Taken from my last journal entry, Tuesday May 16th, 2011

I think the reason I avoid this journal is in part from this girl who explained to me that it should be faced right side up so that the tassel falls from top to bottom, I hadn’t ever considered that before. Today has been a great day, an important day I would say.

A great many things have taken place, some of which made it into my other journals used as space filler for this one, because I can’t seem to write in you! Lets say from now on you just get the filtered bullshit and maybe you can give me some synthesis for now on, for I am tired of just giving. Funny things happened its true, things that caused reflection, events that brought back my times buying underwear from African street merchants in Napoli, times which have taken a seat to my consciousness. All well kept in another text, a book you will only know now through what I let slip. You my friend are the last survivor with me chuckling after a late party before we part ways.

Today was important because I put my two tasks to work. My recent interest in narrative I am sure plays little if any part, maybe as a paratext through outside materials you will never know anything about, because I won’t mention their names. As I was saying, today was an important day. I finally got beyond the insufferable reports from David Copperfield’s wedding but I still can’t get beyond his current indiscretions, benevolence, and inability to disentangle himself from his social sediments. Basically I can’t stand his knickknack of a wife. But hey, at the moment he is only 21, and that’s when it all begins in my book… By the way, I am in deep trouble. I have been swapping between a fully charged Cosco bag of trail mix and a near potato sack of dark Chocolate Açai for the past page now and if the past is supposed to reflect the future, I will take my breakfast with a burning regret. Even without the aid of beef jerky. Thanks mom. Basically today seemed to top other days. I found those I sought, and spoke about space I found to give form to time, cause ‘it’ happened. So it goes.

The first element we agreed on was that ‘it’ could not be communicated, at least through our current system of forms or language that already ‘mean’ something. All presuppositions and therefore all orders are banished. Us as a group, in a circle, we shared a special orientation of space and time and enjoyed each other’s company. Attention being paid to discourse, to the ‘words’ allowed, as language is a form of public transportation at a tax of its paved roads and maps, and we wanted the forms of our conveyance to be free of direction and result. All we agreed on was that one had ones body and its movement, that’s all that we could be sure of back then. We meditated over how to give what we had form, to define it, to make it last, to express outside ourselves what we already knew within.

Today has been a good day. I can’t stand post-modern thought; it seeks fragmentation and clamors for identity, full of perspectives without any plan for action. It’s like a child holding a wooden cup with a handle, and a ball which is attached to a string, which is attached to the cup. Its only entertainment; a toy not to be marveled at but remembered as an effective gizmo that taught coordination while we were still growing up. Now it’s Nintendo. Now I am digressing in thought. We agreed that Plato began and Hegel completed Western Metaphysics, basically the world of thought we were thrown into and forced to make doo with. We are currently very interested in Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard, we made a large pot of ginger tea and decided that today was a good day

If I were a New Historicist I would explain all my current subjective developments and socio/ cultural constructs that have shaped how I view and interpret whatever it is I am speaking of. But that is for my past 7 journals to support, you on the other hand will attest for nothing before now written. We were watching Scanner Darkly projected outside an apartment wall. This was after the brief encounter with a section of American students, t’was their last farewell, adieu, au revoir, adios, bon voyage, aufwedersehen before their sober return. Their semester had just ended. They were drunk and bedazzled, full of sound and sentimentality, we crashed their party, and we smoked American Spirits.

‘Is it rational to be immoral?’ that’s a question posed by my professor that stemmed from a simple question of ‘what is good,’ from which we will submit an outline next week. In my opinion, depending on a reason justified by a given community for some desired result, it is not only true, but its opposite as well: that it is immoral to be rational. I will then allude to the American treatment of the Japanese during WWII and get a feather in my cap for not mentioning the Holocaust. OHHH discourse, ohh language, oh you blasted bottle of invertible time! Today was a good day.

.

End

Actually went out for the first time in weeks rescued from my avalanche of books by a pocket of time and now I can feel the strangle

hold this system has on me and what little of myself that is left, this system of dry emulation and categorization and comparison

that seeks not to innovate but to inundate with qualifications and create space not with substance but with that which defines

its function, a wallflower who gawks and justifies its lack of participation with the dance of life with highfalutin lectures

that call attention to nothing more than words that can only wish to be real. My soul is being sucked moment

by moment so soft and faint I hardly realize it is not my own incompetence but me everlasting prowess

which cannot squeeze and shaped passive by these smothering forces that I seek as a naive convert

seeks absolution through that which only takes and deceives My achievement is a dream,

my room all too well furnished, I blather and stumble my age thickens and coarse

with its leathery carelessness, not I, this is not how it is to be,

no dead arid arrangement can bring me see otherwise

as I ignore and I break and defy and escape

these chains around nothing I laugh

as I feel to be alive is no reason

but with structure no feeling

though once it was said

to have been

what now

isn't.

Fuck Form

and what it stands for

and all its discrimination

to point and regard for a base of a tyrant

all things made select and come taken if proven

yet forms themselves contain nothing and thats why I'm gone.

Inside a coffee shop located on the corner of some busy four-way street stood Charlie, waiting for his latte. The three teenagers behind the little counter moved in every direction, knocking metal on plastic, pulling brass knobs, releasing steam, pouring this, sprinkling that, a wild flurry of bodies performing a synchronized beverage dance while everyone else waiting in line appeared frozen and de-caffeinated. The carefully metered aroma of coffee and soft contemporary jazz music that swirled around Charlie as he remained upright and waiting reminded him of what purgatory might be like, some vague location between standing in line and reclining above cushions. His mind wondered around the earth tone colors and coffee bean mosaics that coated the walls and soon Charlie found himself searching for a quite place to sit and think, a place near one of the windows hopefully…oh too late, well luckily there was a place in the center of the room flanked with sofa’s and there he made himself at home, working himself between two cushions he set his coffee down and slowly stretched his legs out on top of a little community of neighboring pillows. Ahh. He closed his eyes.

Soon a little boy with silver spectacles shaped round carefully balanced his hot chocolate with both hands as he took up residence right next to Charlie. The boy tried to take sips of his chocolate the best he could since he had a patch over his left eye behind his glasses, the doctor said it would have to be there for two more weeks. He had a lazy eye. It was just the two on the sofa and the both began sipping their drinks, each conscious of the other, there was an unnatural silence about the room. Then the boy suddenly turned to Charlie and asked, “Want to hear a joke I heard?” Charlie felt obliged to humor the child so he agreed.

“Ok,” said the boy, “say knock-knock.”

Charlie considered what was asked of him for a moment then said, “knock-knock?”

“Who’s there?” the boy answered swiftly. Charlie wasn’t sure what to do, something wasn’t right he thought.

“Who’s there?” the boy repeated slowly.

“I don’t know?” Charlie said as he crinkled his forehead in confusion.

“Well lets try again,” said the boy, “say knock-knock.”

“Knock-knock,” Charlie mumbled and straightaway felt ridiculous.

The boy with what looked to be a little smile repeated those words, “whose there?”

“I don’t know who’s there!” Charlie exclaimed.

“Who’s there?”

“Nobody! Nobody!” Charlie was trembling as he spoke the words that seemed out of his control and immediately Charlie broke down in front of his young inquisitor, shielding his tears with his great big hands. Who’s there now he thought to himself? This little boy brought out the strangest emotions, he saw his own son who grew up long ago, who one day, just like his wife, wasn’t there. Such great distances of time and loss caught him off guard, he felt ashamed and childish.

“It’s OK grandpa, it’s just a joke. I don’t get it either,” said the little boy.

He pulled himself together taking a long sip from his latte. He managed something that resembled a smile.

“It’s a good one Charlie,” the old man said at last, “I haven’t heard it that way before.”

For all who missed the demonstration yesterday in Freiburg, here is the gist of it though much didn't make it on tape.

Up Next:

Wikipedia and Wikileaks in relations to trust, authority, and funding...

Happy Birthday Kale

Beyond this reporters witlessness lies some questions that must be faced

Some lights reading

http://newsjunkiepost.com/2010/12/04/killing-the-messenger-corporate-media-and-politicians-v-julian-assange-and-wikileaks/

Here is just a quick fun little filmthingy that I made from this sweet site www.xtranormal.com

The conversation is a real one that I had in class yesterday, but more real scripts to come I suppose if time allows, which sure as hell wont be that very often.

In his closing comments, Nabokov says, "In this course I have tried to reveal the mechanism of those wonderful toys -- literary masterpieces. I have tried to make of you good readers who read books not for the infantile purpose of identifying oneself with the characters, and not for the adolescent purpose of learning to live, and not for the academic purpose of indulging in generalizations. I have tried to teach you to read books for the sake of their form, their visions, their art. I have tried to teach you to feel a shiver of artistic satisfaction, to share not the emotions of the people in the book but the emotions of its author -- the joys and difficulties of creation. We did not talk around books, about books; we went to the center of this or that masterpiece, to the live heart of the matter."

I saw my final chapter realized in this passage, I will be ready for you 28...And you?

Poem: Sculpture By The Window

Subtle wind rift shakes golden fingers round soft warm glow

Whose glowing globes has shades point opposed

Upon my window its radiance exposed

People and roads and abodes

My mind -

A metal man on windowsill

Topples what has been left behind

To ravage and forge some thought sublime

Whose tightrope walk works the sole of Fulcrums heel

Observations: That Snow-globe Of Mine

My snow globe has a figurine within it

A girl with a rose whose gown flows in the ether

Where as Maria has the very same globe but with a mushroom in place of the girl

The mushrooms flowing gown with no-body around.

I am the one who gently joggles in the seasons.

I ate terribly all day. '*' more than I care to remember… ate nothing, accept for a cheesy quesadilla in the afternoon and a snickers bar that was given to me after I finished a scientific study. That and 10 Euros wrapped around said snickers bar, like a ribbon. I bought me weeks’ groceries with said 10 Euros… spoke with some Germans who said that saying ‘me’ instead of ‘I’ is more meaningful in how one expresses ones ‘being’…in certain groups…England. Me think. I drink. I play. I phone. I sleep. Conversations always turn toward something that requires contemplation, something best addressed with a spirit for guidance, two or three maybe…Jack and Jim convinced me that the French have the tenacity and brazen conviction to muster a protest and yet monologue their reasonings…I will learn French next…I found myself in an ancient crater beside an old school yard after Jim and Jack did all that they could with me, it was 10.10.10, we decided to meet at 11.11.11, it’s funny how two wrongs make a night. If knowledge is power and power is might and might makes right then right gives me nothing but headaches and I have no more space for the bother. I bought four 500g bags of pasta for 1.20€ and four 1L boxes of milk for 2€ not to mention the kilogram of potatoes, rice, and onions to give a good footing for my next weeks upward scramble…eggs…I bought them too…all with the money that came from a University sociological survey. I do that too. But the ‘how’ of perpetual improvement concerns me very little. Some of my best friends are scientist I have found because we share a similar inspiration but are fated for a profoundly different odyssey. ‘Time’ and what comes with the cuffs of age has jostled my being, but not to the core because there isn’t one…I hate labels more and more these days and I recognize the sentiments my words evoke. A physicist stormed off from me just an hour ago because I wouldn’t be pigeon holed between two words, discovering or creating, for how one labels the human condition. We are all tools to the biggest tool of our own creation…Reason…Justification…as I sober up I know I shouldn’t even be on this damn blog bloging. Slavoj Zizek.

Finished the second draft of my motivational essay, I would love some suggestions if you have any. Thanks a bundle!

Motivational Essay for Freiburg University

My interest in literature comes from my love of writing, art, and the history of ideas. Since college, I have been fascinated with how the thoughts from one historical moment have led up to my own and I found in literature a link to those great minds of the past, whose shoulders we stand on. For me, as a writer and philosophy buff, I couldn’t think of a better field of study.

I received my degree in history from Washington State University, focusing primarily on the Western tradition. I spent my last semester abroad in Florence, Italy at Leonardo di Medici, where I remained for an additional year teaching English and writing about my experiences. The social and political events, Italy’s world cup victory and the election of a centre-left coalition, I encountered during my time in Italy compelled me to re-evaluate how I thought of the interaction between outside cultural forces and local heritage in diverse contexts. Increasingly, I wanted to explore these complex issues from within; as a result, I applied for and received a post in the US Peace Corps in Romania. The following two years, spent in Romania working as an active member of my community in a high school, allowed me to observe the locals’ ancient traditions as well as their struggle to locate their identity in a post-communist consumer society. It was in trying to understand these competing ideologies as well as those of my own generation in a global context that led me to the study of intellectual history.

The idea of undertaking an MA in literature and theory began two years ago while teaching English in Romania. I taught a class on English literature and had such a fun time analyzing my favorite authors and poets with my students that I soon found myself rushing home to prepare for the next lesson, oftentimes reading theorists like Lyotard and Foucault long into the night. I began to recognize a deeper relationship between literature and the fields of history and philosophy, with theorists from the worlds of post-modernism, new-historicism, and Western Marxism as part of my independent study regimen. In the search for the forces and power-relations that have shaped my generation, I found literature to be an invigorating reserve of intellectual narratives that I had been neglecting.

I began to pay more attention to narrative structures and literary devices in narrative theory and its appraisal of what authors ‘do’ in their texts, but I knew I needed a professor to help me develop a more sophisticated critical approach to literary works, and to focus my efforts on a single project. Furthermore, I knew I wanted an interdisciplinary approach to the field where I could incorporate my interests in philosophy and history, as well as continue my international experience. The discovery of the MA in English Literature and Literary theory offered at Freiburg University fit perfectly with my personal and academic goals.

In the long-term, my goal is to use the knowledge garnered in this program to help me become a more critical reader. I want to investigate how effective writers house their ideas in narrative structures in order to enhance my own creative expressions. I wish to understand my own historical moment within the lives and times of those who have come before me, and with the reinterpretations provided by different theories I can multiply the lenses that I use to perceive their world and the lessons that are hidden from within. I also want to improve my critical reading, writing and research skills to an academic journal level, which I expect to gain from graduate study in this program. I am excited to have the chance to study under Professor Fludernik as she is a recognized leading narrative scholar and I am fascinated by ways that narratology interprets the distinctions between story and discourse. I am also thrilled that special emphases is given to the 18th and 19th century novel and to modernist and postmodernist writers since I specifically want to analyze the transforming acts of communication between the two paradigms. The range of different modules that are offered, especially the Foundations of Literary Criticism and Theories as well as Research Techniques, with the experience of the professors and the location of the university makes this program a perfect fit with my own professional aspirations.

My continual evolution in thought after college has given me more reason to return to study in order to develop a higher command of the critical skills needed to tackle the challenges of my generation. I hope that I will be given the opportunity to reach these personal goals as a graduate student and I thank you for your consideration of my admission to the program.

Hello, how’s the daily grind going? We all sometimes get sucked into our own predictable daily schedules: the 7:13 monkey suite parade, the 11:15 banana, and the 4:45 cage cleaning. I almost got lost in the circus, but now with even more acts to perform I feel that I have gained more control over my time; as its value just tripled over the past week. Wednesdays will now become my halftime breaks where I can relax in-between German verbs and French theorists and just appreciate the near kaleidoscopic hues of father time and the confusing smell of one hand clapping. Its funny how anything, after a while, can turn into the same type of passive registration akin to watching the box that you forget to think, or at least I forget to think. I mean the type of thinking that bridges two seemingly disconnected ideas together forming new concepts or the act of trying to recount a past event with some sense of arrangement. Yesterday my afternoon instructor, Hans Bauman, explained to our group of 17 students the difference between the American dream and the German dream, him being the only German and I the only American.

Hans with his deep booming voice and Gandolf like appearance seems to cast as many jokes and puns as he does grammar and history. The American dream is the rags to riches archetype, says he. The German dream is the life of a perpetual student who only approaches work when absolutely necessary. In one generation 60% of the German population will be retirement age, and since Germans are too smart for having noisy expensive children flopping around there book muffled abodes, very few actual ‘Germans’, in the since of both sides of the coins genealogy hailing from the mother land, will be around to make the rules or teach their interpretations of how things should be. And that is where I come in. I of course am not interested what anyone ‘should’ do with themselves, but only in the lenses through which people view their world and in the dismantling of what looks universal in order to revel its hidden controls of the consciousness. Plenty of opportunities in the future await with many exciting twists along the way.

Example, how will the language sound with a generation of foreigners taking over the pronunciation of the German ‘ich’, which involves a tricky back of the tongue maneuver to pull off, with their ‘ish’ like in ‘fish’. The large Turkish population here in Wiesbaden uses the ‘ish’ form. You can also spot a Turkish youth immediately by their mullet haircut, grey sweatpants, and black fanny pack. One of them told me that the ‘old’ German pronunciation of ‘ich’ is for farmers and the ‘ish’ form is the more modern form. I asked my morning instructor if this was the case, which produced a laugh and a sigh.

Example, Christian from my morning group comes from the Ivory Coast and like most of the ‘auslanders’ says ‘ish’ instead of ‘ich’. In order to get to know everyone in our groups we sing and dance in circles and play games, lots of fun. One such game is ‘ich bin die König’ or ‘I am the king’. We have cards with different adjectives and nouns, which need to be added into a sentence with what ever verb that the ‘king’ is holding. Christian was the king. ‘Ich heiße König’, he said, ‘Ich heiße....’ he couldn’t go any further since everyone’s chuckling spilt into laughter, but in a ‘laughing with not at’ type of laughter, as my mom would say. Since he pronounced his ‘ich’ with an ‘ish’ he was effectively saying ‘I am the shit king’.

In other news this Friday Maria and I leave for Köln to meet an old friend from Romania. The last time I was in Köln was in 2006 for Karnival with an old friend from WSU where we drank beer through horns and thought we would be 23 for ever. The massive rabbit cage is nearing completion and my moms package has now made two round trips to Germany and back, but that will have to wait until next weeks half-time report. Until next week. Viel Spaß!

Good Morning!

For the last week Maria and I have been traveling through Germany to visit some friends in Leipzig and Freiburg, both incredible historical epicenters of culture and learning. Before our trip began we spent a lovely weekend with Maria’s grandfather for Easter where Maria and I spent most of the time in between banquet sized meals and church services constructing a rabbit cage for her rabbit ‘Robin’. I am starting a new blog-project that will confront topics of science, religion, history, and ideas in regards to modern and ‘post-modern’ thought and criticism so I wont go into the particulars of what I had the opportunity to witness on this site. Anyway I tried to give up eating chocolate for the two months before Easter along with Maria and her sister but we both gave up just a couple weeks before the big day, its those blasted Tobleroni’s.

Everyone who has been to Europe knows that they have wonderfully efficient and comparatively inexpensive forms of transportation. My round trip flights from Romania to Germany through wizzair cost less then the gas it would take to drive from my hometown of Gig Harbor to Pullman and back, and a quarter of the time. Anyway Germany has this site called mitfahrgelegenheit.com, which has made my travels through Germany in conjunction with couchsurfer an affordable breeze. There you can find people who will be driving to where you want to go for a 10th of the cost of a train ticket but this time we couldn’t find anyone who wanted to leave to Leipzig the day after Easter. Instead we found people who wanted to share a 5-person day pass, which made our cross country train ride a mere 12 Euro kick in the pants. I love traveling through trains anyway. Trains put everything into perspective as you sit watching the rolling hills and quant villages glide by like fast-forwarding through a parade of landscapes as you sit drinking coffee and remembering the smell you would be experiencing had you been in a Romanian train. Romanian trains give you a real feeling of a cold war escape through barreling mountains and pastoral countryside’s. On the way to Leipzig, the absence of the chance that the train might breakdown sort of took the mystique away and left me with a doctored feeling of going in for a routine check-up. I had many plans for my time in Leipzig since I had been studying about this historical city in my language course, so I ripped out the two pages in my workbook to take with me as a guide, much to Marias dismay. She thought that since I ripped these pages out I could no longer resell my workbook, how silly of her.

I will not bore you with all the happenings and whatnot that have taken place in this city for the past 1000 years, there is too much anyway. So I decided to make a quick movie of places that have no historical merit but looked interesting. Yes the oldest church dates back to 1017 when the Crusades and Feudalism were all the rage. Yes Bach turned 325 years old here last March. And yes Napoleons army was defeated here in 1812 but I won’t talk about these things for Leipzig is still a living city and the ‘now’ is what’s happening. We came to visit a friend who is studying psychology and Leipzig University, the very place that produced Wilhelm Wundt who is the ‘father of experimental psychology’, along with Nietzsche and Goethe and Wagner and blah blah blah. Leipzig is only an hour’s train ride from Berlin and shares the same fragmented identity and feelings of youthful unconventionality and boundless possibilities. But Leipzig is more a students city, it’s were you go to live as an artist who doesn’t want to constantly be swimming in between in the currents of ultra-reality and neo-punk Bohemianism. We visited the Spinerei, an 18th century cotton factory the biggest in Europe, turned modern art museum. In Leipzig after the reunification of Germany, many people moved out of the city, leaving more then 30,000 buildings that still remain empty, which one can now live in for free. This factory turned museum felt like an artists commune, strange entrances and doors led to even more remarkable artistic expressions, everything and everyone seemed a piece of the whole art project. Artists sleep in one of the free buildings and paint or draw and meet with others from around the globe who are in the ‘know’. I met an artist from Chicago who is having some of his work shown and we got straight to talking about post-modern impressions and about the ‘ultra-modern’ and the fragmentation of knowledge and the ways art is trying to express or critique it, I love artists!

Our time in Leipzig seemed surreal and soon a mere memory as we found ourselves crammed in a car heading for Freiburg, our next destination. Unfortunately when car-pooling you can’t chose the people who swim along for a ride, even when one lady takes the space of two but pays for only one. We arrived in Freiburg late from a 5-hour ride and walked along the ancient roads toward an old friend of Marias who was once a professor at my future university.

Freiburg was founded as a free market town on the Dreisam River, right on the western edge of the Black Forest. Again too much to say about this incredible city, according to statistics the city is the sunniest and warmest in Germany. I like this place because the people seemed to have always been forward thinking, respected education, and wouldn’t stand for anyone who tried to limit their freedom. In the 13th century, the local Count tried to raise taxes and limit certain freedoms, which resulted in the Freiburgers using catapults to destroy the count’s castle. The count complained to his brother-in-law the Bishop of Strasbourg, who was according to legend stabbed to death by a butcher named Hauri on July 29, 1299 for his subsequent interfering in local affairs. Freiburg was fed up with their lords and purchased their independence from them, but not from the Black Plague which ravaged the city centuries later. They now have the only Mayor who is a member of the green party and is known as an ‘eco-city’. It also has one of the oldest Universities in Germany, Albert-Ludwigs University, where I plan on attending in a couple of months. My meeting with the faculty went well and now I just have to receive my letters of recommendation and official transcripts, and that’s that.

I like Freiburg because in the historical center every nook and cranny is decorated with ornamentation from the cobble stone streets through the falkworkhouses and steel light stands up to the pointed peaked rims and fluted edges of every building. For the past few days this experience was added to music as every corner held some artist breathing fresh life into its ancient past. It’s from growing up in the absence of craftsmanship and ornamentation that marks ‘modern’ architecture that makes living in Freiburg so refreshing.

Well now we are off for one last trip around the center before our return to Mainz and Wiesbaden, a new semester awaits and sooooo much is in store for the coming months it will be hard just to keep it on paper. Have a wonderful week and enjoy the spring!

Saturday, March 27 2010

What a strange past couple of days it has become and the forecast shows no signs of regularity approaching. Yesterday Maria left on a bus for Dijon France, where she will get to enjoy a 5-day sabbatical from nearly a month of constant research and footnotes. My yesterday was spent in my room getting reacquainted with Marx and Blake, until I left for Mainz to release myself from my own thoughts and then it happened. I believe it was when the idea of making beer came into being that got the ball rolling, this Monday I have an appointment with the ‘icehaus’ to get some experience in Brewing. I left around 2 in the morning to go for a walk around campus and spotted a flier for a reggae party on the 27th. I like reggae. Was it the 27th? I asked two guys nearby if they knew what day it was and if they heard of a Reggae party. They said they did and asked if I wanted to come with them. Well why not?

Apparently there was a miss-communication somewhere, as I was understood to have said ‘Gay’ party, which has very little in common with ‘reggae party’. It was a bit awkward, but I did meet some interesting people. I inevitably filtered through to the crowed of straight people who were brought along by their lesbian friends and we got to talking. What strange twists, I met a guy who grows hops.

This morning was spent in the Library reading about the structures of discourses. It’s just so wonderful to be learning new tools for giving form to ideas. I had a coffee and bought a fairly dry and graceless slice of cake. Later I went outside to find two others eating another slice from the very cake that I had just finished eating! I realize that the placement of the exclamation mark gives an overblown sense of surprise, but that’s what I am going for. They turned out to be Americans going to school here for language and film studies.

Back on the computer I received a request to join the network of an old friend from Italy. He is now the manager of a Budweiser Brewery. I met him in a hostel without reservation and little money, only 10 Euros I believe, and he was in need of council. I suggested that he should by a fifth of whiskey with the 10 Euro’s and let Jack figure it out. Jack led us to the Coliseum where we met some nice ladies who agreed to provide him free accommodations. But why do I hear from him now? And why only after I had been affronted with constant 'make beer' references?

I leave with a quote from my book:

In order to become an agent in the first place, a character needs to have the ability, motivation and intent to act, and has to be in the position to act (ludweg 128)

All that I have been missing is the position to act, now its on!!

Wisdom comes from reinterpretation

Tschuss

It has taken nearly two months for this day to come, its what I have been waiting for to give order to all the emotional furniture enclosed by my new physical space, its like the rug that ties the room together. For the longest time I felt like someone pissed on my rug. Everything had changed and I had such a lovely routine of things reordered into question marks and bowling balls. I went seeking recompense only to find that in the end I am better off having had the rug ‘miterated’ upon for all the exploits and opportunities that have come as a result.

Reading over my journal entry for this day March 24th, 2006 I found that I had recognized something years ago while in Italy, and it wasn’t just that most little Italian kids smell like apple juice, but that an artist must never avert his eyes and a writer must always stay curious. I am a writer, and whether I write for others or myself my life will continue to be powered by my spirit of inquiry and distaste for the ordinary. I have forgiven myself for being exactly where I need to be. My friends come from France, Greece, the Ivory Coast, and yes Germany who I play soccer with in between breaks. Last weekend I finished a course on movie lighting and directing, all in German, and was asked to act in a students film coming up. Today I just attended a lecture by Dr. Dr. Noam Chomsky who flew over here yesterday morning from M.I.T to talk about how language is horrible for communication but great for thinking. I got there late and the room was already overstacked with professors but I told them I came all the way from Washington to hear him, so they gave me a press pass. I am currently writing an essay on late Victorian era moral validations of art through Oscar Wilds ‘Picture of Dorian Gray’ for my entrance into Freiburg University. For the first time in a long time I am only doing what I want to do, and after 20 months of volunteer work this type of self-serving stimulation is just what I need at the moment.

Sometimes I forget that I am young. What is the rush? Learn something here, forget something there. Nothing happens until 28 anyway.

So here it is, my name is Brett Ortgiesen, I live in a little room on the fourth floor of a building owned by my girlfriends parents. We have lunch together as a family every day. I sweep and mop the stairs every two weeks and feed the rabbit when Robin needs feeding. Four weeks ago my computer was completely erased, two years of writing and notes gone, but I still have my journals. I decided to give my hair highlights but my hair turned neon orange. For a while I looked like a treasure troll, still sort of do. Once, when it was cold and I was at the height of my low spirits I slipped on dog poop and got punched in the face, though Marias mother was only trying to help. In the city retail windows with different portraits of Ben Affleck looking disappointed ring in the spring season. Purple is in, wonder woman boots are out. Just got health insurance for a year, the cost: 32€ a month. One semester at Johannes Gutenberg University: 201€. Three pretzels: 1€. Using a seven year old American Express tag line to finish the blog: Priceless.

I created this song from Reason about two weeks ago but I havent made the effort to find how to upload MP3's so I made a video to go with it. Getting Germans to hold a camera is a greaet way of pissing most of them off. Hope all is well, enjoy.

Sitting here in the corner of the only 24 hour coffee internet hot-spot in this airport waiting for my flight to Seattle at 6:50 am I have ample time to just write and keep myself from falling asleep. The time is 1:02 am and dreamy futuristic wale music is radiating from ceiling speakers producing a sense of euphoria all around, except around the night shift waitress who’s quick jagged movements and deep frown lines almost seem intentionally set on defying the music’s blissful effects, achieving something comical and sad at the same time. People are everywhere folded up and contorted into whatever position will allow for sleep on black chairs with arm rests. Old men sleep sitting up with their Căciulă, fir hats, over their eyes. The women build a nest out of baggage and seem very comfortable. Outside it is a bone sawing -20C, which I just converted to a -4 F. There is lots of snow on the ground though it all happened while I was in Germany. The bus ride from my little town to this airport took longer then a flight to Dortmond and a car ride to Mainz. Its not the snow but pot holes the size of small ships that create the long rides, that and picking up every yokel on the side of the street with a thumb out. I can’t read while in a car or a bus, I get headachy, so I didn’t read. But I still got a headache because this particular bus driver was also transporting Christmas trees to Bucharest, filling up the last three rows with trees that I am allergic to. The headache was also brought on by the endless supply of horrible English music the chauffeur hand picked to play. This one song called ‘I want your love, I want your revenge’ sounded like the lady bit her tongue while drunk and decided to sing about two completely incompatible emotions in a quasi-Lady GaGa style pop rhythm. It was just as bad as the only food I could find along the way, i.e a can of peanuts and an overpriced pickle and cheese sandwich. Usually on your way toward Bucharest you will find people on the curb with glass cups or cheeses in hand but now everyone had scrawny White Spruce trees and when they got together it almost looked like we were getting attacked by a small forest as we dodged pot holes and on coming cars. I hate traveling with anything more than what I can carry on my back. I like the feeling of having everything I own and depend on being as mobile and unburdening as possible. I am not used to traveling with luggage and then having to drag it through the snow with a rope, because the telescoping metal handle ripped off long ago, it felt like I was dragging a dead body around behind me. People kept stopping in mid walk to stare. Taxi’s charge a comical amount of money to deliver you to the airport so I needed to find a regular bus. The regular bus turned into a two-hour odyssey including a trolley ride in the wrong direction and a shuttle that finally dropped me off about a mile from the airport. In Germany it began to snow on the day we were about to head to Marias grandfathers house and once it hit it seemed that everyone just plum forgot how to drive or what the differences were between red and greed or road and sidewalk, it was a free for all. Same thing in Romania, except that in Germany the big busses pulled to the side of the road anticipating trouble where as here my shuttle pulled into oncoming traffic in order to pass a bus that was parked in the middle of the street. Shoveled sidewalks are silly things to expect and my trek to the airport from where the shuttle had left me was like a battle of will over mounds of snow as I pulled my roped luggage behind me. Finally arrived with 10 more hours to kill. Visited the international flights section filled with panicky faces whining and flapping their lips, lots of flights were delayed and some canceled. I hope my flight does its job and I don’t spend Christmas in this silly airport with a stomachache and no money. Apparently Richard Nixon came to this airport in the 60’s to do some business with Romanias brutal dictator Ceausescu and a new VIP lounge was created for him, which I am sure I won’t get to see. The coffee machine also won’t accept bills. Well I got an hour before I get to check in so I hope that everyone has a great holiday and that I to get the chance to catch up. Let me know if you’re in town. La multi ani!

What if your roommate was the personification of the Internet? What if English was your second language? Watch the first three scenes of Catalin living with Internet. Redone in Final Cut for higher resolution and some color correction, just two more scenes to go!

This year instead of having Thanksgiving thrusted upon me by my students in one big surprise dinner I planned my leave in advance and left for a small village where other Peace Corps volunteers would be congregating for a good ol' fashioned Thanksgiving. There is something special that comes about when you come together with other people from your country who get all your jokes and can follow your Simpson references. Just being with other Americans was a great experience for once and I plan on repeating these experiences on a more regular basis. Unfortunately most of the footage I got turned out to be much too inappropriate to upload but lots of wholesome drinking games and unorthodox methods of cooking, grilling as it tuned out, the 45 pound turkey were put into place.

I now have Final Cut Pro 7, the best and most powerful video editing software to date (in my opinion) so I will say good bye to my old editing software with this last little Vlog called 'A Winters Run', the last time I will be using imove.

And as a test of what I have been learning with FinalCut I give you my latest Vlog which really explains nothing and is more confusing than clarifying, it really is just a quick test and with a better camera and an actual green screen instead of a pink bed sheet to key out frames the possibilities are endless.

I went shopping just the other day so don't worry Mom.

Well actually my Thanksgiving was in Hăşmaş, a little town where I met with other volunteers to celebrate Thanksgiving. That was fun, making this little film trying trying out Final Cut Pro was not. I have sooo much to learn. This first video will be my last made from imove since it just doesn't cut it anymore. In fact I am so tired from editing and the like that I won't even talk about how bad ass the past couple weeks have been until I have some time in the next week or so, until then watch this and the next one then let me know how bored I must seem to be. More interesting stuff ahead, promise.

So I woke up today a little earlier than usual thanks to another dose of repetitive folk music that the politicians use for their campaign. I don't know when this got started or who thought it was a good idea but it seems you aren't really running for president if your not blasting music out of some vehicle with your picture on it. I guess the theory is if you get a lot of people to hear this one song over and over again then during election day all you need to do is play that one song and some Pavlovian response kicks in and your vote is assured. It seemed to have worked for Basescu who is the current president running for re-election so he has a huge semi-truck packed with speakers outside the city hall which plays just this one song non stop for a good four hours straight. Mircea Geoana is not the president but wants to be, so of course he also needs to have someone drive around and play some music, but unfortunately he doesn't have a large Semi-truck crammed with speakers like Basescu and therefor isn't as loud, though you can still hear both at the same time. Fortunately my apartment is right next to the city hall so every day or so I get to enjoy some free folk music and occasionally a recorded message from the actual candidate. This morning I decided to give you a personal look into the presidential campaign here in Abrud that makes politics so fun and aesthetic.

Have a great week!

Here is how much we got done with no practice and two hours. First read the script than see what we managed to do…Their native language is Romanian by the way.

INT. CATALINS HOUSE. BEDROOM. DAY

Scene opens with main character Catalin (17) hunched over his desk working on difficult math equations. He appears frustrated and a bit worried. We first see a shot of his math homework then zoom out to both Catalin and his work. A large hand appears and taps Catalin on the left shoulder. This hand is connected to the large personification of the Internet, known simply as ‘Internet’. He is tall and bulky wearing a red shirt which reads ‘INTERNET’ in large white letters. He has a friendly but absentminded look to his face.

Internet

Hey Catalin, you have a new message

on your hotmail account

Catalin puts down his pen and looks up at Internet half

interested

Catalin

Ahh...ok what is it?

Internet

Its from a Mr. Hung Lo asking

whether you are getting the most

from your love life, he says he has

a new male enhancing...

Internet gets cut off by Catalin who is understandably

irritated

Catalin

Internet, I thought I told you I

don’t know a Mr. Hung lo. Please

can’t you see that I am busy here?

Catalin rubs his eyes, takes glasses off

ONE MINUTE LATER

Internet

Catallin, you should check

Facebook, three of your friends did

stuff since you last logged on, one

became a fan of something...

Catalin

Who became a fan of what?

Internet

George Popescu became a fan of

tomatos

Catalin slowly shakes head in annoyance

10 SECONDS LATER

Internet

I forgot to mention

Catalin

What!?

Internet

That last conversation was brought

to you by Derby. ‘If you don’t know

Derby then you don’t know Mamaliga’

Catalin

Uh huh...And?

Internet

And this conversation is brought to

you by Timisoariana, the beer that

withstood 2 revolutions and 44

years of communism

Catalin

Ok, thanks...back to work now!

Internet

Catlin, you have just been selected

as the grand prize recipient of

200,000,000 dollars. I just need

you to tell me a bank account that

the money can be deposited into...

Catalin gets up frusterated walking out of the room

Just getting two minutes is a lot of work, wow can't wait for more....

Well, spent all day writing for my first Peace Corps SPA Grant, about half finished. Please let me know what doesn't sound right...I can't tell anymore for I have been typing and erasing for 12 hours straight. More creative blog vlogs will appear soon after I am done with this, but until then...I give you

Project Proposal

a. This project intends to create, develop, and put into action new forms of self-expression while relating important technical skills that will open opportunities in media, journalism, and other creative fields. Participants will learn the art of using digital video as a new medium for self-expression and the methodology employed in the five steps to film making. Participants will work together in a team of mixed gender and social backgrounds to help explore and express aspects of their culture and their lives culminating in the development, production, and distribution of a short film or documentary of their choice made entirely by them. There is considerable support for such a project as it gives participants access to education and materials for new forms of expression that have not been available. It also empowers and builds relevant marketable skills for everyone involved as well as instilling confidence and a sense of social inclusion. My counterpart, school director, students in classes beyond of my own, and fellow faculty members are excited and willing to take an active part in this project. Since this project will involve other teachers participation in its implementation and fallow-through it will be a sustainable project as the teachers take over my roll as director and the first year participants move on to more leadership roles. This project also contains all elements of the Peace Corps mission from training to fostering a better understanding of Romanians through the distribution of the end product through film festivals, websites, and other forms of media.

b. The expression of ones feelings, thoughts, and ideas is an important, even fundamental, aspect in what it is to be a social being. Without access to the right tools or guidance necessary to imagine, create, and produce the mind is limited to whatever medium is available, which here in my town of Abrud is not much. The education system in place has no room for lessons that encourage creative thinking and expression, especially in the arts, nor the money to help supply necessary equipment for even the most fundamental mediums i.e. paint brushes, colored pencils, drawing pads. This directly effects the youngest generation, my students, who have all been born after such developments as the computer and the Internet but are not given creative guidance or resources that use said technologies expressively. Lack of knowledge in this field of creativity delimits the possibilities of self-expression and technical competence, closing paths to self-actualization that students never knew were available. Being able to think creatively is of the highest priority for any nation and its expressions and applications are limitless, yet the opposite seems true in terms of its importance in education, as if we are educating out the ability to think and create in exchange for rote learning. This project will allow all students from all types of backgrounds and experiences to work together, learn together, and create something new and expressive that will increase the knowledge and appreciation of their culture while providing new directions of inspiration and personal development.

c. The project is located in a disadvantaged region and all participants face a combination of geographic, economic and social challenges. We have a small Roma community, Gura Rosia, bordering Abrud and a very high rate of unemployment. The initial group involved for this project will come mostly from my current afterschool Film Club that consists of 10 students interested in media, a fellow colleague, and myself, after which we will form a panel for selecting more participants. The purpose of the Film Club is to help broaden the understanding and uses of film for creative expression through observing and critiquing professional films and documentaries then producing original films of our own. I work as the facilitator of relevant materials and steward of topics and equipment along with my colleague; the students bring their own movies, ideas, and directions and could easily manage the club with little help on my part.

d. This project seeks to give the community of Abrud greater control over the conditions that affect their lives by providing education and resources in ways facilitating self-expression and creativity that are currently absent in this community. Media has now become a popular form of expression that can be shared with anyone around the world and an effective platform for cross-cultural communication and understanding. This project will deliver the necessary skills and equipment needed to allow for full participation in this modern and increasingly vital form of communication. It combats feelings of powerlessness and disadvantage and opens not only a persuasive medium that can be used to tackle issues that are important and relevant but also a gives a far-reaching voice to such pursuits through its ease of transference over the Internet. Marketable skills will be developed through the application of creativity and vision, teamwork, and problem solving. This project becomes naturally self-reliant once the education and resources have been properly transferred to those involved, it then requires nothing more than motivation and a desire to express ones idea to the world. First year supporters will become second year leaders, empowering everyone involved and promoting self-confidence.

From the moment of inception to the longer-term goal of self-actualization lie many measurable and achievable goals in between. Each participant will pick which piece of the filmmaking puzzle he or she feels most drawn to i.e. directing, script writing, film editing, etc, and specific lessons and micro-projects will be given for each part. Each part will be connected with the other parts and the team will build together as a group and individually as artists. Simple short 5 min films will be first constructed from existing storylines in the beginning then the development of original script and cinematic style will later take place as knowledge of each field becomes more extensive. Each lesson last for one week and results can be assessed through the quality of each completed project. Participants will advance in knowledge and confidence until the final project of a full film or documentary is realized and deemed feasible.

The students of H.C.C will benefit the most from this project but anyone with a desire to learn is more than welcome. The benefits include but not limited to improvement in team building, communication skills, self-expression, confidence, social inclusion, critical thinking and problem solving, technical skills training, leadership, creativity, storytelling, and self-empowerment.

Beyond the reasons stated above this project will instill a sense of action and immediacy among its participants, which will directly benefit the community since it will be the location of all the projects. Knowledge in this field can lead toward short projects for local tourism, political campaigns, first hand accounts of communism, appeals for government support for historical landmark preservation, etc. Businesses can be created and skills learned transferable to many types of trades, all benefiting the local community in short term publicity and long term creative visions. The community’s assets are its youngest generation who will leave and never look back if there are no resources with which to make a difference.

e. As acting Director I will oversee the logistics and make sure the process is following the schedule as best as possible from day to day, with help from a chosen colleague who will act as co-director and take over after I have finished my service. I will also help with the structuring of lesson plans and teach the editing portion of Final Cut Pro since I believe I am the only one with that specific skill set. The rest of the duties will be given to the teachers/ Community members who express interest and are committed to the project. My counterpart will help with the language barriers in communication between guest speaker and professional trainers in Romania. The list of tasks required to carry out the project are as follows:

1. Consolidating those who will help administer and follow through with the educational side of the project.

A) This will consist of three to five teachers each choosing a particular field they would like to learn more about and help teach, one additional teacher who will serve as co-director, and active contact with professional on-line help with a couple film schools I will be working with back in America including the North West Film School in conjunction with Western Washington University.

B) The creation of weekly lessons and projects for each topic that coincide with the other parts of the film making process as well as activities for the weekly meetings i.e. movie and documentary observations and creative exercises.

C) Set up initial contacts and potential times for guest speakers and professional trainers to coincide with the second half of the project. Also set up room dedicated to project which will have electricity, computers, a projector borrowed from the English room, and time schedules for students.

D) Prepare for publication of event, plan motivational first day with expectations, goals, visions, commitments, including refreshments and film with team building exercises. Include hand outs of what benefits such a project will provide plus written commitments from participants.

2. Purchasing of necessary equipment including: A camera that can render in broadcast quality, sound equipment, a tripod, an external hard drive with at least 1 terabyte of memory, plus all cables and burnable DVD’s for networking and final project distribution. Then set available room with all necessary equipment. All labor will be provided from within the community through students and teachers. The materials must be purchased from outside the community because no electronics store exists for the simple parts and the sound and camera equipment must be ordered from Bucharest.

3. A) Initial class with everyone who wishes to participate including a meeting held weekly to check on progress, watch movies, turn in weekly projects, and discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly…

B) Next we will break into groups of essential parts; film theory/ story telling, script writing, story boarding, camera and sound navigation, and film editing. All in such an order that one could attend all five classes or which ever one he or she has most interest in. Each class falls on a specific day and time each week. Each class is taught by one teacher who will focus exclusively on the topic of choice through out the project.

C) These preliminary lessons will be given over a period of 4 to 5 weeks for initial understanding of each component. (Lesson Plans will be available soon).

D) The guest speakers in specific areas and professional trainers will come to visit around this time (mid March) in preparation for the second and final phase of the project: implementation of an original documentary or film developed and produced be the students.

4. The final project will begin with brain storming of the central themes that could include Identity, community, Past, Present, and Future, then the delegating of parts and responsibilities that will fallow through the five phases of the film making process. The first phase will involve the development of the script, its viability, and the gathering of resources. The second phase includes the pre-production elements. The third phase is just the production and execution of film with camera. The forth phase involves the post-production including editing, sound design, any visual effects, and mastering. The fifth and final phase is the distribution of the film over the Internet and delivery at the school assembly on the first of May, 2010.

The potential problems of participants quitting prematurely can be limited by keeping the participants excited and committed to the project from the beginning and putting this commitment in writing. Staying involved and listening to everyone’s input and ideas will also help bridge any problems before they get too big.

Weekly timeline:

Week one: Consolidation and lesson Prep

Week two: Set up room, purchase equipment, set up potential training, lesson Prep

Week Three: Lesson Prep, announce first meeting, set up and work with equipment

Weeks 4-8: Begin the first of four preliminary lessons for each topic, have weekly meetings to discuss what’s working and what’s not.

Week 9: Guest and professional trainers come for visit, first phase of development begins

Week 10: Second phase of Pre-Production

Week 11: Third Phase of Production

Week 12: Fourth Phase of Post-Production

Week 13: Distribution and enjoyment of end product.

Something extraordinary happened to me about 9 days ago, I returned home from a full days worth of entertaining my students to find my computers power cord dead, fried to a crisp right on top of my favorite blue sock, both now rendered useless including my computer until I can find a replacement Mac power cord. I guess I have been over working the poor power cord, whom I will call ‘Jim’, since I had internet installed a couple months ago, supplying the necessary energy for continuous day and night downloading, but why on my blue sock… I have now only two pairs left.

I can remember myself before that point feeling very stressed and in a rut. School was moving alone just fine and there was nothing really to complain about, except for maybe the large white van blaring traditional Romanian music outside my apartment for the up coming elections. It was this daily routine I somehow found myself in which involved mostly me and my computer which I hadn’t recognized until ‘Jim’ decided to burn out before his time, ending my dependence on this ‘tool’ and thereby pulling myself out of my rut. Of course initially I cursed who ever was the author of my misfortune and spent a brief period in morning hunched over my cold powerless device, but then maybe something’s happen for a reason, or better yet, we attach reason for something’s that happen. I couldn’t watch the new episode of ‘The Office’ or listen to my German audio books of Harry Potter, or find out about the newest catastrophe on nytimes.com, I had no internet, no FinalCut, no movies…no problem! I needed some ‘me’ time anyway. I figured if I can no longer use my computer this might be an opportunity to try to go without other things I have been depending on so I taped all of the light switches to the ‘off’ position and bought 8 candles for the equivalent of 3 dollars which have lasted for now almost a week and a half. Just light a candle and watch as shadows dance and mingle with everyone else like there was always some lively party going on behind the scenes rendered insensible by the cold bright light that I had always used without thinking before. I spent one night with my candle just focusing on Van Goughs painting ‘The Potato Eaters’. The more I contemplated this picture the more I appreciated life, the artist, history, the senses, and I felt relieved. I just gained time because I had less places to spend it. I don’t need a computer to see this painting on my kitchen wall; I can connect to it without one. With my computer and the internet I am lost on an infinite road leading everywhere, I shot myself into space with galaxies of information, my ship can take me anywhere and I am on a search for new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before, but new knowledge doesn’t satisfy, being just a hitch hiker on the road to everywhere. Just arriving and staying seems to be more Zen and purposeful, if there is such a thing. I am forced to deal with time and have been using the struggle and boredom to my advantage, directing it toward observations and ideas, lots of reading and writing with good ol’ fashioned pen and paper. Anyway I could speak of this forever, and my school will be closing soon, so I will move on.

So much has happened since I had stopped updating this blog and its because my focus has changed and so must this blog if I am to be able to keep using it as a means of connection and self expression. I am shifting toward turning my ‘Blog’ into a ‘Vlog’, yes a video log, which I have already written several scripts for but without my computer I can’t do anything yet but enjoy the time until my power cord arrives. Soon big things will be happening and I hope to be ready for them. I have my secondary project lined up and once in place with the necessary funding and participation, which hopefully shouldn’t be to difficult, I will have produced with my kids a full length documentary film about Abrud, the town that I live in, dealing with issues that lay behind the surface of this once prosperous town and what a sense of ‘community’ means and how it might have changed since Romania moved from a communist to a capitalist mindset. I am in contact with the director of the NorthWest Film School who will be providing some much needed advice as to the steps required in script based production. Now it’s just spending the time in writing grants and NGO’s for some funding, and time is all I have back home.

The next update will come with a video accompaniment, please check these two quick videos I made before I lost my computer. One is me just going through the process of fire making and the other is a series I am doing with my advanced students which we plan on submitting to our Pen Pals at Stadium, Tacoma Washington. Let me know what you think.

Teal screen with sea foam swirls

The Title appears in white letters-

‘The 12 signs of the Zodiac’

MUSIC. Edith Piaf’s “Milord”

Before Edith begins to belt out her song the CREDITS ROLL over images of the bucolic surroundings of Romania, the concrete grey of its block apartments, and competing grandmothers selling fruit and cheese on each side of a road that scribbles off into the distance. Next we see a young couple cramped in the back of an old 1970’s DACIA, the tight turns and maniacal maneuvers of who ever is driving can be seen in the rear window behind the two, though their faces remain sanguine and lost in thought. The screen cuts to the two standing in the parking lot of a large boxy supermarket arguing with the driver over how much is owed for the ride. One of the two pulls out what looks to be a credit card and mimes the process of taking money out of an ATM, the driver nods, and the two enter the supermarket and exit out the other side. Edith begins her second chorus as the two are seen looking a bit more disheveled as they both take turns holding a sign with their next destination written in bubble letters – Sylvan - on a white crumpled paper. Shots of cars no bigger than a Geo Metro with 5 to 6 people inside, each person with a miserable pained expression across their face, slowly drift on by. As credits continue we see our two now in the middle of a van, one on the lap of the other, both flanked by large flabby arms that swell both sides of the screen. Both faces are exhausted and one flares his nostrils from some fresh odor released. It is now dusk and the two are seen squeezing out of the van as if it were giving birth. They are in Sylvan, a small pack of dogs limp on by and the two gradually make their way along the towns’ only road toward a concrete apartment.

The CREDITS END

1 INT. SCHOOL AUDATORIUM. TOWN OF SYLVAN. DAY

A wide angled shot of the inside of a school gymnasium filled with students on one side and parents and teachers on the other. A large assembly is ready to launch with all the towns students, their parents and of course teachers weighting for the assembly to officially begin. The screen cuts to a group of teachers standing uncomfortably amongst parents and screeching babies. They are looking across the basketball court at their new supply of unruly kids with looks of pale resignation, except for one who seems to be in another place entirely as he smiles from ear to ear. His name is Zodiac Bankelsanger, a new teacher among the group, and has just been introduced to his future colleagues. From behind the shoulders of Zodiac and another teacher the sounds of incomprehensible babblings and nefarious laughter seem to only get louder as images of kids playfully kicking and chasing each other can be seen. No order.

Camera stays behind the two as they look onward at the chaos. Only the backs of their heads can be seen as well as the kids playing in front of them

ZODIAC:

Wow, these kids sure seem really excited for

school to begin

TEACHER 1:

Yas, thay want for these announcements to start

and finish

ZODIAC:

Me too… Hey shouldn’t someone tell that strange looking boy over there to quit kicking people?

TEACHER 1:

That just so happens to be my daughter

Pause

ZODIAC:

Oh, I am so embarrassed; I don’t have my glasses with me. I didn’t know you were her father

TEACHER 1:

I’m her mother!!

The half bearded teacher shoots Zodiac with a death look as he silently moves eyes forward and swallows hard. The camera pans right to reveal the principle waltzing up to the stage and grabbing the mic.

PRINCIPLE:

Buana Dimineata!!

The principle begins to rattle off non-sequiturs in a rough accent that is eventually squelched by the voice of the narrator, a deep sympathetic voice--James Earl Johnes, perhaps;

NARRATOR (V.O.)

Some say that success in life, in anything, depends upon the number of persons that one can make himself agreeable to.

CUT TO:

Camera slowly zooming toward Zodiac still smiling absentmindedly in between two teachers dressed in their Sundays best, Zodiacs usual sports jacket and collard shirt appears shocking and flamboyant in comparison.

NARRATOR (V.O.)

Others say that circumstances do not make a man, they reveal him.

CUT TO:

All the teachers and parents are now standing in a line as a white bearded priest slowly mutters some Latin under his breath and dashes holly water on each person who gladly receives the blessing. We see Zodiac waiting in line and as the priest approaches, flinging holly water in all directions, he gets some in his eye and sneezes loudly

NARRATOR (V.O.)

This is a story of revelation

We see everyone around Zodiac throwing look daggers in his general direction, especially the bearded woman to his left. Zodiac seems unaware of his latest faux pas and excuses himself in broken Romanian to a hushed crowed.

NARRATOR (V.O.)

It also happens to be the story of Zodiac

...

Sorry for the long reprieve but the punishment can be delayed no longer and a new update is in the works so hang tight, its going to be a lengthy diatribe of blissful ill-assortions and wistful recollections communicated in sign language after having had one too many shots of tuica with a deaf man who understood the marvels of the Golden Ratio and the nonlinear attributes of time. So basically gibberish is what I promise to bring letting language do its own thing since its structures only inhibit what the hell I am trying to express anyway...Enjoy

I had a moment about three weeks ago, as I was hovering over my toilet painting dark blue spirals on the wall, that I realized I haven’t really updated my blog lately. A week later as I was distilling Tuica the same thought came to mind, “Why don’t I write anymore?” These self-reflective moments continued to crop up like ripe pieces of fruit, yet I have let them rot on the vine. Now my room is cluttered with memories and I must clean house literally and figuratively before I can begin any other task, it’s just that the clutter is so thick I just don’t know where to begin, hence my procrastination. So lets just start with this morning, 5:24 AM to be exact.

I normally wake up at 6:35 AM to one of the three highly unoriginal jingles my cell phone allows, then fall back to sleep awaking only minutes before bolting out of my fifth floor apartment to meet my ride for class. This morning I awoke filled from some unmapped source of energy and being unable to fall back to sleep decided to watch the sun rise. My town of Abrud is centered in the middle of a bowl of mountains and I have yet never seen the sun rise, but for this I needed to climb a large hill and trek through uneven footpaths, avoid the gang of roaming dogs, make sure not to tread too close to the northern serpent, and even if I keep to the path I still would need to pass the horns of the hostile Bull, past the Dacian Archer and the jaws of the raging Lion, let alone the clutching claws of the Crab. I mounted the hill unscathed and found a suitable spot to watch the earth rotate forward, the sky nearly clear except for one dark cloud, the mountains folding away into the distance, the sounds of roosters and cows in the distance calling everyone to attention. There I stood, waiting for the mountains to spill its light onto the rolling hills beside me, the moment was close at hand. But the closer the moment approached the closer this little black cloud came dangerously near to where the eventual sun rise would take place. By this time I had been standing on this hill for nearly 40 minutes to see my first sunrise and here comes this black cloud just loafing around, seemingly bent on completely obscuring the very moment I had been waiting for. And as the sun rose behind the only black cloud in the sky I was reminded of how it is not in the destination but the journey where the rich luminescence of experience emanates from. I saw my entire Peace Corps experience in that early morning trip, as either something that ends in disillusionment or something filled with worthy adventures and intentions that keep me walking up the hills of life. I will choose the latter.

Up to this point in my journey I have never really witnessed a community event so strongly regarded and passionately revered as I had with the Orthodox Easter in my little town. I had returned on a Saturday evening from a lovely week with Maria and her Family and having had a full day of travel I was prepared for a full days rest when I by chance ran into a friend who invited me to the midnight mass. The Orthodox Easter is a week after the Catholic mass, and having already gone through all the standing and sitting and hymning less than a week before, I was less than enthusiastic about doing it all over again, but of course I decided to attend. Now for weeks you could hear cannons firing off in the mountains in preparation for this event, a local tradition, which I got to tryout myself before leaving on spring break. It is a tradition followed by the youth who have big bonfires at night around steel pipe cannons and fire them to ward of the malevolent spirits. Every group of kids have their own canons to fire and on the big night 15 cannons were erected next to a roaring fire up in the hills blasting away, which were then answered by another group of kids across town with their 15 cannons and so on. That night I dressed in my Sundays best, and thinking that I would be inside a church I brought only my dress coat for warmth. Ioana met me with three candles in her glove-covered hands and we walked to the town church slowly converging with more and more people until we finally arrived outside the Basilica. Everyone and I mean everyone was there and though it was packed little above a murmur was heard. We walked passed the growing crowed of people toward the candle lit cemetery that rose far off into the night where everyone paid their respects to friends and family that they had. We lit a candle for Ioana’s Grandmother and placed it next to the others on her grave then returned down the well-trodden pathway toward the ever-growing mass of people. The entire town had surrounded their humble little church waiting with candles in hand for the priest to bring them the ‘light’. At a little past 12 am the doors swung open and out popped the priest with a lit candle from which others lit their candles and so on until the ‘light’ reached me and soon the entire field was alight with gleaming faces. This year was a special year I found out because this years light originated from Jerusalem and was brought to Bucuresti, where our local priest lit his candle to bring it to us. After we were all lit the priest began his first of three long and arduous orbits around the church, stopping at every cross section to sing and hymn, then continued on his path around the church followed by everyone in the town who joined in behind him. I couldn’t help but compare the priests long hymns to a slow reggae chant, sort of similar to how ‘Shaggy’ sounds, which definitely gave the whole experience an interesting twist. Before he even finished his first revolution around the church my candle had burnt out and I was the only one without a back-up candle, receiving more than one old lady glare for my ignorance. The whole time with canon blasts echoing through the mountains the hymns could be heard, and the throng of people behind the priest continued to swell as I joined its ranks for one last circling. Finally, the priest ended in front of the church door proclaiming “Hristos a inviat” (Christ has been resurrected) to which the people cried “Adevarat a inviat” (It is true, he has been resurrected). Then everyone who could crammed into the church, the rest went home to wine and bread, and I just went home to bed completely dazzled.

One would think that this event would mark the wrapping up of the celebration but it was really just the beginning. The next day I was picked up by my counterpart’s husband to visit friends and spray the women down with perfume as part of the festivities of spring, a ritual specific to the Transylvanian region which heralds back to when the Hungarians where in control of these parts. The woman in return for getting repeatedly honored with sprays of perfume served coffee and cake. I was told this was a celebration of spring and beauty with the smell of flowers, but after a day worth of getting sprayed with perfume, the smell no longer gives the impression of a nice wholesome spring. In the evening we had a huge family dinner where lamb was served, in fact every part of the lamb including lamb intestine loaf and lamb brain soup. I was and still am confused as to why to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection you eat lamb, wasn’t Jesus a shepherd protecting his flock from predators? I think that 21st century Jesus would be vegetarian anyway. Plus it seems that everyone is trying to consume Jesus, they drink his blood (wine) and eat his bones (bread) like a bunch of ogres, but maybe I am just incredibly misinformed, which is of course the case. After the diner we smashed finely decorated hard boiled eggs against each other symbolizing I don’t know what, but before you smashed the point of your egg with another’s you would say “Hristos a inviat” and your opponent would counter with “Adeverat a inviat” then you collide them together resulting in one loser egg that got smashed and one egg that remains unadulterated, until the next bout.

For nearly a whole week my kids barely came to class, and it was understood that this was because of the Easter celebrations that seemed to never end. “Hristos a inviat” became the new greeting that could be heard on the street and in the faculty lounge, “adeverat a inviat” you would say in reply. This went on for weeks and I began to wonder when, if ever, this saying would peter out which it finally did almost three weeks later.

During the day that we were spraying women I had been invited by a friend to comeback to his house a couple weeks later and make Tuica with the family. Tuica if you don’t know is the Romanian equivalent to German Schnapps, distilled from apples or prunes, but it is part of the Romanian heritage and tradition and everyone makes there own; you can’t find the stuff in stores because apparently it is ‘outlawed’ to make, but know one cares. It can be up to 90 proof and helps the digestion, so they say, since it helps break down the large amount of fatty foods the people eat in the winter, but that’s not all it does. My friend and his family have been living in the same house for generations; his grandfather planted the apple trees that now stand nearly 40 feet tall. The process starts in the fall where the fallen apples are collected and put into big drums where they sit throughout the winter and early spring months. By this time the apples have rotten, fermented, and are ready to boil. This is when the whole family gets involved, conducting an operation which lasts four straight days and nights, we came on day three. 1,500 Kg of mushy apples needed to be boiled, its steam passing through a metal tube that went from the furnace to a vat of water where the tube coiled around inside, cooling the steam into liquid, eventually pouring out of a faucet at the bottom of the vat into an ever overflowing bucket that needed constant emptying. Once the first round is completed the liquid is boiled again a second time for it to become ‘real’ Tuica, before it is just called Vodka. A constant roaring fire must be maintained and more apple mush filled throughout the day and night, so everyone takes turns. In the evening we roasted pig fat over the blazing fire like marshmallows, a spongy confection that no one has ever heard of around here, and drank our newly made Tuica long into the night.

Lately since Maria has moved to Sibiu I have been heading down to see her after my last class on Fridays and last Friday was no different, except that it was my birthday so a few modification needed to be made. In Romania unlike in the States, when you have a birthday people don’t buy you drinks and take you out to some fancy restaurant, even if there was one here in Abrud. No, you buy them drinks and food and being fully aware of this ritual I bought enough cake and Mountain Dew to appease all the teachers in the lounge and smoking room. I also actually wore a tie and dress pants. During our big 20 minute break between 3rd and 4th period all the teachers sang for me the ‘La multi Ani’ song, I stood in line and received everyone’s cheek kisses, then they presented me with my three pre-selected history of art books to take home, which I believe they took from the Library. The problem was that I was so well dressed that nobody wanted to give me a ride, I must have looked like the mafia or some politician who could afford his own car, because what normally takes 15 minutes max took over an hour just waiting with my big sign in hand. Then once I arrived in Alba Iulia where I had to hitch hike the rest of the way the same thing happened, I waited and waited until finally I waved down a bus heading toward Sibiu, but for that I needed to pay. I finally arrived later in the evening and Maria had made me some pasta and a nice pudding cake for desert. For one of my presents I received a techno colored dream scarf, which marks a major step toward complete European assimilation as far as dress is concerned. The next day we went with Maria’s Cousin Horia and his girlfriend Mihiela on a picnic in the mountains, near Sibiu. We drove through a little village called Sibiel and fallowed a winding river 3 kilometers up toward an old Monastery built in the 18th century. The story goes that kids would have to walk up to the monastery for school since only the priests new how to read and write. We found a lovely sun lit patch of green right next to the river, not a single other Romanian in sight. Maria and I had a conversation about the name ‘Zodiac’ that I want to give for my son, she said it wasn’t really a name but something like a category or system which wouldn’t be a suitable title, I disagreed, and Horia pulled out his book on Astrology he just so happened to be reading. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, people ended up around us like flies. Groups of Romanians with their plump uncovered bellies began lying all over the place like pregnant seals and we soon had to continue our discussion another time for the picnic was over.

Looking back I can honestly say that my 25th year was my first year of completely positive growth, action, and motivation. The year as a volunteer teacher in Romania, the year that I feel in love, the year I realized exactly how little I learnt up to now, the year of travel. This next year will be even better starting with a visit in less then two weeks from an old friend Kale, who I met in the 3rd grade after trading me his family’s sacred book of Asopes fables for my early 90’s neon fanny-pack, which had to be returned by parental request soon after. Much more to come, stay tuned.

I guess that I just need to start writing to get the proverbial juices flowing. So what the hell I will talk about how my last week transformed from the one before that and so on. Pickling is also another big tradition here in Romania. My counterpart brought me two mammoth jars of pickled cucumbers and pickled peppers but this was before I had found out that I would be leaving school immediately for Bucharest for a dental check up and physical examination and whatever else comes to mind as fingers type… ah here we go.

For the past month I have been following a schedule of particular engagements so meticulously that I could set my watch to it, if I had one. These daily routines of consecutive activities, from 6:30 am to 11:00 pm, keep me on task with the illusion of productivity and control. But it was my lack of an actual timepiece and the presence of daylight savings that sent this past weeks program sailing into chaos, only now as the clouds begin to clear, can I begin salvaging my precious schedule from the wreckage. I woke up for class last Monday full of beans, ready to tackle whatever my kids would throw me, got dressed, waited outside for my ride which would never come, then walked to school. It seemed brighter than usual with less cars and more dogs on the road. My suspicions were raised after noticing a lack of old men waddling their way toward the local saloon, and instead, found them already drunk inside, and these guys hit the bars like clockwork. These suspicions were confirmed later upon arrival. I really needed a watch, which was conveniently on my old phone before it slipped out of my pocket in some random car over a month ago. It was the second phone to have been lost in this manner and I really had no desire to fork up more cash for something that would inevitably get lost again, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to wear one on my wrist. But this resistance was now affecting my work, so I had to figure the most economical way of getting a new phone which I was able to do quite nicely and in short order.

The next day I remembered that the Peace Corps requires yearly medical check ups and dentist visits in Bucuresti, where I could also pick up a phone for 119 Lei (35 dollars), and possibly get my travel costs paid for with the right maneuvering and I could pay for the phone with the per diem given during my visit. Unfortunately the only time available for the dentists was on a Thursday at 3 pm, meaning I would have to leave for the closest city to catch the train at 4 o’clock Wednesday afternoon. I made the appointment and told the office to reserve a couple of nights lodging then looked at the clock; it was 1:15 pm Wednesday. I was in the middle of teaching class when it all went down and with only two hours to get home, get packed, hitch a ride, and make the train.

After class my counterpart agreed to drop me off at my place, but as we left the school she stopped to help the janitor lift two enormous jars of pickled peppers into her car, which she intend for me to take home. We eventually made it to my apartment but the substantial weight of the two uncooperative jars made the 5 flights of stairs nearly insurmountable against time. As I lugged the 2 jars up the stairs I remembered this one time while eating a big dinner with a group of Georgians and Romanians and a big bucket of pickled tomatoes was brought out as an appetizer. I only had one, which squirted pickled tomato juice right into the eye of a Georgian who happened to be complaining about pickled tomatoes. I only had time to grab my toothbrush then dash out of the apartment with my sign for Alba.

I was in a rush so I grabbed the first car that pulled to the side of the road. It was a beat up 1970’s Dacia that looked like it had developed naturally out of the roadside trash piles that are liberally sprinkled through out this beautiful region. The inside smelled like a warm toilet but I couldn’t be picky so off we went, me in the back with two other hitchhikers, my knees touching my chest. Of course I picked the car whose speedometer is broken, its needle shaking wildly from 0 to 140 Km as the driver oscillates between cartwheel and bullet speeds. After 30 minutes into the experience my left kneecap begins to cramp, but with the drivers Herculean wife loaded into the front seat I had no room for relief. We arrived so late that I had missed my 4 o’clock train, leaving me the only option of taking a slow night train three hours later. This guy then tries to charge me 15 lei for the trip, which only costs 10 lei by bus, without the smell or pain. I decided then and there that he would receive no money from me, which I told him much to his displeasure. I actually didn’t have money anyway since I ran out of the house with only my bank card and usually when I tell people that I am a volunteer and work with kids without getting paid they don’t charge. Not this guy. After extracting money from the others he worked through the whole spectrum of bodily gestures trying to convince me to pay him, arms flailing, feet kicking. I considered this to be my afternoon entertainment since I now had several hours to kill. But after half an hour of this performance he decided to make me an offer. That I meet him at some place in time in the future where I can pay him, I immediately forgot the time and location and agreed. As collateral he took the pin I had in my hand, which would be given back to me upon payment.

I eventually made it to Bucuresti 8 hours later. The next day was packed with visits to the Doctor, Dentist, and department store for the cell phone. The dentist was an interesting experience. All that I have ever known was my hometown dentist and his hometown ways of teeth cleaning. This dentist scraped my teeth with a medal vibrating hook than used this communist grade sandpaper dental floss to really define where the tooth ends and the space begins. I remember lots of metal, more medal than plastic, metal chairs and metal machines making clinking sounds. One thing that I liked was the little TV harnessed to the ceiling allowing me to watch an episode of Animal planet where renegade monkeys turn on their owners, but the sound was turned off and replaced with soothing Enya music playing from behind the metal speakers. It all still seemed to make sense and I don’t have cavities thank goodness.

Got the damn cell phone which was the source of all my discombobulation and now my sights were set for Sibiu, where Maria works as an intern for its German newspaper ‘Hermannstadter Zeitung’. Arrived late Friday afternoon with plenty of hours left to sit on the benches in the grand plaza and watch the pigeons try to have sex with each other. Its disgusting really, the male pigeons puff them selves up and spin around in circles and act a damn fool, then they get it on in one big massive horde, right in front of little kids and the elderly. What a show.

Maria and I spent the nights in her family’s village home in a small near by town called Sibiel, and I am talking about a real village here folks. We had to get water from the well since the pipes were turned off for the winter. This archaic task of fetching the water, turning the big wheel, lowering a rope, and pulling up a bucket of yellow water felt surprisingly therapeutic, even though I complained through out the entire chore. I also gained a new appreciation for outhouses. Regular toilet seats just don’t feel the same once your ass has had a wooden seat polished from generations of use. Plus now flushing feels labored and unnecessary. Its that extra effort that feels like I am working, in an out house you just go and go, freed from the task of initiating flushing sequence, like a king. The nights we spent sipping hot wine while working on a world map puzzle while listening to the BBC. Fun

This Friday I will be in Weisbaden Germany for Easter, where apparently Maria’s parents already have eggs waiting for me to paint. Maybe they know why eggs are painted in the first place.

La revedere und auf wiedersehen

The events of this past month have led me to believe that something has changed, I see it everywhere that I look, in the faces of my students and fellow teachers, in the people that I meet while jogging or buying groceries, in the snow and in the sun and more frequently both at the same time. A sense of immeasurable happiness and an awareness of peace within myself that I have never recognized before, as if I discovered a new sense with which to understand my relation to this world, which any many ways I have created for myself. My priorities have changed to coincide with forces that are out of my control and it is in respect to these forces that I regain a sense of control. I recently discovered that I love teaching and the unique form of creativity and purpose that it provides for not only myself but also my students. I love my life here in this small little town where an hours jog around the rolling hills and bucolic settings hint at some last vestige of truth in this modern world, free of concepts without substance, just pure experience and freedom.

So with that said, much has happened within the past month and I guess what motivated me to begin writing again was what I happened to witness this morning while in the school parking lot. I get out of the car as usual and for no good reason at all I begin to stare off into the back parking lot of the local restaurant across the street from the school, like I was day dreaming or something, but then I realized that I was witnessing from start to finish a pig getting slaughtered, the students walking to class paid it no attention as if the act was meant just for me to see, sort of altering my day a little as a result.

The first of March in Romania is known as martisoare, which is the celebration of Women day and one this day you are to give women in your life these little trinkets and flowers that they pin on their label. In the local villages, red and white wool yarn was pinned on gates, tied around the horns of cattle, around the handles of buckets to protect against the stink eye and bad spirits. The legend has it that there was a time when the Sun used to turn into a young man and descent on Earth to dance a jig among the people folk, but I guess some dragon found out about this and captured him in his castle. The birds stopped singing and children couldn’t laugh anymore but no one dared to confront the dragon. One day a brave young man set out to free the Sun and this journey lasted three seasons: summer, autumn, and winter. The guy found the sun, an epic battle was had which led to the defeat of the Dragon and the release of the sun but the brave young man suffered mortal wounds and his warm blood was drained on the snow which melted and produced flowers called snowdrops, the signals of spring. And this long ridiculous story explains why these red and white colored tassels are everywhere during this time of March.

I bought myself the most perfect old mans pipe, which I picked up from a Gypsy camp. Went home to boil any villainous remnant out of the thing but instead I just boiled the cool curve out of the stem and now it looks more like a question mark than a pipe. During my most recent funeral attendance I found out that a teacher in my school is a famous accordion player, and after trying to play the accordion for the teachers at one of our teacher gatherings, he came up to me and pleaded that I stop and let him teach me. So today was our first lesson, and I can now play the Romanian equivalent to the happy birthday song called ‘la multi ani’, but instead of merely repeating that you are another year older the song requests that the lord give you everything you wish for including days with no clouds and happiness.

Anyway booked my flight to Germany for the next break, started an international current events club with my fellow teachers, I am now a Hegelian… I want to continue this conversation but it is 3 in the morn and I got class so maybe next month…

I am waiting for spring more then ever as I look out my frosty classroom windows. Today it actually became warm enough to snow ending a short two day snow sabbatical colder then a wizard’s nipple, as my dad would say. Winter here has lingered on like a stale fart that just won’t clear the room and I can only pretend I don’t smell it for so long. To escape the winter’s stench I will be spending my weekend in Sibu, the Cultural Capital of Europe in 2007, and hopefully come back with some decent loafs of German bread.

Played European handball last night with some of the locals and not only is it completely different then the handball we have in the States, but its like 3 times as dangerous and fun as well. Instead of smacking around a little ball in a court you have two teams of seven who try to throw a ball the size of a kid’s soccer ball into a goal about twice the width of a normal doorway. Its like what happens when you combine ultimate Frisbee with basketball and football. Fouling is seen as good strategy for disrupting the opponents concentration and apparently you don’t have to skip the third helping of mamalega in order to be fit enough to play, half of the townspeople on my team could barely see their own feet let alone wear our teams blue colored singlet. This being my first time seeing or playing handball I wasn’t sure how I would fair, the opposing team looked pretty intimidating and hungry. But the feeling one gets after knocking over a 300 pound fat man with your throw just can’t be beat.

In the beginning of the school year I would pass out chocolates to the students who did all their work and participated in class but it turned out to not be as effective or healthy as my new method of bribery. Now for correct answers and class participation I pass out chewable one a day multivitamins as a reward and I have noticed a remarkable improvement in my more malnourished students. For the past week I have been focusing mainly on the wide world of adjectives and today when asking the students to throw out some adjectives they would associate with feeling, the first word is yelled out, “pain”, every time. We have very happy bunch here on Firdays.

If you ever come here to Abrud, Romania there will probably be a few things that might furrow your brow in puzzlement. Let’s start with the local shops. At the local market you will find all of your alcoholic beverages resting lazily inside a whole row of refrigerators, giving the impression that they are actually on and cooling said beverages. This is something that will take some getting used to because it is hard to accept the fact that they are just being used to hold and not cool, acting as very expensive shelves and nothing more, but this is Romania and this phenomenon is seen in nearly every city. Lets say you want a 3 liter bottle of Ciuc (beer) which will cost you around 5.40 lei, about 2 dollars. You would think that after giving the casher 6 lei for your purchase 60 bon is owed to you, but instead you receive two sticks of gum. This means that the store is out of change and now has reverted to trade; this too is universally accepted as payment. But collecting the sticks of gum that have accumulated over the months and trying to buy something of lesser or equal value will not work, so don’t even bother. Waiting in line with the elderly or derelict should be avoided since you will find yourself at the end of it anyway.

My ride is here so I hope you all have a good weekend.

Today marks the day of internets glorious return to my humble little village. I don’t know what the hell happened the last three weeks, maybe the wooden wheels of the ox drawn service provider fell apart or maybe the string between the two tin cans snapped. Either way I don’t know how long this will last. Again I will try to pick what has occurred within the last month and grind it into some sort of palatable tasty read, though it still might bring indigestion.

Let’s see here, our trip to Sweden proved to be a great change in climate both in temperature and attitude. While waiting in the airport we had the opportunity to check out the local shops with Hungarian hand crafted gifts to buy, including a whole row of crucified Jesuses and large wooden dice with different sexual positions painted on each side. The thing was that they were right next to each other and the look on his face as he looked down on all of those dice was just priceless. We booked our flights with Wizzair, a discount airline, and in exchange for 15 Euro plane tickets we were dropped off in a small town hours away from Stockholm. The cost of taking a shuttle to the city and back cost more than the flight itself and I would have felt ripped off had it not been for that drunken woman barking out obscenities at whoever was speaking Arabic in the back of the bus. We stayed with a group of EVS volunteers living inside an apartment connected to the school they volunteer in. The cultural differences were obvious from the moment we got to the metro station. Everyone spoke perfect English, metros were on time, no gypsies or crazy old men could be heard, clean, and venders sold fresh produce along with REAL coffee. The Swedes love coffee and I love the Swedes. You will find coffee shops every where, even in places that I would never have thought a coffee shop should belong; like in a bath and body shop or a pharmacy or a movie rental. I was also impressed with what little clothing the women were wearing considering how cold it was outside, I had two jackets on over a long sleeve shirt and I was still freezing.

Stockholm is wonderful for how clean and organized it seems to be, even in the heart of the city I saw barely any traffic and zero homeless. In Sweden education is free (you even get paid to go to school), as well as child care and hospital visits. I read in the latest magazine of ‘The Economist’ that people in countries who have a more socialized government like those in Northern Europe believe less in god since all their needs are taken care of, while the belief in god rises in governments who provide less for their people; USA was second to the last on the list, above Turkey. People greet each other by saying ‘Hey Hey’ and it is hard to spot a road without at least one candy shop and one souvenir shop selling post cards of the king. When visiting the kings palace you will still find dressed up guards standing perfectly still like little pawns around its perimeter. All of the lakes around the city as well as parts of the Baltic Sea were frozen and there were more people on the ice skating then on the sidewalks with full families hand in hand, mothers skating with baby carriages, fathers racing their sons, it brought a tear to my eye. We barrowed some ice skates of our own and skated across to a lonely island where I nursed my sore heels. I can’t ice skate to save my life, I appear to have epileptic seizures with every movement forward and it was the duty of every Swede who passed to give his or her own opinion on how not to look like a complete idiot, but it helped little.

Now Sweden isn’t all gum drops and candy canes for those who have to weather the weather during the winter months and apparently many people take anti-depression pills as a result. What I was told however is that the tap water actually has a large amount of this medication in it because it can’t be filtered completely out of the water supply. I am not sure if this is true or not but it sure did taste nice. In Sweden it is very important to scream if you drop anything on the ground to warn the Gnomes so they can get out of the way and avoid a bad knock on the noggin. Apparently if you don’t they will come to your house and hide your stuff, like car keys or birth control pills. I also like the wide variety of cozy Ikea like shops all selling interesting appliances and house wares and coffee, making me wish I had a house to put them all in. I bought this great neon green spork, which combines the spoon, fork, and even the knife, into one multi-ethnic master utensil. I figured it would cut the time I spend doing the dishes by more then a third. Now I carry it with me where ever I go and it’s been so helpful I am thinking about knighting it and giving it a name, like Sir Sporksalot, but I got nothing so far. In the heart of the city the ‘Publikhause’ towers over the main plaza, the clothing stores, and candy shops. The public house is where we spent most of out time and is something that I wish would be copied in the States, but never will. The first floor was a cool medieval museum with free games and a miniature floor model of old and new Stockholm. The second floor had a huge Ikea like library with a place to sit and read all of the world newspapers that filled one side of the hallway or listen to new music that you could check out while sipping coffee. The third floor was a combination Child care play room packed with mothers and cartoon furniture and a modern art exhibit on the other side. The last floor was a large restaurant slash coffee shop for students which gave a panoramic view of the main city square. Looking down we watched as people gathered to protest the continued conflict in Sri Lanka as a panel of professors across the room discussed the latest actions of the Swedish government. The fact that it was all free seemed to surprise no one else but myself. I could live here very easily.

Our time came too quickly and soon we found ourselves on the plane again, heading toward Budapest, which turned out to be another city I would easily say yes to living in. Beautiful, historic, clean, and well managed, I never wanted to leave though that first night Maria and I weren’t feeling too well on account of a whole days worth of bad dietary choices. For breakfast we had Cinnamon rolls and jam, an airport sandwich for lunch and after finding no place agreeable after landing, we for some reason ate at Burger King, not one whopper, but two…each. Our first night with Debi, our couch surfing host, didn’t go as planned since we just flopped on her couch and instantly fell asleep. The next day we walked along the Danube River on the Buda side, taking in the sights of old castles and historic monuments. On the Pest side I got sucked into walking along the fashion street where we stared at clothes we could never afford. We walked past opera houses and beautiful buildings, showing influences from every period since the 15th century. The people proved to be the most helpful people I have come to meet so far, I you pause to look at a sign for more then a second people will cross the street just to ask if you need help. We were on our way to look at the torture museum but we kept getting side tracked by coffee shops and book stores. I picked up a great book on the revolutionary year of 1848 in Europe and tried in vain to find a shop selling old man pipes. That night Debi brought us to her favorite hang out spot which you would never had noticed if you didn’t know where it was. There was a secret knock too and this place turned out to be what looked like someone’s apartment tuned speak easy bar. It was furnished with antiques, people were drinking on top of sowing machine tables, others on top of an antique bread making machine, the place was packed, and you could only get in if you or your friend had a ‘key’. I was introduced to some new types of Indian (India) Trance which was tolerable and informed about the many bad ass music festivals during the summer that I will have to check out. We stumbled home happy but sad that we had only planned two days for Budapest. Our plane back to Romania was delayed by more then 5 hours which brought a sobering sense of what I was in store for back home.

I received my first education inspection from my organization yesterday and it went better then I had hoped. Apparently all the students and teachers think that I am doing a great job and the lesson I had planned for her inspection involving the use of metaphor gave the impression that I know what I am doing. Alls well that ends well and now I just have to begin my secondary project with the community and see it through before the semester ends.

Before I left for Sweden my English counterpart and our schools music teacher got together and found me an accordion to play, which has been coming along quite nicely. My previous knowledge of the piano has made learning it fairly easy and I now have all the Mario Theme songs down including the water level from Mario 1 and the main theme from Mario 2. I strap the accordion to my chest while I study so I don’t have to move if I want to take a break. I hope to start learning some traditional Romanian songs which I have been trying to find to play on this site, but no luck just yet.

It is sort of funny coming back home from a long vacation, hearing the familiar songs of grandmothers screeching to electronic accordion riffs as you are driven back to your real life, the slick roads and snow powdered hills give you the sobering sense that you never left in the first place. You just passed out for three weeks and had one hell of an out of body experience. You regain consciousness in front of your apartment, pushing that little fat sausage of a dog away from the door like clockwork as you slowly walk up the four flights of stairs. Nothing has changed and come Monday you have school to teach, yet something is different, something personal and validating that revitalizes your surroundings and energizes your resolution, something only a vacation well handled can bring, sort of like a hot chocolate in the ski lodge before bundling up and hitting the slopes again. Except replace the hot chocolate with a glass boot filled to the brim with foreign languages and misadventures, the ski lodge with couches, and the slopes with 34 hours worth of hitch hiking around Europe. It felt like receiving a back massage and a punch in the face at the same time.

The trip began on a frosty Monday morning and we were lucky enough to have somewhat of a clear day to make the hike from Abrud to Alba Iulia and then Cluj, a 150 Kilometer drive. We at first had computer printed signs that stated our desired locations but found that they were too professional and signified that we must have a computer and printer, contradicting out claim to be poor volunteers needing free rides. We flipped the signs and wrote the names in black marker, obtaining a ride almost as soon as we had finished writing. Our plan was to stay the night with a Couch Surfing host in Cluj the night before we were to catch a flight in the early morning to Dortmund, Germany. The whole hike only took 6 hours including rides from a taxi, a lawyer from the time of Ceausescu, and a student all for free. We met our host, Sam, who is from Israel studying to become a doctor in Cluj. He took us out drinking where we had great conversations about his years spent traveling in South America and the effects of technology on the medical profession. We got to bed late and woke up at 4:30 to catch the 6:00 a.m. plane. The airport was basically a one room check-in and waiting room all in one, and this is the main airport for a city of 300,000.

The real fun began once we landed in Dortmund having no idea where we should go to start hitch hiking. We wandered toward a gas station near the freeway outside of the airport. We had a whole day to make it from Dortmund to Amsterdam; it was a little past 8 in the morning, so we wrote our destination on a piece of paper and stood in front of the on ramp for an hour while pinched faced Germans sped on past, either deliberately not looking at us or taking a furtive glance at our sign before leaving us in their rearview mirror. We felt beaten before we had even started and we had 300 k to go. It was decided that we should attempt to go from city to city which would increase our chances for a ride. The first one was called Essen, which confused many who passed because Essen also means ‘food’ and we already by this time resembled street urchins, tired, and yes, hungry. Eventually some kindhearted man named Klaus brought us to Gelsenkirchen where we had better luck at rest stops up until we made it to the Netherlands and were dropped off at a truck stop, 60 kilometers from Amsterdam, so close we could smell it, but that was where our luck abruptly ended. Hours slowly passed by like so many half empty cars whose passengers smirked at us as they crept on by. Finally someone had the decency to inform us that we were on the wrong side of the highway. I really don’t know how we then ended up a kilometer down the road, standing in that no mans land of an island located in the middle of two freeways but there we were, out of options, patience, or common sense; just a ripped piece of cardboard with Amsterdam written on it. Moments later a group of Iranians who were on their way to Amsterdam saw our pathetic condition on the highway meridian and let us ride with them. They spoke no English at first and after a long period of uncomfortable silence one asked where I was from, to which I told him about the great country of Canada for some reason.

It had taken a good 10 hours and I had a half smile half grimace frozen to my face but we had made it to Amsterdam without spending a cent. We arrived at dusk and made our way towards the first coffee shop we could find, just for coffee of course cause we were tired as hell and still needed to find our host for the night. Eventually we made contact with Richie, our host, and took the necessary tram rides to his one room student apartment on the outskirts of the city. There we unloaded our bags, made our introductions, and learned about life in Amsterdam with Richie as our guide. Later that night we all went out for drinks in the Red Light district. I remember shots of jagermeister, free style rapping with this guy who just made parole, bright neon lights, and lots of sinister laughter radiating from every dark alleyway. Our main reason for being in Amsterdam in the first place was to meet with an old friend of mine who was returning from a semester abroad in Denmark so beyond that we just wanted to walk around and get lost in the conundrum that is Amsterdam. We rode bikes, walked over countless bridges, relaxed in cozy coffee houses, and spent the rest of the time confused as to where we were. Amsterdam is a charming city if you aren’t caught in its center with plenty of Renaissance and baroque style architecture, cobblestone streets, and bike filled bridges. It’s really built around the cyclist and very pedestrian friendly, except if you stumble onto the bike lane. The ticket system they have in Amsterdam almost seems setup the way it is to confound and frustrate the million plus foreigners who visit every year. For 6 Euros you get a strip of paper with 12 grids, which should be stamped for every zone you pass, which usually amount to two, and the people you meet in these metros are just as misleading and pointless to deal with. Once we went to the metro to meet our friend Ian but the lady who checks the tickets told us that our used up strip of tickets was in fact used up and not valid anymore and directed us toward a nearby ticket machine. I told the lady I had no idea how to use the thing, so she explained in choppy English how very simple the machine is to operate, pressed a sequence of buttons necessary for us to get our strip of paper, then told us that all we needed to do was to put in the correct amount of money and press the green button, which we did. Out came the ticket, we grabbed it, handed it to her, and she told us it was the wrong ticket. “This is only for the elderly and children under 12”, she said with a look of confusion, the very same look that we were wearing on our faces.

Later that night after all plans had fallen to the floor as our only cell phone was out of minutes and battery, with no way of getting a hold of our new host we walked around aimlessly for near two hours, every damn bridge looked like the last, we bumped into the same Hotel de Europe like 15 times until finally enough was had and we decided to just check into some hostel for what was hoped a be a mediocre sleep. It was agreed that hotels in the Red Light district would be the cheapest and since I had been to the Flying Pig before, we made that our destination. Surprisingly I remembered where it was all those years ago, too bad to. We walked into a reception room filled with kids barely over 18 sneezing and smoking. A sickly brown haired woman swiftly checked us in to the cheapest room, to be shared with 12 other beds. At this point we had exhausted our reserves and needed sleep more then air and the only bed that was actually made wasn’t ours. Our bed had empty bottles and clothes all over it with no sheets; so we took the only bed that was made and promptly fell asleep for about an hour. I woke up to some commotion going on near our bed, which was on the top bunk. Girls were fiddling with our cloths and lots of heavy breathing and pinched voices were heard. Then the frail receptionist came in to ask who we were, I pretended not to know or hear what was being said to me and eventually the noises died down after the receptionist gave a big rustle over having to make the bed that should have been made in the first place. The silence lasted for almost 20 minutes until the girl in the bunk below us started sobbing over all types of nonsensical things for hours on end. She cried about missing her dog and how her friend was in the hospital because of shrooms and how nobody will accept her new life style and so on. It was a real pathetic sobbing too, the type you here from a child whose mother wont by the ice cream; a wheezy, whining, high pitched kind of blubbery. The dude who was with her with his deep baritone voice tried his best to calm the girl; all while everyone was trying to sleep. “Its ok, your beautiful”, he’d whisper, “baseball players take thousands of swings before they can hit the ball”. That type of nonsense all night long, no sleep was had.

Later that morning we walked like zombies out of the Flying Pig to feed on the brains of those who knew where to buy a phone card. We eventually contacted Richie, got our luggage, then began a whole knew search for our last host in Amsterdam. I must say that our experiences with Couch Surfing throughout our trip were unbelievably enjoyable. Everyone we meet really went out of his or her way to make us feel welcome. That night my air mattress deflated and my face fell asleep right on top of the air valve. Our host allowed us to stay an extra day so we could finish Amsterdam right since the day before turned out to be such a trouble.

The next day, after everyone said their goodbyes and my friend left for the plane, we found ourselves on the highway onramp once more, looking as bedraggled as ever, with a new cardboard sign. After an hour in subzero temperatures we were finally picked up by a guy who fixes computers part-time and toilets full time and were dropped off at a rest stop on the German Boarder. No more than 20 minutes pass and this guy literally comes out of the woods behind us and asks if we need a ride. The guy was clearly eccentric, in his mid 40’s his hair was a mirror image of Einstein’s, and he wore a neon purple and green scarf under his white collared shirt, which matched his dinner jacket quite nicely. He seemed safe enough and he pointed to his hatchback over yonder where he said his wife and brand new son were waiting in the back seat. He told us he never missed a chance to pick up hitchhikers as he began rearranging his entire back seat to fit all of our stuff in. His wife, packed in the back seat with baby and luggage, seemed to have no problem with the arrangement and off we went. Now I don’t have to remind you that at this moment we were running on mental fumes, cold, tired, hungry, you name it, and the last thing we wanted was to have to do any brainwork. So of course the guy turns out to be a theoretical physicist who was apparently on his way to Germany where he said he would disclose his new theory that had baffled Einstein, the Unification Theory, which he says to have been discovered to have something to do with electro-magnetism. For two hours this guy was talking about quantum eigenvectors and how he helped invent nano-technology and the whole time all that I could do was bobble my head like a Neanderthal trying to mock understanding. This went on some time until he bought us hot chocolate at a rest stop and left us there. It would take three more rides and 6 more hours until we would finally arrive in Wiesbaden, our final Christmas destination.

Wiesbaden is where Marias family lives and the plan was to stay with them for the days around Christmas, visiting her grandfather in an old village Christmas Eve, and then off to Paris the day after. Nearly two thousand years old, Wiesbaden exhibits grand plazas, regal opera houses, and neo-gothic architecture, it is also one of the oldest spa towns in Europe and of the 27 original hot springs fifteen are still flowing. So the first place we went to relax from the irregularities of hitching was the famous Neo-Classical Kurhaus (spa house) built for the Kaiser during the First World War. Before leaving for Marias Grandfathers house we watched a traditional German play in the Hessian State Theater, Hansel and Gretel, being the only play that I could sort of follow without knowing what was being said. The only thing I didn’t get was why a portly overstuffed woman played the role of Hansel?

Time with Maria’s family in the little village of (find name) was priceless; having done many brand new things related to Christmas that I had never done before, like singing songs or going to church. On Christmas Eve we gathered at the Uncle’s house, just across the road, and feasted on turkey, potato dumplings, and of course sauerkraut. Afterwards we all sat in a circle around a plate of cookies and everyone sang German Christmas songs. Soon the Uncle, Uncle Deeter, pulled out his old tyme crank organ and cranked away song after song for everyone to sing to. But he kept going for an awkwardly long period of time and everybody felt obliged to keep listening to his circus like melodies. In Germany most people open presents on Christmas Eve so after the music had finally ended presents were passed around. The grandfather, Opa, appeared to like his new Technicolor Bird house that I painted for him the day before. On Christmas morning we arrived late to church and had to sit on the sidelines, which proved to be front row seats for when people would trip over a small hidden step after receiving their wafer. Afterwards we all lit candles to place near the pulpit but mine wouldn’t fit in its special candle slot and I kept burning myself on other people’s candles to the point in which finally Maria’s father did it for me. The trip to the cemetery was interesting; four generations of Maria’s family were buried there. Opa pulled me aside and pointed at his own grave next to his late wife, with a sort of transcendent smile on his kind and gentle face. Opa had been a farmer, now retired he spent most of time blowing through crossword puzzles and showcasing his extensive collection of antique cups and plates, as all old people do. At 88 years of age he would still pick apples in his back yard and I spent an entire morning with him in his basement as he slowly filled sack after sack with the apples he had stored for the winter.

The next day, back in Wiesbaden, we opened our late Christmas presents. I received a traditional German hat with a goats beard pinned to it and a large cowbell that I lugged around with me for the rest of the trip, best presents ever. We said our goodbyes and took a train to Freiburg, spending the night at a friend’s house before moving on to Paris for our final hurrah. The next day we were up bright and early for our ride, having luckily reserved a couple of seats with a guy named Osama who had rented a car and needed some passengers to help pay for gas. We were tired of hitchhiking and the temperature outside was -12 Celsius so the small cost was well worth it, arriving in Paris right before dawn. Somewhere between Germany and France we lost our new hosts number and spent the rest of the evening in a McDonalds, packed with crying children from every corner of the globe, calling people who could help find it for us. Finally Marias sister found his number, we got the address, and became instantly lost in the underground metro. A few more hours later and we resurfaced near Piata de’ Italy and eventually made it through the courtyard and into the little one room flat of Romain, a student at the University of Paris. The next day we visited Marias sister who is living as an exchange student in Tours, a two-hour train ride from Paris. Tours is great because you will hear music on the corner of every street from hidden speakers. We met Marias sister and ate an ‘Epiphanie Cake’ with her host family, something I had never heard of which astounded everyone else. Apparently it is French tradition where someone hides under the table and calls off everyone’s name who then receives a slice of flaky cake. Soon after all slices are served everyone begins to eat and whoever receives a trinket in his or her slice gets to wear the king’s crown for the rest of the meal. I wasn’t sure what religious insight the cake was meant to reveal but the thing in the cake turned out to be a little figurine of Charlie Chaplin sitting on a stack of bricks.

The French are funny in that they are really proud to be French and when they tell you they don’t speak English it doesn’t mean that they don’t know it. Maria and I went to a party with Romains friends who would barely even talk with until we started making fun of them with fake Parisian accents. It only took climbing up to the top of a church at midnight, nearly avoiding disaster, for us all to become friends. The church had carvings in it from 1848, way to go J. Zimmerlan!

Of the few places that I wanted to see in Paris, Jim Morrison’s grave was one of them so the day before new years we took the metro to Pere Lauchauz and walked up to the graves of the rich and famous. This place had its own street corners and information kiosk with maps. We passed by Fredrick Chopin’s grave; a fat tabby cat was playing in all of the fresh flowers that completely covered his resting place. Then after some difficulty we came to find Jimmy’s spot, which wasn’t what I had expected. No graffiti, no aging hippies holding candle lit vigils, just his 40 year old grave that looked like it could have been set several centuries earlier with several Chinese taking pictures from behind the barricade. In place of fresh flowers were cigarette butts and withered roses thrown from the fence close enough to be considered for Morrison.

New Years Eve began at the Bastille where we had been looking for hours for a nice place to eat, ending up in a Chinese restaurant again. In France you wont find any restaurant, except kabab shops and Chinese restaurants, open between 4 and 8 p.m., which is always when we needed food. Later that night we found ourselves in a sea of people walking from the Arch de Triumph to the Eiffel Tower. Thanks to last years riot, cops stood in every corner with batman like rubber suits ready to pounce at the slightest disturbance. We eventually made it to the base of the tower, having to look straight up to see the whole of it, prepared with our bottle of champagne, and waited for what seemed like forever. Then a charge of noises came from everywhere though I heard nothing that could be considered a count down, just stars slowly turning off, then the lights of the tower began blinking and the New Year just sort of happened. There were barely any fireworks, people drank their bottles of champagne in deep thought, the group of Americans to our far left screamed to see some boobs, and some kid with a scarf around his face let off his fireworks into the crowd then danced around a little. For the rest of the night we walked through the city making our New Years resolutions to the sounds of cars honking and bottles breaking. We made it to our flight back home in the morning packed with new books, good memories, and a cowbell.

The thought of trying to cram nearly two weeks of life chronologically in one sitting seems sterile and pointless, turning me into some authorial taskmaster to whomever decides to take time out of their busy day to read this. If I had my way I would instead of writing perform to you my last few weeks in an interpretive dance that would look something like me playing tug-of-war with myself, slipping on the ground, my face would then cycle between looks of confusion and hangover as I dance with the notion that my cell phone is missing and my weekend gone, then I jump with a quick 360’ spin and end with my doing jazz hands looking surprised and constipated. It’s the type of face that only comes from an entire weeks worth of test preparation and disillusionment momentarily turned upside down.

It turns out that there is something worse than waking up naked in front of a large group of people and that would be finding yourself in a room full of middle aged business women trying to set up grant proposals in another language having had no sleep for two days. The circumstances that led to this unfortunate waste of my weekend along with the loss of my cell phone in Bucharest are steeped in mystery and loud plastic fabulous bars with Romanians singing Cold-Play, aarrghh. It was a leadership seminar, which sounded good before I found out it would be entirely in Romanian, and by that time I was already locked in. I hardly ever get to go to the Capital now that I live 8 hours away by train, so whenever I am around I do try to enjoy the most out of my time as I can and with old friends with cars and it being a Friday night I slept a grand total of 1 hour and a half before needing to appear at this meeting. I figured the longer I stayed up the more dead-pan my face would become and the less people would want to talk to me in Romanian or in any language for that matter. This worked at first with everyone acting very sympathetic toward my particular handicap but this sympathy turned to irritation as my constant trips to the refreshment tables and bathroom only brought unwanted attention and by the end of the first 20 minutes, almost out of spite, they requested that I give a rundown of my project in Romanian for everyone to scoff at. So after delivering 3 minutes of the most confused and incomprehensible presentation of my young life I took a bow and left for the refreshment table never to return.

My return trip from Bucharest was incredibly introspective as I had 8 hours to think about myself and nurse my headache with a bag of pretzels. About halfway into the trip a wealthy Gypsy in suit and tie with a huge mustache sat across from me and immediately bought the porno mag being sold by another gypsy during the stops. Moving to another location I sat near a group of teenagers who ended up with the same magazine, having stolen it from the man now fast asleep. I returned to Abrud with a foot of snow where the potholes and sleeping dogs used to be and momentarily hibernated in my frosty room, entombed under several jackets and blankets, counting the hours until my first class would begin.

This week was test preparation week for all of my classes, as I must give at lest one test before the school year ends and it has shown me that I should threaten a test more often since the kids immediately become more alert and motivated to participate at some last ditch effort to absorb what I am teaching. I am like a gardener with a big spray bottle full of nutritious English phrases and grammar who must introduce fertilizers every now and then in order for his little class of bud-lings to take the light and synthesis viable forms of the English language, which I then harvest to show that I am doing my job. By Thursday I had three days of reality checks toward what I can honestly expect out of them. Lets just say that if I was a pilgrim and depended on my classes ‘harvest’ for food, no amount of help from the Indians would get me through the winter. With this weighing heavy on mind I didn’t think twice when the principle told me to come to lunch an hour later than usual because of a function happening in the canteen, where I eat. With Thanksgiving being the last thing on my mind I slowly walk up the stairs leading toward the lunch ladies but in place of simple benches and students I find a great big white table filled with fruits and champagne. I thought the function hadn’t even begun yet but as I turned to walk away a class of my best students, the English teachers, and even the two principles jumped out from behind the table and wished me a happy Thanksgiving. The whole set up was mind bottling from the hand made turkey shaped napkin holders to the real turkey they carted out for me to carve. I had never carved a turkey before and I really mangled the thing as I handed out shredded bits of turkey meat, thanking everyone and feeling a bit undeserving of this incredible show of love and generosity. The stuffing was delicious with mashed potatoes and candied apples. Pumpkin pies were even brought out which is something unheard of in Romania, all made by my students who were already getting A’s in the first place. We all drank and laughed and I was so stuffed that I was still full the next day while training my classes on what to say for my next test.

I read an article Yesterday about how a temporary Wall-Mart employee was trampled to death over the Thanksgiving weekend as hundreds of people herded into the store, desperately seeking cheap crap to wrap up for their loved ones. It was said that people were complaining about having to leave do to the death of the temporary worker since they had waited in line for so long. The store re-opened mid-day to a sea of people unaware of the earlier ‘inconveniences’. My weekend on the other hand was relatively mob-free as I spent most of the time studying logic games for the LSAT that I will never take and reading a book on the brief history of happiness which so far is telling me to stop dealing in conflicting interests and focus on a single aspiration, so right now we are all making Christmas chains, one for everyday left until we all leave for Amsterdam. I remember as a little kid having one of those chocolate calendars and waking up every morning with the excitement of knowing Christmas is one day closer and as a reward for not blowing up right then and there a little plastic chocolate morsel would be waiting for me, trapped behind the cardboard door with the corresponding day on it. I also remember the year we left on vacation before Christmas and I returned expecting to have a full weeks worth of stored up chocolates waiting for me only to find the cardboard doors open and the chocolates gone. The girl we had feed and water the dog denied any involvement as my mom gently mentioned the missing chocolates. It just wasn’t the same after that.

Lastly I have decided for my Peace Corps project to write and produce a musical about the Peace Corps experience. It will be like a combination of Moulin Rouge and Fiddler on the Roof meets the Little Barbershop of Horrors. But what should the name of such a project be? It would start with me trying to decide which ridiculous job I should pick between being a Joyologist, a Banana Gasser, a Freelance Mortician, a Food Taster for world leaders, or a Peace Corps volunteer. It will end with me back home 27 months later wondering what sort of job I should pick.

The main pervasive theme that dominated most of my time during and after school hours last week, frustration, has finally been replaced with creative and educational inspiration the likes of which have not been felt since my arrival in this little village. Now let me explain that this frustration was of the horribly grating and exhausting type one would compare to the feeling of being stuck in traffic, late for whatever, and in a car with no radio. Only you’re only in your underwear which happens to be two sizes too small, the sounds of high pitched horns dance around your car, of course you are honking too, desperately trying to relieve some tension but you get no relief. Your phone goes off somewhere in that galaxy of trash you have pilling over your passengers seat, while probing for the phone you look out the window at a rickety old man passing you by on his motorized Rascal. You roll down the window to let some air out and a couple of fat flies drift on through playing hide-and-go-seek and baffling your every attempt to end their game as you appear to be having some convulsive attack to everyone around you. A dog barks. The traffic seems to only get denser and you can almost feel the universe age just a little. Basically let me say that I will never in my life ever try to book a flight through a bank transfer, learned my lesson and I’m sorry, it won’t happen again. Just the highlights of trying to pull one of these off include hitchhiking after school to the only bank available for this type of transfer, Abla Iulia (100 km away), finding the bank only to have it close right in front of you, trying again the next day but not getting a ride, and yes once more finding a ride from some crazy lunatic who passes semi-trucks on blind turns while talking on her I-phone. But that’s now all behind me and I can now continue trying to find people who will let us stay on their couch.

After all that unpleasantness I locked myself in my room and decided to draw a nice warm fireplace right on the wall next to my recliner. The original half day experiment has now turned into a three day art project which consumes every moment of my time when I am not studying Romanian. Through my frustration I rediscovered drawing and it’s incredibly relaxing and it focuses the mind. I listened to my lectures on The Great Literature Series from The Teaching Company while I painted and if I could just do that for the rest of my life I would be very happy indeed.

As I sit here on my break, mindlessly writing at my desk located strategically between two wall heaters and a fire alarm, I get to watch the other English teachers as they battle with my normally docile and somewhat compliant classes. It seems that the kiddies have been taking it easy on me as seen by the shenanigans they are currently pulling on the other teachers. The last ten minutes I could have sworn I was on a farm for every time the teacher spoke someone would make the sound of some animal, goats and cows seem to be the student’s favorite. They all thought it was real great fun and the sweet English teacher calmly let them have it. Once that ran its course the students replaced the barn sounds with the squeaking sounds produced by wet shoes on wooden floors. One student just wadded up his test paper, threw it in the waste bin, then cart wheeled out of class with still 15 minutes to go, its pandemonium in here. If my class ever gets out of hand I just tell them we won't be playing 'heads up seven up' and they straighten right out.

The plane tickets we needed for our Christmas break could not be bought thanks to my card not working so our time table has changed, sort of. Apparently nothing has changed accept that instead of flying to the Netherlands or from Paris back to Cluj-Napoca we will be hitch hiking the whole damn thing. I am not sure what to think but Maria thinks it can be done and I am inclined to believe her, she is a pro at this sort of thing.

The new EVS (European Volunteer Service) volunteers moved in over the weekend and will be spending the next three months here in Abrud. They are both from Georgia, the Country recently attacked by Russia, and the first thing I asked them of course was if the beaches on their side of the Black Sea were any better then those here in Romania. Apparently they have banana trees that grow right along side their beaches that are flanked by great big mountains. I got to go! I also found out other interesting things like how South Ossetia is actually located in the North and that Putin really is an asshole. The power just went out again; luckily I got this baby on automatic save every minute because you never know around here. Anyway we all went to the only club in town and I swear that will be my last time since I spend enough time with my students DURING class. Back home, after a whole bottle of Țuica the German volunteers taught us the first two forbidden stanzas of their beautiful national anthem, Deutschland über alles (Germany above all). Forbidden thanks to a certain party that shall remain nameless misinterpreting its message; it was originally considered to be a drinking song. Ended up back home later that morning with one shoe missing, the shoe I wear to class, so I am currently wearing tennis shoes with dress pants. Watching American movies that involve German stereotypes with Germans can be very precarious and educational. We watched ‘Beerfest,’ a great little movie about two brothers creating a drinking team to defeat the Germans and defend their grandfather’s honor, amongst other things. ‘Is this how you think of us Germans?’ they would say smiling, “they all sound so gay.” And I now know what “Shneedlevixen” means.

I love Romania for so many things I can’t even begin to count. Its people, culture, food, and landscapes are really something special. Its coffee isn’t. You most definitely won’t find a Starbucks here; there might be one in all of Romania but not in my little village, as far as I know. Now I remember one of my reasons for joining the Peace Corps was to experience life without bumping into a Starbucks or McDonalds every half block or so but after half a year of Nescafe and the sobering fact of another hard 19 months of the same, the thought of a ludicrously over priced cup of over-roasted coffee doesn’t sound as despicable anymore. During breaks I go to the neighboring restaurant for the only cup of Joe made by a real person in all of Abrud. Everyday we go through the drill, I ask for coffee, the ‘barista’ fries me up a little tea cups worth of black water with a frown as he hands it my way, I frown back, we both frown together, saying more then words ever could.

Saturday is the birthday of Saint Michael and Saint Gabriel, so everyone named after these two people get to celebrate their birthday. I first heard about this ‘name day’ celebration while living in Italy with three of my five roommates named after Saint Alexander. My counterpart, Michaela, is in celebration mode as is our gym teacher Gabi, pizza and other refreshments were served in the teachers lounge during break. All the teachers gathered around the two whose names we were celebrating, kissing their cheeks and wishing them well through out the day. I was asked if I we celebrate the names of Saints in the States and I had to think a bit. I know we have good ol’ St. Paddy’s day where we celebrate beer and the color green but I don’t think people named Patrick get to claim that day anymore than the next man. There is also St. Valentine’s Day where people are obligated to purchase chocolate and buy diamond necklaces from Zales. Then of course the biggest money maker of them all, Christmas, where we buy a tree, buy presents, and buy a little love in the process. I was painfully reminded of how our consumer culture brought on the commodification of all things that once had meaning.

The simple plans I once had for Christmas vacation have now snowballed into a 3 week extravaganza involving 4 countries, 3 flights, 2 people, and a partridge in a pear tree (in the red light district). In order to make this trip possible we have to hitchhike, couch surf, and survive off of as little food as possible when not with friends and family. I just started up a Couch Surfing account so I could find people who wouldn’t mind hosting us in each country we visit. For those of you unfamiliar with Couchsurfer it is a website which connects people who have couches with those who are willing to sleep on them. You make up profiles like that of Myspace and people put all types of pictures of themselves smiling and looking very fun to be with. The problem I’ve come across is trying to sound cool enough in my e-mails for people to want me to come visit them. After several polite but ‘not interested’ responses, Maria suggested I should beef up my cool credentials by adding stuff like ‘I am thinking about art school’, or that I love poetry and drinking, and that my farts smell like a fresh summer’s breeze. It all seems so contrived and superficial as a representation of a person, but that’s what people want and it seems to be working.

Lately I have been experimenting with waking up as late as possible before jumping into clothes, leaping down stairs, and barely catching my ride before it leaves without me. I have it down to 4 minutes from wake up to standing in front of the market and the furious rush it takes to complete this mission is both exhilarating and irrational, the way I like it. It gets my day started like some character in an action movie nimbly avoiding all booby traps, barreling out of the fun house before it collapses, and then at full sprint flinging himself inside a moving car bound for school. Today was no different except that my counterpart who picks me up every morning was not there, completely changing the whole dynamic of my imaginary and very real situation. Class was to begin in 5 minutes and I was still just standing on the side of the street, hands in my pockets, searched for my phone, left it on my coffee table. Fortunately the principle of the school had also been experimenting with waking up as late as possible and picked me up along the way. While in tote I was informed of who won the Presidency and how momentous it must be for me.

As I hurriedly entered the teachers lounge for the room key other teachers patted me on the back, “Obama 44th President” they said. How happy their faces were and I don’t think it was just because they knew I would have to bring some champagne for a celebration. Their elections are coming up on the 30th of November between the Liberal and the Social Democrats, where they will vote for the one with the nicer tie who is the least dishonest, but they wanted Obama. My students asked me who the FIRST black American President was, I said Obama, they told me they knew who won but wanted to know how many years ago the first BLACK American became President.

Today the teachers are on strike, a ‘Japanese strike’ so they say. It is where they come to work and do their job as if it were any other normal day but with one difference, a white band is worn around their left arm. “Why do you call it a Japanese strike?” I asked my fellow teacher of French. “The Japanese love to work but also want to strike so they found a way to do both; work… and strike ‘Symbolically’, that’s what we’re doing,” was his reply. Something seemed askew and I asked whether he believed that type of protest would get results to which he replied, “of course not”. The real strike will be on the 18th lasting until the end of the month. They asked if I would wear a band knowing full well that I am unable to participate in such matters, though I would like to. In support of the strike I will listen to endless rants about the current political situation with a constant sympathetic node and try to refrain from eating chocolate past 8 o’clock.

The long period of stagnation which has imprisoned my mind and shackled my spirit has finally been banished to the land of wind and ghosts, surrendering me to my own devises once again. Since my return from Turkey a foggy mist has settled over my village and its inhabitants leaving most in a sullen and lethargic state of being. I am unsure whether I was perceiving this foggy disposition or merely creating it but either case the sun is shinning, my kids are quietly scribbling non-sequiturs, and I won’t have to sing Halloween songs for another year!

Crap, I look out my school window; it looks like winter is about to smack this poor little town right back to the ice age and since it still lingers in the late-middle ages it hasn’t as far to go. A horse drawn carriage with jingling bells clops down the main road, the chapel piers shimmer above as old ladies hobble below, and light smoke swirls around chimney stacks like cream in my second cup of coffee. Where does the time go if I don’t capture it in little moments such as these? A new class of students have collected in my room waiting for their early morning entertainment. The foreigner who smiles and says incomprehensible things will perform a one man show then play monkey see monkey do. Tomorrow the theme will be ‘Capitalism: It’s Effects on Morality and Self-Control’ for my advanced students, what variety!

Most of you can appreciate the impact a holiday has on small communities such as mine; everyone is involved in one way or the other. Old ladies, bewildered by the sight of cardboard box robots and cross-dressing teenagers, dart in and out of the markets averting their eyes from a strange and perplexing world. All forms of learning are repressed like a bad memory and weeks of holiday related activities sabotage the curriculum. It suddenly becomes acceptable to belt out blood curdling screams behind someone with a cup of coffee as long as it’s in the spirit of Halloween. Every year my school has a big Halloween party for the little kids put on by the seniors and the English teacher, my counterpart, who is obsessed with the holiday to a level that makes Ms. Frizzle from the ‘Magic School Bus’ look boring. Basically the school was on holiday mode for the entire month of October, so when Dr. Dan came up for the yearly medical check-up, which I had completely forgotten about, I easily put my class to work drawing pictures of scary pumpkins as I met him in his car in front of the school so he could quickly give me a flu shot. As was the case our vice-principle just so happened to be walking back to school and caught a glimpse of one of her teachers getting an injection of some kind by a shifty-eyed old man, she hasn’t said anything. Teachers found ways of celebrating every week something completely unrelated to the holiday in question. One teacher passed her drivers license test so we drank champagne between our morning lessons, another received his doctorate in physics so we had a party in the canteen and taught half day. I last minutely threw together a costume for the Halloween party showing up as a homeless bum who will teach English for food. Surprisingly I had just to wear my normal clothes to give the desired effect. Inside kids bobbed for apples and pinned the noise on the pumpkin while us teachers sat in the back and drank whiskey; mostly to help deal with the horrible child music and sounds of laughter echoing off the bunker walls. Afterwards us volunteers went to the local disco, the only disco, and sat drinking beers as students freak danced to polka music. Only in Romania.

I believe that since I am volunteering to live in this little community and work for free, people have little reason to feel anything but a mix of confusion and appreciation toward my general direction. I am not living in Abrud to make money, I am here to learn about their culture and help their kids get into a good college so lately, as more and more parents are becoming aware of my circumstances, I have been receiving bags full of jarred preserves, fresh produce, and bottles of țuica from my students. Țuica is the Romanian equivalent of bumpkin style moonshine distilled from prunes and apples, knock you right back to 1456 I tells ya. Last weekend Maria and I hitch hiked all the way from Abrud to Sibiu and back without spending a single Leu on account of us being volunteers, and her being a woman. This country is great for traveling dirt cheap if you don’t mind sitting in cars plastered with religious memorabilia and taped up bumpers from the previous accident.

It is official; the teachers will be on strike starting on the 18th of this month. They are striking to protest the government's postponement of a 50% pay raise parliament approved for them. It will most likely not be over until the general election on the 30th of November, giving us even more time for the ping pong/beer bong sessions we’ve been having. The elections campaigns are a funny site to see here in Abrud. Markets are already putting up pictures of the politician who paid the most for their advertisement. Silly little cars lined up in a row drive around, red flags flapping in the wind, and play records of the parties’ leader calmly articulating what he won’t do. As far as what is happening in the States I haven’t heard a single thing, when is the election? Who is running again? By the time you read this the third recount has probably already been contested and Bush wins by double secrete default, which warrants no explanation. Really, let me know how things go.

Trying to just sit down and disseminate exactly what happened to me during last weeks trip to Turkey is very difficult for many reasons that I will not go into, yet I will try to be as precise as possible as to how Turkey has affected me beyond explanation. Lets start with what I remember; the last day, the 20th, there was only Gytis from Lithuania, the two Polish girls Sylwia and Joanna, and me left in Kilis from a group of 20 International participants. We were all terrifically tired from the going away party held the night before at a farm of pomegranate groves. Our calves were throbbing from five straight days of dancing to Turkish music and that catchy but obnoxious song ‘I Kissed a Girl’ by Katy Perry. My stomach had by this time already shut down from day after day of baklava, kadayif, kababs, and Turkish coffee. Every night we ate in different places and settings. The first night we ate in the Police Lounge.

Let me start by explaining just a little bit about how the Turkish Government treats its public servants. If you are a teacher or a policeman or any other public worker you get special benefits on places to stay and eat all around Turkey. For example the hotel we stayed at is especially for teachers who can come anytime they wish for little to no money and relax, sip tea, and play dominoes to their hearts content. The policemen get the same deal but their hotel was much nicer, overlooking all of Kilis and even the Syrian border. We dined with the police chief then spent an hour smiling for the cameras; constant flashings of cameras would be an everyday occurrence as we were seemingly all so strange and foreign to everyone.

The next night we were driven to a village on the border of Syria. As we got off the bus we were encircled by a swarm of children all repeating “hello” over and over again with great big smiles on their faces. The ratio of kids to adults was an easy 5 to 1 and large throngs of children darted in and out of every fixture. Inside a simple shelter we ate a traditional meal of some yogurt type soup, rice with sheep meat, and flat bread on the floor with the village elders, the windows caked with the faces of children trying to get a look at us from outside. We were then led to the village center where ancestral dances took place to the rhythm of African like beats and a high-pitched flute. The young men would dance hand in hand making a semi-circle, the oldest breaking apart to leap in the middle with a scarf in hand. The older men soon joined the group adding more complex kicks and hip gyrations to the mix. In time these young men will soon be handing down this traditional dance to their sons, just as their fathers had shown them, and I wondered what I might show my son from my culture.

Next, the village had planned a mock wedding involving one of us as the bride and groom. In Turkey, before a wedding, the Groom is kidnapped and taken outside of the village while his Bride is brought to the ceremony. Once there, her face is completely covered with red scarves and she sits at a table as girls dance around her passing a candle from one to another. The Groom on the other hand is partying it up with the men in the outskirts of the village then returns once everything is ready. We received word that the ceremony can begin but upon our return the bandleader stopped playing and refused to continue until I sang a song for everyone. The whole celebration suddenly turned deathly quite as 200 villagers waited for my song so the party could continue. My mind went blank, everything escaped me, I opened my mouth and what came out was the ‘I wish I was an Oscar Mayer Weener’ song sung with such emotion that it could have been our national anthem for all they knew, of course our REAL national anthem only came to mind after the fact, but they loved it anyway. After the wedding we retuned to the room for desert and live music and sat on colorful pillows sipping Roki, the Turkish liquor that tastes like liquorish. Then of course someone started dancing and soon we found ourselves hoping around like zombies until the sun came up.

The Turkish people have a beautiful culture and religion as well. My first religious experience was shortly after the first day I actually fell asleep. Earlier that night everyone in the group met for the first time, there were 4 people from Poland, 5 from Lithuania, 2 from Spain, 7 from Turkey, and some guy representing Romania who was actually an American attending a Youth in Action seminar that was only for Europeans. Everyone got along incredibly well and after sampling each other’s national drinks we all became best of friends. Anyway about half an hour after falling asleep an incredible booming voice pierced through my dreams and instantly jolted me out of bed, I was still half dreaming not knowing what the hell was happening or who was in my room singing. It turned out to be the first of five daily calls to prayer that just took a little getting used to. By the end of the week I KNEW that there was only one god and that Mohammad was his messenger. After everyone had left, Gytis my roommate and I were invited to the Hamam for a bath. The Hamam in our town of Kilis was constructed in the 16th century and still in rather good shape. The Hamam, public-bathing house, is usually situated near the mosk so you can wash yourself before you entered for prayer as a symbol of coming clean in front of god. There are certain times that men and women can go but never together and it is a very important social gathering place. Inside were three chambers, one for getting undressed, one for cooling down, and the main room where all the fun takes place. The floor is grounded with volcano stone and steam slowly vents from star and moon shaped holes in the vaulted ceiling. You enter with a plastic bowl that you use to scoop hot water from the basins that line the walls. I entered in the middle of a water fight between 7 grown men. It is the original water amusement park with people singing and laughing. You wash and sing and play your little plastic bowl like a drum and then rest on large marble slabs from all the exertion. It beats the hell out of any athletic club steam room.

At some point during mid-week we visited Gaziantep, the fifth oldest city in the world right behind some place in Syria and Jerusalem. In Gaziantep you will find the type of buildings that Jesus would have recognized, that now house the newest flat screen TV’s and multi-colored blenders. The outdoor Bazaars are a true celebration of smells and colors, spices and rugs, silver tea sets and Pashmina scarf’s. I bought some tea and a neat looking floor mat, which turned out to be a prayer rug. We visited the museum that housed all of Turkeys famous mosaics of confused looking villagers, expressionless worriers, and half naked women; I bought two post cards.

As far as the actual training is concerned it was very effective at bringing us all together and establishing friendships though out the week. By the end we all felt as if we were leaving our families. The first day was just to get to know each other, sing songs, and learn about different forms of communication. English was the bridge language that everyone used to communicate with each other and every nationality had their own peculiar English dialect. Everyone could understand each other except for the only native English speaker in the group, me. My American accent baffled and delighted the group, and I was continually called upon to pronounce such words as ketchup and spoon. The Turkish participants absolutely loved the Oscar Mayer Weener song, singing it to the point of exasperation. I gave my trainer who isn’t that fond of America, though we are now good friends, my wallet made out of the Constitution. I taught the Spaniards some good American one-liners, the Polish how to twist a bottle cap inside out, and the Lithuanians how to suck the essence out of a can of beer like a Vampire. They of course showed me how to dance Flamenco and make real Sangria, sing a Lithuanian drinking song, and turn a pack of cigarettes into a vacuum amongst other important things. All in all I believe that the cultural exchange financed by the European Commission within Youth in Action Programs Action 4.3 was a tremendous success and I hope to soon write my own project that will bring people from all over Europe to Abrud, Romania for the same reason, to get piss drunk and enjoy other peoples cultures.

Woke up this morning with music in my head, the first time in months, and I now feel rejuvenated and full of beans. This past week has been full of interesting surprises sprinkled with colorful little tidbits of change and falling apples.

Last Monday was teacher appreciation day, a day where all us teachers came together to celebrate ourselves and inveigh that relentless taskmaster known as Education. Held promptly at 1:00 pm in the schools canteen, we sat in long rows of white tables heavily stocked with bread, beer, and red chilly peppers. A live two-person band played light polka music as the principle announced how important teachers are and who will be retiring. Once the champagne was passed around and the clock stuck 2:00, the day sort of just got stretched, clipped, and spliced into another as forty middle aged teachers began dancing in karate chop type movements to their traditional polka music while the P.E teacher and I went shot for shot. By around 5 o’clock the French teacher, a woman in her mid 30’s, was on an empty table waving a wad of Romanian bills in her hand, most of them from the P.E teacher. The faculty danced hand in hand in a large circle of inebriated teachers, spinning, hopping, and performing something not unlike a Russian knife dance. Second wind hit around 8 and I found myself with a group of math and physics teachers talking about the importance of science and how to get kids interested in something they can’t immediately recognize. I floated home that night completely twisted with three chilly peppers in my left pocket.

We finally got a washing machine in our apartment a couple of days ago so to celebrate I threw in a load of clothes. Fortunately my only pink shirt made it into the mix transforming my boring white collard shirts and socks into an interesting hue of pink. Fabulousss!

Autumn is hitting full force and colors of burnt orange, gold and bronze have revamped this little town. The colors are extraordinary, a beautiful celebration on public display whose exhibition will soon be closed for the winter. On my daily running rout I jog past old men on rickety ladders picking apples on the sides of the roads, cows moo in my direction, and golden leaves sprinkle the air that is getting more and more crisp.

Tomorrow I will be leaving for a village in the South East of Turkey for a weeklong seminar on international organizations and project development. I will be the only representative for Romania attending and it will be my job to network with other organizations for some joint international youth projects. In the e-mail that I received from my contact in Turkey, Nazan Coban, that I will be expected to “show a performances such as dance, song or special actings in your culture”. What the heck would that be? The C-Walk? I will be flying out of Bucharest Otopeni Airport, which apparently was used as an air base for Hitler’s third Reich during WWII. Last night we went to the local Gypsy village in Rosia Mountana to speak with the community about potential project ideas. This village puts a whole spin on the notion of ‘crossing the tracks’ because it actually is built around the gold mining tracks which were used before the mines where shut down. You will see an entire village of sheet metal shacks and plywood shanties that stretch along a pair of rusty rails. The gypsies in this village have given me reason to be here, Abrud is like the Hamptons in comparison.

I have it then I lose it.

At times I am liquid like water penetrating every permeable surface of my ambitions and desires. I wake up hours before sunrise to indulge in my aspirations, which linger in my mind like a song pleasantly stuck in my head. I desperately seek to play it out, to show the world some unknown beauty that is too unique to keep to myself. It digs into me like an archeologist digs for supposed artifacts. It stirs and starts to become thick like Jell-O, and I hate Jell-O. It irritates worse then a fly out of reach or a key broken off in a lock. I wake up and have slept my entire day to night, feelings of loss and guilt bubble up and spill over into my daily life. Everything is cold, hard, and plastic; my bond is broken with the world. I lose it only to find it in the murky depths of my own dejection, waiting like an outcast waits, reflective and forlorn. Lately even the outcast wont return for there is nothing to return to. An empty vessel, the captain has jumped ship, a lone dark towboat drifting further into the night.

That is I. I am that boat.

When I get like this, when I have nothing better to do then eat loafs of bread and stare off into the many cracks in my wall, I tend to become self-deprecating. Why do you drink so much coffee after 11:30 at night? Why have you given up learning another language? Why do you want to be a writer but you don’t write anything? It’s all too late anyway. If you were going to be anything you would have already been it by now, or at least had the luck to fail at it. I get confused then irritated by my lack of effort then make up for it by blindly grabbing anything that will yield an experience, no matter how reckless. This once got me brainwashed in Tennessee where I spent a summer selling education books only to end up tarring rooftops for a drug lord in Aspin, Colorado. Another time I ended up in Florence, Italy, sleeping in a 6-foot crawl space while becoming certified to teach English. Every decision becomes more certifiable than the last; clearing up why I joined the Peace Corps for a lack of a better reason not to. Purpose is a silly thing and reason isn’t any less disserving of mockery. So let this be a spectacle of my unknown purpose, a tribute to where reason has led me, to a small trace of a village in the mountains of Transylvania.

Many exciting events were planed for the weekend of which none actually came to fruition, though time still managed to throw me into the participation of a world record attempt for the longest strand of onions (5241 meters), discussions of Romanian identity at a Hungarian dance party, and the loss of my left sock in the line of ‘duty’.

The plan was for all us teachers to drive up to Cluj and watch the football game Friday night. Marius, the P.E coach, the only person who has ever given me a welt from a ping-pong ball, regaled me with lavish stories of his favorite team, CFR Cluj, and how much fun life is when watching a live match. Plans fell through at the last minute, the tickets turned out to be too expensive, so instead I bought a log of Toblerone and drank coffee until the wee hours of the morning making a wallet out of The Declaration of Independence. We received a package from the American Embassy a couple of days earlier with all types of propaganda for the youth center including these sweet pocket sized books of The Constitution, so naturally I thought ‘wallet’.

Lately I have been brushing my teeth with my left hand. This will be day number 7 and its not getting any easier. I read somewhere that it helps memory to do things I normally wouldn’t do, like eating cereal with my left hand or volunteering at an onion festival. The festival was held in Turda, three hours northeast of Abrud, and half way into the bus trip I discovered that all my money was in my new wallet that I left on the table next to my cell phone. So much for brushing with the left hand. The bus zoomed through green winding hills as we made are way to Turdafest. Out my window kids played kickball in cornfields with scarecrows and I thought to myself how soberly pragmatic names like ‘kickball’ and ‘scarecrow’ really are.

We arrived before the festival was to begin and old ladies in their Babushkas were still laying out their hand crafted spoons and jars of jam and honey. Turda is an absolutely beautiful city with long streams of sherbet maisonettes bordering spacious cobblestone streets, one of which held the festival. Our job was to grab cord after cord of onions and line them up in the center of town then snake them all the way back to the church parking lot where the cords of onions would continue until the parking lot was completely filled. For two hours we looked liked prisoners on an onion chain gang as we moved our ripe sections of a world record length sting of onions. Why Onions, I can’t say, but apparently the Germans broke Turdas original World Record strand last year, taking the only thing Turda had going for itself. Other Peace Corps volunteers began to show up and soon most managed to abscond into the beer tents, but since help would still be needed through out the night we decided to drink to the point where our services would be of no use to any person or vegetable.

As the day went on the streets teemed with excitement and onions; people were dressed in traditional white and black garbs, children danced in circles holding hands to the sound of synthesized accordions, and venders sprang out from booths scaring you with their wooden dolls for sale. It all seemed like some fantastically twisted scene from a fairytale and I wandered off, getting lost in a crowd of puffy shirts and bowl shaped hats.

I regained consciousness in mid-conversation with an old man as we were sitting on the brick steps of a church. He was a philosopher who had grown tired of experience and mentioned how the truths of beauty and happiness depended on constant change, which could never be understood through the senses. An old lady soon came and carried him away; this would be around the time my stomach began to give me troubles and I hurdled into a rickety church bathroom before all was lost. Unfortunately the little boy’s room lacked all essentials and I returned to the beer tent with one sock missing.

That night as the crowd reached its zenith and the world record length of onions had been measured and confirmed we had reason to celebrate. The Germans had been beaten, the food was free, and we won the onion fight against the local Romanian gypsies. Some Romanians who considered themselves to be Hungarians joined in our onion fight and afterward invited us to a local dance party. This was located a block from town center in a little room with a kitchen. As the techno music played in the main room we were in the kitchen explaining to a full crowd about sub-prime mortgages, globalization, and ethnic minorities. Our audience was Romanian but they were educated and brought up as Hungarians by their parents. Some wanted their children to know only Romanian so that they would feel apart of the culture and have more job opportunities, others refused to give up their heritage for such things. Just a bit of history, following WWI Transylvania became unified with Romania, the Hungarian language was expunged from official life, and all place-names were Romanianized. Territories were taken and given back through out the years and identities redefined along the way. I wonder how I would feel if Washington became part of Canada, eh?

Anyway, the night seemed to never end and by morning I was ready to be back in my little town without any world records to speak of, though it might have a record for the most amount of drunken old men before 6 am, I will have to check. Still having no money I hitched a ride from a teenager who was driving through my town. I saw the cornfields one more time as we whizzed past gypsies on their horse drawn carts. They were sitting on a pile on onions.

Came to class today with my tie and Italian sports jacket to start off the week. I did this for two reasons, the first being that I had missed the last two days of my first week due to horrible stomach illness (bad cheese) and wanted to make up for it with the appearance of professionalism. The second was that I would be asking the director if he would allow me to miss an entire week of school come October so that I can attend an international conference in Turkey and I needed to up the charm a bit. Everyone seemed so impressed that I even owned a tie that all the teachers who never once smiled in my direction offered to buy me a Nescafe, the only coffee available, and the director happily agreed to my free week vacation. I even came to my classroom to find that computer I had asked for weeks ago sitting on my desk. Coincidence?

Time is now spent either in school teaching or playing ping pong, at the youth center playing ‘Settlers’ with the Germans, or in my room on the top floor gazing out my window as I listen to Chopins ‘Three Nocurnes’ which is set perfectly for light rain. The flies here are horribly clumsy, almost worth pitying, unlike the American flies that anticipate every swing leaving one vexed and irritated. These post-communist flies sort of just loiter around my table bumping into one another waiting for the hand to fall and end their short and absurd lives. I suppose I could catch one of them with a chopstick then tie it with a string but it would probably just waltz on back to its comrades and continue feeling sorry for itself.

On my way to the market Yesterday I realized that the little shop I go to for sandwiches is actually connected to the church, along with the hardware shop, and the appliance store with its neon signs. I took a step back and realized that all my favorite shops are actually housed within the buttresses of the towns’ church. I marveled at this seamless blend of Capitalism and Catholicism as I haggled for beans and cheaper bananas. Paying more then 6 lei for a kilo of ripe bananas tells every farmer within sight that you can be hornswoggled. I was their target for the first month until I got wise.

Anyway I have been playing with ridiculous first sentences for short stories and I thought I would share a couple I wrote today:

He opened the door to the smell of an old refrigerator freshly opened and there on the floor laid Ms. Popescu, she still had that half smirk on her marbled bloated face.

There were plenty of unspeakable undertakings she would gladly admit to, but it’s the ones she didn’t do in Hamburg that this story is about.

After a long period of reflection he slowly and with great effort reached his frail hand into the upper left vest pocket and pulled out his whistle, snagging his cocaine tin along with it.

I woke up, supposing everything that happened resembled a dream I set the pistol down on the park bench and floated to the nearest hospital.

They call me Poobah. I’m thirtysomething years old, look like a horse jockey, eat like a horse, and hate horses. I also find the sound of children singing and people who read while sitting on toilettes intolerable but this is not about them, and I am not a hateful man, this is about why I love to kill.

Anyway these were all written on about the 5th cup of Nescafe so I can’t receive all the credit. Gotta sleep now.

The first real day of school has come and gone and I am left here to reflect on all that has happened within the past couple of days, including my all expenses paid trip to Bucuresti last weekend for an MRI scan and the holly water the priests used to bless the students and teachers during our assembly which got in my eye, causing me to sneeze and frighten parents.

Today was a day of firsts for everyone, especially myself, as school gradually came to a start around 8:12. I remember asking my counterpart when we should head up to class as we were sipping coffee in the teachers lounge. She looked up at the smoke filled ceiling as if waiting for a sign.

“Not yet,” she whispered into her coffee

In my youth I always wondered what types of mysteries and wild amusements were kept out of my reach within the inaccessible boundaries of the ‘Teachers Lounge”. It turns out that it was just the absence of kids like myself who made the teachers lounge so sacred as well as a place where every vice can be nurtured and frustration vented. A wonderful magical place where shots of liquor and coffee flow like wine and the thick wall of smoke makes navigation funny and confusing.

Classes seemed to go smoothly considering nothing had been planned, not by me but my counterpart who I am supposed to work with. Lesson plans aren’t in style at the moment and I will eventually receive a workbook to use as a guide for my classes, but in the mean time I have to improvise. The students aren’t used to talking in class, this isn’t the way the education systems works here in Romania. Usually the teacher reads from a book or writes on the black board and the kids are supposed to absorb the information some how and score well on tests. They are very shy and reserved when it comes to any form of class participation, so I made sure to get the high school kids to all stand up and dance in a circle for my amusement before starting the days lesson. We played ‘coffee pot’, a game where I think of a verb and the students ask questions to discover what it is, saying ‘coffee pot’ in place of that verb.

“Do you ‘coffee pot’ in the morning?” – yes

“Do you ‘coffee pot’ alone?” – yes

“Do you ‘coffee pot’ in the bathroom?” – always

“Brush your teeth!?” – you got it

The assembly that rang in the new school year was about as pointless as putting lipstick on a pig. We all stood for 2 hours inside our little gymnasium as the school director then the mayor then the priests each took turns mumbling into a mic connected to a little karaoke speaker while kids played on their cell phones. The whole spectacle ended with the priests praying for the kids to pass all their tests, culminating in the singsong voices of the priests reciting some Latin verse as they flicked holy water at us, which somehow got into my eye and irritated the hell out of it.

Before all of this school stuff began I was in Buchuresti for the weekend because of a headache that would not go away. Our Doctor, Dr. Dan, asked that I come to the headquarters and have some test done, including an MRI. I had a whole day of doctor visits and finally my appointment for the MRI came and I was more then anxious to get it over with. The room containing the machine was white with a lone plant in between two large industrial sized freezer doors with ominous signs indicating incomprehensible dangers with for those with metal attached to their body. The machine was inside, a huge bulk of white, shaped like an engine turbine with a bed in the center. I was to lie on this body-sized bed and not move for 20 minutes while the magnets did their job. Up to this point I had not even begun to think about whether I was nervous or not, but as they put special noise cancelling headphones on then locked my face in place and as the mechanical sounds of my sterile white bed in this pure white room hummed into action slowly sliding me into a tube just big enough for my frame to enter, I realized I was naked under this medical costume and a bit nervous. Immediately I had an itch on my nose that I could nothing about and I felt claustrophobic just laying inside this tube no further then 5 inches from my face. Then the frequencies began and a whole new set of challenges presented themselves. Tones were set into my skull deep inside my brain, I could feel them humming and vibrating bits of information to the big machine around me. It began with three low bursts followed by three light ticks for what seemed like an hour, I used the pulses that were being shot into my brain as a beat for a rap that I was trying to freestyle. I didn’t get too far because the machine let it really rip as it pumped a low frequency then as if slowing turning up the dial let me feel every tone humanly possible culminating in an almost polyphonic kaleidoscope of tones, my brain felt tampered with, I was dumb struck.

I wonder how much the whole day would have cost had I been back in Washington. Lets see, a private doctors check-up, an eye exam, two chauffeured trips including one to an MRI, which required a team of 2 doctors and 3 nurses. Plus my transportation and hotel was paid for including daily per diem. All for a migraine it turns out. I remember when I was sick in Naples, Italy, with food poisoning and the doctors fixed me up after they fed me intravenously for my severe dehydration and gave me medication. The room had about 10 others coughing and barfing and the doctor was smoking a cigarette as he took my temperature but at least it was free. I also remember back in Tacoma when I had food poisoning again a year later (what’s the deal?) and Ashley drove me to a hospital that did the very same procedures but I was smacked with a 1,400-dollar doctors bill.

I have decided to post my own collection of occurrences, reflections, revelations, and irritations beyond my daily journal here for friends and family to enjoy or possibly cough at. Instead of trying to recap my life into a sweet little pastry one could consume in one sitting I will just skip it if it’s all the same to you, let’s just say I've been places and seen stuff. I just like traveling and writing, that’s it. That and ping-pong and piano, but still very hard to do together. I currently work for the Peace Corps as an English teacher in the little village of Abrud, Romania, where I give kids a break from their busy schedule to learn English in a way that does not suck for them. School starts this Monday so hopefully I will be able to qualify that statement.Life so far in Romania is quite relaxing and full of subtle little surprises one can enjoy on a daily basis. Winding roads that hug the banks of the Carpathian Mountains make a simple car ride an adventure since all cars in Romania (the Dacia) must maintain a speed at or above 65km or else Nicolae Ceauşescu will catch them. Most Romanians will have some sort of techno music playing which only fuels their insatiable desire to pass on blind corners. Seat belts are mostly available but frowned upon because of the non-verbal statement they make about the driver. The roads from Abrud to Alba Iulia (the nearest city) or anywhere for that matter are usually in a profound state of disrepair, mostly falling apart, the sides crumbling into the river bed, so concrete barriers are placed in front of these ‘road chasms’ to keep people from plunging into the abyss. I was given a ride to the nearest train station one day and my driver slowed down to let another car pass as she reached a concrete barrier. We were plowed into by a wildlife SUV with trailer attached as a result. We were alright of course; seatbelts do work, though her car was smashed pretty good. The funny thing was that her car could still drive but she refused to not because of the glass or the exhaust leak inside but because of the ‘current’. You see Romanians have this belief that the wind coming through an open window is the cause of all afflictions and illnesses among other things. Also if you are a woman and you are bare foot or sit on the floor your ovaries will freeze, but that is beside the point. To combat the ‘current’ you must stick cotton in your ears. I tried this once and it actually took the edge off a little, this could come in handy while teaching my high scholars.

My little town of Abrud has all the characters one would expect from an old mining town, including old men in fedora hats walking slowly, hands behind their backs, toward one of several old man bars. My town among the many things it has to offer has a disco (dance club) which also acts as the town’s library, weight room, billiard hall, and hardware store all in one. Don’t try to order vodka and red bull because you won’t find shot glasses or red bull. The farmers markets on Mondays are always a hoot and their one can find most anything. For example if your looking for an axe you go up to the old man with different axe blades on his table and pick you favorite, then you head to the next old guy with axe blade handles and buy the one that fits your hand, then head over to the last of the three who will put them all together for you at a nominal cost.