Living with No Regret: Romania - the first six days

It has been six days that I have been in Romania and I have been trying to think of how to best describe my time so far. Not much has been accomplished in getting the project going as we have been settling into life and trying to pick up the language. Romanian is a latin based language so, in theory, I have a head start with knowledge in Spanish and Italian. Italian seems to be the closest to Romanian in terms of pronunciation and sounds which means I can understand quite a few things. Now if only I could reply in Romanian instead of the default Italian or Spanish. Gives the folks something to chuckle about anyway.

Speaking of language, let me share a few tidbits. The first is the formal word for "you". OK, are you ready? Here goes: dumneavoastra. Yup, that is what I thought too, "easy peasy". Luckily if I know the person I can default to the informal "tu". Whew. Oh, and I learned to be careful when saying "Okey Dokey" (spelled phonetically not correctly) because it means "close your eyes" not "fine". Learned that the hard way when playing with two kids ages 3 and 7. We still had the ability to engage in rousing games of freeze tag, tag, and "where's Marc" (you know, when kids partially hid under something and you pretend not to be able to see them).

Back to the beginning... I arrived in Arad last Thursday and spent the first two nights with Maria and Jon Luca. They don't speak english so I had a crash course in Romanian. I also got to sleep in the coolest "sofa bed" ever. The bed is actually in a drawer under the couch and "pops up" when you open the drawer. It was quite comfortable - no bar down the middle of the back like our sofa beds.

Sofa Bed Romanian Style

The second day I negotiated with Maria that I could go for a walk by myself. Maria was worried I would get lost so we agreed that she could call the police if I wasn't back in an hour. While on my walk I was exited to learn about several things: how they collect trash (I know I am 'different'), the latin based word for stop, and how playgrounds are designed. It was quite an "educational" walk as you can see.

Dumpsters Romanesk

"Stop", Romanian for, well, Stop

Play is good!

Now I am staying with Scott and Carolyn in the house of some missionaries who are home for the summer. I will miss Maria and figuring out how to communicate with her. Plus she was just fun and funny. By the way, the romanian word for "joke" is "gluma" - pronounced "gloom". Maria loved telling me that one. Her favorite phrase was in english, "you very hungry". I quickly learned "foarte plin" (very full). I taught her some english "long grained rice" a translation from the rice package "orezc cu bob lung". "Bob" what a great word for grain. Maria would quiz me on words she taught me and phrases I knew. When others would come around she would tell everyone I already speak Romanian. Of course she would get mad at me when I couldn't translate things for her. I told her to give me two more days and "nu problemo". She must have forgiven me because she still gave me homemade donuts to take to the house with me. Yum Yum Yum Yum!

Today I went for another walk and saw some fun parks and sports centers.