Very Superstitious

One thing that is most interesting about living in another country is that we can clearly see superstitions everywhere. There are a few superstitions that Americans have in common with Romania (such as a black cat crossing your path and spilling salt), which I find to be very intriguing. I wonder where these belief systems come from and how they live on. Another strange thing we have noticed is that Romanians from different parts of the country do not necessarily agree on these superstitions, even to the point where they are completely opposite.

• The most prominent one is curent - basically everyone we have met believes that this is science. It's a breeze that can cause everything from fevers to toothaches. Here's a great article from The Telegraph that explains it much better than I can: Where Draughts Are Truly Dangerous. The  article fails to mention that you can prevent the dangers of curent by putting cotton in your ears.
• Depending on the part of the country, a woman can't leave the house after her baby is born until:
• the baby is baptized
• for 7 days
• for 7 weeks!
• If you break a drinking glass or break a dish, it is good luck
• If you step in dog poop, it is good luck
• If you leave something at home and go back for it, it is bad luck
• If you see a priest on the street, it can either be good or bad luck depending on where you live
• You should put red on a baby after baptism
• Breaking a window is bad luck
• Spilling pepper is bad luck
• Instead of crossing your fingers for luck, you hold your fists tightly
• If your right palm itches, you will give money away. If your left itches, you will receive money (or opposite depending on the part of the country)
• If your right eye twitches, someone is saying good things about you; if your left eye twitches,  they are saying bad things
• If your nose itches on the outside, you are in conflict with someone; if it itches on the inside, you've got good luck
• If you hiccup, someone is talking about you
• Breaking the heel of your shoe is bad luck
• Putting your clothing on inside-out is bad luck
• If you put your bag or purse on the floor, you will lose money
• Women who sit at the corner of a table will not get married
• You should have money in your pocket on New Year's Eve to have a prosperous year
• You have to wear red underwear on New Year's Eve
• On New Year's, you should eat garlic, fish, lentils and grapes
• Finding a horseshoe is good luck, and so is hanging one over the door of your house, but you have to hang it like a "U" so that the luck doesn't fall out
• Giving an even number of flowers is bad luck, because you give an even number at a funeral
• If you give a wallet as a gift, you should put a small amount of money in it so that the recipient is prosperous
• If you have a headache, someone may be speaking ill of you. You should light a match and use it to make the sign of the cross. Then put the match out in a glass of water. Do this three times. Then throw the water out. If the matches are thrown out with the water, the person wasn't actually speaking ill of you. If they stay in the glass, you have cursed the person speaking ill of you
• Many horses have red baubles hanging near their faces to bring good luck
• If you sweep under a girl's feet, she won't get married
• If the bride steps on the grooms foot on their wedding day, then she will wear the pants in the family
• If a boy wears a necklace, he'll marry an old woman
• If you refill a woman's glass of alcohol before she is finished, her children will stutter
• For a funeral procession in the country, you put drinking glasses and buckets in the wells for children to throw coins into
• If your bucket comes up empty from the well, you will have bad luck
• If a woman walks barefoot or sits on something cold, she can freeze her ovaries and won't be able to have children

Voroneț Monastery

Some of the most sublime features in our region of Romania are the painted monasteries of Bucovina. Back in July we visited the Voroneț Monastery, built in 1488, during the reign of Ștefan cel Mare. The exterior paintings were done during his son's reign in the mid 1500s. The west wall is the most amazing, in its nearly perfect state of preservation. The paint itself is only a fraction of a millimeter thick, and the beautiful blue color cannot be exactly reproduced to this day. The recipe for Voroneț blue and the explanation for its preserved state are both deep mysteries. Some might even call them miracles. The west wall tells the story of judgement day. You can see the white, Christian Romanians going to heaven, and the dark-skinned Islamic Turks being judged harshly. In fact the monastery was built to celebrate a successful battle in the region. There are many parts of this fresco that I do not understand. There are animals who look like they have eaten humans, with body parts hanging out of their mouths. There are people dressed in something like a mummy wrap in square boxes or boats. There is a scene with an octopus and a whale, with a giant human holding a large ship. There is also a curious mixture of astrology with zodiac symbols across the top of the scene. This single fresco seems rich enough in its symbolism for a PhD thesis. Something to do after the Peace Corps?

Fieni

The computer I use to edit photos has been out of service for a while, but it's back in business. Now I just have a backlog of over 6,000 photos to go through. For those of you complaining that I'm not taking enough pictures, it's definitely not that. The problem seems to be just the opposite! Here are a few new ones from our trip to București and Fieni. We were welcoming our fellow volunteer Jon back from a trip to the U.S.

 

The Intricacies of the Romanian Postal "System"

When I was a kid, one of my favorite TV shows was Young Riders, an action/drama about the beginnings of the Pony Express with lots of horse riding, show-downs, etc. Let's just say that my experiences with the Romanian Poștă are vaguely reminiscent.

The post office will not deliver international packages to our town; they will only deliver them to the county capital. Our county capital is an hour and a half by train. The post office is only open during the week and only the person whose name is on the package can pick it up. This makes holding down a job and receiving packages a difficult combo. Luckily we have a friend, Melissa, who lives in the capital of a neighboring county. It's also about an hour and a half way. So we have the packages sent to her - WITHOUT our names anywhere on the box. She can pick them up between 8 am and 12 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It's unclear why the postal workers are not able to touch the boxes at other times.

Around the beginning of October, my dad sent us two boxes (yeah!). However, after five weeks they hadn't arrived. I called Melissa every week to check on the packages, but she never received a slip indicating that they had arrived. Finally my dad confirmed that the US Postal Service had delivered them to Romania three weeks ago. Another quirk of the Romanian system is that if packages are not picked up after 10 days, they will be returned to the sender. We were way past this time and figured that the packages were already westbound over the Atlantic. Finally, I begged Melissa to go the the post office and ask about them. She promised to do it the very next day.

The next morning at school, a random student came up to her and told her that she needed to pick up her packages immediately, or her dad (apparently the postman) would be forced to send them back to America. You heard this right; Melissa lives in the capital of her county, a city of 200,000 people, and she was informed about her packages by an eight year old. It's my hunch that the girl had been instructed weeks earlier to tell Melissa about the packages in lieu of the normal slip. Later that afternoon, Melissa was able to pick up the packages and was only charged a small "storage fee." But he drove her and the two boxes to her apartment, so all was good in the end... just like every episode of the Young Riders.

IASIMUN and More Fame

This past weekend five of my high school students participated in IASIMUN, a Model United Nations conference in the nearby city of Iași. It took place at Racovița High School, voted the best high school in România. I was extremely proud of my students, who held their own in the debates and were able to come away from the conference more confident and excited about participating in things like this in the future. The students debated issues ranging from the ethics of assisted suicide to the politics of the Jasmine Revolution, all in English.

Yet again, I took one for the team and appeared on the news in an interview. You will find an interview with another Peace Corps Volunteer, Amanda, for the first minute, and then you can find me at the three minute mark. This interview was in English, so I felt quite a bit more comfortable in front of the camera!

I am really looking forward to this conference next year. I am excited to know the format and what is expected of the students, and I am hoping to do a much better job to prepare them. For more information, you can go to iasimun.org.

Hram in the Countryside

"Oh my God! What happened here? Look at all the blood!" exclaimed Sarah.

"Oh, that?" answered ten year old Mădălina cheerily. "Grandma just killed a chicken for dinner. After you help clean it, he'll kill a couple of rabbits for tomorrow. Theron, want to watch? Don't forget your camera!"

Welcome to the Romanian countryside! Sarah and I spent the weekend in with our friends, Lucia and Cristi, and their families for a hram in the village of Lunca Moldovei. I'm still not quite sure what "hram" means, but from my experience it's a lot of cooking, eating, drinking, dancing and conversing (in Romanian of course).

Grandma

As for the animal slaughtering, I consider this an easing into Christmas, where the tradition is to slaughter and roast a full size pig. I hear that the pig is going to be enormous. Don't forget Easter either, where we'll be eating fresh mutton (sheep) and goat.

This weekend we heard that you should not participate in the killing of an animal if you're going to be upset by it. This isn't for your benefit, but for the animal's. According to Romanians, your sadness will prolong the agony and death of the animal. Many members of the family have never even seen a chicken killed - they have always made sure they're somewhere else when it happens.

One of the coolest things about helping to clean the chicken was that there were eggs in there! There was one ready to be laid, with a hard shell. That one was taken out to fry up for dinner. There were a bunch of other ones in various stages of "doneness." They were bright red and soft, as though they were made of blood. I was pretty surprised to find that we just left them attached to the carcass when we threw it into the soup. We also tossed in the head (minus the beak), liver, neck, feet, heart, and stomach (aka gizzard). I was lucky enough not to find a chicken head in my soup, but I did get a heart and part of the gizzard. Sorry for the joke, but it really did taste like chicken!

As promised, we ate all four of the rabbits the next day. Lucia's brother, Vali, seasoned them and roasted them on a rotisserie over an open fire. All table manners disappeared when the rabbits were ready. A hoard of people literally tore off chunks with their fingers, swore at the heat of the meat, and smiled from ear to ear when they finally got a taste.

We cooked all of the food in a tiny room separate from the house, which they called the kitchen. The kitchen had no running water in it, even though there was running water in the house. Even though it was called the kitchen there was a bed in there, where people came to chit chat or to rest between some cooking task. Since the door was constantly being opened and closed, everyone was clothed in tons of layers and stocking caps while they cooked.

Sarah Bundled Up in the Kitchen

Everything is cooked on a huge wood stove, called a soba. There was a metal plate right above the fire where you could add or remove rings to expose a pot directly to the flames. I think this helped to regulate the temperature on the food. Despite the primitive way to regulate the temperature, I never saw any of the food burn, whereas we burn stuff on our gas stove at home pretty much daily.

There was also a huge ceramic tile section on the soba that warmed the room. Many of the Peace Corps volunteers here use a soba to heat their homes. As for us, we just turn a knob and our radiators get hot. Posh Corps!

We learned a few subtleties of the language while we were there. For example, to get a cat out of the room you yell "câț" (which sounds like a mixture between "cuts" and "kits", and you have to really pronounce that last 's' like cutssss). But to get a chicken out of the room you yell "huș" (which sounds like "whoosh"). There's another word to get a dog out, but I liked the dog so I didn't use it much, and forgot what it was! There are also three completely different words to get these animals to come to you. I'm almost positive these are specific to Moldova. What a language!

Drumul cu Ceață

The weekend was exhausting. And absolutely fantastic. This really is the kind of experience that we dreamed of when we decided to join the Peace Corps way back when. We're still learning new things about the culture, the language and the people of Romania every day, and we've still got almost two years to go. Who knows what treasures we'll discover!

Plunging In

Who knew that you could find a friend while looking for a plunger? When we first moved to Pașcani, we wandered around town trying to find the things we needed for our apartment. Our toilet is pretty awful, so we went to the hardware store to find a plunger. Of course, we didn't know the Romanian word. So, like always, we started gesturing and using our limited vocabulary to explain. (Somehow these gestures seemed a little inappropriate to me, but when you have to get your point across....) The clerk engaged in our game of charades and we struck up a conversation. She was patient, kind, and interested in our story. Most importantly, we could understand her Romanian accent and she spoke slowly! Even though her store was across town, we returned to visit her each time we needed something. After going to the store three times, I asked her to be my Romanian tutor. And now we've become friends with her family. We've cooked sarmale, gone out for ice cream, visited their families in the country (which included a whirlwind tour of many of the monasteries nearby), and learned a lot of Romanian. This friendship is perhaps my proudest accomplishment of the last 5 months.

Lucia, Mădălina & Cristi at Mănăstirea Sihăstria

Târgoviște Wanderings

Bran Castle

Way back in June, Sarah and I took a trip to visit what is popularly known as Dracula's Castle with the father of our host family, Jovanka, and Candice. Turns out that the castle has nothing to do with either the Bram Stoker book, or the historical prince the book was based on. It's just the most prominent castle in Transylvania and someone was really good at marketing. But, the castle is still lovely and we had a great time.

On the way up we stopped at a memorial site for one our host father's relatives that was killed by the securitate during the Ceaușescu regime. We also visited a memorial for a large battle fought in WWI in the area. We got a long tour in Romanian by someone at a small museum. I think Jo understood most of it, but I was clueless.

Don't miss the picture of Jo starting the biggest curent ever felt in Transylvania. Curent is what we would call a breeze or a draft, but here it is considered extremely dangerous to your health. Jo seems to revel in this risky behavior. And definitely don't miss the gummy Dracula teeth. They're scary sweet.

After the photos, I have included a text that we saw in the castle about a more ancient demonic myth, similar to vampires. My favorite part is how dangerous it is for a woman to go outside without covering her head.



Strigoi

In Romanian Mythology, Strigoi are the evil souls of the dead. The word is derived from the Romanian "striga," cognate with Italian, which means "witch."

The strigoi is born as any child, but they have a distinctive sign: a bonnet, a veil on the head or a nightgown. Such a child is given birth by a woman, who drank accursed water when she was pregnant, or when she went outside with nothing on her head. Then, Satan comes and puts a red bonnet on her head, just like the one he has. To prevent the child from turning into a strigoi, the bonnet must be removed off the child's head as soon as possible, or else the child takes the bonnet and swallows it undergoing the transformation.

A strigoi is said to be bald on top of his head. He does not eat onions or garlic, fears frankincense, and during St. Andrew's Night, he sleeps outside. His spinal cord is prolonged in a tail, covered in hair.

If there is drought in a village, it means that a strigoi exists there and hinders rain; if it rains and hail falls, then God is punishing the strigoi and if it rains while the sun is shining it is believed that a strigoi is getting married.

Infants who die not baptized, the dead who did nothing but bad deeds while they were alive, those who die of sudden deaths (hung, shot, drowned...), the sick who are not watched and walk over a cat, or the dead who have been walked over by cats, dogs, chickens or any other birds risk turning into one.

At full moon, they come out of their graves or leave their bodies and start dancing or doing all kinds of bad things. Their night is St. Andrew's Night (November 30).

The strigoi also steals cow milk, wheat, people's strength, hinders rain, brings about hail and death among people and animals. On St. George's Day (April 23), young men sprinkle water on young women so as not to be affected by the strigoi or turn into one.

In order to kill them, the grave of the one supposed to be a strigoi needs to be found and priests hold a religious service (but they are often powerless) and a stake, made of oak or ash tree, is driven through its heart, and then the creature is nailed to the coffin to prevent it from getting out and harming people.

Layover in Bucharest

One day, not too terribly long ago, we had a couple of hours to explore Bucharest, the capital of Romania. We didn't know where we were going or what to do there, but we had a fun time hanging out all the same.

Step-by-Step

When you move to a new country, you spend a lot of time not knowing how to do things. You don't know how to shower without a shower curtain. You don't know how to eat the whole tiny fried fish staring up at you. You don't know how to use the washing machine with its unknown symbols. If only there were step-by-step directions with pictures for all those little things we don't know how to do…

I have to admit that we definitely felt superior when we saw these directions for cereal. For the first time in months, we were the ones who didn't need instructions. When our friend saw our cereal box, she showed us this hilarious video of a comedian feeling superior about the directions that exist on pop tart boxes. Perhaps there are some Romanians out there who appreciate the instructions...

Pictures of Pașcani (and Nearby Monasteries)

Here are some photos of our new town. When we came to visit for the first time, Sarah's principal took us to visit a couple of monasteries in the area as well.

As you can see from the panoramic shots of Pașcani itself, it's not a terribly small town, but not exactly a big city either. A few of these shots are taken from our apartment (on the 10th floor). Another one is taken from the top of Scarile Mare, a giant staircase in the middle of town. The town is basically split in two, between Dealul (the hill) and Valea (the valley).

Brașov

On our way to visit our site for the first time, we were able to stop in Brașov. It is an extraordinarily beautiful mountain city in Transylvania. While many cities in România have a distinctly Soviet feel to them, due to the bloc apartment buildings that were constructed during communism, Brașov looks and feels like a medieval European city. Unfortunately we did not have too much time there, and the tourist sites we tried to visit were closed because it was a national holiday. That just means we'll have to go back!

Parcul Chindia

The most historic part of Târgoviște is Parcul Chindia. We had been there plenty of times, but never actually did a tour of it until late in our stay. When our counterparts came to meet us, we decided it was the perfect excuse.

A decent source of information about the tower and princely courts is Wikipedia.

Tennis in Chindia Park

It wasn't all work and no play during training. I was able to get away for an evening of tennis with some trainees, volunteer leaders and a language instructor. I was hoping to learn a few new curse words in Romanian, but no luck there.

One strange thing to me was that the tennis court cost money, and quite a bit by my new standards. A court was 30 lei per hour. Since I played one-on-one for two hours, I had to pay a full 30. That's only $10 US, but it was enough to keep me away for the rest of my time in training. To put it into perspective, a 1/2 liter beer is usually about 4 lei (or $1.25).

The tennis courts are in a public park called Parcul Chindia, which literally means Sunset Park. It is a very historic area. I'll have more photos from the area tomorrow. The first statue is of Vlad Țepeș, aka Vlad the Impaler, aka Dracula. The second statue is his father, Vlad Dracul. These guys lived back in the 1400s and are heroes of southern Romania. The tower, called Chindia Tower, was begun during the reign of Vlad Țepeș and the ruins were probably his royal courts.

Thanks to Jovanka for the tennis action photos! I was too busy getting crushed by Chris to take any myself.

Mânăstirea Dealu

One day, a bunch of us walked to a monastery near our town. It was constructed in the early 1500s, but many of the interior paintings are 20th century. Some of my favorite paintings here are very modern and done with pointillism. On the trek up to the monastery, there was also a beautiful view of the city of Târgoviște from the hillside; Mânăstire Dealu means Hill Monastery.

Arriving in Târgoviște

Here is the first set of some long overdue photos. We finally have stable internet, so I plan on posting links. These photos are all from the city of Târgoviște, our home town for the first couple of months.

Suntem Voluntari

Today, our group of 36 trainees became volunteers. This means that we have completed our training and we are officially part of the Peace Corps for the next two years. We leave for our new home this weekend.

It was a beautiful and emotional day. Here is a picture taken of our group and our country director, Sheila Crowley. Click the pic for more sizes on Flickr, or here are direct links to large and huge.

Legacy

The Peace Corps Romania Country Director has let us know that we will be the last group to serve in Romania. I have mixed emotions about this, as you might expect. But overall, I am very excited that the country has made so much progress. On the other hand I can't say that we aren't needed here. Then again, every country in the world could use more people volunteering more often, and many other countries have an even greater need than Romania.

This year is the 20th anniversary of Peace Corps in Romania, and we will be about half way through the 23rd year when we finish. I feel very lucky to get the opportunity to be part of it. Our whole group hopes to leave a legacy worthy of the Peace Corps name and worthy of all of the efforts over these many years.

If you're interested, here is some more information about the announcement: http://www.romania-insider.com/peace-corps-to-end-its-program-in-romania-by-2013/27419/

Going Home for the First Time

Sarah and I are off to our new home this morning. We will be living in a large town of about 40,000 people. It is in the Moldova region and in the county of Iași. Iași city is considered one of the cultural centers of the country and will only be about an hour train ride from our town.

I'll be teaching high school (although my school goes down to the same age as 6th graders in the U.S.) and Sarah will be at the middle school (but teaching 2nd through 9th U.S.). We met our counterparts this weekend, who will be a major component of our support system as well as teachers in our schools. The first impressions were great and we're looking forward to getting to know them very well over the next two years.

My counterpart, Roxana, and her fiancee are driving us there and we'll get to go through Brașov, a major scenic town in Romania. This is really our first time getting to see any of the country, besides the city we have been in for all of training. We are so excited and can't wait to share our thoughts and pictures!