Alanica Fara Frica

We woke up early on sunday to have our last breakfast at the hotel (a great collection of bread, cheese, yogurt and veggies) then off to meet our gazdas (host family).  It was a slow process where they called each of us up one by one and we met our family in front of everybody.  It was pretty nerve racking because we were all nervous that we would get a gazda who would be real overbearing on our daily schedules.

When I got called, a young man was there to pick me up.  He was 26 and spoke english well.  He took me home to meet my mama and papa gazda and I instantly felt comfortable with them.  Mama gazda spoke very little english, but we are able to communitcate well, and papa gazda I havent really interacted with much because he doesnt speak any english.  I thoguht I’d spend the day unpacking but almost immediately I got into John’s car (his name is ionutz, but everyone calls him john) and we met up with some of his friends, then went food shopping.  We went to a Wal-Mart type store outside of the city, it was pretty surreal to be in a store of that nature in Romania.

Got home in the late afternoon and unpacked, then John came into my room and told me to put my shoes on and get in the car.  When I got in I decided it would be smart to find out where we were going.  His two friends were in the car and mama gazda and they in all told me “Bucharest!” in excited voices.  We were about 40 km north of the capital city, but it took just over an hour to get to because there is no highway like we know in America and there are gypsies and dogs running across the street everywhere. 

Bucharest was big and full of traffic.  We ended up just going there for shopping, which is not my favorite past-time.  But it was fun going to malls and seeing all the beautiful and interesting people walking by.  The malls themselves were a little to familiar to me.  It was a pretty interesting trip and I’m glad we went, but I was about ready to pass out in the car on the way home.  I think I’m going to get into a habit of going to sleep early after a long day of learning Romanian and eating.

La Revedere!

-alannesti (alannati in the states = alannesti in romania… pronounced alan-nesht, as in ploiesti, bucharesti, pitesti…)

Greetings from Ploiesti (pronounced ploy-esht for those Romanian-challenged).  I am currently finishing orientation here in Romania and will start language training on monday.  I met the 72 other volunteers in Philly for two days of staging where we learned about Peace Corps policy and hung out at night with our newly acquired living stipend (which was more than ample, thank you American taxpayers).  After bonding at the pub and playing ice breaker games at the Sheraton hotel, we headed out on a bus to NYC to kick off 30 hours of travel which was not special and I don’t really want to talk about it.

When we arrived in the Bucharest airport everyone stayed pretty silent as we all realized that we weren’t in Ohio anymore.  We got on another bus to head an hour north to the city of Ploiesti (pop. 250,000).  There, we stayed in the nicest hotel in the city (it was alright) and had a few more days of orientation where we learned some basic Romanian and talked about our host families that we would live with for the next 3 months.  We meet them on Sunday so wish me luck on a family that doesn’t treat me like a 16 year-old but still gives me a fantastic introduction to Romanian culture. 

So far I love how the Peace Corps has handled us so far and have been pretty impressed with our group.  the ages range from slightly younger than me to over sixty.  We are one of the biggest groups to all train together (73) and are all very excited to grow relationships with each other.  We have gone out in constantly rotating groups so that we can hang out with as many people as possible.  Romania has pretty much the same climate patterns as southern ohio so I am able to handle the humid heat that is setting in for the summer. 

Now I must go and study up on my Romanian… Noapte buna!