Saturday, November 18, 2006

I woke up this morning at 7am and got ready to go to Bacau. First we all met at Tirgu Cucu and took tram 6 to the Gara. Then we waited for a while and took a two hour maxi taxi ride to Bacau. It was really foggy, so you could see much out of the windows and my legs were on the hump, which was a little uncomfortable. I sat next to Abbi and I read “Each One a Miracle” the whole way and almost finished it. When we got to Bacau, there was a missionary and a Romanian man waiting for us. All they said was that we were going to a park for 30 minutes and then a museum and then the Villa. We were really confused as to why exactly we were going to a park and a museum, but we didn’t ask questions and just followed them around the city. The city looked pretty much the same as Iasi. We got to the museum, and walked through a tiny street corner park across the street from it, but all they did was check the museum’s hours and then we went to the Villa. Theirs looks a lot like ours, but is nicer and bigger, even though Bacau actually has less members. Everyone else was already there, so we quickly reunited with them and then ate breakfast. They had pancakes! They weren’t the best I’ve ever had, but they were still sooo good. After that we stood around for a while and then decided to go to the museum. The museum was really interesting and I walked around it with Raluca and kept asking her questions. At the beginning it was a lot of biology stuff and species of animal and stuff. Then there was this random room with like, Romanian artifacts, kind of. It had some Orthodox stuff, some gypsy stuff and then different spices. With the Orthodox stuff, there was this cake that was white with sprinkles and a coco cross on top which Raluca said was really good. It was only for funerals though. And then there were these covrig things that she said you had to have specially made and I can’t remember what else. She told us though, that there are special days, usually like certain Saturdays, that people reverence the dead and they will go to their graves and bring food for other people who come and give food to the dead. Then, there was some stuff about gypsy magic and then she just read off what all the different spices were. I also thought it was interesting that in the species part, there were these moth cocoons and the caption called them “gogosi!” After and before the museum Raluca and I also talked some more. Once we got back to the villa, they had a bunch of games set up. I wanted to play risk, but no one else did, and eventually they just replaced it with something else, so I played UNO instead. Melissa won twice and then that was over. I saw that risk had been reassembled and that people were playing with real cards right next to it, so I decided to do both, since risk can be kind of slow. Bri, Holly and Jess were playing Nerts on teams with the cards and I would go in and out being on Jess’s team and we still won. Risk never really got off the ground. Like, we set up and explained it and put our pieces out and started playing, but by the time it was my turn, the game was over. Lunch was actually really good. We had this tuna pasta stuff and Salata de Beuf. Oh, and while we were playing Nerts, this really weird Romanian kid came up and started talking to us. He like got way to excited about everything and was waaaay too obvious about the fact that he was in love with Jessica and Holly and was just aaaawkward. Like, he was obsessed with the fact that Jess was from Las Vegas and was like “you’re a shiny girl from a shiny city! Ha! Shiny girl from a shiny city! Ha ha!” and we’re all like, “ha…ha…yeah…wow.” There were many more very interesting comments like that the whole time. And while we were sitting there trying our best to concentrate on the game he kept just being like, “Holly, holly, guess what? I’m your cheerleader! Holly, holly, guess what, you’re a pretty girl. Holly holly…” He was nice and all, but soooo awkward. After lunch we played do you love your neighbor. After that we Shannon and Jessica kiiind of taught us to do the cha cha and swing, but there were only like 2 or 3 couples and it didn’t really work. Then we all took a taxi to the maxi taxi and went for another 2 hours! This time I had to sit up front with the driver. I was in the middle, on the hump with my purse at my feet and my jacket and books on my lap and another lady next to me. I was sooo uncomfortable because there was no where to put my feet and I was feeling claustrophobic and nauseous. Then, lastly, we took a tramvii home. I reunited myself with Shannon on the way because we hadn’t talked in like…gasp…a day.