Alanica Fara Frica

Last year I was living in Portland and spent my Thanksgiving with a large group of other west coast orphans.  We had a great time and it really gave me a chance to appreciate the holiday more than I ever had.  Being away from home made me more conscience of what I had to be thankful for.

This year was exponentially more powerfull.  Tim and I had a train to catch leaving Poland on thursday night at 10:30.  The Krakow gang had planned a big Thanksgiving dinner for anyone that was interested in going.  There were Americans (both current residents and ex-pats), Canadians, Poles, Brits and someothers that I can’t remember.  Steve had left that morning, but Ian was there that night and so were Anna and Katie.  It was nice to spend that time with Steve and Ian because we were together the year before for our midwest meets west coast Thanksgiving.  The turkey we finally found was frozen and we didn’t get it till the afternoon so we had to flash thaw it in the bath tub… a bird bath (bad joke).   And, of course, at 8:28pm we were deep into our circle of thanks. 

It was hard to leave such a lively group right in the middle of the party, but Tim and I had a train to catch… and we really didn’t want to do dishes.  Filled up on stuffing and wine, we were ready to sleep through our 15 hour train ride back to Arad where….

We did Thanksgiving all over again!

A volunteer in a small town outside of Arad had organized a dinner of about 13 volunteers and 20 romanians.  It was nice to get out into the countryside of RO after spending a crazy week in Poland, but my late nights sure didn’t get any earlier.We hung out friday night in the cabana in the woods and caught up after having spent a few months apart at our sites.  We had great food that night and lots of fun sharing our holiday with Romanians.  Highlights of the night include:

• Deep fried turkey, it was my first experience with that, and I don’t think I can go back
• Stirring the big bowl of mashed potatoes with a rolling pin
• Having a dance party in the tiny kitchen
• The french guy dancing on top of the old iron stove and waking up to find his shoes had melted on the bottoms
• Did I mention deep fried turkey?
• Sleeping in a bed by myself (needless to say sleeping conditions were a little cramped in Krakow)
• Sitting around a fire

Well, chalk up another great Thanksgiving.  Now I’m back in Reghin and have to do work and wake up “early” and upload pictures and clean my apartment and study romanian and …

After a pretty entertaining train ride with Anna, Katie and Clint (another volunteer who just happened to going to Krakow on the same train) I arrived in Krakow in the early foggy morning.  We wandered around for a while until we found my friend Garrett’s apartment.

Garrett is living in Krakow now teaching english and writing for the English language magazine, Lost in Krakow.  My friend Rachel was there and my visit was a surprise for her.  Most of the excitment of the surprise was not fully felt at 6:30 am.  Their friend, the Goat, was also crashing with them for a few weeks.  Once my friends Steve and Ian showed up from California, the apartment felt more like a hostel than an apartment.  Oh, Garrett also has two roomates… and oh, my friend Tim from Arad also showed up a few days later.  It was quite a culmination of people in one polish apartment.

Despite the many distractions in the apartment, I got out of it plenty and was able to explore one of my new favorite cities.  Krakow’s city center is a great place to wander around.  The old city is surrounded by a park that used to be a moat.  Unlike some other European cities, the old city still serves as the financial and civic center for the city so it is the busiest area of town.  There is basically no car traffic in the center as well and the streets are filled with people all the time.  I can understand why it has such a high ex-pat community there.  Every bar/restaurant/cafe we went to was a unique experience.  The food was great.  There were all kinds of events and festivals going on.  Pretty much everything that I ever wanted in a city was there (save Skyline Chili).  All that and I was actually not spending too much money.  I was shocked to find that the Romanian lei is actually slightly stonger than the Polish zloty.  Didn’t really make much sense.

I saw the World Press Photo traveling exhibit, which is the best photojournalism images from the year.  It tours all over the world, and looks like it will be in Los Angeles in January.  To my friends there (who probably don’t view this blog) check it out.  I also got to see a little bit of the animation film festival that was going on there.  Saw some cool stop motion animation by a film maker whose name escapes me.  We even checked out the National Museum of Art, but that was mostly because we were there for the free museum day.  It was pretty awesome.

If anyone happens to be in the area of Krakow, I’d suggest a stop.  It is a place that can easily suck you in if you go with no agenda and just feel like hanging out for a while. 

For those of you reading this that know and see Steve Muzik, feel free to point your finger and laugh at him a little.  He was sure klutzing it up Krakow to the tune of chipped tooth, face abbrasion and broken foot.  He’ll tell you a meteorite hit him… you can choose to believe him or not.

Last week two friends from UC, Anna and Katie, came by Reghin to check up on me.  We cooked some Romanian dishes at my apartment and got ready for an all day trek to Arad, a city on the border of Romania and Hungry, where I would leave to Krakow.  Since the girls had such a short time in Romania, we thought the best way for them to really see the country would be to hitch hike to Arad. 

We set out towards Cluj and got there early enough to check out the center and go to my favorite tea house, Flowers.  We then walked 40 min to the edge of town where we waited for 40 seconds before a truck driver pulled over for us.  Danny was his name and he was an Italian truck driver transporting tires from Bucharest to Turin.  I was able to understand his Romanian better than one else before and I got some good language practice in.  He could only take us half way to Arad, but was on the CV radio most of the ride trying to find us a ride all the way to our destination.

We pulled over in a traffic circle outside of Oradea and he walked us to another truck who was heading towards Arad.  This guy I could not understand at all.  But after some poor verbal communication and hand jestures we managed to get dropped off only 10 min from where my friend Tim (who lives in Arad) was. 

We partied that night and after minimal persuasion, the girls agreed to come to Krakow with me… despite the fact that they already visited there a week before.  If anyone reading this knows Anna and Katie, give them a pat on the back for being awesome travelling partners and open to changing their travel itineraries.

Many of Romanian’s youth learn english in school, but the only other experience they have with it is through television and movies.  With Romania’s accession into the EU just around the corner, learning english is extremely important for future economic and social development.

The organization A Thousand Books sends books to volunteer teachers teaching english anywhere in the world.  They have sent thousands of books to Peace Corps Volunteers in Romania since 2004, including Reghin.  They are always in need of donations to help with the high costs of shipping books overseas.  Please take the time to check out their site and help our cause.

My apartment took a major step towards completion as a permanent residence today with the addition of a full stove.  Before I only had a table top two-burner, but now I have four burners and an oven.  The most impressive thing is that the city of Reghin actually paid for a brand new stove for me… I have to say that I am a little surprised it happened.

Another pleasent surprise is that my project is starting to develop further.  I am moving ahead on a design project to replace the old fountain in the center park with a small stage area for events.  I also hope to design a new fountain that will be located in the center of the park.  If anyone has any experience in fountain design, please share.

Also, here’s a little Romania culture tidbit.  Last week, there was a birthday in the office. This person holds a pretty high ranking role in the office so all employees came down to the center courtyard for food and drinks, all of which supplied by the birthday guy.  Whenever it is your birthday, you are expected to supply food to others.  Also, if you go out for drinks, guess what… you’re buying. 

As you many have already noticed, I’ve started the long journey creating a unified website.  I’ve matched the blog and photosite in common themes that I have found through the gracious online programming community and I will be slowly personalizing the pages to be uniquely my own (oddly enough I decided to use the design themes you see now around 8:28pm tonight… ya see, it is a magic time).  Hopefully I will have a home page soon and a more full site.  Make sure to keep checking in as I am now pretty settled and have more time to write more contemplative posts, as opposed to my earlier ones, where I just breezed through the things I have been seeing and doing.  Please leave comments, they keep me motivated to continue to spend the hours developing this site. 

-alanica