like saying George Washington was a vampire

The past few days have been packed and now I’m feeling a little exhausted.

Last weekend, my friend Kymber came up from Bucharest for her birthday. On Friday, we went to a lovely little French bistro and then met up with some friends at karaoke. Not one of my favorite pastimes. But karaoke is huge here – I think it has to do with people wanting a chance to practice their English. It’s pretty funny to watch some of them go at it.

On Saturday, we went to a local Seventh Day Adventist church for their Thanksgiving celebration. One of my students (the pastor’s wife) invited us to go. The church is this crazy skyscraper building that was built during communist times, when they weren’t allowed to have much space for something like a church, so instead of covering a lot of land, they built up really high on a small piece of land in the city. The ground floor was the coat check, then the next few floors were the sanctuary (including a balcony), then a few floors of apartments and rooms for choir practice, and then at the top of the building a large attic space that looks out at the city in four directions, and that can be used for church festivals like the Thanksgiving meal we had on Saturday.

One of the younger (my age) members of the church sat with Kymber and I and translated the entire service, which was really helpful! Since it was their Thanksgiving service, a lot of people stood up and spoke about what they were thankful for. It was really cool to hear some of their stories about their lives – a lot of the people who spoke were in their 80s so they’d been through a lot! The coolest thing about the church community itself is that they advocate vegetarianism (and veganism), to the extent that most of the preaching during the service had to do with living as a vegetarian.

So, Sunday another one of my students took us on a really cool hike. We went to this place called “Soloman’s Rocks.” Brasov is awesome for this kind of hike. Basically, you just start walking out of the center, and keep going until you’re sitting on top of a rock looking in every direction at the hills of changing fall colors below you. It’s pretty crazy. There are also tons of people who go up there each weekend to get water from a mountain spring.

On Monday I had to teach two classes first thing in the morning, but then Kymber and I headed off to Fagaras, which is a nearby town surrounded by the most beautiful mountains in Romania (which I couldn’t see because it was cloudy). The high school there has a British English teacher who asked us to come, to give a presentation about undergraduate study in the U.S. We were big celebrities there – the local TV station taped the entire presentation and interviewed us (twice). The history museum is closed on Mondays, but they got it open just for us! We had several students who showed us around town. They were amazing – but more about that another time.

Yesterday was Halloween. I met a lot of Americans – basically, if you’re American (or Australian, apparently) and living or traveling anywhere in Eastern Europe, then you come to Transilvania for Halloween. I didn’t go to any of the fancy schmancy Halloween parties, but still managed to run into a lot good ol’ Halloween cheer. Or something like that.