10 Week Home with our Gazda (Host)

Here are our hosts, Constantin (Constantine) and Maria, in the kitchen/dining room. This is their 6th time hosting a Peace Corps volunteer and are very laid back. It's nice how they accomodate our schedules and needs. The kitchen is efficient with less to clean. The table we move out when it's time to eat, and put it back against the wall when we're done. Good use of space, I think.

Costel and Maria speak a few words of English as they've been to the States a few times. But we're definitely using the Romanian we're learning in school to communicate with them. It's amazing how much more we understand as we progress through our classes. After just 5 days we've learned greetings, asking for directions, asking occupation, describing the house, asking and telling the time, and all kinds of other things. It's AMAZING!

Hotel "Chentral"

Here are some pictures from our first experiences in Romania. We stayed in Hotel Central ("Chentral")

Our Hotel Room .... Small, but very nice and cosy. The electricity only works when you put your room key in power slot.... :)

In the dining room of the hotel. Very good food... and very different. We'll be sharing recipes with our host family (gazda = host) before we leave. Some VERY tasty dishes!

Trip through Frankfurt

Here's Nils and I in the Frankfurt Airport on the way to Bucharest. My first time "in" Germany.... well anywhere outside of North America really. This was Nils' 4th time, 7th time across the Atlantic ocean. He actually lived in Germany for a month right after High School. The flight over the Atlantic obviously took it's toll on us, even though it only took about 7 hours. Nils did sleep some on the plane while I watched two movies (I just couldn't sleep, it was like 7:00pm Eastern time.) We flew on Lufthansa... a very nice airline which constantly gave us meals, snacks, drinks, and a heated towel.

Here we're waiting in Frankfurt for them to open the second security line to get to our gate. We had already passed through an exact 10 feet away we had already gone through another security line. The airport is enormous and made announcements always in at least two languages. Very cool!

Staging in Philadelphia til Wednesday

We made it to Philadelphia!! Molly met us at the airport and loaded up all of our stuff. Funny, we had so much stuff that Nils had to take the shuttle to the hotel! No room for Nils. Molly also brought us dinner! Thanks Molly! It was simply delicious! It was good to see a friendly face before heading off to Romania with complete strangers!

Training started today. The trainers do a great job mixing up the activities and helping us get to know the other volunteers. There's young and old in our group, so we hear varied comments and experiences as we work in groups going over principles of development and safety. Most of our shared fear comes from not knowing what to expect in Romania and trying to soak in all the information. It's so nice we get to be together as a married couple! We're one of two couples in our group. It should be fun getting to know everyone!

We will continue to have Internet access until Wednesday early morning (so pretty much just tomorrow). Don't exect to hear from us the rest of the week since it will take time to get settled and find where all the "hotspots" are for internet and get an international phone card.

As to mailing things to us... it's better to wait to send us packages. Once we've finished training and provide you guys with a real address, then it's safe to send us things. Otherwise, it'll probably be sent back. BUT, you are free to send us LETTERS!!! :) Here's the address:

Our name
Peace Corps Romania
Str. Negustori nr. 16, Sector 2
Bucharest, Romania

We want to thank everyone who has helped us get this far. It STILL hasn't sunk in yet that we're going to Romania for 27 months. It's already been an amazing journey just preparing to go. Thank you. Love to all!!

Ahhh... We made it.

Nils and I arrived in Millville, UT (near Logan) last Thursday after a day of driving through California and Nevada. Funny... Nils and I had to put chains on our tires to make it through Donner's pass. That was a first for Nils. We had to lay in the wet snow and put these $60 chains on. We could have spent an extra $20 to have someone install them for us, but of course, a penny saved is a penny earned.

Figuring the car was a rear-wheeler, we started following the highly visual instructions for installing chains to the rear tires. To complete installation, I got in the driver's seat and put the car in 1st gear to move the car forward a few inches. As I applied the gas, the car proceeded to slide and the tires proceeded to spin without any real progress. Wrong set of wheels. Front-wheel drive. Doh! So we had to take the chains off the back tires and start all over again, getting more wet and cold in order to move them to the front. Added some adventure to our little trip.... and some soaking to our little pants.

Upon arriving to Utah, we were greeted with a nice snow storm. Not actually too bad until we got to our parents' driveway where Nils' dad was hard at work plowing. He wasn't finished yet, but we were in a daring mood, so we took our loaded car right into a pile of snow and got stuck. Oh, wasn't Dad happy. At least we made it. :)

Moving Pains

Well, it's time to move again. Just once more before our big move to Romania. And in preparation for moving from California, I had to paint over my wall art. So, below are pictures taken right before I painted over them. Sad... but not really.

Freehand and not my best work, I had a lot of fun painting directly on the wall. The first one I did (the yellow and green one) I started when a friend was over visiting. She was talking about something while I was mixing my paint, and she stopped mid sentence as she saw me paint right onto the wall. She was quite surprised that I was just going to paint without even drawing with pencil first. Gotta love shock value.

Model for a Day

Through some luck I met Bill Millios, a wonderful gentleman who's picked up photography as a hobby. Having recently been married, and still fitting into my dress, Bill asked if I would do a bridal shoot for him, to help him build the wedding side of his portfolio. It was definitely fun learning how to model. Luckily my sister-in-law Sharole came along to help out and give me feedback.

This picture is one of my favorites. If you're interested in more, send me an e-mail and I'll give you the link to the gallery, while it's still up, or I'll send you some.

As fun as this experience was, I don't see modeling in my future :)