Team Romania Photo

To all you 5th and 6th graders out there! We have answers!
Sorry it took the blog guy so long to figure out what I need to do to process the comments. I have Heather here with me to answer your questions: 1) The food has been delicious. We have had a lot of tomatoes, cucumbers, sausages, chicken, sheep and goat cheese. Not much for desserts or hot spice - think church basement without the sweets. 2) The ecomony suffers from the transition of moving to a free society from a socialist one, so people are used to working for others and not themselves. This leads to long hours for little money and no middle class (if you know what that is in 5th-6th grade). They have things we have like car companies (Dacia), chemical companies, farming, wood products factory (out our window), and a salt mine (we toured today - read today's post). Locally there are a number of gas stations (6.20 Lei per liter), quick marts and restaurants. 3) The climate has been confusing to us as we were expecting similar temperatures to Wisconsin/Minnesota/Colorado where we are from. It has been unseasonably warm with the temperatures in the 80's and no rain. Also, when we visited a house this week, we saw a peach tree, pear tree, grapes, plums, roses, magnolia tree -- all things we would associate with a state like Georgia or Florida. But - Romania does get down to -30 degrees celsius (-22 fahrenheit) in the winter and last year they had so much snow that the windows on houses were covered. We are thinking that since Romania has been around a long time that the plants have established themselves to survive locally in these climates (someone should research this more). 4) During a recent field trip we saw a soccer field, volleyball court and basketball court. From history though, we know that the Romanians are famous for gymnastics and the legendary Nadia Comaneci - who won the olympics in 1976. She is from the place we are currently staying and building. From watching local news, we would say that soccer and handball are covered on the sports report. 5) The landscape of Romania is similar to ours with lots of farm fields. In Comanesti where we are currently staying, we are on the edge of the Carpathian mountains, so our apartment we are staying at is built on a hill and we have sheep and cows that roam freely in pastures around our place. Today we also toured a monastery which was located at the top of a winding road, which caused a number of passengers in our van to have white knuckles as we drove the stick shift van up and down the mountain. Most towns are in valleys and the scenery is quite beautiful and suprisingly green for this time of the year. 6) Tonight we had a cultural experience with local youth. In their traditional garb, they have puffy shirts with long skirts for the girls and white pants for the boys with a cumberbun. But, when they are at school, they wear similar fashions to kids in the US, but more conservative - some kids look like they would be dressed for church, while a few others have America themed items like Bart Simpson, Hannah Montana, Disney, and American sports teams.