Week of March 1st - March 7th
March 1st is an important day here in Romania. Known as Maritsoar (something like that), it is kind of like the first day of spring here, and people give each other pins with red and white ribbons on them. And, appropriatly enough for the day, it was in fact spring-like on the 1st of March.
A lady selling flowers on the street.
Check out how busy the Piata Muzeului is on the 1st of March. How lucky that we had such a beautiful day!
Some of the pins for March 1st and March 8th.
Another woman selling flowers. These are little bunches of snowdrops for 1 leu (like 40 cents) - the first flowers that come up in spring here.
I didn't give or receive any pins on this day, but I did go to yoga in the morning. I am so glad that I have gotten back into that. Good to just stretch! After yoga, I brought some food to Shari, who is still recovering. I made tabouleh with couscous, fresh parsley, tomatoes, peppers, lemon juice, and drive dill. I also made some ratatouille (at least my version of it!) with eggplant, tomatoes, onion, etc etc. I think they both turned out really well, even without salt (since Shari is on a low-salt/no salt diet). Then, in the evening, I had class with the first year students. This week we met at the main BBU library for a tour and learned about the digital databases that the university subscribes to. I hope that they remember all of that information and go back to the library sometime in their time as students!
Some of my students on the library tour. As you can tell, they are quite excited about the tour.... (please note my extreme sarcasm!)
The next day (Tuesday), I went to Tokyo Restaurant with some of the people from the women's group. This time I had salmon teriyaki, miso soup, salad, and salmon sushi. While it is really nice to have this restaurant as an option and even though it is said to have the best sushi in all of Romania, it still has not impressed me. If I go again, I think I will need to get one of the actual meals instead of the lunch specials. The lunch specials are great deals with tons of food, but just are not very good.
At Toyko Restaurant.
(from front left, counter-clockwise: Me, Patricia, Sofie, Bobbie, Terri, Michelle, Geke, and Zsuzsa)
On Wednesday I had another interview on skype and then had my MA class (intro to public history) afterwards. I have no idea how the interview went - I will find out about a secound-round interview soon. In class, we discussed public history as a field. I still only had two of my four students show up, but I think class went pretty well. I am enjoying this class so far, so I just hope that continues...and that everyone actually shows up sometime!
Thursday morning was knitting group, and I am making progress on my scarf - but there definitely still is a long way to go. Since I don't ever touch the thing outside of group, it might be a few years until I finish it. It is really nice to meet at Quo Vadis (yay for non-smoking cafes!!!), but I wish they had internet access. Most places here do, and it makes me sad that the one non-smoking place doesn't have wireless - sigh. I think that explains why I have been to Starbucks more here than anywhere else I have ever lived. It is a nice place because they have internet AND it is non-smoking. That combination and its rareness cannot be emphasized enough!
Before Romanian class, I went to the park with Terri and her son. I know, I have a funny look on my face....
Romanian playground. While there isn't much in the way of grass, it has some pretty sweet slides and other things to play on, along with some thumping discotheque music in the background.
The next day was the monthly CIWC meeting. Two of my MA students came. They are both interested in international work, so I thought they might be interested in meeting some of the women in the group. This month, we had a presentation by someone who owns a store/gallery in town that sells traditional Romanian crafts. She gave a nice talk and powerpoint about all of the different crafts in the country. We got to see examples of the different pottery techniques practiced in different parts of the country, etc. It definitely was a learning experience, and I hope that I can get a copy of the powerpoint so that I can share it with other people when I leave Romania.
Sofie blindfolded at the meeting during a game to learn some Romanian words.
On Saturday, I met Shari for her first big excursion out of the house! We went to the Iulius Mall to see a movie. We had kind of just planned to see something, but the movie times online were wrong, so we wandered around the mall and big grocery store there until it was time for things to start. We saw Leap Year, which was an okay romantic comedy. Afterwards, we went to the Starbucks and ended up running into some other people from the women's group. What a small place! It was a lot of fun to be out, but I definitely think I wore Shari out with all of that walking.
The statue of Matei Corvin in Piata Unirii. Still under renovation!
Week of March 8th - March 14th
Happy International Women's Day! Although this isn't a big deal in the U.S., it certainly is celebrated a lot in other countries (especially former communist countries). It also is Mother's Day in Romania, so that means that everyone gives the March 1st pins to women and mother's on this day, too. Unfortunately, while March 1st was a lovel spring-like day, those days were short-lived, and March 8th was back to snowy and cold weather. Despite the chill, I managed to drag myself to yoga in the morning. Our trusty leader Michelle was out of town, so we had to do yoga with a video, which was a change (but better than nothing). In the evening I had my 1st year course on research and writing, and we talking about how to write a research paper (5 paragraphs, topic statement, common grammatical mistakes, etc), and I learned that not only are there differences between academic disciplines in writing and citing but that there are differences among countries. That made it a little tricky, but I think that good writing generally is good writing, regardless of place, so hopefully that came across.
Tuesday the 9th I had tons of editing to do. As I think I mentioned previously, I am helping some of the 3rd year students with their big 80 page final papers. We meet every week or so, and they are turning in outlines and drafts of their chapters. This week their first chapter was due, so I had 4 twenty page papers to read. That definitely took some time, but I think they are all doing very well. That evening, I went to Terri's house for her son's 3rd birthday party. I think it might be my first kid's birthday party (where I wasn't a kid at the party). How crazy is that?
Three cakes on his third birthday!
(from L to R: Simona, Terri, Brigitta)
Wednesday was a pretty busy day. I spent most of the day preparing for my MA class in the evening. We did mueums and historical societies this week, so I had tons to talk about. We started by going over the history of museums and how they have changed over time - and then focused on things like ethics in museums - discussed their readings - and talked about what they would do with a controversial topic (like communism in Romania). I think it was a pretty successful class, and we went the full three hours, which is impressive because it is a really tiny group. After class, I rushed over to knitting to work for the last hour on my never-ending scarf project.
On Thursday, I met with the curator/director of the BBU history museum. We had lunch at the university cafeteria (which was surprisingly good!) and talked about what I wanted to do on my MA class visit to the museum the following week. It was nice to talk with someone in a museum here and just to learn more about things. In the evening, I had my Romanian language class. I am not sure what it is about Romanian classes here. Is the language just a lot more complicated than Spanish, or is it just not being taught very well anywhere I have been? I am thinking it is the latter, but I could be wrong. Regardless, class is just incredibly frustrating for me, which drives me crazy. But, I am glad I am doing it. And, apparently it is a good thing because lots of people in the women's group think I am going to keep coming back here! Lots of people get hooked by Romania, and they think I might be one of them.
There isn't much in my calendar about what I did on Friday, so who knows what happened! I know that I had Romanian class in the afternoon. It also was my dad's birthday - turned 55 and was born in 1955 - that is pretty cool!
The weekend was pretty busy with little activities. Saturday I met with a Romanian Fulbright grantee. She is an architect and teaches at the Technical University here in Cluj and went to Cincinnati to study socialist-era Romania architecture (while I, who study American rodeo, came to Romania - go figure!). It was nice to meet her and talk a little about the university system here. It seems that many of the frustrations that I have also are felt by lots of the professors (and even students) here. I hope that means that there soon will be a movement afoot to change things.
That evening, I went to someone's house to make pizza and play games. The pizza was delicious (spinach, sun-dried tomatoes, some pineapple - yum), and we played an easy version of bridge and rumikub (yes, it is here in romania too - senior citizens must be the same around the world). We have been trying to set up a game night for a while, so I hope it will be able to happen again before too long.
Sunday was Terri's birthday. I sent her a birthday email of a list of almost 100 "you know you're a texan if...." lines. I even added some of my own, like: "you know you're a texan if you got sent home from elementary school for having chicken pox, but it was only a lot of chigger bites!" I also gave her a few magazines and a book that I had, and picked up a nice potted plant (a bulb of some kind) on my way to the birthday coffee.
Terri's birthday coffee hour :)
That evening, I decided to go ahead and check out Terri's English-language church service at the Hungarian Lutheran church in town. It was nice but a little strange. The Lutheran service is very similar to the Episcopal service, but all of the prayers are just wored a little differently. I am just so used to the service that I know (since that is all I have done since like 4th grade) that it is very strange to hear anything else. After the service, there was a special organ concert by an organist from Budapest. It was nice to sit there and listen to while I read a little of Robert Michener's Chesapeake (aka the longest book ever - good but long!!).
Most members of the new choir.
Week of March 15th - March 21st
Wow, the time is just flying by, and this week seemed to go by in a blur, too. This week I was a busy little editing bee. I am editing someone's dissertation (from back in the US), and I got a little behind. So, this week, I had to do the last three chapters and go over the conclusion again. Talk about a lot of reading.
Earlier, I said that I read the 1st chapters of the 3rd year students' final papers last week, but that was actually their outlines for the first two chapters. On Monday I got the draft of their first chapter, so I was busy doing that on Monday night and Tuesday morning. I also had my 1st year research and writing class on Monday night, and we discussed plagiarism and started to go over citations. Hopefully they really bellieve me when I say that I take plagiarism seriously AND that it is really easy to find so they will get caught.
Wednesday was a really busy day. So busy, in fact, that I forgot it was St. Patrick's Day! In the morning, I went to a CIWC event - the New Zealand Showcase. I definitely learned a lot of New Zealand (it was the first country that gave women the right to vote - 1883 or so) and got to try all sorts of Kiwi food: marmite, pavlova, etc. We also had some kiwi bread that was amazing!!!! I definitely need that recipe.
Pania and her audience for the showcase.
Then from 4-5pm I gave a presentation at the BBU office of international cooperation about a fairly new Fulbright award in science and technology. We had been promoting this for a while, and I had two former Fulbright professors (one in architecture and one in math) to come and share a little about their experiences in the U.S. Unfortunately, only three students turned up! I guess that helps explain why only two students from Romania have received this award since it was begun in 2006. I hope that a few more end up learning about the program and take advantage of it since it provides 2 years of funding to earn a PhD in the US and the American university has to agree to fund the rest of the student's study. It is am amazing opportunity! If it is available for Cambodian students, I definitely am going to tell the girls at the dorm about it!!!
My tiny little audience and the wonderful professors who helped out.
After the presentation, I had to rush over to the BBU museum where my MA students were having a tour. Even though I arrived 10-15 min late (they were to start without me), only 1 of the 4 students was there! It is one thing when they do not come to class, but it is another when they don't show up for a specially-arranged event like this where the museum curator had to stay about 5 hours late to give us the tour. Two of the students ended up coming about 1 hour later (because of work). I have asked them to let me know beforehand if they will not be there or will be late. Apparently, they tell each other but not me, and it is just very frustrating as the instructor. We might end up changing the class from starting at 6pm to 6:30pm and hopefully that will mean that everyone is able to come to class (and come on time!). We will see what happens. It definitely feels like I am trying to swim upstream against the system here, but I refuse to give up yet. I might be crazy because I even asked the Romanian Fulbright committee if I would be able to extend my grant for a semester or even a year so that I can continue to work on implementing these changes (like the intro to research and writing course), but unfortunately there is no money for that. I figured that it probably would be too late in the year to ask about that, but I thought that I should at least try. I hope that whatever has happened so far will be able to make an impact. I am thinking of doing a small project with the students - interview them about their courses, how they are taught, changes they would like to see, etc - because right now the department doesn't do any type of evaluation, and it is hard to change things without any kind of feedback.
After that frustration, Thursday was a fun day! I had knitting in the morning and am almost finished with my first thing of yarn. That color apparently is no longer sold in the entire city of Cluj, so I have a multi-colored yarn to start on next, and I think I will do one more (3 in total) so that I will have a nice long scarf. I can't imagine how long it will take if the first thing of yarn has taken me since November!! In the early evening I had Romanian class, and I was frustrated as usual. I just need to accept it and not get so frustrated. After class I mixed up dough for chocolate chip cookies (with a little orange zest because I am incapable of making plain cookies and not tweaking the recipe!). Then, Zsuzsa and I went to Lauren's for a dinner of Thai curry. It was so awesome to have something that had a completely different taste from anything else I have had here. Even though I complained a little about all of the rice this summer in Cambodia, I miss it here! I am definitely eating way too much pasta, though I have stopped buying bread as much (apparently bread is my enemy).
We also had a great wine that Zsuzsa brought, and I rarely like wine. It was a semi-sweet Romanian wine. They make a lot of wine here and in Moldova, so it would be fun to check out a winery sometime. I think Lauren is interested in that, too, so we will have to do that before we leave. After dinner, we baked the cookies that I brought. Because there is no brown sugar here, they turned out a little cakey, not chewy, but they were still pretty good. And, my new cookie sheet from California was the PERFECT size for the little ovens here!
On Friday, I had class in the afternoon and then headed to the center of town to pick up opera tickets for Saturday and pay my phone bill. It was a BEAUTIFUL DAY - like 50 degrees, and I celebrated with some ice cream (maracua which seemed to be like some kind of orange and capsuni which is strawberry). It cost about $1 for those two scoops (small but plenty) in a cone - can you even imagine that in the U.S.?? That evening, I went to an English-language speakers meetup at El Toro steakhouse (I didn't have steak, I promise). It was fun, and I got to meet a couple of new people. Most people ended up drinking a lot of wine and ordering big steaks and kind of making a night of it, but I just got a soup for 6 lei. It is definitely kind of uncomfortable when stuff like that happens and it is time to pay - everyone else is going crazy and has to contribute 150 lei but that is just craziness for what I got!
Saturday was another beautiful day, and I met Shari in the morning to see the Magic Flute at the National Opera. I was excited about it, but it really wasn't all that great. In part that was because I couldn't really remember the story and should have looked it up beforehand to remind myself. And, in part because it was in the morning and mostly for children, so it was a theater FULL of kids. Not exactly the quietest opera in the world, and somehow we ended up sitting behind the only two adults in the theater, so I really couldn't see anything. Oh well.
Shari and I in front of the opera house (we are those itty-bitty people!).
Then, in the evening Shari and I went to a Bahai celebration of their New Year. This was a lot of fun, and I met some really great people (in addition to learning more about Bahai). One of the people there, who also is a member of the CIWC group, is a 6th generation Bahai, which means her family in Iran (then Persia) were part of the original followers. There is a lot that I find intriguing about it as a religion because it is all about the unity of all religions and focusing on social justice, equality, and peace. I think I would like to learn a little more about it and about the Unitarian Church in the U.S. to see how they are similar and different.
Some of the people at the Bahai New Year.
more pics coming soon!
Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and they had plenty of vegetarian options for me to eat. I have known about Bahai for a while, but I never would have thought that I would go to my first meeting in Romania! I am continually surprised by my experiences here.
Actually, before we went to the New Year's celebration, Shari and I stopped in an Orthodox church in her neighborhood.
Completely painted inside. Isn't it amazing?
And, finally, the most important day of this posting :) Today is March 21st - the first full day of spring, the first day of Aries, and my birthday! I started out the day by getitng up at a fairly decent time (a little before 9am) and around 10:30 decided to go for a run (wearing my new yoga pants from California!!). It was such a beautiful day, and it seemed like a good way to start my new year (after adding yoga at the New Year). I ended up being out for 45 minutes with a fair amount of running and some walking. I won't say it was exactly fun, but it made me feel better, that is for sure.
Wondering why on earth I went running on my birthday!?
After my run, I took a shower and shaved my legs for the first time since October! I felt a little sad doing it since it seemed like I worked so hard to not shave all these months, but it is getting warmer, and I think it is time for the winter hibernation to end. It was kind of weird, though, because my legs feel naked now! Then, at 2pm it was time for my birthday lunch. 7 people joined me for lunch at a really good restaurant in town (Napoca 15), which I had not been to before. I got some lovely presents (perfume, lavender scented potpourri as a gesture to my lavender goat farm, a book with pictures of Romania, a necklace that I am wearing right now, and some chocolates) and lots of beautiful flowers. I have all of these wonderful tulips in my living room right now! My friend Shari set everything up and even had champagne and delicious little vanilla and chocolate mousse cakes (with a little whiskey in them!). They were presented with four crazy sparklers (they looked like huge flares to me - but it certainly was impressive). It was so much fun and so nice to know that I have so many wonderful friends here in Cluj!!! And, thank you to everyone for all of the birthday wishes on facebook, too - that has been fun to get!
Happy Birthday to me!
(from L to R: Simona, Shari, Pania, Ariana, Terri - in back: me, Mary, Maru)
An antique show in the center of the mall. I bought two old, amazing postcards!
Here is a little info about things coming up. I am going to Timisoara and then to Budapest in the middle of April, and I am thinking of flying to Turin, Italy and then taking the train to Paris for a few days there at the end of April. I am so excited to do all of this. And to take advantage of all the wonderful low cost airlines here (4 lei tickets to Turin - that is less than $2!!!!!).
A variety of pictures to leave you with:
My beloved kurtos stand with a violinist providing some music in the background!
Romanian dolls wearing traditional clothes.
A boy in my neighborhood playing with a soccer ball.
And, finally. some pussywillows. They feel like fur and look so weird like this when they start to pollinate. It brings me back to my days of Cricket magazine!!
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