I need your help

I need to think of some good American movies that show American culture...vague, I know. These are suggestions for the professor teaching "Intro to Cultural Studies" in the brand new American Studies department here at lovely Transilvania University. I am bad at thinking of films, so I thought maybe I should ask other people to do the thinking for me. Thanks. Obviously, they have to be something that would spark a good discussion in class, and show something worthwhile about American culture, dealing with multiculturalism, perhaps.

In the meantime, here are two photos from Brasov. Ain't it purdy?

First (almost) Week in Brasov

Until I found my apartment, I stayed with the head of the American Studies department, whose flat was on the seventh floor of a building just outside the city center. The views from that high are amazing – mountains in every direction. Her son is going to college in Michigan, her daughter (after studying in Spain, Belgium, and the U.S.) is working in Bucharest, and her husband lives in Spain where he conducts an orchestra. With her family all spread out, I think she enjoyed having me to take care of for a few days.

I had my first day of class last Thursday. I had two sections of first year American Studies students. American Studies is basically like majoring in French or Hispanic Studies at WM, so there is some grammar and so on but also classes on government and culture. My class is special. Because I am American. It's great. This is actually a big year for these kids because it is the first year of the American Studies program (the faculty also teach in English Studies, French, and German), and it is also the first year of the 3 year (instead of 4) undergraduate degree. Most of my students are 19, some are more like 22, and one is in her late 30s (and pregnant, I think). Only 2 have been to the U.S., one of whom did so as a pro skier. She's going to teach me how to ski (we'll see). It's amazing, these kids can speak English so well (and spell better than I can), and they've seen more movies than I have, but they've never read any American books. I think they are accustomed to being told things in lectures and not finding anything themselves. But it's also their first year of college, so maybe that's normal. Anyway, I really want them to be able to read some American stuff, so I’m doing my best to get a hold of particular books.

I have another class on Monday (7:30am every other week!). I have 4 sections of the same class (2 each week), which is for students in the Applied Modern Languages program. I think it was supposed to be a translation class, but obviously I can't teach them how to translate from Romanian to English. Basically I was told to do whatever I wanted with them; someone suggested "communications." I need to get back to lesson planning, actually…

My apartment is in the old center of the city, right at the base of Mount Tampa, which overlooks the city (and is home to the Hollywood-style “Brasov” sign that overlooks the city). I haven’t yet had a chance to take one of the many walks and hikes that start from nearby places, but apparently they will provide plenty of short adventures once I get settled in.

It will be 2 or 3 weeks before I get internet at my place, so in the meantime I have to venture down sketchy alleys and into Irish pubs to get connected.

On Friday night I went to Carrefour to get some stuff for my apartment. That experience was like a cross between the textile market in Bombay and a trip to Wal-Mart: the store was massive, had an entire freezer aisle (both sides) of cheese and every vegetable grown in Europe and the Middle East, and was packed packed packed with people and their shopping carts. The experience exhausted me and I managed to leave the store without buying most of the things I’ll need.

But my apartment is coming along, and soon I will be ready to post pictures of it online (first I need to get a few more things so it looks less empty). Then it will be ready for visitors, so I hope that anyone within any distance of me will visit. When else are you going to visit Romania and have a great place to stay? Oh, and even though I have a good-sized kitchen, Brasov has an amazing restaurant scene. Come try.

Orientation

I arrived in Romania a few hours late – 27 to be exact. I consider Delta Airlines to be fully responsible for my tardiness…I hate Delta. As the last Fulbrighter to arrive, I made it to the orientation in time to hear about things like health insurance and bank accounts, which apparently was more important information that the stories about bears and condoms that I missed while still on the flight from Paris.

My first night in Bucharest included a lot of delicious food (salmon—which I now eat, by the way,—tiramisu, and wine are the only ones I can recall at the moment) courtesy of the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. That night flew by, as I still hadn’t slept in a real bed for awhile.

At this point, I feel it is necessary to give a short recounting (in the form of a list) of the various places where I have laid down (or sat down) to rest for my evenings since I graduated from William and Mary just four short months ago.

1. My dorm bed (for a few hours the last night)
2. Jimmy and Guy’s extra bed (post-Skylar)
3. The domestic terminal at Mumbai International Airport
4. My bed in my lovely room in Goa (which I miss)
5. The Taj Business hotel in Mangalore
6. The floor of the plastic house/tent in the rainforest of the Coffee Plantation
7. The cabin in the back in Bandipur
8. Lost hotel in Bangalore
9. The Vintage Hotel in Panjim, Goa
10. The pension room in Hampi under the mosquito net
    
11. The bus from Hampi to Goa (though sleeping was not involved)
12. My grandparents’ condo in south Goa
13. The house of Loretta in Goa
14. Hostel in the Tibetan Colony on the outskirts of Delhi
15. Agra hostel
16. Hostel by the train station in Delhi
17. The hostel in Varanasi
18. Hotel in Bombay
19. Hotel near Osho in Pune
20. Swiss Air flight from Mumbai to Zurich
21. Granparents’ house in London
22. Dad’s house in Alexandria
23. Gordon’s apartment in Richmond
24. Heather’s GW apartment in DC
25. Gordon’s car while parked in Charlottesville region (and the next night in Shenandoah)
26. Hotel on Broad Street in Richmond
27. Jennifer’s spare room
28. Chris’ couch in Williamsburg
29. Wrightsville Beach
30. Ben’s apartment in Fredericksburg
31. Doubletree Inn in Richmond (downtown, top floor…nice)
32. Lyra’s futon in Providence
33. Mom’s reiki table in Prov
34. Mom’s couch
35. Poughkeepsie
36. Delta Airlines flight from Atlanta to Paris
37. Academica Hotel in Bucharest
38. Monstery hotel somewhere between Sibiu and Brasov
39. Liliana’s (the head of the American Studies department’s son’s room, to be exact)

But I’m skipping ahead. Back at the Academica, I slept for a bit, and that was nice. The next morning I got on a bus and slept a lot more. I also used the opportunity to learn a little bit about Romania, seeing as I was sitting on a bus full of Americans (and Romanian-Americans) who study the region and could help me improve my ignorant self. *One interesting fact: Bucharest has a severe and visible stray dog problem. Unlike the stray dogs in (to name some places I’ve been) India or Ecuador, these dogs are treated with some compassion and considered to be stray dogs rather than say, wild dogs. The problem exists because people had to dump their pets when forced to move from larger houses and country homes into the Communist blocks which line many streets in the city. Cramped into these tiny spaces, many people did not have space for their furry friends. And so, the problem.

Our bus brought us to a lovely monastery, and our visit there included a lunch which I certainly enjoyed: Orthodox monasteries like this one serve “fasting meals” which are vegetarian. I also enjoyed the wine.

Our next stop was the town of Sibiu, which is the European Culture of Capital for 2007 (and there’s no way one could possibly be there without knowing that fact). I got to visit a bookstore, climb a clock tower, and dine on more fish, though that dinner consisted of wine, mostly.

At midnight we pulled up to a sleepy monastery, where I climbed into bed and continued my habit of taking a picture to find out the time. I started doing this because I don’t have a watch or an alarm clock, my American phone would not tell time, my other phone was in another bag, and no hotel rooms have clocks. The TV would have been another option, but I usually forgot that. So instead, I kept my digital camera next to my bed, and each time I woke up during the night I would snap a photo, change the mode to “view,” and find out the time that I took the photo. This provided me with several nights’ series of snapshots of my blanket, curtains, lens cap, and floor. I have deleted all of those.

We explored the monastery the next morning, as it was bathed in sunlight, and also discovered that it was surrounded by green mountains on nearly every side.

Our final stop was in Bran, a town just 12 kilometres or so from my new home in Brasov. Here we had an enormous meal of cheese (Literally. As a vegetarian, I had three courses of cheese. Non-vegs had two.), a taste of Romanian whisky, and of course more wine. This was followed by eventually successful attempts at a group photo, and then a trip to “Dracula Castle,” which actually has nothing to do with the guy called Dracula. The castle was in all the Dracula movies though, and I have seen none of them.

Back in Bucharest I spent a sunny Sunday walking around looking for bookstores and webcams. I ended up buying a map of Romania instead. Webcams (as with all electronics) are at minimum twice the cost in the United States. I do plan to buy one still, but I need some time to process the fact that I'm paying $100 instead of $40.

My last real day in Bucharest was a training for advising. Aside from teaching, my other real duty here in Romania is to advise students on studying in the United States. However, there is no Education USA center in Brasov (my city), so I will have to be creative and find a place to carry out all this advising. Should be interesting.