Romania Day 1

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Today began with waking up around 7:30, getting ready and then going to breakfast. For breakfast the hotel offered the normal eggs, sausage (they type of sausage that in America my dad used to cook for dinner called Kielbasa), potatoes, fruit, yogurt, toast, pastries, etc. but they also offered some things I am not used to seeing at breakfast which included potato salad (at least that’s what it looked like), salami and turkey cold cuts, tomatoes, olives, mustard. I of course stuck to fruit, scrambled eggs, potatoes, and the sausage. The next part of the day include a quick walk to the church. The church was way different from what I had expected. The women were standing on the left and the men on the right (there were only a few chairs scattered throughout). The next thing that I noticed that was different to me was that the people would go from kneeling to standing quite often. Also, the “Altar” was kept in a room behind the front of the church which you could see through the door. One thing I did notice around the church was the paintings of the icons which were beautiful. Speaking of icons an elderly lady at the church who was very friendly gave us a card of an icon which I found to be very welcoming, she also showed us where we could find the history of the church in English. The service was done in Romanian so we could not actually understand what was being said. After about 20 minutes we went outside where Tavi gave us candles to light, if you placed your candle on the left you were asking for good wishes for yourself or your family, and if on the right it was a family member or someone who passed away. Since the service was going to last another hour we walked to the park for about half an hour where we sat in the shade and chatted. We then went back to the church where we met with 1 survivor who was a political detainee who explained his story and told how his family member’s actions affected his life. The reason he was ever originally flagged was because his father was a member of the Legendary Movement. This man seemed very passionate about his story and by the tone of his voice and his actions it seems that he had not told his story very much. The next man discussed how something as simple as creating flyers against the communist party affected his whole life. He was not able to get jobs, and it took him at least 8 years, and a “threatening” letter from his uncle who pretended to be part of the U.S. congress to allow him to visit his family in Canada where he then remained for 20 years. After the meeting with these two men we went to lunch at Pizza which was very fancy compared to America the dining room had 3 separate areas. On the menu there were burgers, pasta, chicken fingers, wine, cocktails, beer, etc. After lunch we had class where we discussed the book that we are reading and also the history of communism.

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