Blogs from Transilvania, Romania, Europe - page 26

Today was the last day for me here in Cluj... Camp was bittersweet as the kids loved the activities but didn't want to leave. We exchanged contact information so hopefully I will be able to stay in touch with them a bit.. Yay email!! Ioana and I celebrated our last girls night by making french fries from scratch here at the school. We then went to visit her cousin and her cousin's son who just got out of the hospital with a throat infection. Funny how kids go from deathly ill to up and running around as soon as visitors come over. I met Zcack's (yes that's how you spell Zach here) hampster named tutu and watched some cartoons with him as Ioana and her cousin cought up... Then it was back to the school and ... read more

Greetings Friends, Alecia and I have now officially finished Peace Corps and so thought it might be time to fill you all in on the big ‘what’s next?’ Alecia and I have decided to stay in this beautiful part of the world for at least 3 more years. Alecia is working on a small company that will collect, dry and export the region’s delicious natural bounty (i.e. wild blueberries, mushrooms, sea buckthorn etc…). She and her business partner were lucky to find a used industrial scale drier which they acquired for the low low price of “take it out of my backyard and it is yours.” They have been working on fixing it up and testing blueberries which are plentiful at this time of year. So far they have had measured success (which means they figured ... read more

Well today is my Friday as I've planned to see Brasov tomorrow. Thaty's where Dracula's Castle is. It's a 3.5 hour train ride if I take the 5am...or a 5 hour train ride if I leave at 10:30. I'll do my best to hop on that 5am short trip. Camp was fun today... not much to report. Some kids are starting to go on holiday so I think the numbers should even out and possibly even decline. The kitchen staff prepared chicken liver for lunch today... I think thats one tradition I'll skip. Ioana and I will be heading off to the baby house in a lil bit... ... back from the baby house. Those are the cutest kids ever!!! It's a really great program they have going for them. The baby house is like a ... read more

So Tuesday we had another heard of kids join us at camp. It's now growing really fast as the news spreads of juist how much fun camp is. /the children from the prison fellowship joined us and it was very interesting!! They were all of gyspy blood and you could see the differences right away. They all had super dark skin and carried themselved much different than the other kids. Also, they were resistant to authoriry and tried to be the boss for the first while. The girl of the group seemed almost shocked when I asked her what she wanted to do. I guess she doesn't get many choices in life. The boys eventually loosened up, all but one. The kids seeemed to fit in well with the others. One boy however still held onto ... read more

The next day we were planning to take the bus to Medias, then from there the bus to Biertan and after visiting the village we would have walked 5 km till the next village, Richis... but because the night before we arrived at the hotel after 11 PM, waking up early in the morning wasnt so easy. Actually we've missed the 11 AM bus to Medias only by 5 minutes. So we decided to take the 12:57 train but after I ve done some calculation our time wasnt enough. The train ride was quite interesting, its been a while since I traveled with the personal train (this train stops in every little station and its driven in slow speed). The ticket costs around 1,5 Euro and it takes 1 hour and a half to get to ... read more