With less than a month to go before I head off to Romania, I'm getting excited! I'm still in the process of finding an apartment, but I've made some contact with a real estate agent. He's terrible at returning emails, but my friend Cristina was awesome enough to call him up and talk to him for me since 1) My Romanian is too basic to make any sense and 2) The 7-hour time difference makes calling at a reasonable business hour REALLY hard (especially since I'm NOT a morning person). I also got the itinerary for my orientation in Bucharest at the end of my first week. Among other things, I'll be going on a day trip to Peles Castle, which I think will be pretty cool, having never seen a castle before here in this bastion of democracy.
This coming Sunday some of my Romanian friends are going to cook some traditional Romanian food for me. There are promises of sarmale (stuffed cabbage leaves) and mamaliga (similar to polenta). Yum!
I'm still brainstorming topics to teach my students, so if you have any suggestions of American topics I can share and discuss with my students or any icon American reaings to assign them, let me know your thoughts!
