This weekend I went to Brasov to stay with Neah, a Fulbrighter and a fellow Pacific Northwesterner, for an early "American birthday" celebration. Why American, you ask? Well, in Romania, it's the birthday girl (or boy) who pays for everything. And quite frankly I like the American way of doing birthdays better, and so did my fellow Americans, so I didn't complain. 

Brasov is such a beautiful town. Situated in Transylvania, it was influenced heavily by the Austro Hungarian monarchy, and the architecture is solid proof of that. It even has a German name, Kronstadt, and many of the street signs were in German. Needless to say, I felt quite at home there. 

Saturday morning Neah and I joined one of her university students for a "Thanksgiving Celebration" at her church. It was a Seventh Day Adventist church, and Neah's student, who is in her early 50s, is the pastor's wife. A Romanian girl around our age sat in between Neah and I and translated the whole service, which, while not being a traditional service, was a cultural experience nonetheless. After a few hours of spontaneous thanksgiving and beautiful a capella music, we climbed three storeys to the attic space of the church for the harvest meal. Seventh Day Adventists preach vegetarianism, so of course the meal had no meat. But if I could eat such delicious food everyday, I wouldn't mind being a vegetarian at all! 

After the church service, Neah and I took the cable car to the top of Mount Tampa, the mountain with the Hollywood style "Brasov" sign at the top. The trees were just beginning to turn all shades of autumn colors, and the red shingles of Brasov in the valley made for a breathtaking view. 

Sunday Dan, another Fulbrighter living in Bucharest, and Neah and I met another of Neah's students who took us on a hike out into the hills west of Brasov. We started in the main square of the town, and just kept walking until the flat city roads turned into dirt paths with ever-increasing inclines. Pretty soon we were using all fours to climb to the top of "Solomon's Rock." It was a gorgeous 360 degree view from the top, but of course my pictures just don't do it justice. 

Monday morning we (Neah and I) took the hour-long train to Fagaras, where we presented on study opportunities in the US at Radu Negru High School, the top school in the town. The whole thing was quite the production. The local television station was there recording the whole thing, and interviewed us and a few of the 60 students present. Afterwards, a few of the 11th graders walked us through the town, and took us on a tour through the Fagaras Fortress, which, by the way, is closed on Mondays. Unless your celebrities like us, I guess. 

It was the first time in a while that I had been outside of Bucharest, and it was perfect timing for such a trip. The weather was gorgeous, and a good dose of the great outdoors (and a slow-paced, walkable town) was just what I needed to prepare for the cold snap in Bucharest. But Bucharest is growing on me, slow going as it might be.

So, as I had mentioned earlier, I have problems when it comes to shopping. I have learned how to say piece, "bucata," so that I can get two apples instead of two kilograms. But I realized that half of the confusion was that most people order by weight, not by individual pieces.


Last night on my way home from work, I decided to try ordering by weight. I went to this little fast-food bakery of sorts called Fornetti. It's one of those places where everyone crowds outside the window to order mass-produced simple carbs in a variety of forms. Nothing too spectacular, but it's on my corner and pretty darn inexpensive. Normally I will order 2 or 3 little pastries, which ends up costing me about 50 bani, or 25 cents. It's a great little unhealthy snack for very little money.


This time, I decide to go with the weight that's on the price tags, for 1.10 lei. I figured I'll have some leftovers and that's ok. So I'm trying to tell them that I want half of it to be apricot filled, the other half cheese-filled. And of course I don't know the word for half, I didn't think that one through very well before I decided to order. So these two girls about my age in line behind me ask if I speak English, and I tell them what I'm trying to order and they translate for me. After I ask them how to say half, "jumatate" (zhoomutahteh...easy enough, right?), and thank them, I look back to the ladies weighing my order, and realize my huge mistake.


For some reason that eludes me still, instead of ordering 100 grams as it says on the price tags, I said I wanted one kilogram. I basically cleaned them out. But by the time I realized what was going on I couldn't very well just tell them to put it all back, that that's not what I meant at all. They thanked me profusely as I handed over 11 lei and I walked away with a grocery bag full of pastries. I can only hope they thought I was sent out to stock up for a party; there's no other excuse for an American girl in Bucharest to buy so much unhealthy cheap food.


I have to say I laughed all the way home. I really have no idea how I managed to get 100 grams and 1 kilogram mixed up. I can't even blame it on America's non-metric system. It was just plain ridiculous of me. I think I was just so flustered that my brain short-circuited for a few seconds. I really have no idea what I'm going to do with all this food. I might start handing it out to the stray dogs and the homeless people on the street, because there's no way I could eat it all, even if I wanted to.


So yea, another little escapade in the life of Kymber in Romania. I suppose they're learning experiences, but after a few more of these I'll be ready to dish out some serious money for real lessons. It might not be as exciting that way, but it might ending up costing me less in the long run!

Down the street from my flat, at the far side of a park frequented by grandparents and their young charges, is Piata Crangasi. Every day from dawn till dusk this small square is bustling with farmers and merchants selling their goods to the crowds shuffling past their stalls. Young women selling apples, grapes and blueberries, weathered old men offering their peppers and cauliflower at bargain prices, all noisily competing for the attention and lei of the passersby. In the evening, as everyone slowly packs up for home, the sound of loud bartering is seamlessly replaced by the loose minor chords of that soulful Romanian music genre that is so skilled at sending shivers through me. A wizened old man dances exuberantly, resolutely, with his half-full beer bottle, while children dodge his sporadic steps. Maybe he's celebrating a day of good business, but my guess is he'd be still be dancing if he hadn't sold a single bean.

Every day, either before or after work, I stop here for some fresh produce. I have yet to have a transaction without some sort of misunderstanding, but people here don't seem to mind. After I use wild gestures to explain that I want two apples, not two kilograms of apples, and then inadvertently give them the entirely wrong amount of lei, they smile and say "nu suntet romunca." I've heard it enough to figure out that they're inferring that I'm not Romanian. And then begins the guessing game. 
France? Germany? England? 
America. 
Ahh! America! You speak English? She speaks English! 
They yell across the aisle and a man comes running over, telling me in a very thick Romanian accent that he is from England.
I know they're asking me what I, an American girl, am doing buying fruit and vegetables from their market everyday. Maybe in a few months I will be able to tell them. For now I just smile and tell them I don't understand.

I just got back from a three-day retreat in the mountains above a small village called Bran. Me, Mihaela, Cecilia, and four other ladies who are advisors in Education USA centers around Romania met there for some training and collaborating.

Our villa was on top of a mountain, and as I walked out onto my balcony to take in the breathtaking view, lo and behold, there was Dracula's castle, not more than 1000 meters away!

Every night we enjoyed a traditional meal in the restaurant decorated with sheepskins and antlers. The meal always started with a shot of Tsuinka, the famous Romanian plumb brandy, then a plate heaping full of polenta, sausages, pies, peppers, cheese balls, and yoguhrt. Then they served us hot wine as we went outside to watch the massive bonfire. A young man always played his guitar and sang folk songs, and people would join in from time to time. It was so soulful and hauntingly beautiful that it sent shivers down my spine and it hit me...I'm in ROMANIA!

After I settled down and we went back inside, I was mildly horrified to find out that what we had just eaten was only the appetizer. Out came another monstrous plate with two baked potatoes, bacon, lamb and chicken. Then wine. Then dessert. And when we went for breakfast the next morning it wasn't much less. I don't know how people eat like this three meals a day! I started eating less and less, and pretty soon the other ladies were claiming my leftovers after they had cleaned their plates.

One afternoon we visited the Rasnov Citadel, a massive contruction from the 1600s built on the top of a mountain a few kilometers away. It was quite impressive (I'll put pictures up next week!), and the view from the top was spectacular. Too bad for it there was no great vampire legend to make it famous, because it was definitely more striking than Dracula's castle.

I definitely feel that Mihaela and I bonded on this trip. Not only are our birthdays two days apart, which makes us both scorpios (very important to all the ladies), but she discovered that I too prefer Pepsi, and I like garlic flavored bagel chips, all things she was disappointed to see I had not put on my resume. We actually do have quite a bit in common, and I know working with her will be great fun and very productive!

Thanks for all your notes on my message board. It makes my day to hear from you!

Noapte Buna!

"Life in a foreign country is a dance of submission and resistance. Self-knowledge comes in small repeated shocks as you find yourself giving in easily, with a struggle, or not at all. What can you do without? What do you cling to?"

From Expat: Women's True Tales of Life Abroad

Never in my life has this rung so true as it has in these first few days of adjusting to Bucharest. Every day I am bombarded by dozens of new traditions, mindsets, cultural quirks and culinary specialties. The struggle of seeing Bucharest as it is, and not as I had imagined it would be, leaves me exhausted each night as I collapse on my couch/bed.

Yes, I can deal with "showering" by holding a hose over my head in a bathtub with no curtain. I am actually quite skilled at it after living in Austria for a year. But will I ever get used to the brown, lukewarm water that runs for the first five minutes every morning?

I can eat mysterious meatballs and yoghurt that tastes, rightfully so, like the cow it came from. Years of refusing to give my dad the satisfaction of a reaction as he tried to gross me out anytime I ate new things has given me an uncanny control over my gag reflex. But the fish canned in its scaley entirety in some sort of tomato sauce just about did me in. Thank the Lord for Pepto Bismol!

Every morning when I wake up the street vendors are advertising their goods in their sing-song chants, and a buggy, pulled by an old grey horse and filled with what looks like garbage to me, but who knows, makes its lazy way down Strada Vintila Mihailescu. Every morning Nicoleta crossed this street to buy bread from the corner convenience "shack." The bread is kept in a plastic box, covered by a towel, and everyone digs through to find their perfect loaf. One of those things I'm giving in to with a struggle.

Getting anywhere is a total test of agility. The "gliding" technique we learned in Viet Nam—walk slowly and steadily and the cars, motorcycles, etc., will go around you—comes in handy when crossing the streets here. The metro system is the most confusing I've ever seen. The underground lines try to be color coded, but I've seen the M3 in red, orange and yellow. And, each direction of each line is called either "Linie 1" or "Linie 2." I know they're trying to be helpful, but "Linie 1" means underground line 1 to me, so when I am looking for M3, which was yellow but is red in this station, and all I see are signs for "Linie 1" and "Linie 2," and nothing for M1 (which I just got off of) or M3 (which is supposed to connect at this station), well you can imagine my frustration…not to mention the amusement of the commuters watching me wander back and forth in a trying-to-look-not-lost sort of way.

This minor fiasco happened on my way home after going to the Fulbright Commission and meeting Mihaela, my supervisor. The office is quite large, and the walk to it from the metro station is along the edge of Parcul Kiseleff, a huge city park. Mihaela and Cecilia are two lovely, warm-hearted and giggling eastern European ladies who gave me a warm welcome "to our land, and to our hearts." I am looking forward to working with them.

As Samuel Johnson said, "The point of traveling is to correct our fantasies through reality. Instead of imagining the world as it could be, we see it as it is."

People told me Bucharest would be very different than America.

They were wrong.

It's an entirely different world over here.

My two-day "layover" in Budapest was lovely. It was absolutely wonderful to just relax (and speak English!) with my friends from home. I do love Diosd, the town they live in. And it's always great to see them and catch up and scheme up ways for me to work at the school they all teach at. It was a perfect little dose of Moses Lake before I had to get back on the train and go to Bucharest.

I managed to survive a 13-hour overnight train ride, complete with scoffing policemen who rolled their eyes at my huge backpack and my inability to understand neither Hungarian nor Romanian, grumpy old Romanian ladies who were very fervently telling me something, only stopping briefly to stare at me quite rudely when I said the only Romanian phrase I could: "I don't understand Romanian," and of course loud drunks. I never felt in any real danger, but not being able to understand anything definitely put me at a severe disadvantage. Needless to say I did not sleep very well.

The Romanian countryside is beautiful in that Eastern European sort of way. There were shepherds wandering the green rolling hills with their flocks of muddy, yellowish sheep. Horses pulling wagons and children with their dogs seemed to be the main form of agricultural labor, and it must have been laundry day, because all of the yards were shadowed by brightly colored sheets and clothing trying to dry in the foggy wind. Some houses were barely intact; I must say sometimes I couldn't quite tell which buildings were for the people and which were for the animals. And there's no way the rain didn't get through most of the roofs. And yet, there was one village with a satellite dish on almost every house.

At the train station in Bucharest, a man charged me four Euros to carry my bags for me, and I let him because my blinking backpack was so ridiculously heavy. If he managed to run off with it, I reasoned, he probably deserved to have it.

Cecilia, one of the ladies from the Fulbright Commission, and Vergil, an associate, picked me up and drove me to the place I'll be staying for the next six months. We almost got killed a few times on the way, I think. There aren't really lanes on the roads here. There are stripes, of course, but I guess they're just more like suggestions than anything else. I almost had a heart attack.

I am living with a woman named Nicoletta on the sixth floor of a communist-style cement block apartment building. My bedroom, which was previously the living/dining room, based on furniture, looks out to three of the dozen other identical buildings in this neighborhood.I had a minor meltdown when the reality of my living situation hit me, but I don't really know what I was expecting. This is Romania, after all. I should be glad I have hot water and electricity!

Nicoletta has been very hospitable. She fed me sour, salty meatball soup that her mother, who lives out in the countryside, made. It was really good, although I didn't dare ask what kind of meat was in the meatballs. Then she took me to the "Hypermarket," as they call them here. All the buildings look the same; I don't know how I'm ever going to find my way around! The Hypermarket was bigger than any Safeway or Fred Meyer in the States. I even think I saw some things that you can't get even in Austria. I was quite impressed, albeit entirely overwhelmed.

This evening I watched TV with Nicoletta in her room. The Romanians love American television, and they never dub, only subtitles. So I got to watch CNN and Law and Order in English. That was a treat. While we watched TV, we had a snack of yoghurt that her dad had made himself. We drank it out of mugs and ate some other meatballs that her mother had made as well. We'll just say that was an adventure!

I have been taking plenty of pictures, and will post them as soon as I can access the internet from my computer. I am constantly overwhelmed with new sights, sounds, even smells, so I'm sure I will be writing again soon! La revedere…

Pitstop in Budapest

After almost two weeks in Vienna, I had to face up to the fact that it was time to move on. This morning I took the train from Vienna to Budapest, where my friends from home who teach at the International Christian School of Budapest picked me up from the train station.


It was really hard to leave Vienna. It feels so much like my home away from home, and staying with my host family from my study abroad program was so wonderful. They are certainly my european family, and being with them made the initial wave of homesickness bearable. Bucharest is still a city of unknowns for me, and I will have to work hard at not comparing it to Vienna all the time. It will be an adventure of an entirely different sort, and I know I will feel at home there before my six months is up.


In a way I am glad to make a 2-day stop in Budapest before I get on the train for another 14 hours. Seeing the Whites and MacLamores is always a taste of home, and it gave me something to look forward to when I boarded the train in Vienna. But at the same time, I feel like all these stops as I make my way east is just prolonging the inevitable. Like peeling off a bandaid agonizingly slowly instead of just getting it over with in one quick rip. I can go as slowly as I want, and make plenty of stops along the way. But eventually I am going to end up in Bucharest, where I am going to be unprotected and alone, forced to start anew and be more independent than I've ever had to be in my life.


The thought alone is daunting, but these are the kinds of challanges that make my life the spectacular adventure that it is. This is my version of life to the fullest, and I remind myself of that whenever I start to wonder what in the world I am really getting myself into! :)