, I almost can't hold it in. Here is our club, which incidentally, the students proclaimed themselves the "Dangerous Angels" club. So here are my little Dangerous Angels:

Saturday I woke up sort of late and had to get a move on in order to meet all the LDS young single adults (and a few not so single ones) at the Botanical Gardens in Galati. We planned an activity and it turned out really well. I have been to the garden several times, but never in June (last day of May, same thing) when all of the roses were in bloom. The thing this garden is most famous for is the rose garden section, and it actually was beautiful. We walked around and took a ton of pictures. We also went to the museum/aquarium/planetarium.

This is the PCV couple, Nils and Emily, who live in Braila. She really does like him, I promise.

They are actually one of the coolest couples I have ever met and thats where they enter this weekend tale of craziness. After we were done at the garden, Nils, Emily, Tanta, and I all went back to my place for what was supposed to be a quick lunch. It ended up being about three hours. What are ya gonna do? But we had a wonderful time chatting and fixing food. I'm also starting to prepare things for when I leave and was trying to get rid of cloths in my closet. So the girls had a little fashion show trying on all my cloths.

After that we all took a maxi-taxi down to Braila and stayed the night with Nils and Emily. Braila has a little "faleza" or promenade next to the Danube river just like Galati, except the one in Galati is cooler. (But then again, I might be a little bit biased in that opinion.)

Today after church we had a linger longer, that was Sister Bryson's idea, and it was awesome. After church was over we all hung out and ate a small snack of "eggplant salad" on bread with thinly sliced tomatoes on top and cornflake-crispies. I honestly didn't think people would want to hang out after church or anything, but just like any normal human, show them food and they will stay.

After that was over we went as a Relief Society to an orphanage to give away some sweets and goodies to the kids there. Again, that was happened due to the amazing planning and execution skills of Sister Bryson and Tanta. Its pretty amazing to stand back and see what happens when they get together. The kids at the orphanage were cute. We didn't stay very long. Just long enough to wish them a happy Children's day and sing a few songs together. But it was actually perfect in its simplicity and sweetness. I have been totally inspired and uplifted by all the amazing women I am surrounded by here.

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend. I realized today in church that this week was going to be my last fast and testimony meeting here in Galati. Its the beginning of "the last time" here. Its so strange to realize I'm going to be leaving soon, but I am so freaking excited about my family coming and seeing all of this I don't think I have realized yet that I am going to have to say goodbye to some of these people. I guess a little denial never hurt anyone right? ;)