So this week was another short one, which is always nice for me :) We did not have school on Thursday because the teachers were on strike again, because of the problems with the pay and the insurance of a job for next year. I feel so bad for the teachers because they are having so many problems with salaries and whatnot, I am very fortunate to not be feeling these effects because I cannot imagine what I would do in their situation. However that did lead to another shortened week for me :) The strike was on Thursday and I do not have classes on Fridays so I only had three days this week. I don't know what I am going to do next week, I have a full schedule, which has not happened for the past three weeks! Oh well, I need more to keep me busy and motivated, it is good for me :)
So I have officially started a project. It is going to be long and difficult, but I think that it will be good for the community as does the community. We are going to be putting on a play for the community. So far this includes 4 short Romanian plays and 1 short English play. I will be going to the students on Monday and picking them out for their parts. I will be picking the most advanced students in English, but I am also hoping to pick a few that try really hard for some of the smaller parts. It is going to be hard to decided, because I think that all of the kids have potential. So we are going to put this play on and then charge people that enter a small entrance fee of 1 or 2 lei. This money will then go to the 25% that is needed for a grant that we will apply for. In addition to this hopefully we will be receiving some money from the mayor's office to fully meet this percentage. This money will then be used to purchase and install an asphalt soccer/play area for the kids. Here for physical education and for soccer at the elementary level they play it on a hard surface. While this still is a foreign concept to me, and I myself cannot do it because it kills my legs, they really do need it for their school to make the physical education program better for the kids. Maybe I can even teach them games like Hop scotch and 4-square when it is finally installed. This is the initial idea and I know with hard work and perseverance it can be obtained. The students also seem to be really excited about the play, so hopefully that energy continues until the end of the semester.
Let's see what else did this week bring. Oh I went into Botosani to go to a festival there. This weekend was a big holiday you might say, it was sfantal gheorge (Saint George) which is an important day for the Romanian Orthodoxes (the biggest religion here) and it was also Botosani's birthday for lack of a better word. So they had lots of stands available to buy things, tons of food, traditional dances (which I actually did not get a chance to see :( and live music. I stayed with another volunteer there and we went to see Bad Boys Blue. It was a band I have never heard of, but they were apparently popular in the early 80s (before me time!) and they actually did have a lot of good music. So it was fun to listen and dance and hang out with friends. I had a nice time there :) Apparently the festival was all weekend, so I am sure that Botosani was a happening place all weekend!
Now however I am back to the grindstone, lesson planning, studying Romanian, cooking, picking out students for the English play and I will probably be starting the SPA grant work next week. So I will hopefully be a busy bee, and hopefully the Internet will not be too much of a distraction for me! I love having the Internet here it is fabulous, but it sure sucks me in really quickly. It is a good source of distraction when I am trying to avoid doing an undesirable task. That should be a new resolution for me, more productive work and less play!
On a positive note, I have been doing better with getting more exercise. I try to walk about 4 kilometers a day, and I have been succeeding with that. I took a break yesterday, but I will be back to work today with the walking. I have already had a fairly productive morning with lesson planning, and will be doing my Romanian lesson shortly. I was slacking on the Romanian for a while but am now teaming up with my neighbor. We are hard at work on grammar, which is my week spot. I never know how to end the words, because that is where they but the ownership, plural and the words. Oh and they are normally irregular, so it is just memorization for me! Yipee! Oh well if I keep working hard I will eventually get there, and in time it will just start to click...or so I hope!
So I think that is about it for the week. I wish I had something else interesting to say, but due to a short week, with little excitement I think that is about it. I hope that the weather is treating you well and that you are all able to enjoy Spring. It is warmer here, but so dusty and when it is windy it makes it very difficult to be outside! However I am happy that the snow is gone! I miss you all a lot, and always feel free to send me an e-mail if you want to talk more or tell me some exciting news, I love hearing from you and I promise I will respond! Or you can always get Skype and we can schedule a time to chat :) I always like that! Alright well Happy Sunday everyone and I hope that this week brings you smiles and cheer!
Va iubesc
Va pup
Mi-a dor de voi!
Pana mai tarziu
~Sarah B.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Back to Work
So after a long and nice 2 week vacation I have to go back to work tomorrow. I suppose it is about time, I mean that is why I am here in the Peace Corps, to teach English, but it is sure nice as it is in any job to have a little break from time to time. It wasn't all fun and games the whole time though. I did have a week of pure relaxation, but last week I was at a conference in Sibiu. The conference really did have a lot of interesting and useful information. It was about encouraging healthy behaviors in youth, but it wasn't just limited to eating healthy, it also focused on pollution, vandalism, reducing your risk for HIV/AIDS and basically anything that would gear to helping a youth grow up to be a better person. One thing that we would like to focus on here at my site is encouraging the youth to spend less time on the computer and more time playing outside, spending time with friends and reading and doing homework. So I guess that means we should lead by example and I don't even want to tell you how much time I spend on the computer each day. All I know is that it is way to much, and it is not always for communication and researching...all too often it is for entertainment purposes. I would like to start a once a week activity with my students where we all get together and play a game for about an hour, maybe on Saturdays. I think it would be cool to have a cross cultural exchange, one week they can teach me a game that they play here and then the next I can teach them a game that I used to play in the states when I was little. So if you all have any suggestions for fun phy ed type games I am all ears!
So there is not to much to say about the conference, it was a lot of sessions and then afterwards we were able to spend time with one another. Which was really nice because I don't always get to see people from my group. My site is a little hard to get in and out of, and if I go anywhere it has to be for a weekend and generally on the weekends I am lesson planning and I have an adult English class, but from time to time I make up for it during the week and we skip the adult lessons or change the date. So it was nice to see some of the people, especially those who are really far away from me, for example in the southern part of the country or in the far northwestern part, because we have this little thing called the Carpathians separating us :)
Also I received some potentially good news this weekend! I am trying really hard to instill the idea of fundraising in my community. They want to put some asphalt behind the school so that the kids have a soccer/handball court to play on and so that it is just something better than dust to have their phy ed on. So my idea is to have a play at the end of the semester, but not just one big play, but rather several small plays so that everyone in the school can participate. Then the parents and other relatives can come to see the play if they want, and either they can give a donation or we can charge 2 or 3 lei for a ticket. This way I can show them that when a lot of people work together and they give a small amount it really does have the potential to go a long way. So I brought this idea up in my student council, and it did not go so well. We have some money left over from the Halloween party and they said we will just offer that to the mayor and then he can cover the rest. I also should add that we are applying for a SPA grant and in order to be accepted we have to prove that we have 25% of the funds first. This is really hard for me to accept because I feel like I am not doing my job here. Maybe I am being a little stubborn and selfish, but my idea of the Peace Corps purpose is that we are supposed to provide and instill ideas that will continue on after we leave. If we just ask the mayor to cover the rest, and receive the SPA grant, they will have the opportunity to apply for a SPA grant after I leave, because it is something generally found through the Peace Corps. I just want to encourage them that if their community works together they can achieve things, and they don't have to wait for someone to hand things to them, they can go and get it themselves and I think that is more satisfying in the end. I did find someone who agrees with what I want to do, and she happens to be the directors wife. She really seems to like my idea and seems to want to work with me, so we will see what happens. So please keep your fingers crossed, and hopefully I am not posting this prematurely! We shall see and only time will tell and I will let you know how things evolve. So with that I would like to end on a happy not and share with you some of my favorite stories that have happened here at Peace Corps, that I myself have experienced, or have heard through the grapevine.
1.) This actually happened this week at the training. There was a bit of miscommunication over dinner and I ended up missing everybody by a little bit for dinner, so I had nobody to eat with. Not a big deal or anything so I just went to the store and bought some bread and cheese and a few veggies to eat on a park bench. So I found a place to sit, and once I was finished I was going to call some friends and meet them somewhere. However my plan did not work out quite as I planned, because these friends ran into me eating my bread and cheese on a park bench as they say like a homeless woman. Needless to say I was rather embarrassed, but picturing me on that bench I am sure it was a site to see. I endured some ridicule, but it was all in good fun, and just another story to remember here.
2.) My second story is from my very first day at my site. So I arrived at around 8:30 in the morning after a night train, in which I did not sleep well, and I had not slept well the night before either. So I was going on about 8-10 hours of sleep covered over the past 2 or 3 days. My friend Ionut picked me up from the train station and then informed me that we were going to be going on a picnic a little bit later. I thought okay, a picnic in the afternoon I will rest for a little bit then I can handle a few hours outside on a picnic...or so I thought! Well we left early in the afternoon, and 6 hours later we were still there, at one point I actually fell asleep on the grass and woke up with a bunch of cows surrounding me! I laughed to myself because of my exhaustion, but then after about 8 hours on the picnic we went home. So I was introduced to the Romanian concept of a picnic, all in good fun though.
3.) This one has to deal with a case of mis-speaking, and before you assume no it was not me! So we had been in Romania for about 2 or 3 weeks at this time. We still did not know much about anything especially the language, but we all liked to go to the terraces after school and have a beer or two. So one of our volunteers was trying to be nice and let someone else out from the table, but he tripped over a backpack, feel into a fence and broke it! The staff saw this and came over to ask what was happened. So the waiter says to the volunteer in English "What happened?" and our volunteer responds with "Imi pare bine" which means "Nice to meet you" instead of "Imi pare rau" which means I'm sorry. We still do not let him forget about this event and it makes me giggle still!
4.) I have a student who is in the 4th grade, he is ridiculously adorable and sometimes quite the little troublemaker, but I have a hard time being angry with him. A few weeks ago he asked me for a book in English, I told him I would look when I had the time, and see what I could find. About a week later he asked me if I had looked, and I had accidentally forgotten, so I told him, "You know Daniel, I am old and sometimes old people forget things, but I will write it down and I will look for you this week." He accepted that and then when we were walking into the school after our lesson outside, he proceeded to hook his arm around mine as we were walking into the school, so I said "Daniel, what are you doing?" and he responded with "Your old I am helping you." I struggled greatly to hold back the laughs and couldn't help but think, man this is a smart kid. Sometimes these kids just make me smile, and on down days I just need to think of them!
5.) Finally a short one I heard through the grapevine. I have some friends who smoke here and one of my friends shared his story with my about mis-speaking. So we have to words here that for us can be a little bit easier to mix up as we are not native Romanian speakers, tigare - cigarette and tigan - gypsy (but it is not a very nice word). So my friend was buying cigarettes one day and accidentally asked for tigan, while the cashier didn't think it was so funny it made me and him laugh because he had asked to buy a gypsy essentially instead of a pack of cigarettes, oh the things that we say sometimes that are completely wrong, just make me smile!
So those are my 5 fun stories after what I realized is a ridiculously long post, sorry if I have bored you. However, know that I love and miss you all and think of you everyday! I hope you are all doing well and that mother nature is being nice to you and allowing Spring to grace you with her presence! I think of you all everyday and I am sending you all hugs and kisses!
Va iubesc!
Va pup!
Mi-a dor de voi!
~Pana mai tarziu
Sarah B.
So there is not to much to say about the conference, it was a lot of sessions and then afterwards we were able to spend time with one another. Which was really nice because I don't always get to see people from my group. My site is a little hard to get in and out of, and if I go anywhere it has to be for a weekend and generally on the weekends I am lesson planning and I have an adult English class, but from time to time I make up for it during the week and we skip the adult lessons or change the date. So it was nice to see some of the people, especially those who are really far away from me, for example in the southern part of the country or in the far northwestern part, because we have this little thing called the Carpathians separating us :)
Also I received some potentially good news this weekend! I am trying really hard to instill the idea of fundraising in my community. They want to put some asphalt behind the school so that the kids have a soccer/handball court to play on and so that it is just something better than dust to have their phy ed on. So my idea is to have a play at the end of the semester, but not just one big play, but rather several small plays so that everyone in the school can participate. Then the parents and other relatives can come to see the play if they want, and either they can give a donation or we can charge 2 or 3 lei for a ticket. This way I can show them that when a lot of people work together and they give a small amount it really does have the potential to go a long way. So I brought this idea up in my student council, and it did not go so well. We have some money left over from the Halloween party and they said we will just offer that to the mayor and then he can cover the rest. I also should add that we are applying for a SPA grant and in order to be accepted we have to prove that we have 25% of the funds first. This is really hard for me to accept because I feel like I am not doing my job here. Maybe I am being a little stubborn and selfish, but my idea of the Peace Corps purpose is that we are supposed to provide and instill ideas that will continue on after we leave. If we just ask the mayor to cover the rest, and receive the SPA grant, they will have the opportunity to apply for a SPA grant after I leave, because it is something generally found through the Peace Corps. I just want to encourage them that if their community works together they can achieve things, and they don't have to wait for someone to hand things to them, they can go and get it themselves and I think that is more satisfying in the end. I did find someone who agrees with what I want to do, and she happens to be the directors wife. She really seems to like my idea and seems to want to work with me, so we will see what happens. So please keep your fingers crossed, and hopefully I am not posting this prematurely! We shall see and only time will tell and I will let you know how things evolve. So with that I would like to end on a happy not and share with you some of my favorite stories that have happened here at Peace Corps, that I myself have experienced, or have heard through the grapevine.
1.) This actually happened this week at the training. There was a bit of miscommunication over dinner and I ended up missing everybody by a little bit for dinner, so I had nobody to eat with. Not a big deal or anything so I just went to the store and bought some bread and cheese and a few veggies to eat on a park bench. So I found a place to sit, and once I was finished I was going to call some friends and meet them somewhere. However my plan did not work out quite as I planned, because these friends ran into me eating my bread and cheese on a park bench as they say like a homeless woman. Needless to say I was rather embarrassed, but picturing me on that bench I am sure it was a site to see. I endured some ridicule, but it was all in good fun, and just another story to remember here.
2.) My second story is from my very first day at my site. So I arrived at around 8:30 in the morning after a night train, in which I did not sleep well, and I had not slept well the night before either. So I was going on about 8-10 hours of sleep covered over the past 2 or 3 days. My friend Ionut picked me up from the train station and then informed me that we were going to be going on a picnic a little bit later. I thought okay, a picnic in the afternoon I will rest for a little bit then I can handle a few hours outside on a picnic...or so I thought! Well we left early in the afternoon, and 6 hours later we were still there, at one point I actually fell asleep on the grass and woke up with a bunch of cows surrounding me! I laughed to myself because of my exhaustion, but then after about 8 hours on the picnic we went home. So I was introduced to the Romanian concept of a picnic, all in good fun though.
3.) This one has to deal with a case of mis-speaking, and before you assume no it was not me! So we had been in Romania for about 2 or 3 weeks at this time. We still did not know much about anything especially the language, but we all liked to go to the terraces after school and have a beer or two. So one of our volunteers was trying to be nice and let someone else out from the table, but he tripped over a backpack, feel into a fence and broke it! The staff saw this and came over to ask what was happened. So the waiter says to the volunteer in English "What happened?" and our volunteer responds with "Imi pare bine" which means "Nice to meet you" instead of "Imi pare rau" which means I'm sorry. We still do not let him forget about this event and it makes me giggle still!
4.) I have a student who is in the 4th grade, he is ridiculously adorable and sometimes quite the little troublemaker, but I have a hard time being angry with him. A few weeks ago he asked me for a book in English, I told him I would look when I had the time, and see what I could find. About a week later he asked me if I had looked, and I had accidentally forgotten, so I told him, "You know Daniel, I am old and sometimes old people forget things, but I will write it down and I will look for you this week." He accepted that and then when we were walking into the school after our lesson outside, he proceeded to hook his arm around mine as we were walking into the school, so I said "Daniel, what are you doing?" and he responded with "Your old I am helping you." I struggled greatly to hold back the laughs and couldn't help but think, man this is a smart kid. Sometimes these kids just make me smile, and on down days I just need to think of them!
5.) Finally a short one I heard through the grapevine. I have some friends who smoke here and one of my friends shared his story with my about mis-speaking. So we have to words here that for us can be a little bit easier to mix up as we are not native Romanian speakers, tigare - cigarette and tigan - gypsy (but it is not a very nice word). So my friend was buying cigarettes one day and accidentally asked for tigan, while the cashier didn't think it was so funny it made me and him laugh because he had asked to buy a gypsy essentially instead of a pack of cigarettes, oh the things that we say sometimes that are completely wrong, just make me smile!
So those are my 5 fun stories after what I realized is a ridiculously long post, sorry if I have bored you. However, know that I love and miss you all and think of you everyday! I hope you are all doing well and that mother nature is being nice to you and allowing Spring to grace you with her presence! I think of you all everyday and I am sending you all hugs and kisses!
Va iubesc!
Va pup!
Mi-a dor de voi!
~Pana mai tarziu
Sarah B.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Hristos a inviat!! Paste fericit!!!
Happy Easter everyone! I hope you all had a lovely Easter and were able to spend it with family and friends and didn't forget the true meaning of Easter :) My first Easter in Romania was wonderful! Easter is even bigger than Christmas, and like Christmas they have celebrations and traditions that are different and fabulous. To start out there is a mass cleaning, it is basically Spring cleaning. People in Romania clean their houses from top to bottom until they are spotless. Now you have to remember that the houses here are already very clean, but they do a super clean before Easter. I asked why this is so right around Easter and the explanation that I received was that if you greet Easter with a clean house then a nice Easter will ensue. I thought that was really beautiful and interesting.
So to go along with the tradition I decided to clean my apartment. While it wasn't as well cleaned as other places I was pretty proud of myself, and it took my quite some time. As many of you may know, I hate cleaning, I do not like to do it at all! If I am at a place of work I don't mind cleaning because I am getting paid for it, but at home I do not like it at all. So even though my place is still small, it took me about 4 hours to clean, not fun, but the end product was really nice :)
So the festivities begin here before Easter actually. It was raining unfortunately so it wasn't as interesting as it normally is I guess but I still thought that it was really interesting. For one thing they have a sort of bonfire in the fields. There are usually many of them, upwards to 20 or 30 I guess that you can see from the bridge in the center of town. These bonfires are started from tires. Yes you read it right tires, while the smell is not so pleasant and it is dark so you can't see the insane amount of black smoke. The really interesting part, and not so safe I am sure is the spinning of the tires. So some of the guys take a cable and tie it around a tire, then they stick this tire into the fire and wait for it to catch on fire, they usually wait until it is going really good. Then the proceed to drag it outside of the circle of people and spin the cable around their heads so that the flaming tire is flying in a circle around them. It is a super cool thing to see and I was very impressed by it and I am looking forward to seeing it again next year!!!
So then after the bonfires we headed to the church. There is like a midnight mass that happens and it is really quite beautiful. Everyone is gathered with candles in which they receive the light from inside the church, the priest comes out and does the blessing, then everyone proceeds to the cemetery to put their candles by their family plots. The really challenge is getting there without having your candle go out...needless to say I did not make it all the way there with a flame...I tried but it was still interesting to be part of that cultural experience and very beautiful as well.
So that brought us to Easter Sunday. I have to admit it was a little odd not to be getting up at 5 AM and heading to the Sunrise service at my church and seeing my Dad and sometimes brother off to help with the Easter breakfast and then going to the school gym to enjoy a nice breakfast with family and friends of my congregation but I had a nice substitute. I did not go to any church services as they were all held the night before, and I could not make it up that late. Some people stay up until around 4 in the morning...and I just could not do that. I went over to a family's house that I greatly enjoy spending time with and we had a lovely dinner along with Tory, the former volunteer that was here before me. We had lamb, sarmale, salata beof, beets with horseraddish, garlic, eggs, mamaliga, I tried racitor and delicious deserts along with wine, coffee, and of course tuica! So this racitor that I mentioned is something that I am not a fan of in the least but it is a traditional dish here especially for holidays. What it consists of is basically meat in a gelatin and I tried it and hated it the texture was terrible and it was extremely salty and I could not handle it. Fortunately since Tory was here before me there was not to much hope that I would like it because it is not a dish that Americans generally like because it is so different than anything that we have in the states. The salat beof is actually quite delicious though, it consists of mushrooms, carrots, potatoes, eggs, mayonnaise, mustard and garlic all combined together and it is very tasty! Also I had lamb for the first time, and it is yummy! I was a fan, it is sad that it has to be a little baby that we are consuming, but it may be even more sad that it is so tasty...not sure but I enjoyed it, especially with the garlic.
So they also have a game with the Easter eggs. You have to knock the Easter Eggs together and whoever has the uncracked egg wins and it is supposed to be good luck...sort of like the wishbone that we have. It was interesting and I won one side and lost the other side. I am hoping to win more next year! We shall see what happens!
So then I decided to go see some friends in Suceava yesterday, which was really nice and I actually witnessed another really interesting Easter tradition which is the bringing of the food to the cemetery the day after Easter. What it basically was, was that people would bring a picnic lunch to the cemetery and eat it there and I think that they may also leave some food there for the individuals that have passed. It is part of the Orthodox tradition and I wish I could have went into the cemetery to see it, but I was on a bus. It was very interesting to see the scores of people that were in the cemetery and all of the cars, it almost looked like it could have a been a funeral, but there were people at just about every plot, as a part of the Easter tradition.
So that brings me to the close of my first Easter in Romania. I may be a little bit late on my next post as well, as I am not sure how exciting this week is going to be as I am on vacation and I will be going out of town next week as well to a conference in Sibiu, a very beautiful and historical city in Romania. So it may be a bit, but don't worry I will post!! :)
I hope you all are doing well and that the Lord brought you a pleasant Easter and you were reminded of all the good things that are in your life. I am thankful everyday for all the blessings that I have, but more than anything I am thankful for the wonderful people that I have been blessed with (hint this is especially for you reading this blog!) I have so many wonderful friends and family and I am thankful for you each and everyday! I hope that Spring is coming to you as well, and that the sun is shining more and bringing pleasant weather. Take care and remember to smile today!! :)
Va pup
Va iubesc
Mi-a dor de voi!
Pana mai tarziu
~Sarah B.
So to go along with the tradition I decided to clean my apartment. While it wasn't as well cleaned as other places I was pretty proud of myself, and it took my quite some time. As many of you may know, I hate cleaning, I do not like to do it at all! If I am at a place of work I don't mind cleaning because I am getting paid for it, but at home I do not like it at all. So even though my place is still small, it took me about 4 hours to clean, not fun, but the end product was really nice :)
So the festivities begin here before Easter actually. It was raining unfortunately so it wasn't as interesting as it normally is I guess but I still thought that it was really interesting. For one thing they have a sort of bonfire in the fields. There are usually many of them, upwards to 20 or 30 I guess that you can see from the bridge in the center of town. These bonfires are started from tires. Yes you read it right tires, while the smell is not so pleasant and it is dark so you can't see the insane amount of black smoke. The really interesting part, and not so safe I am sure is the spinning of the tires. So some of the guys take a cable and tie it around a tire, then they stick this tire into the fire and wait for it to catch on fire, they usually wait until it is going really good. Then the proceed to drag it outside of the circle of people and spin the cable around their heads so that the flaming tire is flying in a circle around them. It is a super cool thing to see and I was very impressed by it and I am looking forward to seeing it again next year!!!
So then after the bonfires we headed to the church. There is like a midnight mass that happens and it is really quite beautiful. Everyone is gathered with candles in which they receive the light from inside the church, the priest comes out and does the blessing, then everyone proceeds to the cemetery to put their candles by their family plots. The really challenge is getting there without having your candle go out...needless to say I did not make it all the way there with a flame...I tried but it was still interesting to be part of that cultural experience and very beautiful as well.
So that brought us to Easter Sunday. I have to admit it was a little odd not to be getting up at 5 AM and heading to the Sunrise service at my church and seeing my Dad and sometimes brother off to help with the Easter breakfast and then going to the school gym to enjoy a nice breakfast with family and friends of my congregation but I had a nice substitute. I did not go to any church services as they were all held the night before, and I could not make it up that late. Some people stay up until around 4 in the morning...and I just could not do that. I went over to a family's house that I greatly enjoy spending time with and we had a lovely dinner along with Tory, the former volunteer that was here before me. We had lamb, sarmale, salata beof, beets with horseraddish, garlic, eggs, mamaliga, I tried racitor and delicious deserts along with wine, coffee, and of course tuica! So this racitor that I mentioned is something that I am not a fan of in the least but it is a traditional dish here especially for holidays. What it consists of is basically meat in a gelatin and I tried it and hated it the texture was terrible and it was extremely salty and I could not handle it. Fortunately since Tory was here before me there was not to much hope that I would like it because it is not a dish that Americans generally like because it is so different than anything that we have in the states. The salat beof is actually quite delicious though, it consists of mushrooms, carrots, potatoes, eggs, mayonnaise, mustard and garlic all combined together and it is very tasty! Also I had lamb for the first time, and it is yummy! I was a fan, it is sad that it has to be a little baby that we are consuming, but it may be even more sad that it is so tasty...not sure but I enjoyed it, especially with the garlic.
So they also have a game with the Easter eggs. You have to knock the Easter Eggs together and whoever has the uncracked egg wins and it is supposed to be good luck...sort of like the wishbone that we have. It was interesting and I won one side and lost the other side. I am hoping to win more next year! We shall see what happens!
So then I decided to go see some friends in Suceava yesterday, which was really nice and I actually witnessed another really interesting Easter tradition which is the bringing of the food to the cemetery the day after Easter. What it basically was, was that people would bring a picnic lunch to the cemetery and eat it there and I think that they may also leave some food there for the individuals that have passed. It is part of the Orthodox tradition and I wish I could have went into the cemetery to see it, but I was on a bus. It was very interesting to see the scores of people that were in the cemetery and all of the cars, it almost looked like it could have a been a funeral, but there were people at just about every plot, as a part of the Easter tradition.
So that brings me to the close of my first Easter in Romania. I may be a little bit late on my next post as well, as I am not sure how exciting this week is going to be as I am on vacation and I will be going out of town next week as well to a conference in Sibiu, a very beautiful and historical city in Romania. So it may be a bit, but don't worry I will post!! :)
I hope you all are doing well and that the Lord brought you a pleasant Easter and you were reminded of all the good things that are in your life. I am thankful everyday for all the blessings that I have, but more than anything I am thankful for the wonderful people that I have been blessed with (hint this is especially for you reading this blog!) I have so many wonderful friends and family and I am thankful for you each and everyday! I hope that Spring is coming to you as well, and that the sun is shining more and bringing pleasant weather. Take care and remember to smile today!! :)
Va pup
Va iubesc
Mi-a dor de voi!
Pana mai tarziu
~Sarah B.
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