Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome

I just discovered that Blogger has a "Stats" page that tracks all sorts of things about readership of each blog on the site. According to the stats for this blog, the majority of readers are in California People of Windsurf U.S. and Romania, as expected. But Blogger claims to have also received hits from the United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Spain, Japan, Switzerland, France, and Singapore. I assume those are not actual readers, but rather Web-trawling bots of some sort hoping that I will post my Social Security number (335-26-1424) or my ATM pin (1337) so they can steal my identity.

Whoops!

But if by any chance there are actually people hitting this site from any of those countries, please allow me to say: BONVENIGI!, and please don't judge America based on me. Judge us based on George W. Bush. And the shitty, shitty USCIS.

Book reviews from my first month in Romania:

Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson: Worth reading, but not as good as the other books of his I've read. It's got the same Stephenson quirkiness and the same "Wow is this guy way smarter than me" wonder to it, but the story doesn't really go much of anywhere. It's first in a trilogy, I think, but even so it should stand on its own. It's not bad, but it's more of a weird slice-of-life thing than a real story. B-.

The Life of Pi by Yann Martel: Holy smokes, what a book. Io gave me this after her friend Emilene (who loyal readers will remember as a recurring character earlier in this blog) gave it to her. Outstanding book. It's best if you go in totally cold, as I did. Don't read anything about it. Don't even read the back of the book! Just read it. If during the first part you think "OK this is interesting and decently written but mostly a bunch of wooly-headed hippie claptrap," just keep going. I promise it's a good book. A+.

When I googled "Quicksilver Stephenson" for the book cover, this image of Twiki from Buck Rogers was on the first page of Google hits. So I am including him here.

Also burn in hell: USCIS

The USCIS (the post-9/11 version of the INS) recently denied our appeal, which was trying to get Io back into the country this year rather than next year. This was expected but is still really disappointing, and means that it's pretty much guaranteed that Io will be here until July of 2012. I still have one card left to play, but it's a much lower-percentage shot than the appeal was.

It's upsetting mostly because it's just so senseless. There's no actual, logical reason for anyone in the United States to want Io to be in Romania. It doesn't help the U.S. at all -- in fact, it hurts us, and benefits nobody but Romania. But the USCIS is a gigantic, shuddering machine that doesn't care about logic or sensible results, it just follows simple rules down the path of least resistance. Everyone from think-tank pundits to the President of the United States have decried how stupid this rule is, but nobody will actually do anything about it.

"One last point about education. Today, there are hundreds of thousands of students excelling in our schools who are not American citizens. . . . [They] come here from abroad to study in our colleges and universities. But as soon as they obtain advanced degrees, we send them back home to compete against us. It makes no sense."

-- Barack Obama, 2011 State of the Union

"After training the world's best and brightest -- often at public expense -- we don't find ways to make sure they stay here by giving them a green card but rather insist that they leave and take their knowledge to another country, where they will invent, inspire, build and pay taxes. Every year, we send tens of thousands of the smartest immigrants back home, which is a great investment -- in the future of those countries."

-- Fareed Zakaria, Time Magazine, 2010

WTG, America. GG.

The Walkin Dude

Everyone is out of the house for various reasons, so I went for a walk around Titan, Ioana's neighborhood in Bucharest. Winter is in full swing. Many people walk in the road, because the sidewalks aren't cleared as a general matter. They're well-packed from walking, though, so I don't have any real problem with them.

It's the middle of the school day, but it seems like all the kids are at home. Maybe schools are closed because of the snow. In this bloc, a bunch of kids were down in the yard throwing snowballs. Other children opened up the windows of their apartments and were trying to get the kids below to throw snow up through the windows. Eventually parents began to show up and ruined the whole thing.

[Correction: Io tells me this building is actually a school. So that explains that. And makes it super-funny how the kids were throwing snow up through the windows and then the teachers showed up.]

More kids in the snow. Are there no orphanages?

Just down the street from Io's bloc is this building. The blocs were all built during Communist times and are pretty grim on the outside and ruthlessly functional minimalist construction on the inside (although every one I've seen has been nicely decorated). This building, though, is a post-revolution capitalist-era building. Io says the condos inside are supposed to be very luxurious, for those who can afford them.

Interestingly, the very next block is basically a Romanian slum. I can't remember anywhere in America where I've seen this sort of juxtaposition. We definitely have both sorts of houses, but not as next-door neighbors. As I was walking back up the road right after taking this photo, a couple of Roma (gypsy) children were coming the other way, back from the market. One of them stopped dead in the middle of the road, pulled down his pants, and took a giant piss into the street. At first I thought, Wow, who would pay exorbitant rent to live in a place where people piss in the road right in front of your building? But then I thought about New York City, and about the super-expensive condos they've started installing in downtown LA, and I guess we do the same thing.

The market was in full swing. I stopped in for a merdenele pastry from the new bakery that opened since the last time I was here. They have better merdenele than the old place. And still only 40 cents. What a country! The guy in the picture was here to do some major grocery shopping, with a sled tied to his bicycle to haul stuff home.

Eventually I headed home. Nice walk! I've definitely gotten comfortable maneuvering around this part of Bucharest, buying occasional things, etc. And I've mastered getting back home.

Much of Bucharest, including Titan, is an absolute maze. The business districts are dominated by multiple copies of the same businesses (Western Union, Maxbet casinos, Raiffeisen Bank, identical-looking pharmacies, etc). Probably LA looks the same way to someone who's not used to it, all strip malls and Starbucks, but for me it can be really disorienting to try and figure out which street I'm on. The residential areas are even worse, because they are just street after street of literally identical blocs.

That is a satellite photo of Titan, with Tania's place in the middle (for a clearer view, you can see a larger version at this blog's associated Picasa site. All the photos from this blog can be viewed in larger, hi-res versions there). In the upper left you can see the market. All the blocs are identical. Imagine yourself dropped in the middle of that maze and trying to find one particular building door. The first time I did it I thought I would be OK because I memorized that we live in Bloc 19. What I didn't realize, though, is that the entire building is called Bloc 19, and you also need to know the number of your entrance door (in our case, 6). Otherwise, it's like knowing that you live in the 11000 block of Acama Street in Los Angeles. That's better than nothing, but doesn't really get you where you're going.

But, like I said, it's all coming together now.

Bonus picture of baby belly:

Burn in Hell, Sam Shields

Yesterday we waited for a brief break in the snowstorm and took grandma back to her home. She and grandpa seemed very happy to be reunited, even though everyone else thinks this is a pretty bad idea. The roads were treacherous and the weather was very cold, and only the main streets in Bucharest get plowed as nearly as I can tell. Brr.

Tania has really outdone herself in the kitchen the past couple of days. She made us delicious chiftelute (meatballs) for dinner, which I will secretly tell the entire world are better even than Ioana's meatballs. Then my plan to make cookies got put on hold because Tania made papanosh -- home-made donuts! These are basically like sassy donuts except that they have some sweet cheese in the batter, which makes them super-moist. So delicious! I think I honestly ate like six of them over the course of the day yesterday, and then got a big bellyache, but it was so worth it.

And then it was an evening of World of Warcraft (super fun!) and football. Watching the game turned into an enormous project. I could only find one American sports bar in Bucharest, but when we called them they said they only show the European league American football games. European league? Where do you get off calling yourself an American sports bar? Because, quick geography lesson, America is not in Europe. There was actually sort of a big deal about this a couple hundred years ago. Maybe you should read up on it.

Gagi and I spent the evening scouring the Internets trying to find some way to get the game. Eventually, after about two hours of trying by each of us, we found a website streaming the Swedish broadcast of the game. Gagi helped me hook up the laptop to the TV and it was game on! I missed the first 5 minutes or so, but got to see the rest. The streaming feed worked nearly flawlessly (a couple of hitches in the stream, but nothing terrible), and had the added bonus of being totally free. Woohoo!

Unfortunately my Bears did not put forth equal effort. It was actually a great game, at least in the second half. After falling way behind, the Bears ended up putting in their third-string QB, a guy who has barely played professional football at all, who led them on a Cinderella-story comeback that came within yards of pulling out the game. Alas, an interception in the final minute of the game on their own 12 as they were driving to score spelled the end of the Bears' Super Bowl hopes. I was so bummed. So now I have to root for the freaking AFC in the big game. Yuck. But thanks to Gagi and Io for helping me figure out a way to see the game, and then sitting and watching it with me even though both of them had very little understanding of the rules.

Gagi got so hooked that I woke up this morning to find him reviewing Youtube videos of football. He's printed out all the rules in Romanian and bound them into a booklet, and has spent the morning looking at websites explaining the different defensive lineups and offensive plays. The guy probably knows more about football than I do at this point. He also discovered that Romania has its own five-team American football league, believe it or not. Bucharest has two teams, which is two more than my home-town of Los Angeles -- which, geography lesson #2, is actually in America -- has. WTF.

Today begins a new week, blanketed in snow. Io is heading off to the hospital for some pregnancy stuff and then work (pretty convenient to have both of those things in the same place!), and I have no plans until I go pick her up at the end of her shift tonight, other than my continuing scientific investigation of the effects of not showering.

She Blinded Me

Today I embark upon two great science projects.

First, I have decided to see whether it is possible to make chocolate chip cookies in Romania. The United Nations has already determined that chocolate chip cookies are the best kind of cookies. For some reason, though, there are no chocolate chip cookies here. I assume it has something to do with the Communists, but jeez, Romania, the revolution was 22 years ago. It's time to get your bake on.

It honestly makes no sense to me how this country got McDonald's before they got chocolate chip cookies. I mean, come on. So anyway, I've had a real hankering for chocolate chip cookies and, displaying the sort of can-do American spirit that led to the invention of chocolate chip cookies in the first place, I've decided that if Romania doesn't have any, I will by God make some.

This is similar to the thought process I went through when I looked around and realized there were no kids in this apartment.

So I am heading to Auchan later today to see if I can get the stuff to make chocolate chip cookies. For science. I imagine that, in a country that doesn't have chocolate chip cookies, it might be difficult to find chocolate chips. But I think back to my brother scientists, your Issac Newton, your Galileo Galilei, your Doc Brown, and I think: would they have been stopped by lack of chocolate chips? No, they would not.

One point twenty-one gigawatts?!?

Second, I was thinking to myself, "Should I take a shower today?" Because during the winter, Romanians (like most populations that go through deep winters) don't exactly shower every day. And then I thought, Hell, I'm on vacation for six months, I could not take a shower for a month if I wanted to. And then I thought, I wonder what that would be like? And then I realized, this is probably the only time in my life I will ever be able to find out. Right? I mean, for science? So today is Day Two.

If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Winter is Coming

The cold and snow have returned to Bucharest at last. Yesterday there was a fairly serious snowstorm, enough to keep us all pretty much cooped up in the house except for one brief foray Gagi and I took to the Auchan hipermart. A man needs his croissants, you know. Today the wind is blowing hard enough to rattle the windows. Gagi has pulled all the shades down in the living room, which I assume is to help keep the heat in but makes it feel like we are preparing for a hurricane or something.

No chance of us staying indoors today, though. Grandma's iron will has won out and we are returning her to her home in Bucharest. She and grandpa have apparently had it with this being separated business, and grandpa won't leave the house for fear it will be burglarized, so we're taking grandma back even though she's supposed to stay in a warm environment for another two weeks. And then tonight Io and I are heading out to Bucharest in search of a place where I can watch the NFC championship game. It turns out that in the metric system, "football" means some crazy game where you boot a ball around a field and can't even use your God-given hands. The NFL will let you watch coverage of the game live over the internet for the low low price of twenty five dollars a game, which seems frankly insane to me. So, we are off to find an American sports bar that will hopefully be showing the game.

For now, we are listening to the wind howling outside and enjoying our last few hours in our jammies before heading out to do battle with Romania's weather. Gagi tells me that the forests around Bucharest have mostly been cut down, so the wind comes straight down from Siberia. Awesome!

You Say You Want A Revolution

A couple days ago was my first time using Romanian public transportation on my own. I went out to pick up Ioana at the hospital where she volunteers/goes to school, which is a couple of walks and a moderately long bus ride from home. I figured I would be fine, though, because I had made the trip once with Io, although that was during daylight and this trip was going to be at night. But I didn't care, because 90% of Romanian buses are these cool modern vehicles that have a big monitor at the front with a real-time GPS map showing where the bus is, the next stop, ETA, cycling through highlighting various streets and points of interest nearby, etc. I mean, what kind of a person gets lost when they have a GPS telling them where to go, right?

Unfortunately, when my bus came it was one of the 10% that still hadn't been upgraded, which left me to navigate my way to the hospital by the stars. Luckily my famous Magellan-like direction sense kicked in, and I was able to make it to the hospital no problem.

Yesterday we went to see Grandpa Paul Negru (Io's mom's father) to see how he's holding up. Dedicated readers of this blog will recall that Grandma Negru had eye surgery recently, necessitating her moving out of the house. The original plan was to move Grandpa with her and have Io and I move into the house to take care of it, but Grandpa refused to leave, so he's there trying to make it on his own, which is not easy for a man approaching 90 who is used to having his wife do the cooking and several of the chores. So Io and I were heading out to check up on him, bring him some food, and make sure the house hadn't burned down around him.

This entailed another Romanian Odyssey. Grandpa lives on the other side of Bucharest, probably 4 or 5 miles away. Getting there takes about 45 on the tram, bus, and subway (and walking). So we went on that little trip, which was good mostly because the route goes past a vendor selling sasssy donuts, which I have been craving ever since I got here (over two weeks ago!!) but have not yet had. I bought the double-sized order but couldn't even get through half of it before I was sugared out. I obviously need to work on building up my sass resistance.

We also stopped on the way to buy some hot pretzels (I am telling you, if you ever get stranded at home alone, you should have Io and I take care of you. Io's mom asked us to bring Grandpa some food, and we showed up with soft pretzels and donuts) and a calendar. The Orthodox Church has this awesome racket going: all their holidays are set by some non-Gregorian calendar or something, so nobody but them knows what days various holidays will fall on from year to year. The only way to find out is to buy a Genuine Church Miracle Calendar (tm) every January from one of their Authorized Retailers.

Seeing Grandpa was great. Io had an exhausting evening of constant translation due to my still-terrible Romanian and grandpa's penchant for telling stories, but a good time was had by all.

Sassy donuts for everyone!

We were confined to just the bedroom because that's the room that has the wood-fired stove/heater in it. Grandpa showed off his large collection of watches and clocks, which I guess are the sorts of things people collected in the mid-1900's. It was a great collection, because he's got a completely indiscriminate outlook on what constitutes a collectible watch. So there were Timex digital calculator-watches in there, but also amazing antique Swiss and Russian pocketwatches that still run flawlessly. I'm certainly no expert but he has what appear to be some amazing pieces in his collection.

He's also a walking treasure-trove of history. Pictured at left is his military service identification from World War 2. When the war first broke out, Romania was a monarchy, and the King remained neutral. Within a year, though, fascists led a coup d'etat and took over the government, joining the war on the side of the Axis. Romania was a huge participant in Hitler's eastern front against the Soviets, and starting in about 1943-44 became a major target of Allied bombing. Although officially in the army, Grandpa was a skilled iron-worker and spent the war working in a factory manufacturing bombs. In 1944 the King returned and deposed the fascists, switching sides and joining the Allies. In 1945 the country underwent yet another revolution, and the King eventually abdicated under pressure in favor of a Communist government (mostly because the Soviets had invaded before the country switched sides).

The Allies put Romania in Russia's sphere of influence as the war ended, leading to decades of totalitarian Communism here, from which the country has never recovered. At right is Grandpa's work permit. Notice that the factory where he worked had its name changed from "Vulcan" to "Mao-Tze-Dun," even though most Romanians wouldn't know China if it came up and punched them in the face. Which, economically at least, it did. Grandpa retired from the factory about 40 years later, right before the democratic revolution that left Romania's government in the state it remains today.

So we had an evening of stories, and then went out and helped Grandpa lock stuff up outside.

He wanted to show me everything he had out there, which was an impressive collection of stuff, but it's hard to pay attention to every tool and chicken when you're walking around in freezing temperatures. He'd show me every little thing, and I'd be like "OK, let's go back by the stove now," but on the way he would grab my arm and pull me over to an electric grinder, which he would turn on to show me it still worked. We have no mutual language, but the message was clear: "This thing still works! If you ever need anything ground or sharpened, you can just come right here and do it!" Right! Thanks! Please, I am freezing to death!

Eventually we had to bid Grandpa goodbye, which I know was hard for him because he's out there all alone. We told him we'd go back this Sunday (and will end up shoveling him out, if the weather forecasts are anything to go by). By the time we got back home we had been out for over eight hours, and I collapsed into bed.

The Butterfly Effect. Of Couches.

Fairly lazy times again the last few days. I think that's going to grow to be a theme in this blog, at least until the baby comes. After receiving the new couch that was the subject of the last update, we embarked on the Great Couch Relocation. The global recession is in full swing here and lots of people are hard up for stuff, so the acquisition of our new couch touched off a ripple effect of hand-me-downs. We hauled our old couch to Gagi's mother's house. Gagi's mom gave her old couch to some friends of Tania's. Io tells me that couches will continue to propagate down the economic space-time continuum until eventually someone's old furniture is broken up for firewood.

We also made several trips to various markets, including another hour-round-trip walking odyssey to the OBI/Metro/Real shopping complex to buy some clothes for Io, as well as some groceries and other junk. I got a little reminder of home from one of the T-shirts for sale:

Oh, California. Home of the People of Windsurf U.S. So true.

I will say, though, that Real is home to one of many Romanian inventions that surpass what we have in America: shopping baskets you can pull along behind you rather than carrying in your hand. How about it, American science? Let's get on that. Other things you could invent: the cool vacuum that has no bags or dust because everything gets deposited into an onboard water tank; the dryer that doesn't need to vent water vapor outside because it all gets captured in a bin; and the washing machine that doesn't need agitators or even much water because it cleans your clothes with jets of air bubbles. I'm not sure how this landlocked* country that doesn't even speak English got so far ahead of us in water technology, but if futurist Kevin Costner and all the global warming scientists are to be believed, dealing with water is going to be a big issue in the future. We cannot allow a water-tank gap!

This week also marked one of my first real forays out into Bucharest on my own. I took advantage of one day this week when everyone else was gone, and headed out for a solo flight. I managed to get around fine and my broken Romanian was enough to conduct several commercial transactions with only a few dozen hitches.

All this (and a pair of gloves not pictured) for under $7. What a country!

Io and I also went out to eat for the first time since my arrival. Up to now, food has all been home-cooked by my soacra frumosa, Tania. But Io and I headed out to "Mr. Pizza," an Italian place near here. As with most Romanian restaurants serving foreign food, it's not exactly the sort of Italian I'm used to getting in California People of Windsurf U.S., but it's reasonably close. I got a pizza that had pepperoni so hot it brought tears to your eyes, but it was pretty decent for all that.

In other Romanian news, my world-champion Chicago Bears managed to advance to the NFC championship. That means we play arch-rivals Green Bay on Sunday. I have GOT TO FIND SOME WAY TO WATCH THE GAME. I can never keep up with which team Brett Favre is playing for anymore (when he isn't too busy sending pictures of his junk to strangers! J/k Brett! Ha ha! Rapist!), but it's always good to hate the Cheeseheads no matter who is playing for them. Go Bears! This is the same weekend, by the way, that super-hippie Tom Brady got his. All in all, these are good times in America. Or, Romania.

*I only do this to irritate the Romanians who read this blog.

And Our Friends Are All Aboard.

Editors Note: I don't know why the following paragraph became a giant link to a photograph, and seem unable to change it back. Wacky! Crazy Blogger is crazy!

One of the funniest, and funnest, things about Romania is the music here. As I understand it, there's a decent amount of Romanian music, made by local bands, often in Romanian. I rarely hear that being played when I'm out, though. When you're in the hipermart or just walking out on the street, what you more often hear is a crazy mishmash of music from other countries. There's a lot of American and Euro-pop, as well as some oldies, some rap, some C&W, all sorts of stuff. There seems to be little in terms of flow or format -- it's just one song after another, almost at random. It'll be like ABBA, Eminem, Willie Nelson, Jefferson Airplane. It's like JACK-FM on steroids. At least half the time, the song you're listening to is actually a cover version by a (presumably) Romanian artist, but in the original English. I assume this is because it's a good way to get popular music on the cheap here in royalty-free Romania. I'm interested to see whether that (along with the thriving market in pirated DVDs) changes as Romania becomes more and more integrated into the EU.

We've had a fairly lazy last couple of days. Some errands, walking Io to the bus stop for her job at the hospital, and a lot of time hanging around the house. I'm realizing this blog, like my life in general, is changing from "Wow look at all these amazing things I'm doing in this foreign country" to a sort of maintenance mode, where I settle into more of a business-as-usual lifestyle here. This is the new normal.

We did finally get our new couch, which is great. Storage space here in the bloc is at an absolute premium. There just isn't a lot of extra room for storage and whatnot. Most of the furniture here is designed so that it opens in some way so you can use the empty space inside it for storage (bench seats hinge up, etc). Even the oven is used for storage when things get tight. Living here with everyone is like serving on a submarine together: there's a lot of "We need to eat dinner so you have to put the computer away" sort of stuff, but it also brings you a lot closer through necessity. So far everyone has been very cool and understanding with one another. And obviously, it just shows the level of sacrifice that Romanian parents will go through for their children / son-in-law. Letting us live here involves major changes for Tania and Gagi, at a time (Gagi's retired and Tania's approaching retirement) when their lives are supposed to be settling into an easy routine. Soacra si soacru: multumesc foarte mult!

Anyway, the new couch. The shot at left is the old configuration of my and Io's room. It's a 9x12 bedroom that has about a foot and a half of one wall (the one not visible in the photo) taken up by floor-to-ceiling bookcases, and two feet on the other side taken up by a wall-length bureau/desk unit. Space is pretty tight, to the extent that I sit on the bed when I'm working on my computer (mine's the one on the left). The bed is a futon couch that folds out, but it was pretty narrow (about the size of a full), which is, you know, an issue when one of you is nearly seven months pregnant.

We have since given away that long desk unit and gotten a new couch/bed, this one the kind that has a changeable frame (so the mattress is better as a bed). It's about the same length as the old one, but definitely wider (about as wide as a queen, I think, maybe a bit less), which is a huge improvement for us. Hooray!

The couch is also a good thing for Tania. She got her current furniture over 20 years ago, during Ceaucescu's time. Back then, availability of furniture (or food, or medicine, or anything else) was pretty irregular. And if you wanted to buy furniture, you pretty much had to take out a loan because nobody had money. And the only place to get a loan was from the government, because it was a centrally run economy. When it was time for Tania to get furniture, she found a couch that she loved. She went to get the loan, but it was Communist times, so it took weeks for the money to come through. By the time she got it, she went back and the couch was gone. And it wasn't like you could just order another one, this was Communist times and availability of things was sporadic and random, and you just took whatever was available.

So Tania ended up getting this other furniture, which she didn't like nearly as much, and has had it for 20 years now. With Io and I arriving, Tania and Gagi decided it was time to get a new couch, and we shopped around until we found one that was exactly like that couch-of-her-dreams from 20 years ago, and we bought it. Yay for heartwarming capitalism.

Adventure Looms

It's warmed up a lot the past couple of days, into the high 30's. We haven't done much in the past couple of days -- a lot of shopping, some errands, etc. We ordered the new couch for Io and my's room, which will be showing up tomorrow.

We took grandma Negru to the eye doctor. It turns out she needs some eye surgery, and after the surgery she needs to stay in a warm environment for two weeks to assist in healing. Grandma and grandpa live in a house on the outskirts of Bucharest that has no real heating system. In the winter, they live in just one room of the house, which has a wood-burning stove they use for heat. So after the surgery, grandma (and presumably grandpa, who can't really take care of himself) are going to go live at Io's aunt's place. But that means nobody would be around to keep up the maintenance on grandma's place. In particular, all of grandma's chickens would die.

It looks like the most likely solution is that Io and I will go live there to take care of the place for those two weeks. This would be quite an adventure, because in addition to no heat, there is no working indoor plumbing and no internet. There is one electrical wire run into a small junction box there, but it doesn't look like it would support much load. Then again, how much electricity could you use in one room?

Depending on what you're doing, potentially a lot. But for us, probably not so much. Going without the internet for two weeks will be pretty challenging for me, though. I might actually look into renting a USB satellite internet antenna for a month, which I think you can do here. But if I'm off the radar for a couple of weeks, that is likely why. The whole thing is potentially a fun adventure-within-an-adventure, like going camping for two weeks while I'm in Romania. Io knows the house well because she lived with her grandma and grew up here for several years as a pre-teenager.

I also had an amusing first brush with Romanian business practices today. We went out to renew Io's private health insurance (she's covered by the national program, but with the pregnancy we put her on some supplementary insurance as well). You basically have to go do this in person, because Romania still operates primarily as a cash economy. Few places take credit cards and most Romanians do not even know what a personal check is. It seems like this is in the process of changing, and maybe pretty fast, but for now most everything at the consumer level is done in cash. Io had tried to renew the insurance yesterday, only to discover that the business had relocated on the other side of the city without informing any of its policyholders. Today we had Gagi drive us out to the new location, after calling to verify where it was and when it was open. When we got there, they wouldn't let us in. It had been a busy day because a lot of people renew insurance in January, so they decided to close an hour early because they were sick of working. Hilarious! Can you imagine if, like, a bank in the United States did that? "Yeah, we're tired, so we closed up shop. Come back tomorrow." It's like something that would happen on Seinfeld.

It Has Acid For Blood

When I came back from Romania last time, I brought souvenirs for a handful of people. Let's call them "my real friends." Just kidding, people who didn't get souvenirs! Anyway, I brought my friend Jason some tuica, that Romanian bathtub gin. When I gave it to him, I explained what it was and told him whatever you do, for God's sake don't drink any of this. He said he was going to try some anyway. On the right is a photograph of the Lixandru dining room table after the saint day party. Those white marks are where someone spilled some tuica on the table and it ate through the varnish. Gagi had to resurface that part of the table this weekend. Still want to give that stuff a shot, J? (Gagi would like me to tell everyone that the tuica only did that because the varnish is alcohol-based, as if such a thing even exists. To which I say: Whatever. You're taking your life into your hands if you voluntarily expose your tissues to this stuff.)

The weekend's been good. We cleaned up from the party, moved some furniture out of my and Io's room to make room for future baby furniture, and then headed out to Auchan hipermart to do some errands, just me and Io. The walk was nice -- it's warmed up to above freezing, although winter is still a tough time for Romania's large population of stray dogs. The smart ones curl up on manhole covers and similar things for warmth.

Yesterday was Tania & Gagi's wedding anniversary. We were going to go out to a restaurant, but at the last second decided to stay in instead. Tania made Gagi's favorite meal, moussaka, which is a Turkish dish adapted by the Romanians. As it happens, moussaka is also one of my favorite Romanian dishes, basically ground beef and pork in a savory sauce, sandwiched between layers of potato. Yum! Tania also brought out some of her famous pickled vegetables. Yuck!

Things you can discern from these photographs: In Romania people usually don't have beverages with food. You eat, and then after the meal you have some water or whatever. During the meal traditional Romanians will have a glass of whisky or tuica that they sip from occasionally, but having a big glass of water that you're draining constantly through the meal isn't typical (although nobody cares that I do it). Also, in Romanian tradition you have white bread with the meal, and the bread is laid out right on the tablecloth, and eaten off the tablecloth. No bread plates. See how many interesting cultural tidbits you're learning from this blog?

Delicious moussaka

So we wished Tania and Gagi a happy anniversary, and then spent the rest of the night playing World of Warcraft with folks back in the New World. All in all, a very fun weekend. Next week, we are on regular schedule of Tania at work, Io at class and at the hospital, and Gagi and I pantomiming to each other while they're gone. Sometime during the week we're getting a new couch / hide-a-bed for Io and me, which will be nice, and I am going to start my regular program of daily walking.

La multi ani! Happy anniversary!