Life here continues to be amusing, contrary, and all around exciting. Since I’ve last written, much has happened. A few weeks ago I went with a few friends to Bucharest, the capital of Romania. It was one of my friend’s 30th birthday, and since she wanted all out for such a special event, it was so granted. Of course, as you must know, although Romania is one of the most developed of the Peace Corps countries, travel here is still a bit of a crap shoot. Getting to Bucharest should have been easy. My friend would take a train from her site to mine, and then we’d hop another train. As we well should have figured, though, this was not to be. Instead she sat on her train for an hour in the middle of nowhere, and arrived too late for the connecting train. The solution was to take a “maxi-taxi” all the way from my site (Tirgu-Mures) to Bucharest (total distance about 500 km.) For those of you lucky to have cars, you probably haven’t had to suffer a long-distance maxi taxi ride.

A maxi-taxi is a van with lots of seats cramped into it that must fly through its route in order to maintain a tight schedule. So, that was the story. And additionally, Romania has no highways (or at least as we understand them,) so anytime we passed by a hill of any magnitude, our little maxi-taxi became a bobsled – woosh – jerrrk – woosh! By the time we arrived in Bucharest (unfamiliar and late at night,) my traveling companion was a bit delirious. Luckily we were not taken for a ride by the taxi driver, and soon settled in.

Bucharest was great fun, although I didn’t get to to any sightseeing. The first night we went out for cocktails, and the second night, well, we went out to a “fabulous” club – something which never would have been possible in Uz. Another major highlight of the visit was our trip to a Indian restaurant called Taj. Expensive? Yes. Delicious? Unbelievably so! My program manager had mentioned to me, when I told here that things at school were tough, that a change of scenery would be a great boost to my emotions. Well, she was totally correct – the thrill of travel and a new place really cleared my mind. Luckily getting home was much easier (although our train departed just one minute after we got on board…) All in all it was hectic, crazy and just what we all needed.

This past weekend we had another little trip, this time to a city called Sighisoara, not far from my site. Sighisoara contains a medieval fortress which is still occupied with ordinary peoples’ houses. It was amazingly Gothic. I took some pictures and promise to soon upload an entirely new Romania album which will include these and many others. Again we had some good food and danced a bit. One of the other guys we were with mentioned that many of his students were at the same club at which we ended up…. eeeh.

This week all the teachers in the country are on strike! Good for them. They would like a greater percentage of the national budget to be directed toward education, and receive food tickets (a benefit to which all other governmental employees are privy.) I sincerely hope that some progress will be made. For me this means time off to organize. Just today I went to the cable company and prodded them to hurry it up with my cable internet hookup (I’ve been waiting two months,) and they said they’d send someone on Friday from between 9 and 3 – so, some things are the same even here. I’m going to have some general interest meetings with my students next week about what kinds of extracurriculars they’d like to do; I have many ideas myself, but it’s important that they are into it. I should have done this much sooner, but better late then never.

When people aren’t burning their plastic laden garbage, the air here smells like classic fall. Old women with long handled brooms sweep up the large brown leaves around my building and the children are (always) playing their makeshift soccer. Maxi-taxis come and go, the bells chime at six and the earth revolves.