Boldog Szülinapot!

     Today was Zenkő's birthday.  I made pancakes for breakfast and we used some of the maple syrup I brought.  They came out pretty good, all things considered.  I forgot that they would have any measuring cups or teaspoons here.  Everything is in mL and grams.  Also, we had to use baking soda instead of baking powder and olive oil instead of cooking oil.  They still tasted about the same though.  Cooking them a difficult too because not only was the stove not in degrees fahrenheit, but it wasn't in celsius either.  Fanny just turned it on to its default setting and we experimented from there.

     Yesterday we drove to a nearby village where their little cousins live.  Kincső is maybe 6 and Babi turned 3.  She and Zenkő had a joint party.  The girl from their Grampa's house last week, Monika, was there, as well as her little sister who's probably 2.  None of them speak english so I had fun playing with them.

This is Babi's room.  The entire inside of the house was really cute.

     Their house is beautiful.  Its a big cottage looking thing that's really haphazardly fenced in, with a really old barn, and some sheep behind the house.  On a lot of the old buildings the date it was built is tiled into the roof.

     They even had two massive sheep dogs.  They went up to my hip.

     They have an outdoor stove/oven/chimney thing that they cooked a sheep in.

     There was also mashed potatoes, bean salad, and lots of bread.  They made this yummy dry fudge paste stuff out of sunflower seeds.  The cakes were beautifully decorated and everyone sang a Hungarian birthday song.  We ate out on the side porch and after all the dishes were cleared they pulled hammocks down from the rafters and people sat around chatting.

Random Things and More School Stuff

     So I know I mentioned that the driving here is crazy, but it really really is.  A lot of the roads are made from big grey brick that now have horrible tire ruts in them and most of them all really uneven.  Its really bumpy for cars, which is fine, you're not supposed to be driving too fast.  But I've seen bikers going down these roads too, and that just looks terrifying.  Also, a lot of the roads here are either one way roads already, or if not then they definitely should be.  Even a lot of the roads that are pretty wide are still effectively one way.  People park on both sides of the street, mostly on the side walks, making two many two way streets one way streets.  Quite often we'll be driving, in the middle of the city, and have to do some quick parallel parking on the side walk to let a car going the other direction by, and vice versa.  Driving anywhere is like a big game of chicken.  Except not really, because everyone here is so nice and polite.

     When people ask me what I want to be, I tell them a veterinarian, then say in Hungarian 'animal doctor' to clarify.  Well, I finally decided to look up the actual Hungarian word for Veterinarian so people wouldn't be confused.  Turns out it the word is állatorvos.  Literally animal doctor.  Every great once in a while this language is easy.

    There are no set meal times here.  We never eat breakfast and there's no lunch time.  Everyone brings a sandwich/some sort of food to school and then we snack on it during each break.  At around 3:30 I meet Zenkő and Erika at the Hotel and we have an actual meal together.  Then we go back to the house.  György come home from work late, usually around 7 or 8 and then we have a dinner snack, which is usually veggies and bread.

     For school, unlike at home, the girls and boys uniforms at school are identical.  Navy pants, light blue button up, and no tie or anything.  The girls have red blazers and the boys have navy though, and of course girls can wear skirts.  The uniform code here is nice because we can wear whatever shoes and socks/tights we want.

     I found out today that I'm not in the Mathematics/Informatics class but the Science/English class. Turns out the sign on our door is simply outdated.

    And here is my school schedule I finally made up.

     Classes start at 8, which the exception of Tuesdays which start at 7, and we meet in our classroom.  Each class is 45 mins long with 15 min breaks in between, except for a half hour break for lunch.  The only class we move for is Geography. We go down to the basement where there is a classroom filled with maps.

    English class is a lot of fun, we still are mostly just playing games.  We started a sports unit and the teachers tried to get me to explain the rules to baseball.  That did not end well.  Some days Romanian is more productive than others.  The first day the kids were learning house vocabulary so I got Anna, who sits next to me, to give me the english and Hungarian translations.  Today they were writing stories, so not very good for me.  All the other classes are a bit dull.  Math I can take good notes on because the teacher has good handwriting.  The other teachers tend to have horrendous handwriting so I usually just sit and listen and sometimes doodle.  I made up vocabulary lists, though, so on Monday I can have something more productive to do.  I'm looking forward to German class.  At the very least it will be a change of pace from the lecture-style of the majority of the classes.  We were supposed to have it today but the teacher was out.  It was supposed to be the second to last class, so the kids all asked the computer teacher, we had computer last, if we could just skip computer and go home early instead of sitting around for an hour.  The teacher actually said yes and we all left school at 1.  I got to go to a cafe with Anna and her two friends, who are both in our class as well.  They had really good smoothies there.  Also, everything is really inexpensive.  It was the USD equivalent of a $1 smoothie.  During some of the breaks at school we go outside.  Behind the school is an old concrete something. I don't really know what.  Most of its gone but there's still a concrete group and some stairs going up a hill.  All the freshmen were down on the concrete learning traditional songs and dances that they have to perform at some point and everyone else in the school was watching from up the hill.  They're actually getting pretty good.  

     And on another side note, we get milk delivered by a neighbor every night.  It then lived in the little milk warmer upper pot thing in the fridge.  It's adorable and tastes really good!  All of our fruit and veggies come from this local farm about ten minutes away, and usually they're delivered to town, but sometimes there is a dinner at the farm so the customers can look at where everything is grown.  I went with György and Erika and it was really neat.  The farm itself is a little family run thing with a couple of green houses and some apple orchards on a hill.  They had chickens, pigs, and one ginormous rabbit that was just free hopping around the place.  The food was really good, homemade bread, cheese, bacon (but what they call bacon is just cooked fat?  That wasn't my favorite), a weird eggplant/mayonaise/onion spread, and of course lots of fresh veggies.  There was amazing apple things and plum dough things for desert.  I even found the Hungarian equivalent of sparkling grape juice.  They have this stuff that they call syrup, which is some sort of concentrated fruit juice.  They put a little bit of it in a cup then add water and have homemade instant juice.  Except, that fizzy water is super common here.  So all they had tonight was fizzy water.  Plain, it doesn't taste the best, but with the fruit juice it came out tasting just like sparkling grape juice.

(Lots of potatoes)

(Eggplant/mayo paste on the left, cheese on the right.)

   The first rotary meeting was Wednesday.  Both Ashlee and I were there, as well as Jakab and Petra, two students from Udvarhely who were on exchange last year.  Jakab was actually in a town right next to Ashlee's so they already knew each other.  Ashlee did her presentation in English and Jakab translated.  I did mine in Hungarian and it went pretty well, but it was awkward because everyone in the room spoke English so every time I forgot or messed up a word the entire room corrected me.  Jakab and Petra did presentations too.  There was a nice rotarian sitting next to me and Ashlee who translated some of the important bits of the meeting.  Our first inbound orientation meeting is on September 23, in a city called Brăila, which is about 4 hours away.  I can't wait to meet the other exchange students.

 

És Az Iskola Kezdődik

     So this morning I went with György to set up my school schedule.  Erika had told me to put on my uniform, but I wasn't sure why because György had told me all we were doing was meeting the principal.  Turns out it was a good thing, because I ended up going to school.  I really thought it started Friday, but apparently not.

    Ashlee got put in 10th grade, though she's really in 11th and I ended up in 11th.  I'm not really sure why, but my class is very nice so it works.  I'm in Class 11B aka the Mathematics/Informatics/English class.  Since school starts at 8 and our meeting with the principal was at 10, Ashlee and I missed our first few classes.  They were in the middle of physics when I came in.  Then we had double block english which was a lot of fun because the kids all speak excellent english so instead of learning grammar or vocabulary we just played games all class.  The only rule was that no Hungarian was allowed.  Chemistry came next.  Unlike at home, they do a little bit of each physics, chemistry, and biology a year instead of one single class only for one year.  I didn't really understand much but I think the teacher went around the room asking what people want to be when they grow up.  If so, we have about twenty future doctors in my class.  Lastly, was gym, for which I was totally unprepared.  Luckily since it was the first day we didn't actually do anything.  Everyone got measured for height, like a sort of yearly check up, and then we had to sign some sort of form.  A girl named Emő said it was a 'don't die on my watch' form but that could really mean anything.  

     Everyone is so nice and they were all asking me random questions during breaks.  We don't have a formal lunch break, just ten minutes between every class, and since we don't change classrooms, the teachers do, that gives everyone plenty of time to snack.  Having people to tell me what's going on is really nice and makes things a lot less stressful, but I don't get to speak Hungarian much, so I really need to work on that.

-These are just some pictures of my class room and the view out the window.  (Its empty because everyone was changing for gym)

A Templom

      So today (Monday, 12) wasn't the first day of school, but it was some sort of opening

ceremony at the church.  The school I'm going to, Tamási Áron Gimnazium, is a Roman Catholic school.  György and Erika dropped us off at the hotel at 8 and Zenkő and I walked to the church from there.  We stood in front of it for a while and Zenkő greeted all her friends she hadn't seen over the summer and introduced me to them. I managed to find Ashlee and Kata, which was nice because Zenkő is great but I'd rather not sit with the seventh graders.   At 8:30 everyone went in.

    From what I could tell, which wasn't a lot, it was mostly a normal mass but the gospel and stuff was all about school.  I think the priest was blessing the school year or something.  He said the word school a lot but that's about all I understood.  Mass itself was pretty much exactly like a home, I could tell when they were doing the Our Father and everything.

    Afterwards, I met Ashlee's host mom.  She has a three month old baby also named Zenkő, which is funny because everyone says how uncommon of a name it is.  Apparently its a really really old name.  We all went to the hotel for breakfast after that, then I went shopping with Ashlee and her host mom.  I didn't get anything, but it was cool to just wander around the city center, which is what they call the main streets in the center of town.  There are some really nice old buildings around there and some pretty flowers.  We went back to Ashlee's house for a while before Kata came over and the three of us walked back to the hotel together so I didn't get lost.  Also, it turns out Kata isn't actually Ashlee's host sister, just a really close family friend who is always over at there house.

       

 This is Dénni, he's Csendőr's dog.  (Ashlee's family)  Unfortunately, we don't have any pets, though Zenkő's been lobbying for a dog.  They have to wait until they have a fenced in yard.  Dogs seem to be more out door pets here.  They also bark all night long.

This is the Csendõr house.  It's in the typical style here.  The inside is all wood and its amazing.

This is the view out Ashlee's window.  That's the Székely flag, they're the Hungarian ethnic group thats here in Romania.

A bridged we crossed to get to her house from city center.

And this is the road I live on.  I think its relatively new.  My house still isn't finished.  The inside is really modern and fairly empty and the outside is missing the white wash the rest of the houses have, its just cement and oddly shaped bricks at the moment.

Az Első Napok

     Fanny, Zenkő, and I walked to the Gondűző Hotel for lunch.  György owns it and Erika works there as a manager I think.  Here's a picture of one of the roads.

     Lunch was a potato soup this time and a cabbage and rice ball with sour cream stuff on top.  Then the grandma made little dough things called pánko.

     I went uniform shopping with everyone except Zenkő who went biking with a friend.  People bike a lot around here.  I already have blue pants and socks, and I'm using Fanny's skirt, so all we had to get was two blue shirts and the red blazer.  I'll take a picture of it at some point, when all the pieces are together.

    We then picked Zenkő back up at the hotel and dropped Fanny off with her friend.  Zenkő and I went to Tata's apartment, which was only a few minutes away.  I think he's their grandpa but I'm not entirely sure.  Örs skyped while everyone was there and I got to say hello.  Then the parents left and Tata helped Zenkő with her summer math home work.  He used to be a maths teacher.  I watched some Hungarian tv.  I flipped through the channels and Mia would be all set if she lived here (and knew Hungarian).  I found Hungarian Criminal Minds (Gyilkos Elmék) and Castle.   Its funny, when the commercials are about to start, the word Advertising goes across the screen to let you know.  I also found my new favorite show.  I'm pretty sure it was aimed at three year olds and came with Hungarian subtitles.   

     Another little girl came over at some point.  I think she's a cousin.  Her name's Monika and she's ten years old.  She speaks both Romanian and Hungarian perfectly as her mom is Romanian and her dad is from Udvarhely, but she speaks no english.  We watched Disney channel together and talked a little bit.  Tata left a little while later and Zenkő went into the kitchen to roast marshmallows.  I was confused until Monika and I walked in to see her literally roasting marshmallows on toothpicks over a gas stove.  Which totally does not seem safe, but Monica had clearly done it before to.  The marshmallows aren't quite like home, they're tinier with sugar on the outside.

     Tata came back with two more little girls, one about four and the other maybe two.  They were really cute.  Zenkő and Monica knew them so I guess they're family of some sort.  They were only there for a few minutes before György picked us up to go home.  

     There was another family there too.  There was a girl, Orsi, who is a friend of Zenkő's.  We hung out in her room.  They listened to really loud music and danced, which was really funny because the Hungarian music was really good, and I recognized most of the English music, but some of the English music was really really really not child appropriate but beyond the common words, Zenkő and Orsi didn't understand what it was saying.  

     We then decided to play Clue (Cluedo in Hungarian), which went surprisingly well except that I was the only one who really knew how to play.  Both girls speak very good english but unlike Fanny and the adults, they had no problem just shouting out random things in Hungarian.  They only spoke english when I couldn't figure out what was going on.  So we played the whole game of Clue in Hungarian.  Which was easy because all the words for things are written on those little sheets you fill out.  I do know know the Hungarian words for kitchen and bathroom (which is different from restroom) which are useful, but also billiard room and observatory which are less so.  I won because the other too guessed way too soon.  For dinner someone cooked homemade sausage, a Romanian food called mici.  It was really good.  I didn't end up going out with Fanny because she didn't leave until 9 and I was doing something with Ashely and her family the next morning.  It's ok though because my Hungarian actually made so progress.  The girls wanted to play some question game.  I'm not sure how we were supposed to play, but it turned into 'what is your favorite ___'.  They started out asking everything in english but after they told me how to say 'favorite' we mostly spoke Hungarian.  It went well, they were very happy that I had watched Bones and they spent a few minutes moping that Sweets died. Though we did spend a solid ten minutes trying to translate 'do you prefer stripes or polk-a-dots' and had to resort to finding shirts with said prints.  They also didn't seem to believe me that they're called polk-a-dots in english?  It was fun though.  I'm comfortable saying random stuff to Zenkő in Hungarian now.

     This morning Zenkő and I grilled ham and cheese sandwiches for breakfast, they have a cute little panini like machine.  There was also fresh tomatoes and peppers.  The Nagys don't have a garden but most other houses around here do (even in the apartments) and all the food at the house and restaurant is home grown somewhere.

     Around 11:00 Ashlee, her host dad János, her 16 year old sister Kata, and her 4 year old brother Mátyás picked me up and we drove about an hour to the middle of no where, except for a little farm house with some horses.  I think they give horse riding lessons and since Kata likes horses the families are friends.  There are some really good hiking trails in the woods.

    We hiked through some fields and woods, then up a pretty big hill.

The landscape is fairly similar to home.  I thought their dirt was way more sandy than ours, but now I think it's just really really really dry.  Ashlee says it hasn't rained since she got here and that was a week ago.

 There was a really good view up top.  Down in the valley we could see the entrance to a huge cave.

Ashlee is in the middle and Kata is on the right.

We hiked down the other side of the hill and there was a more public hiking trail that followed a river, which eventually took us back to where we parked.  The trail crossed back and forth over the river a lot so there were a bunch of really cool rope bridges.

There were also a couple of massive caves we stopped by.  We walked around one for a while using our phone flashlights.

This is Mátyás, he was impressed by all the 'gomba' on the tree.

This is the house back where we parked.  We ate our packed lunches under a wooden thing.  The family (families ?) who lived there were cooking tortalinis on a fire, but the directions were in Spanish and everyone was so confused.  Their kids were all hanging from trees and playing in the water.  I really want to know how houses like this function in the winter.  For a solid half hour we drove on only dirt road that were winding up and between steep hills.  There was an entire town with no 'main road' so to speak.  Either no one leaves after it snows or they have a better way of dealing with snow than we do.  There are a bunch of turkeys because they were all coming home for the night.  Driving home there was this one spot where it looked like the pied piper.  A huge line of cows and sheep just walking over a hill towards the town we had passed.  I think I forgot to say, but this happened in Udvarhely too.  On the way back from the airport we had to loop around and go to the house from a different direction because a bunch of cows were walking down the road we needed to go up.  And this was right near the middle of city with 30 thousand people!  I can't believe they all actually know which house to go to.

Sziasztok!

     It was a long trip, but it went pretty smoothly.  They fed us dinner and breakfast on the flight to Munich.  I guess because it was dinner in New York time but breakfast Munich time.  On the flight to Cluj they gave us lunch.  A mini sandwich that was brown bread, veal (cut like ham), tuna cream (that's what it said on the box), and red peppers.  I ate it all, but it wasn't y favorite.  I found the host family at Cluj easily.  György (the dad), Erika (the mom), Fanny (the sister my age), Zenkő (the 13 year old sister), and a young woman from the Cluj rotary met me there.  The lady from Cluj left and the other five of us drove the three hours back to Udvarhely (I think that's what they called it, short for Székelyudvarhely).  The land, for the most part, looks just like home.  Lots of hills and farms on hills.  Less trees because they got cut down, but the ones I've seen are basically like home too.  The buildings are completely different.  They feel more like somewhere that gets no snow, like Mexico or the south somewhere, which is funny because they definitely get snow here. I didn't take any pictures, but I will at some point because their buildings are amazing.  All of the residential houses are traditional little white washed things with terracotta tiled rooves, but right next to them are concrete communist-era apartment buildings, and in between those are a variety of churches.  Some are white washed with terracotta rooves too, but others look more like mosques, a lot had really shiny pointed rooves, and some are gothic, and a few looked just like those square Chinese temple things.  I have no idea where those are from.  About an hour in to the drive, some Hungarian words started showing up and by the time we reached Udvarhely all official signs were in both Romanian and Hungarian and all unofficial signs were just in Hungarian.  Also, houses started getting these really intricately carved wooden doorways in their fences.  I think they're called székely gates, but I don't really know.  They're only in the Hungarian speaking regions though.

     Even if I could drive in Romania, I wouldn't dare to.  Speed limits are totally just suggestions, as are no passing stripes, and cross walks.  Also, everyone was tailgating.  I was laughing because three massive trucks driving down a steep hill on the opposite side of the road were maybe two feet apart each.  It looked ridiculous and really dangerous.  They also don't have real highways, as far as I've seen.  Think Iceland, where there was a main road connecting little towns, and lots of driving circles.  Except there are way more little towns than in Iceland, so that's why it takes a while to drive anywhere.  We passed one train crossing while a train was coming by.  It was funny because the road blocks aren't automatic.  One of the train workers had to get off and swing the gates in front of either side of the road before the train drove passed and stopped on the other side.  The gates then had to be opened and the guy had to get back in the train and then it could leave.

     Despite being way larger than all the towns we went through, Udvarhely looked just the same, with the exception of having a handful of tall office buildings.  We stopped at the hotel restaurant to eat.  We just went in the back.  I think the family does this all the time.  György's mom was there and said hello.  Unlike the rest of the family, she doesn't speak any English, or at the very least she didn't.  All I did was introduce myself and answer the question of how old I was, but the everyone seemed really impressed.  I hadn't said anything other than hello and thank you up until that point.  Fanny said that none of the other students really learned Hungarian.  Dinner was good.  There was some sort of meat soup, just like chicken soup, but the meat wasn't chicken.  Then some coleslaw ish thing which was actually better than normal coleslaw.  And some paprikas which was pretty good (some sort of ground up meat in a brown pepper sauce?).  We then drove to their house, which is still only a five minute walk from city center.  It has a great view of the city.  I actually took pictures this time.

    

     I'm staying in the brother's room.  Örs is the one Matt's age who is on exchange in Taiwan right now.  It's really nice and even has its own bathroom.  I was a bit thrown by the shower because its really just a tub with a shower head/hose thing clipped to a wall.  He has some good books, but unfortunately they're all in Hungarian.  While I do need to finish a Dance With Dragons that's probably not a good place to start reading Hungarian.

(The last three are the view out my window)

     This morning I watched the news with Erika.  Its a channel broadcast from Hungary.  Then we had cereal for breakfast, the chocolate puff kind, which is normal, but Erika warmed milk on the stove instead of just using it cold.  I don't know if this is a Romanian thing, Hungarian thing, or just this family but it tasted good.  Fanny went out to the back porch to smoke after and I sat with her and she told all sorts of stuff.  She's going to be here for the next few weeks.  Her college doesn't start until October.  She's studying Hungarian Lit at a school in Cluj, which teaches in Hungarian because, while Cluj is now a Romanian speaking majority, it used to be the larges Hungarian speaking city and still has the best Hungarian college in Romania.  She said that's where most of the people from around her go.  Fanny explained school a bit too.  In my high school there five 'class groups'.  Religion, Natural Science/English, Sciences, Maths, and Language.  Each class is made up of about 30 kids who stay together for the whole year, no switching classes like at home, and each is specifically focused.  The Maths kids don't have many language classes, and the science kids don't take religious classes.  There are some that everyone takes though, Romanian, English, History, etc.  She said I'll probably be in Language or Natural Science/English because they've got the most english classes.  Ashely (the girl here now from Colorado) and I are also only the third group of exchange students this town has had.  Fanny said there were the two last year, and one or two who were here three years ago.   She invited me to go to her favorite cafe tonight, she said something about her favorite DJ playing there.  I think we're going uniform shopping later too.  

(This is really long, but don't worry I'm not being anti social.  I woke up an hour before everyone and right now the girls have to clean their rooms.)

Some random differences I've noticed so far:

-I have yet to see a wooden telephone pole.  They're all concrete cylinders, or concrete in the shape of what looks like cinder block stack on top of each other (square with holes).

-Hay is actually stacked in stacks, not so much bails.  Also, there were tractors, but most people seemed to use them as little as possible, doing most of the stuff by hand.  

-Tons of people all over the streets, even just walking on the shoulder between towns.  There was an accident we passed on a road with some houses (but no actual town) and everyone had come out to look and a solid half the men had no shirts.  A lot of the women had traditional looking head scarves and skirts.  It was cool.  We pulled over and György went to make sure no one needed help until the police came.  Everyone was fine.  Also, we didn't pass any tractors on the roads here, but a lot of horse carts filled with hay.  There was a stretch of one way road due to construction and it took forever because a hay cart driven by two little old ladies had to go through.  No one seemed overly surprised, the flagger just seemed exasperated, he started chatting with György, we were in Hungarian region by then.  Though I think he speak Romanian too, while the others don't.  

Testing

Hello!  I'm leaving for Romania on September 7.  This is just a test to see if everyone can find the blog alright!