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.

 

Merry Christmas!

We had a wonderful Christmas! Some of our best experiences included:

Christmas Morning in Pascani

1) Christmas concert performed by 30 local priests.

Colinde by the Priests

2) Visits from volunteers Stephen, Anthony, Abby, and Aran.

3) Carolers on Christmas Eve, including two groups of Theron's students.

12A Stops by to Sing

4) Anthony's spaghetti sauce, which ended up feeding all of us for a week.

5) Decorating our Christmas tree with popcorn garland made by Theron and Anthony, and ornaments made by my 3rd graders. (The 3rd graders win.)

6) Christmas "breakfast" at the Judele's house including pork roast and sausage, fresh from the slaughter, and lots of homemade alcohol starting at 9:00 a.m.

Anthony, Theron, Stephen, Lucia, Sarah, Mădălina & Cristi

7) Traditional Moldovan Christmas meal (including răcitură, a meat jello) prepared by one of Theron's counterparts and her husband.

Răcitură!

8) Party for St. Stephen's Day which is the name day of Theron's principal's husband. "Name days" or "saint days" are like second birthdays based your name and the Orthodox calendar.

9) Seeing mini "parades" of people in traditional costumes playing traditional music, or in goat and bear costumes dancing.

A Christmas Parade

10) Knowing that New Year's is celebrated for three days and we still have two more weeks of vacation!

Well Done, Google!

Happy Ziua Naționiăl a României! Today is a Romanian holiday that celebrates the unification of Romania as a country. For most of its history, Romania has been occupied by foreign invaders. This holiday is celebrated with great pride, including school programs, parades, town-wide celebrations with music and dancing, and the ever present Romanian food, sarmale.

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.