"Buna seara (good evening)!"
"Buna seara!"
"Ati hotarut? (Have you decided?)"
"Da, Da. As vrea muschi de porc, mazare, cartofi copt si pentru baut un suc...coca-cola. (yes, yes. I would like the nape of a pig, fine freen peas, an oven basted potato and to drink a juice..coke.)."
"Multumesc. (tank you)"
"Multumesc si eu. (tank you and me)"

No really, I can order the nape of a pig, lumpy corn mush, or a steaming bowl of "tummy" soup. Once I was tempted to try the Geek salad but wary of the "bitter vegetational greens" I thought I'd just stick with the squashed aubergine salad instead. Lately I have had the hankering for a big serving of freen peas, the finer the better. (translation green beans).
I love going to restaurants and ordering from the English translation menu. It brings added spice to my mundane Romanian routine. I mean tummy/ belly/ stomach soup, can life get better, can food get more interesting?!
Disgusting English food items are not the only amusing Englishisms that I encounter on the street daily. English is misspelled and misapplied everywhere. It's great! The best was a two year old girl being led down the street by her mother "KINKY" written in bold upon her tiny little chest. Tons of name brand knock-offs from Turkey manipulate English until most product names and slogans have no meaning whatsoever (that is no meaning to me the native speaker). There existed a GUCCI knock-off CUCCI handbag (pronounceed coochie). I have seen every bastardization of Adidas possible, abbibas, adddidas, appidas, but my personal favortie brandname rip-off is, mike instead of nike. I almost bought Mikey a pair of those shoes. The bus company that I take to get to Bucharest has an English slogan, "the roads goes ons forever." I recently recieved a plastic bag that "tanked me bery much". Some altered names are almost better then their originals as is the case with fine freen peas. I mean it just has a ring to it that green beans doesn't. MMmm those freen peas are fine.

There are three Peace Corps doctors. Doctor Dan, Doctor Alice and Doctor Ilana. They deal with all our complaints splinters, to arthritis and they are really wonderful doctors (especially the smoking, drinking, and motorcycle riding Dr. Dan, he's really the best, no joke). They are like overbearing mothers sometimes, in fact I think that they may worry about our health even more than our own mothers. If you happen to be in the office and mention you have a cold you will not leave without an armload of pills and ointments and an earful of instructions. This will all most definitly be followed up with two calls daily for the next week and minute to minute accounts of the color and texture of your stool. Sorry to get so personal but poop and peace corps really go hand in hand. (tangent: to get an idea of how much poop impacts the average Peace Corps experience, at thanksgiving the entire table (twleve people) was able to share one poop in your pants incident which concluded with Janice's last words, "thought I had to fart, didn't.") Anyway to get to the point I recently had a medical encounter of the Romanian kind (not fecal, sorry I went off on that subject). I took a blood test and found out that I am anemic and I have a problem with my thyroid (apparantly it's not working well...damn those extra forty pounds). So naturally Dr. Ilana prescribed me the one egg a day diet. Apparantly this is the only way towards a healthy subsistance in Romania. She is infamous for prescribing eggs as the cure-all for anything and everything. Janice had a stomach problem so Dr. Ilana told her to lay off the vegetables and start eating more eggs. Beth had dry skin, what do you know...she needed more eggs. THe list goes on and on. A sore back = not enough eggs. Headaches, you guessed it, up your egg intake. So what I am really wondering, since eggs seem to be the Ro cure, is what the heck the cholestorol count in ROmanian would be? Anyway last night for dinner I had an egg sandwich. Two eggs!! Dr. Ilana would be proud.