Kurt kommer, snapsvisor och fina flickor

 

We started the night with some wine in the kitchen, and found a new friend Kurt that "hängde med" the whole night

Lizette and Viveca soon joined in, they brought cheeseballs and kiiwi shots

 Lovisa and I, my best friend who hopefully will come and visit me in Romania in the spring

Woot-woot!

Lisa and Linn, "Lisa is always this cute"

Lisa hanging some wine in the Christmas tree

 

Party Party in my livingroom

 

The very tasty kiwi shots, after this things got a bit wild... It was a nice night!

Cristmas in Sweden

i know this blogg is supposed to be about my experiences in Romania, but since I also have some non-swedish readers I thought it could be nice to post some pictures from Christmas in Sweden.

Making ginger bread with my mother, we were going to make a castle, but we were to lazy!

Some Christmas decoration in the apartment, and in the left corner you can almost see my brother

We had almost no snow on Christmas, it all went away with the rain... But the small fires are always nice

My mother preparing a sallad for the Christmas buffé, this is not a traditional food but it's very nice

My sister Ylva, she's not an easy target with the camera

Some food for the buffé

This is herring, a fish which we always eat on Christmas in Sweden. You can make it with a lot of different tastes like chilli, mustard, garlic, sherry and so on. I don't like this, but I know many people do.. This is NOT the "smelly fish"

Mmm, samon, it's one of my favorites! The left one is kind of marinated in salt and the right one is smoked

A lot of porc, elk- and deer meat and some eggs with mayonnaise and shrimps, it's very good

 

Here is my cusin Andreas, preparing a sandwish with traditonal flatbread. Here is also the crispy bread which is normal in Sweden, and a lot of good cheese

The most traditional food would be the Swedish meatballs, the boiled potatoes and the chipolata sausages

Watching the TV-Show "Karl-Vertil Jonson, about a boy who wants to be like Robin Hood, is one of our most typical activities during Christmas. 7 o'clock every year.

 

Desert, clementins and of course the Aladdin chocolat!

 

The Christmas Three and some of the presents, we've all been very nice this year

Merry Christmas!

Social Campaign and our new college Cristhofer

This last week before the Christmas Holiday we made a social campaign together with the school and the local hospital of Dabuleni. The idea was to spread some joy to the people who are staying at the hospital and to raise the social awareness among the students. We made Christmas cards together with the 5th and 8th graders and collected money from all students that wanted to contribute. We manage to collect almost 300 lei (about 75 euros) and made 58 Christmas cards. For the money we put together a bag of seven oranges and a pair of socks for each patient and we also bought tea, coffee and cookies to give them. About 30 students came to follow us to the hospital, and there we sang some carols and gave the things we bought to the patients. It was a very good day and we are very happy that so many students participated and tomorrow the group (except for me because I am leaving to go home to Sweden for Christmas) will go to Bechet, the neighboring village, to visit the elderly home and continue the procedure. 

Also we now have a new college in Dabuleni! Cristhofer from Peru has arrived so now the group is completed. Cristhofer is 25 years, from Lima, likes to dance samba, salsa and traditional dances from Peru and to cook. e is a very nice guy, the only problem is that he does not speak any English so we are always dependent on Luis to translate between us. Now I am very sorry that I did not learn Spanish, but who knows maybe after six more months I will know some. I hope! 

Luis, Marion and Cristhofer with 210 portocales

Making the Christmas bags for the patients

The first snow came today, just when we were supposed to walk to the hospital.

Cold!

Very cold!

Team Dabuleni is completed!

After the visit to the hospital we had a snow ball war, of course the volunteers were a popular target... 

Here are some of the kids from the 5th grade with their Christmas cards!

International Volunteer Day

This Monday we celebrated Intentional Volunteer Day here in Dabuleni together with volunteers here from Dolj,some from Gorj and a lot of enthusiastic students. For us volunteers in Dabuleni this day was a success because we had many motivated participants, we had fun and we feel like we delivered the message about this day and this topic.  For me personally it was great to see that many students already knew some things about volunteering, that they wanted to know much more and that some was thinking about volunteering in the future. During this time I think the most important thing was to enlighten the importance of volunteering, both because of our social responsibility and because of the experiences and the personal development you gain from this. And I also am very happy because we had such a good response from the students, our organisation and the mentors afterwards. 

The best thing was when the students came to us the day after and said "It was a beautiful day".

The best activity was the round table, where the volunteers were discussing volunteering with the students in small groups. It was nice to see how enthusiastic the students were!

We also had a small exhibition with pictures about volunteering, made by the volunteers, here are some of the pictures

We also had a City Rally, where the students were running around Dabuleni to answer questions about volunteering. Here is Pilar!

Luis

Marion and Yasmin

Some students running, here they pass the police station

Victoria

Group photo!

The last activity was to paint the roads in our park with messages and thoughts about Volunteers' Day

 

The volunteers all got matching sweatshirts

As a final all those who participate the whole day got a diploma!

My best Portuguese friend

Today is Romania's National Day. We have the day of and I celebrate by studding for my seminar and by watching the documentary "The Complete History of My Sexual Failures" with my favorite Portuguese guy Luis. Who loves gogosi.

Predal

Last week we were in in a city called Predal for some "on-arrival training". Basically the National Agency of Romania gathered all the new volunteers in Romania, put us in a hotel and taught us everything they think we need to know about volunteering. We learnt a lot of important stuff, like the fact that volunteers need to adapt to everything, if something break in your apartment you probably have to pay for it yourself, hitchhiking is gooood, Romania like wet cake, some trainers are good others not, the word fika" is very international and I learnt the national anthem of Uganda. I think the best thing we learnt during this week is something we already knew; Party is the best way to bound with new people. The fact is we had a five days in a row party, seven days for some. And it was good.

We took the train to Predal. Unfortenatly there were no direct train there, so we had to go to Bucharest first (3 hours) and then to Predal up in the mountains (3 more hours).

 Justine, Luis and Diana in the train. And my dear roommate Marion.

Some houses in Predal

Got to share room with my girls in the hotel, and we got the room with the Jacuzzi, yeah.

The mountains, it was really beautiful!

A small party in our room, and then some djungel speed with some other volunteers from north of Romania.

A group picture with some of the volunteers

This was for the international evening.
Beer from Germany, Cabbage from Romania, Oranges from Spain and Wine from France. 

Party, Party!

 The grand finale was the fire outside and it was very nice, exept the fact that Pilar hurt her ancle when she was jumping over it... Alcohol, jumping and fire don't go good together...