Alanica Fara Frica

First I must appologize for being out of contact for a while for those who have tried to contact me.  I have been travelling around the country checking out the region of Transylvania.

My site for the next two years is going to be the town of Reghin in east-central Transylvania.  It is about 30km north of Targu-Mures and 100km east of Cluj-Napoca, the second largest city in Romania and home to most of the college students in the country.  I got to visit both cities on my recent trip.  Reghin is actually about 36,000 people and is set along the side of a hill, at the edge of the Carpathian mountains.  I will be working for the Primaria (city hall) there.

Reghin’s claim to fame is the violin and guitar factory, which is the only one in the country.  It has a quaint main street along their central park and a forest at the top of the hill.  It is mostly Romanian, but has a about 10,000 Hungarians and a few thousand Roma (gypsies).

I met my counterpart, Camelia, on thursday, who is the person I will mainly be working with in the city.  She works in the Financing and Economics department and speaks the most English out of the 70 city workers.  I will actually be working in the Urban Development office, but no one in that office speaks english, so I will have to become fluent in Romanian real quick.  In the mean time, I will be doing a little traveling and studing of the language and city so that I can have a good understanding of the town by the time I can easily work with the Urban Development office.  I will also probably be helping Camelia in the finance department helping to find new grants and funding sources from the upcoming accesion into the European Union.

I have also posted loads of new pictures at www.828pm.com/photos There are pics from PST in Ploiesti, Brasov, Sighisoara, Reghin and I addem more from the Habitat for Humanity trip.  Check them out and if you want to leave any comments, you have to register (really easy).

I have also changed the name of this blog page for, hopefully, the last time.  My gazda mom always calls me Alanica Fara Frica and I never knew what it meant until today.  Little Alan Without Fear.  It is actually used to refer to someone more foolish than heroic, but… whatever.  It’s probably true anyway.

Our presentation to the city went great.  The head of the urban planning department liked our design that we presented with one of the students.  There were certain elements of the plan that they agreed were important to discuss with city officials.  They are planning a presentation where some of the students we worked with will present to the city council.

On the weekend I went to the town of Sighisoara (pronounced Sigishoara).  It was a beautiful, historic town of about 30,000.  It was the hometown of Vlad the Impaler who the character Dracula was loosely based on.  I spent the whole day on sunday relaxing by a pool with some volunteers from group 20 (I’m in group 21).  Check out the pictures at www.828pm.com/photos.

Today we had a 4th of July party at the school with PC staff and our gazda families.  It was great to grill out and listen to some classic American music that I, of course, got to DJ.

Tomorow is the big day where we learn our permanent sites.  I have no idea where I am going to go.  Don’t know if will be a big city or a small town.  During my site interviews I focused more on the type of job I would do and not where.  All I know is that I will probably be working at a mayors office which tends to mean that I will be in a smaller city, possibly around the same size as Sighisoara.  Well, I’ll let you know as soon as I do!