GOD BLESS THE WASHING MACHINE


So I am finally in Valcea, and you will be happy to learn that I finally have a toilet seat ( it's the squisy type that hisses when you sit on it), and today the landlord brought my fridge from the country side. Yippeee skippy, it's nice to have a fridge, after talking to you folks, i am going to buy food!! Perishable food!! Up till now I have been living on can goods and bread. Hearty!
I am in the process of cleaning and cleaning and cleaning. The kitchen was and still kinda is nasty. I washed all of my miss matched plates and assorted jars. I threw away a disgusting garlic press with three year old garlic encrusted inside it. Oh it was nasty. And I took off these furry and full of dust couch covers to find a full of dust couch. Luckily the landlord left a vacuum cleaner so that has been a tremendous help. I am also happy because i located where the moth ball smell was eminating from. The landlord had placed a bad full of the stuff in my linen box and thought it took a lot of digging, I got that sucker out and threw it away. Hopefully the grandma smell will start to dissipate in the next week. And I can't forget to mention the thousands ( you think I'm exaggerating, but I'm not) cut glass wine and shot glasses I removed from various china cabinets and hid in the hall closet with the assorted religious art and decorative plates. This place is hilarious I tell you. I have found so cool things though. Sorting through various boxes I came accross a ton of old postcards. This is treasure stuff, they are pre-communist and communist style postcards from all over Romania. I swear Communism drained all the creative architectural impulse out of people. There must be fifty postcards just of communist style blocs in Bucharest; sterile, uniform and concrete is how I would describe them. I pulled a bunch out of the box and decided to use them for wall art. I though they would be kinda funny. But the biggest task that I did today was laundry and oh was it a chore. Folks I would like you to take a moment and kiss your washing machine. Just do it. I can wait here. Go ahead and kiss it, hug it, make it feel your appreciation because hand washing sucks, and hand washing jeans sucks even more. I washed my kaki ( how do you spell that?) pants last night and stupid me forget to look in all of the pockets. Well, the pockets turned flourescent pink and purple...that is the color ( for future reference) that bleeds out of lined paper). So today I bleached them and some of the purple came out. I am learning. The thing that sucks the most is the wringing things out. It takes muscles. But such is life in the posh core.
So I wanted to shout out a THANK YOU VERY MUCH AND I LOVE YOU! to everyone for making my birthday so special. To everybody who called, you really made my day over and over again. It was a super day...I woke up late that morning and went jogging around this huge lake in Constanta. And when I came back to the apartment, Elizabeth one of the other volunteers attending the drama conference called me on my cell phone. "Where are you Nina, Vanda ( my counterpart) needs your help?" I was running super late. So, I hurried up and hopped on a maxi taxi to the camp where the conference was being held. When I got there the session was just ending and I joined in on the last exercise. Jane the instructor had all of the teachers get together in a giant circle. What we were supposed to do was create a "picture of happiness." She askes for a volunteer to start the tableau. Nobody was volunteering so, I finally did and went out into the middle of the circle. One buy one all of the teachers surrounded me to create a frozen mimed image of happiness. After everyone was in place Jane yelled out, "All we are missing is a bit of color!" And then all at once all of the teachers threw up streamers all around me and started to sing Happy Birthday in english and then La Multi Ani in Romanian. I almost started to cry. It was so unexpected and so overwhelming. They made me a huge conical hat out of crey paper and shells and two of the teachers painted me a picture of the sea ( more wall art). I couldn't have asked for a better birthday. Later that evening a bunch of volunteers that I met at the conference took me out to Mexican food in Constanta. It was actually good. They had guacamole and I drank sangria ( although that's spanish) which was decent. All in all it was a 10 plus day, one of my best so far in Romania. So thank you again!!!
Today was also my first day of school ( kind of). One the first of the month all the teachers go to school to plan for the rest of the year. So today marks the end of vacation which is bitter sweet, good because I am looking forward to being busy, bad because i am not looking forward to being busy. But you can't stop time. Well, I better sign out here. Sorry for the random and sparse entries. Once I have a schedule so will they. I love you all and miss you more each day.
neens