Lost in time

I can’t believe that I’ve only been here in Romania for a week. It definitely feels like longer; and I don’t mean that in a bad way I just mean that in a very literal way. I really honestly cannot believe that today is only like my 10th day in this country. It’s such a weird feeling and I’m not even sure I know how to describe it articulately but it’s almost as if I’ve somehow messed with the Space/Time Continuum and I was just in the States a week ago but somehow managed to, in that week, cover like 3 month’s worth of time.... See? I told you I couldn’t really articulate my thoughts very well!!

But anyways, moving on from my refusal to believe I’ve only been here a week, I just wanted to talk a bit about the food here. Ok, well, for starters, there’s a lot of it. With the exception of breakfast every meal that I eat has at least 3 courses. The first is usually “salad” or “soup”. I put these in quotes because they really aren’t soup or salad the way we, as Americans, think of soup or salad. For example salad here is finely chopped cabbage that is SATURATED in oil and vinegar and is sometimes served cold but most times not. Soup here is probably more liquid fat/grease than actual water or broth and there’s usually a huge piece of chicken just chillin in the middle of the bowl. If you want to actually have some cut up chicken in your soup, you gotta cut if off the bone and then cut it into little pieces, but by the time you actually do that the greasy broth is ice cold and so is the chicken! Hahahaha! Now don’t get me wrong: the food here IS good. I mean, I eat all of my food at every meal. But I’ve just had to deal with the reality that most of my food will probably be ice cold and may or may not have some actual solidified fat in it. At first I was kind of scared of eating all this fatty food but everyone here (well more specifically, women here) is skinny so there must be something good about their diet! So I gladly eat pretty much any and everything that’s put in front of me and so far so good.

Oh and one last thing about the food: the fruit here is spectacular! Strawberries and cherries are so tasty and I have never liked cherries before in my life! But they are sooo good here!!

Anyways, my Romanian skills seem to be improving even though I do still speak at the level of a 2 year old. I can understand a fair amount of what people say to me and it seems as though they can understand the pathetic utterances that pour from my mouth everyday. So all in all, things are good and I’m doing well. Much to my surprise, I haven’t experienced much homesickness or loneliness here and I think that is a good omen about how my life in this country will be. I do have lots more that I want to write but this is getting long so I’ll write more in the coming days.