Corcova - Rroma community

I went with my organization to a Rroma community in the Mehedinti County (my city's county) to verify and see if people require social assistance (more of an observer). Of course they were observing me as well to see if I had any extra appendages or if I brought my UFO with me. After a couple of minutes I started to talk to the kids and then to some of the adults. When asked if I can take their photo, they were not shy at all and started calling other kids and people to get their picture taken, especially when I told them I wanted to share the photos with people back in the states. I am hoping to meet with one of the Rroma heads in Severin in order to learn more about the relationship between the Rroma population and Romania and will hopefully be able to share it with all of you.

Pirates of the Carpathian - Carpathian Challenge

Support Team - missing Heather

Sheep Crossing

2,457 Meters high-up - I believe we reached 2,800 meters as a max.

Fog

Rappelling right into the water. Yes, it was very very cold.

The Carpathian Challenge was probably one of the most difficult race challenges I have been faced with to date. Our team (groups of four and there had to be at least one female) was the Pirates of the Carpathian and had the following Peace Corps volunteers; Chris, Carol, Justin, and myself. It makes running a marathon a walk in the park. The first event was trekking/mountain climbing and we started at 8am Thursday morning. It was supposed to be approximatly 62km but we definitely went over that due to getting lost (really easy to do) and trying to find water. Now, after departing, the only time you return to base camp is if you can no longer continue (but you still have to find your way back) or you finish the entire trekking/mountain climbing course.

Thursday - Trekked to a majority of the check points but had to camp at a checkpoint Thursday night because it was around 11pm and plus after trekking/climbing uphill (which downhill takes just as much energy especially across wet rocks) we needed to rest. Trekked uphill for about 14 hours. We were a little slow but managing to move forward.

Friday was a complete nightmare. Woke up Friday 5am to a thunderstorm. We only packed a tarp and sleeping bags (no tent) because you have to travel light. We made a makeshift tent from the tarp and huddled in it for one hour. We started trekking again at about 6:15 am when it was only drizzling. Now we had to make it to checkpoint 7 then basecamp, which ended up being the biggest nightmare. Let's just say from 6am we were hoping to make it back to basecamp by 3pm Friday, this would not be remotely close.

note: you only have a map and compass. No guides, GPS is not allowed and you really need someone with serious orienting / topography map reading skills. We found out even with the master's team, who are serious expert mountain hikers that when the fog is out, you can end up anywhere, as you can see in one of the pictures.

This was probably the hardest leg of the mountain climbing. You ended up about 2800 meters high, literally balancing on slippery rocks after the rain and nothing but a steep fall on either side. There were times you truly were holding for life.
We took two major wrong turns which caused us about a 6-7 hour delay. One was due to two paths had the same markings. About 2 to 3 teams that were behind us also made the same mistake. Then another wrong turn since the fog was covering up the mountain ridges and you can't tell where you remotely are. We thought we found the checkpoint but it ended up being a master's team realizing they made a mistake. This was bad because now we ran out of water. Chris, Carol, and I hiked down to a side of a mountain and literally dug out a small little stream to fill up on water. We were drinking anything we can find. We found another team that was lost and we stuck together but there was a point we literally waited until the fog to clear for a little bit. Once it did, we were able to point out the correct ridge to go on.

Finally made it to checkpoint 7 after close to 11 hrs trying to find it. We were not out of the woods yet (literally). From checkpoint 7 you had to make it to base camp which was approximately another 5-6 hours. You had to descend without any markings through the woods trying to find your way out. We did not stop because we knew if we did not get out of the woods by night we would be in a bad situation. Let's just say it was raining and descending on slipperly grass and blueberry bushes, you ended up with a blueberry butt right away. Lot of falling and a lot of strain on your feet and knees. Luckily we barely spotted a clearing made it out of the woods to find an old logging trail to the main road. We made it back to base camp at 11 pm Friday night. We were one of the last teams to make it back. Many teams already quit due to being seriuosly lost and exhaustion.

Saturday morning 5:30 am. Yes, I wanted to cry. We got up to start the Canyoning, Caving, Rappelling and Rafting portion. It was raining and cold. The first event we went to was the Canyoning, because it was raining, the river was waist high at certain points and of course we had to walk through it. Cold and soaking wet.

Not to make it worse but after that we went caving, which inside the cave, felt like 40 deg farenheit, now, I was really really cold. Coming outside after Caving felt like a sauna (even though it was still cold outside). Rapelling was pretty cool, you actually had to zip-line across from one mountain top to another mountain top then rappell. Yes, that is me rappelling right into the cold river.

Rafting, we had to build our own raft (out of 4 inner-tubes , 5 pieces of wood and 6 pieces of string) and row for 3 kilometers, at least the sun was out for awhile.

Biking, the last event, 80 kilometers. We gave it our best shot but in the end, this is where we were taken down. I believe that this was even harder than the hiking portion.

• Thank you to our support team as well, making sure we were set for our journey.
  
• Finally - thanks to all financial supporters donating to my organization.

Hungarian Headlines

Newspaper from Satu Mare about the English Camp
(can't translate from Hungarian - hopefully it's a nice write-up)

Other Newspaper from Satu Mare

Town Criers still exist. (Might need to hire one myself)

Little magic to start the camp...

Distributing the birthday cake they made for me. I think the girl was just trying to eat it.

Thermal pool (medium temp. there was a cold and a really hot thermal pool as well).

Pictures from Camp

English Camp in Hodod (by Satu Mare)

Pictures are above (Hungarian Headlines and Pictures from Camp)

This camp was significantly different from my last camp in Ocland. This time there were a little over 60 kids, they all stayed at camp and there was much more drama between the boys and the girls. This was also the first time they had Americans at this camp (Justin, Heather, and myself). In Ocland, there were only 23 kids and some of them lived in the village so some slept at home.

When we were going to Hodod (from Satu Mare), we met an individual boy named Josh (father’s Hungarian and mother is Filipino), just moved from Canada a couple of weeks ago and now needs to learn Hungarian and Romanian and his parents thought it would be a good idea to go to this camp. He’s about 13 yrs old and was scared about being in this camp since he had no friends and couldn’t speak the language. Justin and I tried to give him a little pep talk but we would soon find out, none was needed.

We had English class every morning for about two hours and instead of going by they lessons, I would usually just talk to each individual which I found much more amusing. For example, I would ask ‘What is your favorite food?’, one boy would say ‘Pizza’, What do you like on your pizza?’, he would answer ‘Ham’. I would then ask, ‘Where does ham come from?’, he would answer ‘Europe’. Questions like, Where does chicken come from?’, you would receive the most amusing answers and it seemed to keep everyone entertained.

We had about 5 different groups and they had to act out the group name and if the other groups can guess your name, you won points. We were the Cannibals ! (nice huh?, hey the kids chose it, I just helped choreograph the cooking of the kids, as my nephews can atest, that is my specialty!). In the pictures are the Ogres, Vikings, and Cannibals.

Hodod challenge: Groups ran around the village doing a treasure hunt and certain challenges such as, eating hanging bread from a tree, wrapping a person with toilet paper into a mummy basically trekking around town to find clues. Hats off to the three teachers who organized the event while the rest of us were swimming at the pool.

The Strand (The Pool): We took the kids to a really nice swimming location. It had three different pools; one really cold, one warm, and one natural thermal heat pool which was really hot (but relaxing). Probably teaching them how to do chicken fights in the pool wasn’t the best idea but we had a blast.

Poker Night: Now, this was a mistake, Justin and I were playing poker and one by one, the kids wanted to learn how to play. Now, talk about having kids learn english fast; some of the ones that were struggling with english were picking up the lingo fast ; ‘I’ll raise’, ‘I knock’, ‘I call’. At first we thought it was harmless but boy did they like to play and wanted to play almost everyday, hey they learned English pretty well through it.

Soccer Game: The local village kids wanted to play a game against the camp. Justin and I thought this was a bad idea and wanted to mix the teams but they insisted and wanted Justin and I to play (one as a goalie and one as defense). Yeah, we were doing pretty well until the first half and then it just went downhill from there. We left some of our pride on the football field somewhere.

Birthday: This was really nice, they had a big chocolate birthday cake for me on my birthday and I received little presents and pupics from all the kids. One boy gave me his wallet, didn’t want to take it from him but I mentioned before that it was really cool, so he insisted that I take it (almost teared there for a second). They sang Happy Birthday and it was anarchy trying to give each person a piece of cake, almost didn’t make it out alive.

Trekking through the mountains and village was really nice. As you can see in one of the pictures I adopted a little baby to hold on my back through the trek.

Drama: You think soap operas have a lot of drama, since there were soo many kids this time, there were boys trying to get girlfriends, girls having to choose which boy they wanted. There were some wars going on between the boys. They also tried to do a lot of sneeking around (I think some of the adults tried to sneak around also). The kids usually did not fall asleep until 1 or 2 a.m. every morning. Josh (half Hungarian/half Filipino) being different had his pick of the girls (Justin and I no longer felt sorry for him and he was having such a blast he did not want to go home – I’m sure you can pick him out in the picture). One kid asked me for advice about what to do since one of the girls lived in Satu Mare and he lives 5 hours away. Now for a kid, might as well try to keep a trans-atlantic relationship. Basically told him to try your best to keep in touch so you don’t have regrets and if things don’t work out, you still have the time you spent together and no telling what the future will bring.

Accomodations:
Let’s just say by the last night, there was such a strong odor sharing a room with 12 other boys and their stinky little feet, especially with that one that just didn’t shower. The odor was soooo strong that I was actually in tears at one point. AND WHO’s BRIGHT IDEA WAS IT TO SERVE BEANS FOR DINNER ONE NIGHT ???!!! Cruel and inhumane punishment! I needed an extra dose of palinka just to get through that night.

Hodod was a very cool little Hungarian village and still used the Town Crier ! He is the man with a drum banging on it and telling everyone what was going on. At this time he was just anouncing an auction the following week.

Too hot, even for the dogs !!

Its been kind of quiet lately since a majority of people and colleagues take their vacation during this time. The highs are from 100-104 degrees for this week and my apartment is on the 4th floor and faces the west, so I get the extra added heat in the afternoon.

I'm still struggling to get a defined primary project that the agency will support but I keep trying... In the meantime, I'm volunteering for english camps since summer is the time to take advantage of these camps. The week of July 23, I will be doing an English camp by Satu Mare in a town called Hodod.

Other than that been soo hot the dogs are even too hot to bark!

Petrosani & Yes, those are eggs on a coffee maker

This weekend I met other volunteers in Petrosani, which is a mining town and in the center of the mountains. Small town of about 40,000 people but it was nice and quaint (about 5 hrs to get to by train and you go through 29 tunnels through the mountains). Travelling back by train I had a family in my train wagon and they literally store at me for some time, while I was reading my book I can feel the hard stares until the mom says, 'Chineza?'. So I have my usual explanation in Romanian and after that proceeded to talk to them for the next two hours. The two sons spoke a little English, the kids wanted to discuss cowboys and indians and try to talk in English, the father wanted to talk about Al Capone, the grandma wanted to know why I wasn't married and how I need to find a Romanian woman soon. The mom just kept correcting the children keeping them very well behaved. They explained, at least from their point of view (with a sad look) that most of Europe and the rest of the world looks down on Romania, took me a little by surprise. I explained that was not true at least from the U.S. perspective (great, that's all we need, Steve talking about the perspective of the U.S., the view of who looks down on who will switch quick if I keep representing) and tried to explain that all countries have their growing pains and issues but so far Romania is some of the most beautiful country I have seen. Hopefully that worked.

Creative Cooking
So we were making eggs and potatoes for breakfast when the gas ran out (some towns like mine and Petrosani do not hav central gas so we have to use tanks). The potatoes just barely cooked but we still had the eggs. Kirstin, using Peace Corps ingenuity, starts using the coffee maker to cook the eggs since we did not want to waste them. I must tip my hat to that, altough took a little bit, she was able to make fluffy eggs off of a coffee maker (golf clap).

4th of July
Thank you to Justin and Heather for making burgers and hot dogs! No fireworks though, I wanted to create some (involved rabid dogs, gun powder, gasoline, and a wick - jk) but after dinner everyone was just too tired to do anything.