Life With My Gazda

Saturday morning, the Peace Corps staff put out place cards at tables in a speed dating-type set-up. All the volunteers waited anxiously with our odd-numbered bouquets (even numbers are reserved for funerals). I met my gazda mom, Florentina, and a sudden downpour required us to take a taxi; my two enormous suitcases in tow. For the next eleven weeks, I will be living in an apartment with her and her husband. She is a very sweet lady and is just as excited to be learning some English as she is to help me learn Romanian. We spent a few hours flipping through English/Romanian dictionaries and pointing to objects around the house (casă). I got to practice my Romanian some more by insisting that I was indeed full (m-am săturat) thank you (mulţumesc) after she adamantly served me a large meal only a few hours after the insanely large lunch at the hotel. (I have yet to have a meal in Romania that did not have at least two servings of meat).

Today, Florentina and I walked around the city and she showed me how to get to school tomorrow. We walked through the market (piaţă) at the center of town. Small town markets with stalls of fresh produce, meat and bread is so indicative of the differences between many European towns and most of the United States. I’m excited to go back and explore the market more once my Romanian is better and I’ve learned how to barter. Florentina was excited to explain her “American volunteer” to anyone who questioned my presence.


We walked through the center of town, passing many Orthodox churches (bisericăs) and a monastery. Florentina also showed me the town park with a lake full of frogs (broascăs) and statues of Romanian kings.

My geeky-ness (or twmp-ness, if you will) is coming out, but I'm really excited to start language training tomorrow. Most of the time, I can figure out from context what people are trying to tell me, but I can’t wait to be able to communicate without using a lot of hand motions.

The view from my bedroom window is really gorgeous; you can see beyond the apartment buildings to the hills on the edge of town. As you can see, România becomes beautiful countryside very quickly when you leave town.