Iași

This past weekend were the interviews/first meeting for the Romanian outbounds next year.  There are three girls in my town, all in ninth grade at the moment, who applied and I went with them to the meeting, which was about five hours away in the big city of Iași.  We got there Friday evening and went to the opening Rotary meeting where there were some power points on what Rotary Youth Exchange is.  It was held in this beautiful building, Palatul Culturii din Iași. 

Palatul Culturii din Iași

View of the court yard between the palace and a big shopping mall.

The palace in the day light.

Cool building opposite our hotel.

Iași

 Saturday morning the actual interviews were held.  All of the students, about 20, introduced themselves.  They chose their countries as well, they get three choices here.  Most people chose some variation of US, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, or Japan.  A couple kids had India and Taiwan as choices, I'm not sure what other ones they offer here.  After everyone was finished we all got on a bus and drove to see some cool buildings.

A little palace thing.  There was a prince who lived here and the inside has been reconstructed to look really realistic.  

Painting on the ceiling of an old monastery.  At some point it was a children's ward (?) and there was a fire too.  A lot of the paintings on the walls were gone but its still a beautiful old building.

We went out to dinner Saturday night and it was a lot of fun to get to know the other kids better.  Dani, the Brazilian girl living in Iași at the moment, came as well.  Between Romanian, Hungarian, and English communication was a bit tricky at times but everyone made do.

Sunday morning we drove back through the mountains, which still had snow even though it had melted down below.  This is Békás-Szoros, roughly Frog Canyon I think.  There were little wooden stalls along the side of the road in places, selling things.  It was really kind of cool because this was deep in the mountains without any other houses or anything around.  

This is Red Lake or Gyilkos-Tó (Killer's Lake), its a really big barrier lake in the Carpathians.

 And this is an adorable dog we saw somewhere along the way who looks like Luna.

Fesztiválok és Mindenszentek Napja

In the fall, there are a ton of little festivals here.  The first one I went to was a fruit festival.  It was held near the town park in a sports court of some sort.  All the local farmers had little stalls to display their fruits and vegetable and jams and stuff. There was a stage at one end as well and at one point Zenkő's folk dance group performed.  

There was a wine festival in the same place a few weeks later, and then there was a honey festival in the center square of the city a couple weeks ago.  They had so many different types of honey, sunflower, raspberry, stuff like that.  Also, there were tons of wax candles and honey comb.  An actor from the theater was working there, he had kids come up one at a time and they got to sing little songs to everyone.  It was very cute.

So they don't really do Halloween here.  Instead, November first is All Saints Day or Mindenszentek Napja (I think that's how it goes).  In the evening everyone goes to the cemeteries to light candles and put flowers on the graves of their relatives.  We couldn't stay long this year because it was awfully cold.  It was so pretty though.  The two cemeteries we went to were both on hills so in the dark, you could see the candles glowing on all the graves going up.  

These are just some picture I took a week or so ago from the park and the city center.

This is an old church in the center of town.  Its roof says its form 1781.

And one week later we've had snow for five days straight.  It feels like winter already.

This is Frodo, he's the neighbors' cat and he is super fluffy.

And this is a cute dog I see just about everyday walking home from school.