Romania is not the United States >:<
The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps, of which I am a proud volunteer.

For the first time I have been really annoyed that Romania is not the United States. It started around 4 am this morning when a car in my neighborhood's car alarm when off - and proceeded to blare for two hours until 6:05 this morning.

Usually it is screaming cats. bloody snarling dog fights and occasionally a rooster cockadoodling at 5 am which make up the annoying noises heard in my alley, and I've learned to live with it. This car alarm pissed me off though. I lay in the dark with a second pillow and my arm over my head trying to drown out the noise waiting for one of my neighbors to call the police. I imagine no one did.

I didn't call the police because a) I don't have a non-emergency number for the police department
b) I don't know if they would understand my Romanian, and because
c) I'm not sure if letting your car alarm blare for two hours in the early morning is illegal.

But it should be. It doesn't seem fair that one person's car alarm falsely going off should deprive people in three bloc buildings of a night of sleep - and for the record that's a lot of people. And I can tell how many people were up by how many lights went on in the apartments in the other building.
In fact, at one point I put my headphones in, flicked on the lights in the bedroom out of solidarity with the neighbors and to show the police should they ever show up just how many people were disturbed by this, and buried my head under the pillows and tried to sleep in the living room.

After breakfast this morning I sent an irritated email to our Safety and Security officer describing the situation and asking what I can do should it re-occur. I not so sensitively pointed out that this is illegal in the US, that playing sirens to deprive people of sleep is a torture technique, and told him I might call him at four in the morning next time it happens so that he can call the Deva police for me.

I signed off, Tired and Cranky, Laura.

Luckily as daylight broke the wailing siren stopped. I popped a couple of ibuprophen to help get rid of my screaming headache, put my eye pillow over my face to simulate darkness and turned off the alarm so I could sleep in till 10. Unfortunately at 9:30 I was awakened by someone in my hallway cutting metal with a chainsaw because they are making some renovations I don't understand to the building - but that is what I am used to.

One weekend, four musicals and these clips
The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps, of which I am a proud volunteer.

A working weekend, but I managed to listen to Godspell, Mama Mia, Tommy, and watch Sweeney Todd (finally!) Also, discovered these priceless gems. Can't wait to get involved in Improv Everywhere when I'm back in the states!

OH Sweet Hell, Batman!
The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps, of which I am a proud volunteer.

I saw The Dark Knight last night. I felt a little bad that it such a dark movie and I was cackling obnoxiously through a lot of it. It is funnier than I expected, and let me just say the Joker has some lines that completely satisfy! At one point I gave a dirty look to some other Americans in the audience that were talking out loud in English during the movie - but I didn't really have a leg to stand on with my burst of maniacal laughter (let me say in my own defense though, in this movie, maniacal laughter is not out out of place.)

I heard an American girl say during one seen "couldn't they have found a better Alfred?" which made me consider leaping out of my seat and grabbing her by the throat. I wouldn't have had very far to go because she was sitting in the middle of the aisle (apparently you can do that) but I decided against it because I wanted to see the rest of the movie.

Heath Ledger's Joker is hands down my favorite character and my favorite performance. Knowing me, and my sense of humor you know that if Ledger's Joker wasn't so sharp there could have been a moment during his scene with Maggie Gyllenhaal where I would have thought "HA HA! He totally made out with her brother!" but as it was that didn't occur to me till the ending credits.

I love the Joker's voice, which I read was Ledger's biggest challenge with the role. The whole performance is just incredible. If you put this movie next to anything else the Brother's Grimm, Brokeback Mountain, A Knight's Tale, - I'd never guess it was the same actor if I didn't already know!

I was SO SAD it's the last movie I'll ever see him. I wanted to cry during every seen he wasn't in. I wore all black to the movie theatre. If I were in the states I would have worn The Joker makeup too - but I can't do that here because A) I don't have my Ben Nye kit and B) People would talk - "I saw an American at the cinema wearing The Joker make up. That's because they're all homicidal maniacs, Americans." And they'd only be half right. (shh! I didn't say that.)

Even with all Ledger's amazingness Gary Oldman also stole the show for me. Could be that he's got a bit more screen time than the Joker, but also the subdued Jim Gordon, stands out next to the energetic performances of Ledger, Christain Bale, and Aaron Eckhart. It made me love Commissioner Gordon even more than I did after the first Christopher Nolan Batman movie.

Funny thing is on the train on the way to Bucuresti (for the fourth out of five anti-rabies shots) I had a dream about Adam West and the Batman tv show that I watched in the second grade. After walking out of the theatre last night the following occurred to me: Batman-still cool. Nolan really packs the punches when it comes to questioning the goodness of human nature, heroism, and the struggle against evil internally and externally. This is not Adam West's Batman.

Nature Girl
The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps, of which I am a proud volunteer.

Hope isn't easily killed. I have tried to kill her many times, never really believing I'd succeeded, and still she refuses to die. That's a good thing, for the most part. But Hope has a dangerous twin sister Expectation.

In the life of every woman (and I expect also, every man) there comes a time when you look to the future and ask yourself what you want. At this point you separate what you were told you wanted and what you actually want. You also examine the horizon and make note of the difference between how you were told your life would be and how it is. For most of us I believe involves hearing a lot of "When you grow up and get married and have kids" and then looking around going "huh?" or "when?" and "Whaaa?"

For me I don't have a lot actual guides to reference when I think about ideas like "relationship" "happiness" and "forever" so I look to The Movies to be my guides. It occurs to me lately that several movies involve people reminiscing about happiness from their youth which is over. Happiness the character expected would continue to the end of the storyline and are now looking back on with fondness and regret.

Then there are the enormous multitude of movies that end when the couples get together and we presume they live "happily ever after." I have often commented that movies like this build false expectations - most of our stories end when a couple get together at the end of a film and we never see the complicated trials, or the work of maintaining a relationship.

But which is it? Should we expect that happiness will just come and that one day after some amusing pitfalls, some crying and a big comedic moment (Julia Roberts stealing a truck and proposing to her best friend) it will all fall into place and happiness will just arrive?

Or are we constantly wary, avoiding false expectations, eschewing disappointment and pain...and wrestling with hope?

There are things that I was told all my life - and I never believed them. I turned a cold eye to all romantic comedies which build dangerous expectations. The ones I don't admit to watching - and have done so only under duress. I told myself happiness can't be found in another person. Love should never be calculated in terms of what you "deserve" or think you deserve, and any time I ever heard someone say that I forced my interior monologue to shout "SHUT UP, SHUT UP" because people don't always get what they deserve. I think, rarely, they do. I repeated Eponine's lines in One Day More "Not for me, Not for me," until they became true for me and still I tried not to dream, tried to have no expectations. I tried to kill hope.

I did this because it was easier than maintaining that fragile faith. My faith in this area is almost gone. But then...

Where's the line between hoping and creating false expectations? What is tempting fate, setting yourself up for failure? And what is sitting on the bench, staying out of the game? When is it true that if you don't expect to find happiness you won't find it? What amount of hope, or expectation of happiness is reasonable?

I joined Peace Corps because I've always wanted to serve. But also for a bit of adventure, and maybe also to "find myself." And instead, maybe I'm finding something else. Something all those innocent - I believed naive grandmothers and well meaning Old Ladies said I would find, and I didn't believe them. Something I didn't know existed. Didn't think could exist. Still don't know if it does....
but maybe it does.
Maybe.
I hope.

No one but you.

Twice Bitten
The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps, of which I am a proud volunteer.

And not by mosquitoes although I have plenty of those bites to go around. Yes those are my two-year pale calves up there with the bruises that hardly show up when photographed. Yesterday they looked worse, today better. The big bruise on my right leg is already yellow in the middle so healing well.

Here's what happened: Last Wednesday at 6:45 in the morning, I was on my way to the bus that would take me to the train station that would take me to camp in the village, when I turned a corner near my apartment and surprised a pack of wild dogs some guy was feeding from his doorway. I didn't know they were there, but one on the outskirts of the pack was apparently surprised and threatened by my sudden appearance. I'm sure with my big backpack and the big tent in a bag I was carrying I seemed like a large threatening human coming up behind him when he wasn't too sure he wanted to get closer to the human in front of him with the food.

He never growled. But barked threateningly and charged. I had time to back away, tell myself not to run or he would chase me, and realize even if I didn't run he was still coming for me. He bit twice. Once on each leg. And ran away. I screamed, fell down, was going to cry - decided not to cry - realized I couldn't bet back on my feet with my big backpack on and the guy feeding the dogs had to come and help me. Among my thoughts were - Did he bite me? I never thought a dog would bite me. If I'm bleeding I have to go to Bucharest for the rabies shots.

I was bleeding, but not a lot. My first thought was "It's just a scratch. I've had worse falling off my bike." I think it was the dogs equivalent I think to shoving someone out of the way so you can run down the stairs and out of the house before the cops show up. It wasn't until I was on the bus to the train station, trying not to bleed on the car, that I realized my legs actually hurt. Later the bruises started to swell and show up but and once I got a band-aid one of the punctures bleed for about half a day. I count myself lucky, though. If the dog had been angry he certainly could have done more damage.

Rabies shots - for those of you afraid of needles, injections, and long grueling amounts of time spent on trains you should probably not read on.

I ended up getting on the bus to the train station, buying tickets then dumping my water bottle on the wounds before getting on the train to camp. On the way one of our high school student leaders insisted on cleaning the wounds again with my bottle of hand-sanitizer. Peace Corps doctors insisted I come to Bucharest for the anti-rabies shots so rather than going out to the camp ground with everyone else I had lunch in Baru Mare and got back on the train. Nine hours later I arrived in Romania's capital where thankfully I met a friend and went out to dinner rather than dragging my sorry self to the hotel and finding food alone.

Thursday morning at 8:15 I saw our Peace Corps doctor and received four shots. One in the arm, one in the butt and one in each bite (yeah, and I got bit twice!) And a schedule telling me I had to come back four more times for the rest of the anti-rabies treatments. Took an afternoon train home for seven hours spent the night at home at my apartment and early Friday morning set out for camp - made it there by Friday afternoon.

Saturday night, we ended camp around three, was back on a train at nine. Midnight took the overnight train to Bucharest, got to the office at 7:00, 7:30 had a shot, 9:45 was on a train back to Deva - arrived in Deva at 7pm.

The thing about the anti-rabies shots is I'm glad they have them and that Peace Corps makes us get them if we're bit by an animal. However, I don't have any reason to suspect that the dog had rabies and when I think about it not having rabies, I just get upset at all the time I have to spend traveling for these shots. In other PC countries you can get three shots when you show up in country so you don't get rabies in the event that you are bitten (like the vaccines you give your pet dog so they DON'T get rabies.) I'm not sure why we don't do that here because three shots is ultimately less than six (or in my case nine) but then again I only know of three other volunteers who have actually been bitten by dogs.

Getting bit by a dog is surely going to make me hate trains. I have to go back to Bucharest again overnight train Wednesday night spend three hours in Bucharest and come back Thursday night. And again next week, and then again in two weeks. At least hopefully by August 7th The Dark Knight may be playing in Bucharest and if that's the case I won't be in such a hurry to get back to site.

The Babies are Gone!
The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps, of which I am a proud volunteer.

Christina came to pick up the kittens an hour ago and now it's just me and Bella again. So another project over, and again not the way I anticipated, but accomplished nonetheless. I feel bad about their missing "escapee" brother and sisters, but I'm very happy that at least Chuckles and Hugs will be going to a good home. I tried to give Christina some advice about socializing them but she said her mother has cats and knows how to take of them. And I'm sure she does.

I hope the little girls will be happy and will continue to make progress. Today we went to the vet because of Chuckles puffy firm stomach, made me expect stomach worms. Later, I had them both in my arms and they were playing with each other and then they both fell asleep. They purr when I held them, but disliked being picked up - so I had to chase them because they'd never come to me. Still hissy and spitty, but hopefully on the way to long happy domestic lives.

I hope your new guardian will give you the vaccines you need to be healthy and hopefully will have you sterilized. I hope you'll be happy with a yard to play in and when you're tempted to go exploring this big crazy dangerous world you'll remember not to stray too far from the food bowl. Good luck guys! I miss you already.

Now I'm getting ready to leave for camp for four days and Bella goes from Big Sister to ruling the house all alone. I hope she doesn't get too lonely!

On Failure
The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps, of which I am a proud volunteer.

People are uncomfortable with failure. Americans in particular do not accept it. In Romania there is a cultural stigma against failure that says its better not to try than to try and fail. Someone described it as Americans will start out saying "yes" and Romanians will start out saying "no." I think that's accurate.

I think one of the most valuable things we have to teach as Romanians in America is that you can fail - the only redeeming point about America's attitude toward failure is that we have an underbelly of "at least you tried" which doesn't exist here. As a postcard I found in my apartment left by the previous Peace Corps volunteer says "Even if you fail, at least you are trying to succeed. You could do nothing." I think if we can impart that value to Romania, we will have accomplished a lot.

I have had a couple of experiences in my life where I've completely failed at something - and when I say "failed" I don't mean "blew it off" or "didn't do what I could have." What I mean by Failure in this instance is that I gave 100% of everything I had - there was absolutely nothing more I could do - and still I failed. Many people if they find themselves close to failing, find the resources (either within themselves or in friends and family) to pull themselves out at the last minute. Therefore I don't know many people who claim to have this experience of Failure and very few people I have met in life can relate to Failure. It is like hitting a wall.

Therefore, when I relate my experience starting out in a "this is what happened to me" style, I quickly become assertive. Because it has been my experience the other person needs some convincing that I did in fact Fail - that there was nothing I could have done to try harder. Maybe it's because of my assertions, but the other person almost always argues with me my experience was not actual Failure (capital F) but just failure on my part to do something more.

Example:"I'm sure if you went to therapy and overcame math anxiety you could do math."
No. I have math anxiety and a learning disability. While Math anxiety may be treatable, a learning disability is not something that can be cured. I'm sorry you don't believe me but it's not a matter of not having tried. It's not a matter of not wanting to learn.

This treatment of my experience - making it invalid - is incredibly frustrating on top of the experience of Failing. I do realize that tat it's not my failure that they disbelieve, it's the idea that people can fail that they don't want to believe. Because if it happened to me it could happen to them and they don't want to think about what it's like to have that incredibly frustrating experience like beating your head against an immovable object.

But I don't have to think about it what that's like. I know.

So when you encounter someone sharing an experience with you from their life, and incredibly frustrating experience of Failure, don't try to convince them that there's more they could have done. They are probably more than anything else just looking for someone to acknowledge and validate their experience. They are looking for someone to say "I understand that it was very difficult." They don't want to hear, "I'm sure there was something else you could have done."

And in the meantime chances are when someone is telling you about the worst period in their life - the story is going to be negative. I bet the story of the worst thing that ever happened to you isn't a positive story. So don't assume the situation was a negative one because of this attitude. Attitudes are shaped by circumstances and someone who starts out with a good attitude in a situation can change their attitude over time. When the good attitude receives no nourishment, it bears no fruit and it dies.

I have learned to appreciate my failures. For one thing they taught me to identify and understand what other people in unjust circumstances are going through. It can be very helpful to know that failure is possible - even when you are trying your hardest, and I find it useful to be able to identify with what people in other situations are going through.

But for now, I have to figure out how, when I get this response of someone trying to invalidate my life experience, how not to let it take me right back to that darkest time in my life when the Failure was actually happening. If anyone has any advice on that, I'll happily take it.

I can't mull this over in my head anymore, so I had to write about. Now I'm going to go take a shower and stop feeling this way.

Two Sisters
The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps, of which I am a proud volunteer.

This is Hugs (the hissy and spitty one)

This is Chuckles (the one with the eye problem)

Two kittens found after an interesting night-long adventure which involved lifting up the bed and also crawling around the living room with the flashlight on my phone at 3:30 in the morning while my friends who were crashing over slept, unawares.

They now wait in the no-places-to-hide kitchen for my work colleague Cristina to call and say when she's picking them up to take to their new home outside of Deva with her mother.

Their sister, Precious, who is white with gray tabby-striped spots seems to have disappeared, and by the uneaten food left about in bowls sequestered in various rooms at different times I have concluded she is no longer in the apartment. How or when she left I have no idea. I believe it was probably sometime after I lost Tiger on Thursday night, but actually Thursday night was the last time I saw her (maybe it was her, maybe it was Hugs) and it could be that Tiger followed her out the window. I didn't hear another jumper - but I can't be certain. As my friends pointed out, if Hugs could sneak into the living room without us knowing it - Precious could have sneaked out the window or the front door. I feel bad for having lost her.

My worst fear is that she's dead somewhere in the apartment. (Poor Precious!)

More on last night's adventure: We caught Chuckles here, and confined her to the cat carrier in the bedroom and put out a bowl of fresh food to tempt her sisters out. My friends crashing for the night went to bed on the couches, and I took the fold out chair-bed so as not to sleep in the bedroom and disturb the kitten(s). Chuckles started crying and I was hearing responding cries. They sounded like they were coming from under the couch I was sleeping next to, but sometimes I have a hard time telling where sounds are really coming from. Then I moved somehow and heard a hiss and I knew I she was in the living room. So I sat up and picked Bella up from where she was sleeping by my feet and told her to go get the kitten under the couch. When I acquired my flashlight I didn't see her under the couch anywhere, but heard Bella growling across the room and realized she was under the TV. But with all the large backpacking packs around the room and shopping bags, what a great place for a kitten to hide. Twice I saw Hugs under the TV and twice she proved very disappear-y until we (Bella and I) finally cornered her and imprisoned her with Chuckles in the carrier.

Bella proved very embarrassed by her lack of ability to hunt other cats in her own territory and decided to stay up for the rest of the night and prove herself by getting into the spices my friends brought over from other exotic locals, and knocking the chocolate sprinkles all over the floor. However, Bella has been very gracious about giving up her kitchen so I could move the kittens, bowls and litter box into that space and close the door.

This experience has also taught me to appreciate Bella's even temperment. All that I know of Bella's origins is that my second host mother found her crying in the rain with two other kittens, caught her, brought her to Deva from the country house where her garden is and gave her to me covered in fleas, yet Bella had a friendly disposition from the beginning after being socialized for all of a few hours by my host mother. I suppose it's completely possible she was already at that time someone else's cat who got away in the rain. But if that was the case someone else wasn't looking after her with eye drops and flea medication. Yet Bella first purred for me the first time I gave her rice boiled in milk (because I didn't yet have any cat food) and on the second day she was more inclined to climb up my pant leg than to run into the corner. She never hissed or spat at me.

Anyway, this experience has taught me that no matter how good our intentions are, sometimes we can't help the kittens that don't want to be helped (hence the two that ran away.) I'm very lucky to have so quickly found a home for the two that remain, but whether they will stay there or run away to live out their lives in the wild I have my doubts - and also no control. I have to console myself knowing I did only the best I could for them, and even though I held them both today and stroked each one of them until they stopped shaking and started to purr - they probably still hate me and hate people. I broke up their family. And the knowledge that their family was going to break up soon naturally anyway doesn't comfort me much. It does make me feel good to think that maybe I could help these two beauties have better, longer, healthier lives, but I'm also worried because until Christina picks them up I know I'm not off the hook.

I told myself getting into this that we all must make decisions knowing we have to live with what we did or did not do. And I chose to do this. I think maybe its because my parents never let me rescue animals off the street when I was a kid and now that I'm on my own I'll do what I want and no one can stop me. In any case I learned my lesson about feral cats and now I believe people when they say that they don't like people and don't want to be tamed. When Bella and I say goodbye to Chuckles and Hugs I'll know that I've had my "rescuing" experience for Romania and I won't need to do it again. Until I'm back in the U.S. and can work through a rescue organization.

And then there were 3?
The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps, of which I am a proud volunteer.

I think this little guy is the one who escaped last night. I never saw which one it was, but this guy is the darkest and his sisters (all calico, therefore I assume female, but they could also be sterile males) have some white on them - which leads me to believe it was the Tiger, here.

Last night the kittens came out - I actually saw three of them - and emptied the bowl of food I put out.Three were all standing in the window crying. I caught the two who needed their eye drops. That's when I took this picture.

I didn't think the kittens could climb up the chair to get into the window because it seems when Bella was their size she had trouble jumping on to the couch, and the chair is higher. But maybe they're more motivated out of fear. I didn't think much of it at the time. After a while I gave up on the catching the other two to check on them, I settled on administering the eye drops and went to bed.
Then I heard a noise and something made me think "I bet a kitten that could climb up to the window could make it through the kitten-size hole in the screen." So I got up to nail the screen in the two places I saw that it was loose, in the process discovering a much bigger kitten gap than I had seen before. So I decided to go out on the balcony and investigate. What I should have done is gotten the flashlight and scanned the balcony for kittens, because when I stepped outside I heard the crashing sound of a kitten jumping off the second story balcony into the very bushes where I had seen large dog sleeping earlier in the day.

I know the kitten landed on his feet though because I heard him crying on the ground after that. One of his sisters whined a little in response and I felt very bad that he was separated from his siblings.

And bad about the convention of barking dogs that proceeded to take place in the alley below my window. But I think from the sound of it the local pack was turning on one of their own rather than hunting kittens.

Ironically this guy was the one I originally named Lucky. Is he Lucky to have escaped domesticity? I don't know. Free meals, free medical care and someone who cleans up your poop in exchange for sleeping all day. I don't see a downside. At least he gets to remain wild at heart.

I hoped for for him that he would find his way back to his mother. But then I thought she will just get fleas on him again. The medicine I gave him will make him immune to fleas for six weeks but Mother will probably get the flea eggs on him and they will hatch whenever he finds himself not immune anymore. Maybe he will find himself a new home in the six weeks in between.

If not, I hope that he will make it. He was a tough guy. He was the biggest of the litter. I named him Lucky, but I started calling him Tiger because he was so feisty. He was the brave one. He once ran out from under the bureau sacrificing himself so I wouldn't go after the little sister, and thus he was first to get his medicine. He bit me once, and he was not afraid to hiss and spit but once you got him in your hands you could put him on his back and and he would show the bottoms of his little paws, how pads were black and not pink. He also had a cute little black nose.

Godspeed to you, Tiger. May all of your nine lives be long, healthy and happy. I'm sorry if I made you afraid and miserable. So afraid you were willing to jump off the balcony and chance life on the street. I hope being parasite free and having your eye goop cleared up and a few meals brought you some brief happiness. I will miss you.

Cat Lady
The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps, of which I am a proud volunteer.

I'm about to relate a story which I already consider to be a mistake. In fact I was well aware that this was probably a bad idea when I set out to do it - but do you ever have an idea and before you can reason yourself out of it, your mind is "wedded"* to the idea. It's like "too bad-you thought of it. Now you have to do it." *PC term

There were four kittens living down the street in what would be like a man hole, only it didn't have a cover and it was square. I say "were" because I caught them and now they're living in my bedroom. I think. All four of them are MIA at the moment which leads me to think they must have gone under the bed and crawled up into the box spring. Otherwise I have no clue.

I thought I would take in these four adorable babies and sequester them in my room, since I'm sleeping on the couch anyway, and foster them until I can find homes for them. I already bathed, trimmed the claws and flea shampooed all of them, and applied the necessary medicine which prevents them from getting fleas again for 6 weeks. However, I thought they would be a little more social - or easy to socialize. These babies hate me. They are hissy and bitey.

I thought they would be like Bella who when she was that age stayed all night in the cardboard box I put her in - even when she had to stay in the kitchen. These guys take off for the nearest corner as soon as I put them in the box. Two of them need eye drops like Bella did when I first got her but those two were not to be found this morning. And I thought they would take to Bella like a new mom. Bella is curious about them, but they are scared of her.

Last night I was plagued with guilt about how their poor mother must feel after I stole her four babies! Even though I know I did it because for their own good! I thought a flea bath and regular food would be good for them. I was dead set on finding them homes (before next Wednesday when I leave for the next camp). Now I'm having nightmares about dead kittens being stuck inside my furniture. None of them have eaten any of the food I put out for them yet, and I'm afraid I made a bad experience for them worth with the bathing them, and the twice catching them from their hiding places in the bedroom so I could administer the flea and eye medicines. Now I can 't find a one.

This may have been a mistake. But at least I realized catching their mother so I wouldn't have to separate her from her babies was a worse idea. She too would need a flea bath before she could become a guest in my lovely home and I don't think she would have been as accommodating as the kittens. I think she would have killed me.

Rest assured I have no intention of living with 5 cats, so even if these guys don't find homes and I have to get a sitter while I'm at camp, I'm still looking for a volunteer or a Romanian family to take them in. Unfortunately there's only room on the plane home for one cat, but there's room in my heart for all of them. If I can't find homes for them I have a lead on a Deva animal shelter where they can go.

In the meantime everyone I know in Deva has been mobilized to find a home for these feral kittens. I even have my number up on the bulletin board at my local vet's office. Now let's hope they come out from hiding so I can give them away!

Inner Rock Star
The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps, of which I am a proud volunteer.

I've never been someone who listened to music everywhere I went. I was kind surprised by this ear bud phenomenon. I've never been someone who walks around "plugged in." Even when I got my shiny MP3 player for Christmas I often forgot to bring it with me or forgot to put on some tunes if I was with other people. Therefore, sadly my last year in Romania has been mostly music-free. However, I recently took a train trip and realized the appeal of the ear bud culture. Now those ipod commercials with the dancing people finally make sense to me. When I have the ear buds in I don't have to give a care about anything. I don't even have to listen to my own thoughts! It's amazing.

I had forgotten how much energy one can get from music. It's like being plugged in to a battery, constantly recharging my strength and motivation to make through the day - like a strong cup of tea or a good fruit smoothie - and right now my fruit of choice is Queen (pun intended. Freddie forgive.)

I have been a Queen fan for a long time but I couldn't say I've been a big Queen fan. They are one of the bands I always liked but never owned any of their music, with the exception of the Bohemian Rhapsody single one side and Show must go on the other. However, by now I am proud to say that I am very close to accomplishing a goal I've had for my life since I was in high school - which is to learn all the words to Killer Queen.

For various reasons last week I decided it would be a good time to electronically acquire all of Queen's Greatest Hits Platinum Collection disks 1 through 3. And that last Tuesday would be a good day to listen to "Somebody to Love" for 11 hours straight. Then Saturday when I got on the train it was a nonstop jam session. The second train ride was about a half hour long and I couldn't sit still. Well today on the way home it was the same thing. My train was originally 20 minutes late. Not a good because I had an eight minute layover to make a connection. When I finally got on a brand shiny new train, I was told it was direct to Deva. Great! Especially considering I slept all of 3 and half hours the night before. Did I sleep? Not at all. It was a 100% Queen concert in my head. This was a nice train but it was what is call a cattle car. It's all open seating inside, no private compartments. And that was fine. It was happily lip-snyching and fidgeting in my seat until the very delayed train started moving again after an inexplicable 40 minute stop at a small village station, and I realized that I was the only one in my train car. Time to sing. I sang and sang whatever I wanted for about 35 minutes when I got up to walk to the back of the train car and wait for my station. That's when I noticed that the front of the car I was in opened up right to the train conductor. Not the guy who comes and checks the tickets - the guy driving the train, was listening to me the whole time.

Nothing to be too embarrassed about. I went to the back of the train and shut the door so I was in the little private room waiting by the door for the train to stop at my station. Two stations early. And I closed the door so I figured now I was really safe to belt out "Somebody to Love" at the TOP of my lungs. And I was standing in the moving train with the hand rails by which I could hold on to as I danced/prevented myself from falling. Then I noticed that though the door closed, the space above the door was completely open and I was not sealed in my happy little compartment.

"I try and I try and I try! But everybody wants to put me down..."

Maybe I would be more embarrassed if I had actually seen the train driver and made eye contact with him or if I knew that he understood English. It's possible he was driving the train with his own ear buds in.

I Love Deva
The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps, of which I am a proud volunteer.

Last Thursday was a big day for me. I took out my red bicycle I bought last August (and haven't ridden since last August) and had two guys fixing a car pump up the tires, and rode my bike to the Deva swimming pool. I've vaguely known that Deva has a city pool for a long time, but I've never been. I've heard from a lot of other volunteers reservations about Romanian public pools, but I thought I should at least go check it out.

It is so nice! There are actually three pools. One kiddie pool, on "middle" pool and then a pool that's two meters deep. I didn't actually find out how deep the other two pools are because I spent all my time in the two meter pool. In addition to three swimming pools, the whole pool-area which costs 5 lei to get in has a volley ball net, outdoor showers for rinsing off, and lots of outdoor bars and restaurants where you can get a beer and mici (sausages), corn on the cob, or ice cream and a variety of cold drinks.

And the water in the swimming pool is cold too. I hoped in and thought Wow! This is as cold as I wish my cool-aid would get in the refridgerator, however the cool-aid remains as cold as tap water. I swam laps across the two meters deep pool for two hours. Flotation devices are allowed and had I one of those floating rafts it would have been quite nice to float in the pool from which you can see our ruin of the ancient citadel in the hills.

I noticed, however that no one really swims acrross the pool the long way. Some guys were swimming across the pool the short way, but mostly everyone hangs around the edges of the pool and jump in and out. It's a lot of teenage guys thinking of new configurations of ways to fling themselves over the top of or into their friends and then into the water. And they don't always look at where or who they're jumping on to. And there are no life guards, so there's no mandatory 20 minute rest period - which would have been nice when swimming laps for two hours in water so deep you never once touch the bottom.

But the only bad thing about the pool is that there are no lockers. So I had to leave my bag with my bike helmet in it on my towel. I was actually expecting a phone call, so I went back to the towel repeatedly to check on my phone - but I guess I didn't check on my wallet. After I got dressed I left the pool and maybe I imagined I put my pool ticket into my wallet and my wallet in my pocket but when I arrived at the closest grocery store minutes later my wallet was nowhere to be found. And I had no minutes on my phone and no computer as mine was in the shop being fixed. And no money to recover my computer. Luckily at that moment when I was standing embarassed in the checkout line admitting I had no money, a friend called me and I was able to ask him to call Peace Corps and have the safety and security officer call me. But strangely, not two minutes later a collegue from my office called me to say someone had found my wallet and called the office. First I thought he had only my ID card. He was at the huge Super grocery store on the outside of town. I didn't know how to get there by bike and had no money on me for a cab so my work colleges drove out to meet him and he gave them my wallet while I waited at the office for them. I recovered my entire wallet, cards, IDs, and cash! I felt very lucky. And I immediately bought myself an ice cream cone!

Strangely enough, the amount of money in my wallet was about the exact amount that a pool pass costs. I think one might be a good investment. But regardless I'm looking for a friend to come with me on the 4th because I plan to spend the day at the pool - and I need someone to watch my bag.

Writer writer
The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps, of which I am a proud volunteer.

If you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up when I was five years old, I would have said an author illustrator. If you had asked me when I was in fifth grade I would have said the same, and when I was a junior in high school and a sophomore in college. I don't remember when things changed and I started to think being a fiction author wasn't a viable career option. Maybe it was when my manuscript was rejected from the First Young Adult Novel Contest and I realized the winner had an MFA in creative writing. I didn't realize you could major in creative writing because it wasn't a major at any state schools. And I figured that if someone with an MFA had to win a contest to get their novel published maybe I didn't have much of a chance.

Last year I decided to write my autobiography as a cook book some time in the future.

Some friends of mine and I decided to start holding each other responsible for writing goals (some of them said 10 pages in a month - I personally set no page limits for myself) but I don't think any of did much personal writing this month. I for one, I hadn't even realized it had been a month and was still thinking about my personal writing. I wasn't even going to mention it in this blog until someone just brought it up.

What I was going to say though was that I've recently realized that about 89% of my job is writing - and I seem to be doing a lot more writing than usual lately. Sometimes I'm writing introductory emails to random people I've never met hoping that we can collaborate. Other times it's finely tuned letters stating this is what I want, this is why you should give it me. I've written more than three proposals in the last five months. Last week was a perfect example of finding out the funding is available on Monday, sending out a proposal on Wednesday. That felt good. And then there was writing the same letter 22 times to send to different people. Not so good.

In my down time between writing for work - I actually do write letters and postcards home. And when work is slow (or like next week when I'll be recovering from camp) I write to Congress. (I'm not kidding I actually write letters to my congressional representatives.)

I've got to go work on another proposal now, but even though this blog is not a good example of my best writing (sometimes) it's nice to think that maybe all my talents haven't gone to waste.

Berry Bliss!
The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps, of which I am a proud volunteer.

I think for the first time in my life I went to the piata and bought only what was on my list and nothing else. That's because I made sure that my list included fresh strawberries. Because in late May and early June when the strawberries are ripe, life isn't worth living if you can't have strawberries. The strawberries are so ripe that the air in the market even smells like real fresh strawberries.

And they are delicious. I ate one as I was leaving the market and I swear it was sweet perfection in strawberry form. The ultimate strawberry. True berry bliss!

I waked home dipping into my bag of berries thinking about what I'm going to do with my whole kilo. Should I buy yogurt? make vanilla ice milk? add whipped cream? You know what I think I'll do. Eat them one at a time.

The whole kilo, you may ask. No, some now, and some later.

I was walking up my alley thinking of how this could be better. If I had fondue-set and some chocolate? If I somehow would have time this season to make strawberry preserves? If there was somehow a hammock in my life and a constantly replenishing bowl of perfectly ripe strawberries?

I was walking by the blooming roses and my alley is heavy with the perfume of tea rose - that is when its not smelling inexplicably like jasmine. (I don't know what the jasmine bush looks like, but it smells exactly like the time I made jasmine candles with a jar of candle fragrance purchased off the internet...good.)

And I decided not to think about ways to make this experience better. I have strawberries and good weather, pretty flowers. Why complicate things?

Woa!
The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps, of which I am a proud volunteer.

Some weird things happened this week. First of all two friends came to visit me during the week, bringing their friends with them so we could meet and become friends (isn't it nice?) and moreover so they could crash and my apartment while visiting the local tourist sites, one of them being the Castelul Corvinilor or The Corvin Castel in Hunedoara about twenty minutes away by car.

The funny thing is both these friends came with me the first time I saw the castle the Saturday after my birthday. Jesse came over on Sunday night with his Romanian friend Dragos who had never been to Hunedoara and wanted to tourist it up at castle. So Monday, after my meeting at the office the tree of us visited the castle, took a lot of pictures, and noticed while we were there there were a lot of old-fashioned looking wooden carts around, quite a bit of hay and an abundance of ladders made of tree branches.

Jesse left on Tuesday and that day Micah called and said he was visiting with his friend-from-home who he wanted to take to the castle as well as the famous Deva citadel. I wasn't sure if I'd go back to the castle since I'd just been there Monday but I decided to go, because believe-it-or-not Micah and I actually have a project going on with said castle so going there together would give us a chance to discuss work while boring his friend to tears, as I did to Jesse's friend who is not involved in our project.

When we approached the driver of our taxi wasn't allowed in the gate. We'd noticed a lot of trucks and trailers in the street leading up to the castle as well as a few guys in medieval costume, and also horse crap everywhere. Someone at the gate told us if we wanted to go in to the castle we had to hike around to the back entrance.


Once inside we noticed about two dozen people dressed as medieval knights, knights on horseback, and flags and banners that hadn't been around when I was there on Monday. But they still allowed us to pay admission to enter and walk around inside the castle. It turns out the castle was being used to film an Italian movie called Barbarossa (or Red Beard). The castle courtyard was being used as a holding area where the knights with banners, the horse mounted knights, and the horse drawn covered wagons would line up and wait for a signal to come over walkie-talkie, march out of the castle and across the bridge, then turn around and do it again. We got to watch this process about eight times. I counted 22 knights on horseback. I was fascinated by the horses. Big, shiny, healthy, beautiful looking horses the likes of which I haven't seen in a while, neighing loudly in the echoing courtyard. It was so exciting to see! Even though I know nothing about this movie or the actors in it I was instantly star-struck by being surrounded by a production and also suddenly filled with a five-year-old girl desire to always watch the horses - whatever they were doing!




The guy guarding the gate when we crept around front to try and sneak a view of the castle's main entrance didn't understand the question when I said "does the castle pay an Italian castle in the movie?" What I meant was: Is the movie set in Romania? I doubt it, though I was happy to see so many Romanians working as medieval soldiers in the movie.

It was an exciting and unexpected treat. Too bad I left my camera at home because I thought, (shrug) I've seen the castle. I was there days ago and I have pictures of it already!

But if you happen to see the movie Barbarossa - the saddle blankets - totally not period, but I doubt you'll be able to see that in the "storming out of the castle on horseback and across the bridge" scene.

Me and my new friend, Dragos

Yikes!
The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps, of which I am a proud volunteer.

It's times like this when it's hard to be so far away. To know that things are going on at home, you wish you could be there but you can't. Can't do anything about it.

This fire happened in my hometown Wednesday night, Thursday morning, leaving 70 people homeless. One of them is my brother. His apartment burned down and he evacuated with his hat, his wallet, his phone and his car keys.

I'm just glad everyone got out ok and no one was hurt.

But my brother's living at home again. Starting over from nothing. And there's nothing I can do for him from here but ask that you send him positive energy. If you have a couch or somehting that would be nice, but positive energy is more likely the order of the day.

What am I obsessed with today?
The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps, of which I am a proud volunteer.

Usually the answer to that would be Schwepp's Bitter Lemon. Oooh, I love me some Schwepp's Bitter Lemon...

Those of you who know me well, know I don't get in to new music easily. Usually it takes a cd player and at least a five-hour rode trip. See, for me, the purpose of music is to sing along with it (if it's show tunes - like it's your audition) so it's hard for me to get into new music because I almost never listen to anything I don't already know. Then last weekend a friend introduced me to this:



This is Mika. And this:



I realized that finding actual official - released by the band music videos on Youtube can be difficult, but I don't care I want to encourage this.



I was all excited to introduce you to Mika because as I said I don't get into new music very often, so for all I know this guy could be brand new - cds hot off the lazer writer. you guys are all still listening to cds, right?

Then the title of Sam's blog post shattered my image that I was into something new that you guys stateside don't yet know about. There's going to be years of you guys talking to me about movies like Bucket List that I don't know about and have never heard of.

Well, bring it on. Because I challenge you to name the song on this album I am completely obsessed with. I'll give you two hints - A) it sounds like Killer Queen and B) It's me, c'mon guys this shouldn't be hard.

Flat Broke
The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps, of which I am a proud volunteer.

I was thinking about what to write in my blog entry when I remembered I'm flat @$$ broke this month. Seriously. I shudder to think of it.

What happened was when I got back from vacation last month - I had just enough in my account to pay my rent. But I don't have to pay my rent on any fixed schedule, just whenever I see my landlord. So the last week in April I decided to take some of my rent money out of the bank and buy groceries. I didn't even spend it all. Just a little bit more than half.

Then at the end of April I either got paid for April or got my "allowance" for May - however you like to look at it, but since my landlord came by to drop off a brand-spanking new stove and oven last week I thought I should pay him the rent for April and May out of the same chunk of money which was automatically deposited in my account at the end of April. At the same time I withdrew 400 lei to pay the bills for April.

Recently my internet/cable company has decided to start charging people every other month for two months at a time. Which means I probably didn't pay a cable/internet bill in March - but what happened to the money? Who knows? Or more accurately I probably spent it on coffees and deserts when I was on vacation.

So after rent and bills I was already left with 71 lei for the month of May - and May hadn't started yet. That's about $29.58. And food is roughly the same price here as it is in the USA (so when I a jar of spaghetti sauce is roughly $3 in the USA - it's roughly 7 lei here.) Luckily I already bought enough groceries to (hopefully) last me the month.

That and I got 25 lei out of my change jar, and I had about 8 lei left over after I paid the bills.

However, I have two problems.

1) I went out for pizza today - because when a friend comes to town and you actually have someone visiting that you can sit at a table and speak English with, someone who is regularly denied pizza as much as I am denied opportunities to leave my apartment without spending money - you get 10 lei out of your change jar and go out to lunch with them.

2) I'm leaving on Thursday to go to a Peace Corps conference. Well, I'm leaving Thursday to visit a friend and going to the conference Monday through Thursday - but as I'll be gone for six days I need to show up to the person watching my cat with a week's supply of cat food and cat litter and I'm pretty sure to make it through the week I'm going to need to buy toilet paper, matches and yeast.

I'd like some milk for my tea too, but that's just silly when I'm leaving Thursday. A liter of milk will spoil and I can't afford it.

But I do need bus fair because tomorrow morning I have big meeting in another town at the time I'm usually opening my eyes and trying to decide if I can reasonably hit snooze for another half hour - and it's probably going to be about 10 lei round trip not to mention it would be good form to pay for the friend-who's-going-with-me-because-she-speaks-Romanian-better-than-I-do-although-English-isn't-her-first-language-either.

So I'm in a bit of a bind.

Also, I eat only fruits and vegetables. Or rather, because I'm a vegetarian I like to think I eat only fruits and vegetables but I actually eat mostly Schwepp's bitter lemon, banana peanut butter and honey sandwiches, potatoes, cheese, eggs and olives. But if you buy a month's supply of fruits and vegetables, specifically if you buy them at the end of last month - they go bad quickly. Which is why right now I have half a pizza in the fridge along with a big bowl of Greek salad, four carrots, and all the necessary ingredients to make another pizza - but all of which should be eaten before the end of the week.

Thankfully I have the unnatural luck of having a freezer so I can make another pizza and freeze it because I'm going to need to eat something later in the month. Too bad I can't do all my eating these first two weeks when I have access to good fresh food and then just not eat the rest of the month.

Which brings me to the point I wanted to make. No matter how low funds are I always have to remind myself that my needs will be met. Even when I've been really broke, I've never been totally broke. I mean, yeah, I've eaten nothing but rice and popcorn for a week. But I've always had a Safety Net - in college I would say I'm just going to eat this bag of apples and nothing else, but then I could go out to dinner and put it on my credit card. Here I have the option of using my American bank account (which I have only done three times and once was so I could buy medicine for my sore throat and which only has money in it because I found a wealthy pirate named Magwhich to be my patron). Or there was that time I was contacted by a collection agency because my health insurance never paid a bill I thought they had paid and I split the bill three ways with my parents.

Anyway, I attribute my ability to get by - to find a way to meet my needs - to live on a corner of a dollar more to privilege than to my own intelligence. In Moorhead I got to ride the bus for free - lucky me. Here, well I get reimbursed by Peace Corps for that medicine, eventually, so that will help me make it through the month.

So I'm not complaining. It's nice to know when you're broke that you're not really going to go under. It's an amusing challenge to see how far you can make it. Am I going eat plain baked potatoes with nothing but salt at the end of the month? Maybe. But I know I won't starve.

So if you're reading this take a moment to appreciate all the times you've had a Safety Net and then maybe go to The Hunger Site or something. Do something for someone who doesn't have a safety net. I know I will be doing that - after I make it through the week.

I hate being a responsible adult!
The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps, of which I am a proud volunteer.

Tomorrow is Easter in Romania and I don't have any plans to celebrate with anyone, but I was walking through the piata yesterday and everyone everywhere was selling rabbits. Live rabbits!
Little rabbits by the boxfull, big rabbits - three times the size of my cat, white rabbits, brown rabbits, gray rabbits, dirty rabbits, cute rabbits, rabbits in plastic bags (still alive).

Now I strongly suspect theser rabbits are...um, not being sold as pets, but every time someone called out to me in Romanian, "Domnishwara, Buy a rabbit for Easter!" I was tempted.

The rabbit could live in carboard box in my apartment. I could buy fresh sawdust for it at the pet store. It could eat the vegetable scraps from my cooking - or I could just go outside and pull up some fresh grass for it like everyone else is doing.

Bella and the rabbit could be friends and play together - because basically she's got nothing on a rabbit of decent size. She could be fierce to one of the little baby rabbits, maybe but otherwise I'm not worried. Besides, I'd be there to protect little Pipkin or Fiver.

I don't want to take a home to the USA. I just want a rabbit. Now. To play with for a while and after a couple of months I could take it to the top of the hill and release it into the wild (if I thought it could survive in the wild) and spare it being dinner.

I've never before been in a situation where getting a rabbit could be so easy. And you have to understand that I've wanted a rabbit all my very own for my whole life!!

But I know none of this would work out. None of it is a good idea. It's not good for me, for Bella, or for the rabbit. So I'm not getting a rabbit. And I hate being a responsible adult.

Spring Fever
The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps, of which I am a proud volunteer.

I am still not feeling 100%, I'm sad to report. My sore throat has persisted for what is now a week and three days. I've tried everything. I have Dr. recommended sore throat lozenges, Cold Remedy Tea, Magic Potion - that concoction of ginger, cinnamon and clove that I brewed up on Andy and co.'s stove in New York. I'm gargling salt water. I'm taking ibuprofen. I'm drinking Tuica.

In less than two weeks I've consumed nearly all of a 1,000 gram jar of honey in various mugs of piping hot beverage and honey is a natural antibiotic.

All this going back and forth between I-feel-better-because-I'm-up-and-about-and-probably-also-because-of-the-drugs and the waking up in the middle of the night with a throat so sore pain is radiating up to my ears and I don't even have to swallow for it to hurt is wearing me out. I must admit I have shut off the alarm several times this week and slept in later that I wanted to. I have been napping on the couch in the afternoons. I have engaged my cat in a lazy-off and I am winning.

We were even when we both fell asleep on the couch watching The Shawshank Redemption the other day but when I discovered I could watch Too Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar in 11 parts on YouTube and pulled the computer up so close to my face I could open each successive window by rubbing my eyelashes on the touch pad while drool pooled on the keyboard - I pulled ahead.

It's not that while feeling like crap-ola I'm ignoring my work as a volunteer. I can still send plenty of emails from right here - mug of tea in my hand - and right now sending emails is pretty much my job.

The other half of this post, however is about how my cat needs to get a job. She needs to do something because the green on the trees and the chirping birds outside the window is calling to her and she is whining constantly to go outside.

But it can't be helped. I can't let her on the ledge outside the kitchen window anymore. And not because a neighbor told me I can never open my kitchen window because she has her kitchen window open every day and if I do my cat will go out, cross the ledge go in through her kitchen window and eat her cheese (which she had done except for the cheese-eating part). But because once I let her out on the ledge and she crawled down a drainage pipe and was frolicking in the grass yard in front of our bloc and crossing the alley before I caught her.

I can't let her out on the balcony unsupervised because she could jump into the nearby tree, slide down it and be off and away on the ground.

I can't open the window in my room because she could push the mosquito-net held in with thumb tacks out of the window frame and be on the balcony (see above.)

Now, your cat getting outside might not seem like such a huge ordeal but Outside she is in Danger of being eaten by Stray Dogs, Hit By Cars, Attacked by other Wild Cats, trampled by Angry Horses, Tortured by School Children or perhaps just getting Lost and unable to find her way home.

You may think I'm exaggerating but I hear the alley cats screaming in pain through the window at night. It disturbs me that Bella has never given any indication of recognizing the cries of her fellow species.

I understand she's a cat and has an animal's desire to explore nature and breathe fresh air. There's no way I can get this cat to forget there is an Outside and accept being an Indoor cat because she was born outside and spent the first 6 weeks of her life there. And her babysitters thankfully have a too-high-to-jump-off-of balcony where she can go in and out as she pleases. So its no wonder she's not happy to be home.

I know she she wants to climb trees and chase pigeons but it's too much of a risk. Too many bad things could happen to her and frankly I don't want to lose her and have to go back to living alone in this apartment. The thought of it is too depressing. Maybe that's selfish and over protective but its the way it is.

So now we've got some problem solving to do. Last summer I hardly ever had the windows closed. And now Bella is crying and moaning when the weather isn't even nice. The sky is gray and it's rained all but one day this week. So for now I'm considering getting her a collar and one of those free-range leashes. We'll see.

Something tells me we have a long season ahead of us.