Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Gratar Pentru Aragaz!


Humor:
Pictures:
* Every morning I watch a three-legged dog chase cars. And they say I don't learn lessons from my mistakes. Once in awhile a black dog will join in on the 'save the environment by walking or car pool' protest but gets bored pretty fast then leaves but only to return another day.
* Started cooking, this thing is amazing, may have to start taking orders. The 'gratar pentru aragaz' (grill for the stove) beats out the foreman grill and the turbobroiler !! I was cooking mici (meechi) at the time. Tell anyone from Romania that an American is cooking mici on the gratar pentru aragaz and they'll definitely laugh.
Things are slowly coming together (I think).
Unemployment Agency (UA):
The UA needs help in understanding the European Union (EU) standards for requesting funds, basically grant writing. So there are a couple of things I need to learn, unemployment, Romi population, how to search the web about EU regulations, and a crash course in grant writing. Anyone out there have a successful grant I can reuse (I'm sure I can find one somewhere)?

Secondary Project (?):
Possibly found a secondary project in trying to raise funds for a youth activity and resource center. In my grant writing research (which makes it hard because I currently don't have access to the internet on a consistent basis) I hope to learn about accessing funds for continuing education / youth centers as well. Right now, I volunteered to teach basic English there (I know what most of you are thinking, I can hardly speak correctly myself - - as long as I don't need to do sentence structuring we'll all be fine and they'll survive on the streets, not sure if they would survive in a classroom) and in return they will teach me Romanian. Fair exchange.
Apartment:
Hopefully this will come to a close soon, I ran out of sacrificial lambs and down to my last one which I'm saving for when I'm in a pinch.

Quick Language and Culture Lesson:
When making a cheer with alcohol (can't join the cheer unless you have an alcoholic beverage, yes juice and water drinkers are discriminated against). Klank the glasses and say 'Noroc' (no-roke) - can also use it when someone sneezes.
Places visited:
Last weekend I visited a town called Ramnicu Valcea, size is approximately the same as Severin (approx. 108,000 people). It was very clean and impressive for a small town. We met other volunteers there for a bbq. The true adventure was making it from Severin to Valcea... ???

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