Festival in Craiova

Buna! This week-end it is a festival in Craiova with a market, concerts and a lot of other nice things.
Here are some pictures from yesterday!

Marion an I tried some typical local ood, but we later found out it is originally from Hungary... It was king of a sweet bread, a bit like the swedish "pinnbroed", and it was really good!

It gets cold in Romania to...

The Primaria and more of the market

There was a lot of music entertainment like this, these guys were playing some traditional music,
 others were playing hits songs, still dressed like indians

We went to Marcellos apartment for dinner, ofcourse we made pasta

We watched some silly videos, like "Lamas in Hats"

And we drank some beer

There are some closets in the apartment stuffed with old clothes,
so ofcourse we had a fashion show

Then we went to the concert area, we listened to the Romainian band Phoenix, they were really good;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDH0mtdqT9M

Mikaela and some other volunteers joined us,
and we met the clown

We were also practising to whistle.. Seemed like a good idea

Tonight we are giong back to Craiova and all the volunteers will come and have a Halloween Party in Mikaela's apartment. Probably we will end up in Pub's Pub... On monday we will go back to Musetesti and have some more training, and there is no internet, so I wont write in a week... But after Musetesti I am sure that I will have a lot to write about. Pa Pa!

A very good week-end

Hello hello

This week-end can only be summariced with a picture of Britta's pizza - the vegetarian pizza with french fries

This friday I went to visit Diana and Anna who lives in a community called Segarcea, this day they also got a new room mate: Praise from Uganda (who is 24, has about 40 siblings, is very nice and has never eaten with a knife before) The aftenoon started with a mission - to find some sand for the "cat box", the girls have adopted a kittenfrom the street! After visiting their appartment, which is very nice for romanian standard ( exept for the fact that there is no wather at all after 10...), we went to eat some pizza. It took forever to get the food, and in this community the girls were not allowed to drink alcohol in public, so we eat bread and played some games while we waited.. The pizza was ok, exept for the fact that there was ketchup on it instead of tomato souce.. And yeah, the vegitarian pizza contained french fries. 

The mentor in Segarcea is very funny and eager to find new friends for the volunteers there, so she invited some local teenagers to a party in the appartmant, and also her son who is 14... We drank bear (even the 14 year old boy, togheter with his mum) and played card games until about 12 o'clock. Then the romainian people left, but a friend of the voluteers in Segarcea named Davideo came to visit and after a while we decided to go to a bar in Craiova. We called for a ride and went to "Pubb's Pub", the same bar as we went to last week, it is very nice and the cocktails only cost 30 kr. We stayed until about 3.30 (we also drove to another community to drop of some other volunteers who lived there). The next day we spent eating the pizza we had brought home from the restaurant and uddling with the cat. I had to go home because Marion and  was invited to a party in our community; our mentor's god father was having an opening party for his new revonated club. We went there after 11 o'clock (after a power-nap) and stayed for some hours, drinking bear and dancing. We feelt a little bit uncomfterable thought, because we did not know so many people exept for our mentor and we did not know the music... Thank god for bear! I have also noticed that Lykke Lii's song "follow rivers" is a big hit in Romania, they play it all the time on the romanian RIX FM.

Today we got up early to go to the church. The ortodox religion is very passionated, the survice was interesting but a bit strange to watch. The priest gave us the evil eye when we didn't go down on our knees to be blessed, maybe we are cursed now... Tonight I have the casa for myself because Marion is in Craiova, so I am going to just watch a movie and relax, either the romanian movie "4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days", "black cat white cat" or "the elephant man", we'll see :)

Also we got the bad news that the heating system in Mustatesti has broken, so we have to extend our two weeks in Dabuleni with another week. This means that we have to change the date for the Halloween Party since we are going to be on trainings on the fourth.. Our mentor is going to Hugary this week so we can't really do anything in our community, which means we'll have some time to travel around in the area and visit the other volunteers. It'll be good. Pa pa!

Our community

Today it was like summer again, the sky was blue and it was warm and nice outside. After I finished my paper for my university class we spent the day outside. First we walked down the mainstreet to take some pictures of important buildings in our community that we need for our presentation next week. Then we just walked around in Dabuleni, enjoyed the sun and talked to  people. We were going to visit the libary, but it was closed. The woman who worked there was very friendly to us, she hugged and kissed us like we were old friends... Maybe she realy liked the old volonteers... After our walk we stopped by Violetas shop for some chatting, it was very nice as usually. Right now we are stuffes from dinner, as usually we ate to much.

Here are some pictures from the community

The biggest and most beautiful church

The cultue house, and a horse and carriage which is very common in Dabuleni

The police station

The primaria, which is the major's office and where our host mother works

This is the school where we spend most of our time. There are four schools in Dabuleni, but this is the biggest one and the only one with both a gymnasium and a high school. It has about 1000 students and it's also the work place of our mentor Lucia. It is with the students of this school that we are planning a Halloween Party!

Craiova

This week-end we desided to go to Craiova, which is the biggest city in Dolj county where we live and has about 300,000 inhibitants. Almost all the volonters from our program was able to go (but only 10 out of 26 has arrived to Romania so far...) Some volonters from another EVS project are living in appartments i Craiova, among others Mikaella and Marcello who we got to know during or training in Musatesti, so we went to visit them. Marion and I arrived early in the day, because we had no plans for the day in Dabuleni so Marcello and a guy named André showed us the city. We visited the university and the main square, walked through a park and we went to a very nice café named Da Vinci to drink some cappuccino.

The park.

Mikaella thought it might have been the one they call "the enlish park",
 because of all the roses, but I am not sure.

The prefecture of Craiova.
Marcello said that he had heard that this is the nicest one in Romania,
but he also said that he didn't really believe that.

This fountain was really nice and located in the roundabout next to the appartment where we were staying.

This is the welcoming you get when you enter the appartment where Marcello lives.

The owner doesn't really like what they did to Jesus...




At the night when everybody had arrived we had dinner togheter. It was a really nice dinner, the italians made a very good pasta and some home made meatballs, Mikaela (who also is from sweden) made skagenr¨ora. We bought some cheap bear and later at night we went to a bar, I think we got back about 5-6 in the morning... The taxi only cost 7 lei, which is less than 2 euro!

Justine (Latvia) with some really nice glasses that we found at Marcello's place.

Nunzio (Italy), Renars (Latvia) and Anna (Germany)
Notice the Beatles t-shirt ;)

Diana and I (She's also from Latvia)

André, one of the hosts and also from Latvia

Mikaella and the Danish guy Benji

Lucy, she i from France/Belgium

Bike tour

This thursday we went on a bike tour through Dabuleni with Violeta. So far we had only been in the city centre, on our street and to the school, but now we went to both ends of the city. Violeta showed us among other things the three other schools and the graveyard.

 Me and Violeta

The major's office and new slippers

Today we went to the major's office togheter with Violeta. The major is kind of sexist according to our mentors, and I think it is kind of funny that the first thing Marcella said to us about him (she is his secretary) is that he was gong to like us because he likes pretty girls... But he was very nice, everybody at the office was, and they seamed to like us and he fact that we presented ourself in very bad romanian.

Here we are togheter with the major at his office, he is very religious so there is a lot of christian symbols.

After that we went back to school to do some more presentations. We also got our first assignment; to organize a Halloween Party! It is not much time to plan the whole thing, but the pupils are very enthusiastic and Lucia will help us so I think it is possible

When we came home Marcella had bought us some slippers! Pink for Marion and purple for me, it will be good in this cold house!

Community discovery

This post will be in english since I am using Marion's computer and it is french...
We have now begun our community descovey which will last for wo weeks. The community discovery is basicly a chance to get to know your community, your mentor and other important persons that you will work with during the project. Yesterday we were in the school and held presentations about us and our contries and today we visited Violet who is a clse friend of our mentor and will help us during the project. Violet is very nice, talks good english and owns a second hand store.

Here is some more pictures

This is our host family! To the left is Marcella, her husband Orel and tata (the grandfather), to the left is the daughter Alina and her husband and me.

This is our house, it is located very close to the school and the main road which is very nice

These are the typical roads of our community, the only road with asphalt is tha main road... And still we are living in a big community with abouth 20,000 inhabitants... The second picture is what we like to call "the swiming pool"

This is me and Violet outside her shop. Today it was sunny, but still it is very cold here just as I can imagine it is at home. In Romania there is no electrical heating system in the houses, they only use fire stoves... Inside our house it was 15 degrees today... And you all know how much I lika the cold...

This is the "evil cat". It is resting on the top of my closet and I am scared every night when I go to sleep.

This was all from today! Lots of love

Huset

Hej igen!
Nu sitter vi hos grannen, en tjej som heter Ramona (tror jag), eftersom Marchella har daligt samvete for att vi inte har internet an... Haha, efter att mamma frogat moste jag bara klargora att vi inte delar sang med hela familjen.. Det er bara jag och Marion som delar rum, och en dubbelseng..

Her kommer lite bilder fron huset och garden

Forts tvo bilder fron vart rum

Vardagsrummet och korridoren utanfor vart rum, samt hallen her nedanfor

The kitchen

 Det har er Max, familjens "fina" hund, den andra er vakthunden som bara for vara utomhus. De flesta familjer i Rumanien har en av varje

Det her er varan seng, den er fktiskt storrre en den ser ut ;)

Den blo tunnan inneholler vin, i Rumanien gor nestan alla familjer sitt eget vin..

This was it! Nu ska vi fika ;)