An International Public Historian: Week of Snow

While last week was the "week of Christmas carols," this definitely is the "week of snow"!! It has been below freezing and snowing since Sunday or Monday. I think at least 5 inches have accumulated. This is by far the most winter I have had in about 6, going on 7 years - since I graduated from college. Wow, I just realized that this summer will be 7 years since I graduated from college. That is beyond crazy, and I really cannot believe it has been that long. And, it just felt like I was at the 5 year reunion. I guess that just means that I have the 10 year reunion to look forward to before too long, which is exciting.

Monday, Dec. 14th
I started out the day at Starbucks in a mall. Am I back in the U.S., you might ask? No, I am still here in Cluj! And, yep, there is a totally American-style mall here, with a Starbucks and all. I got a tall skinny hazlenut latte. I have no idea where they buy their non-fat milk because I have not seen any at the grocery stores (same for yogurt - good luck finding some that is low fat, much less non-fat). It was pretty delicious, but there certainly is better and cheaper coffee here. For instance, anyone coming to Cluj, needs to go to Coffee O'Clock (also known as the River Cafe) on Horea (what Regele Ferdinandy turns into), right before the bridge goes over the river. They have so many choices, and everything is so good. I need to take pictures of their menu before I leave because all of the cafes have way more coffee choices here than in the U.S. And, they have lots of pseudo-coffee things, which are perfect for me!

So, I started my Monday at Starbucks. It was for a community development meeting with the CIWC. We were talking about using a group called the Cluj Community Foundation to handle our finances and distribute money to the charities that the CIWC supports. It was an interesting meeting, and I was able to tell everyone that I have decided to stay in Cluj for the full year. Everyone was excited, and so am I!!! Oh, and to all of you - I finally decided to stay in Cluj for the year! I am happy here and have a lot going on, so I decided to not make things more difficult for myself by starting over again. It just didn't make sense to me.

Sofie, Bobbi, Rada, ad Michelle (l - r) - hard at work :)

In the evening, I met with a wonderful jewelry artist who I had met in Bucharest. She recently moved back to Cluj after living in London and Italy. Her pieces are great, so I was excited to learn that she lives up here. We managed to meet for coffee, which was nice. When my sister comes, we are going to go visit her and see how she makes some of her pieces. I am so excited about that! I also told her about http://etsy.com/ where artists and crafty people can sell their pieces.

This is from my graduation day (see below) where Liana came to sell some of her jewelry.

We met at the Diverta bookstore in the center of town, and I bought this really awesome cookbook that was on sale. It is all about recipes from Spain and Morocco. I am excited to try out some of them. It also includes things like pomegranate syrup and preserved lemons, so I definitely want to try to make those when I get back home. Lots more fun things to can when I get home (in addition to doing the prickly pair cactus fruit jelly - don't tell my mom!).

After the meeting and bookstore, Lauren and I met up and went to the ballet at the National Theater. It actually was two small ballets, split by an intermission. A Chopin piece (who knew he did a ballet...) and something called "Paquita" by a composer I have never heard of (Russian, I think). It was a really nice performance and only lasted about 1 hr and 15 minutes. And, the theater was at least half empty, which was pretty sad...and strange because it has been absolutely packed every other time I have been there. Maybe people don't like the ballet as much here? Or, maybe it was because they were doing pieces that people weren't familiar with. Either way, I definitely will try to go to another ballet there!

Absolutely beautiful.

And, I am impressed how well the picture came out!

Tuesday, Dec. 15th
I was thinking about going to someone's house for a potluck and to sing Christmas carols from 10am-12pm, but I just couldn't get myself out of my cozy bed :) Also, I have some errands to take care of. I transferred my rent money on the 10th, but my landlord still hadn't received it, so I had to go to my bank to check on everything. Apparently it did in fact get transferred on the 10th, so I was a little concerned. Later, I heard from my landlord, and she had been looking in her euro account, not her lei account. It is very strange the way that money and banking works here. But, that meant that the money really was there. Whew, crisis averted.

I also went to the dentist in the morning. I was chowing down on lots of pumpkin seeds around Thanksgiving and have been feeling something a little strange around one of the teeth for a little while since then. I am always a little nervous about my teeth since I tend to have lots of cavities. So, a few CIWC members sent a few recommendations to me. One member (canadian) is actually married to a dentist (german). Their place sounded really good, but I decided to stop by a different office (also recommended) very close to where I live. It was quite interesting because it was the dentist who did everything - cleaning, check-up, money, etc. My dentist in the US just sweeps in and out for a check that lasts about 1 minute, if that. So, it was kind of nice to have the dentist actually there and explain things. The check-up was only $12 and revealed 5 small cavities. Sigh. But, these might be ones I have had for a while since I know they don't usually fix the small ones in the US. If I want to get it done here, it would cost $40 for a cleaning and then $20 per cavity, so about $150 for everything. X-rays would be $40 for the whole mouth or $10 for just a part. Definitely cheaper than the U.S.! I am not sure what I will end up doing. I still kind of feel like that one tooth feels a little weird, but it wouldn't be from these cavities because they are all small and super-ficial. We will see....

At 2:30 in the afternoon, Lauren and I met up to go to the the passport office to try and pick up our residency permits. I was a little nervous because we didn't get any kind of receipt when we dropped off the forms, and all of the fulbright people in other towns did. Yikes - what would happen if they didn't have it?! It would be no fun to go through all of that again. We got there and waited about 2 minutes. We went in together, handed over our passports, and immediately got the residency cards. It was awesomely easy! And, the card looks so cool and official. I now have permission to stay in Romanian until November 1, 2010. It was such a relief to have that taken care of because I wasn't sure what to do if it wasn't ready before I leave the country for two weeks - would they let me back in, etc. Luckily, I don't have to worry about any of that now!

Since I don't think I should include a picture of my card, here is a car that was outside the passport office :)

In the evening, I met up with Simona from the CIWC and went to an art opening and music performance at the music school in the center of town. It was a pretty interesting concert because it actually was the end of year "recital" for a group of conducting students. There was a choir, and each song was conducted by a different student. I have never seen anything like it, and it was a lot of fun.

They look very professional and sounded just as good.

Wednesday, Dec. 16th

Today I had my last class before the break and my last graduate school workshop ever! I didn't think anyone would come to class because it was just a day for individual meetings to talk about their papers. But, four people ended up coming. One person really did need to talk about her paper, and we managed to come up with a good outline for her to follow. The others really had questions about the second response paper and then about a big paper they have to do next semester. Apparently, they have to write an 80 page paper in order to graduate, and they have three years after finishing their classes to complete that paper. It is pretty strange because they NEVER write papers for their other classes. They do presentations but everything is oral. The students said that the professors don't want them writing papers because they are scared the students will just copy and plagiarize. Then, without any practice or direction, they have to write an 80 paper?! And, almost all of the students in the program would not focus on American Studies if they could do it again. I wonder if the faculty in the department know about all of this, and I wonder what can be done to make some good changes here for the students and for the program?

After class, I had coffee with a couple of the students. It will be nice to interact more them like this next semester when I am no longer teaching them. They are excited I am staying for the spring and have asked me to help them with their big, final papers. I think we will set up a sort-of workshop series to go over research, outlines, drafts, etc. I hope it will help them.

Following class and coffee (at my favorite, coffee o'clock!), I went to the graduate school workshop. This was the day that people were supposed to bring a draft of their personal statements so that we could read over them. But, no one did. One new person showed up, and all of us just talked a little bit about any final questions that they had. I also told them a little more about what graduate school in the US is like. I hope that they found the workshop series useful even though people weren't as prepared as I had hoped. After the workshop, I stopped by a photography exhibit that Lauren was hosting - for a photography workshop that she did with some students at the University of Art and Design. It looked great, and the students actually showed up even though it was cold and snowing!

Lauren (left) and one of her students setting up the photographs.

Everything hanging there.

On the Matthei Corvin house (where he was born) - became a king of Hungary in the 1400s.

After that, I met a few people in the evening to see Three Sisters by Chekov at the Hungarian Opera. It was a special performance with an English translation. I looked up a little about the story beforehand and that definitely helped as the plot was rather confusing. It is a kind of story that makes a lot of sense to people from this part of the world - the cold, the struggles, the work, the futility, etc. There was a lot of symbolism, and I think I need to learn a little more about this play and Chekov so that I understand everything that was going on a little better. And, there was a little glimpse of full frontal nudity. Unexpected...I definitely am not in the U.S. anymore!

Posing with my ticket and my translator.

The set and the theater.

Some friends: Simona, Michael, and Terri (l to r).

Thursday, Dec. 17th

Although I thought about getting up at a decent hour, it didn't really work out. 10am seemed to be the time. I need to start waking up earlier though because my flight to London leaves around 6:15am!!!! I hope there are cabs around then. I might need to call one. Hmmm. Since I didn't start getting up early today, here is my schedule: I need to wake up at 9am on Friday, 8am on Saturday, 7am on Sunday, and then crazy early on Monday :)

I thought about running some errands in the morning, but it was snowing pretty hard. It is just hard to go outside when it is yucky out. I did leave around 12:30, though, because.....today is the day that I officially graduate with my Ph.D. However, because I am in Romania, I cannot attend my graduation and get hooded. So, I decided that I needed to have some kind of party here to celebrate the day. Being from Texas and having lived in Arizona for 5 years for graduate school, it made perfect sense to have lunch at the new Mexican restaurant in town. I invited people from the CIWC, the local fulbright people, and a few other PhD candidates doing research here (I met them at one of the concerts last week). I also invived the jewelry artist to attend so that she could try to sell some jewlery to the group. 12 people showed up, and several people bought jewelry :) I had a cuba libre (rum, coke, lime) and some veggie tacos. It was not great, but also not bad - tasted just fine. Pretty good for Mexican food in Romania, I would say! The group wrote me a card and included a little money as a graduation gift (awwww). One of them gave me a really great ring that I am wearing right now. It fits perfectly and is a great gift since I didn't bring very many rings with me. And, one of the women made me a huge chocolate chip cookie "cake" with "Congratulations Dr. Ford" on it. It was so nice...and delicious! It was a lot of fun :)

Everyone (and my cookie!) at the party. Yay for me!!!

There is a Christmas concert tonight - the Johann Strauss group from Vienna, but I decided not to go since I needed to get tickets. Lauren knew about a student fashion show at Central (the department store near us) in the early evening, so we decided to check it out. It was interesting but not super exciting. Still, it was nice to do something different.

Check out all of the photographers in the back. Maybe students?

Definitely the funkiest person I have seen in Cluj. Where has she been hiding out?!

The grand finale.

Friday, December, 18th

This was the day I was a casnica (a homemaker). I went to a lunch at a steakhouse with the women's group, visited a little art/craft fair, and completed the afternoon by hemming a pair of pants. Can you believe it? The lunch was pretty good actually even though I was a vegetarian at a steakhouse. It was called El Toro and it is supposed to have good steaks. And, what is most astonishing is that they give you oodles of free bread, delicious whipped butter, and yummy olives. Trust me, this does not happen in Romania (or really anywhere in Europe!)

I basically spent the day taking care of final errands before I leave on Monday. It had to be done today because not much is open on Saturday; nothing is open Sunday; and, I will be flying out at 6:10 am on Monday (crazy early). Just things like returning library books, getting some British currency, and checking on my phone account.

Then, in the evening I went to the Iulius Mall with someone from the CIWC. There was a free Christmas concert that evening, which is why we went. The music was okay, but I spent more of the time walking around the mall. That was really my first time to do this. It is a fairly small mall and has a strange mix of stores. Some stores I haven't heard of and then things like Lush, Accessories (my fav store from when I studied in London but less exciting to me now), Nike, and Sephora. It was strange because there are no stores like this in town - they have all closed and moved into the malls. But, even at this mall, there were no people in the stores. Tons of people were in the mall for the concert, but it seemed like the vast majority of people were going to the large grocery store in the mall. The other stores were literally empty - odd, especially since it is right before Christmas.

Christmas lights in Cluj.

The crowds and concert at Iulius Mall.

While there, I got a delicious gelato. $2 for a sugar cone and three flavors! Wow. I will miss the super cheap ice cream and gelato when I get home, that is for sure. After that, I went to the grocery store to buy snacks for London. I wanted to do this because it will be much cheaper to buy a few snacks here than in London.

Freaking delicious. Seriously, $2....awesome!

And, since this has in fact been the week of snow, I have decided to leave you with some snow pictures. It has been tricky getting used to it again after all these years. By Wednesday my thighs were super sore from walking kind of crouched and carefully for several days. I also have been using an umbrella to keep the snow off. Finally a way to stay snow-free! Yes, it is pretty to look at, but I don't really like it on me :) And, now I will leave you with some snow pictures.....