Entryway Makeover?

I've been contemplating a makeover of the entryway in my apartment as a birthday present to myself. Something along the lines of these goodies from Ikea, I'm thinking...

...and possibly some black tile on the floor to replace the blackish indoor/outdoor carpet currently residing there. My hallway has turned into the "gallery" of black and white photography that I love while allowing the rest of the apartment to contain lots of color. I'd like to sharpen up the look a little bit and make it a little more functional (including getting rid of the "Leaning Tower of Pisa" coat tree).

Now, I think my hand has been forced...

Yesterday, I started noticing a water stain on the ceiling right next to the front door. Throughout the day, it crept lower and lower on the wall. Meanwhile, the neighbors upstairs won't answer their door (we had this same problem the LAST time there was a water leak...grrr!), and my landlord is in Hungary. The wet smell started getting a little annoying, too.





Today, the annoyance turned into a major problem. You see, right above the front door is the fuse box to my apartment. And right next to the door is, well, a tangle of wires going to who knows what. This morning the water and the wires met, and the result was a bright orange flash and a big bang coming from the wall. The electrical box hidden in this wall is normally covered with a plastic faceplate (like the one you see behind the light switch in the first picture). The "minor explosion" in the wall knocked it halfway off (two of the four screws came straight out of the concrete), and I finished the job to see what was left back there and make sure nothing was smoldering. I also pulled up the carpet, hoping to salvage it before it got too wet.

(If you look closely, you can see a rusty drop of water forming at the top of the box.)

As you can see, the wiring was a little scary to begin with. And the water just finished off the job. I now have no power in the back half of my apartment (that is, every room except the living room!). Sound familiar? I lived with only power in the living room for almost 4 months last year. That time, I ran extension cords & plugged the refrigerator and washing machine into living room outlets. I'm not ready to do that, especially given the fact that the fuse box to the entire apartment is still in the "path of destruction" and I could easily lose power in the living room too at any time. I'll be emptying out the freezer in a couple of hours and bringing stuff to my teammates to either store in their freezers or eat (I'm a sharing person, but I'm keeping those 2 pints of blueberries that I paid a half a fortune for last week and then spent several hours removing stems, leaves, bad berries, etc.!).

Since it's 100 degrees outside today (and has been the last two days, as well), I really won't miss having my stove or oven. I'm not likely to use the dryer soon, either. But, 100 degrees without a refrigerator or freezer? Oy...at least I can plot my entryway makeover which, from the looks of things, might be happening sooner than I planned.

Bridges '07

I returned home last Wednesday from a fantastic 3 weeks in Budapest, Hungary where I taught English. It was nice to feel in my element for once (teaching English, not being in Hungary...which is definitely NOT my element since I can't make heads nor tails of the Hungarian language). I remembered how much I love teaching; I teach here, but always either through a translator or in a language that I'm still not 100% comfortable with. I taught the Advanced class, so it was refreshing to talk with my students, explain things, and feel competent for a couple of weeks. I was glad to come home, but am struggling with returning to my "incompetent" role after being comfortable with a while.

For your viewing pleasure, here's a pictorial recap of the last couple of weeks.

Istvan and Tunde, two of my morning students

My evening class picture (unfortuntely, missing 2 students)

The huge pot of traditional Hungarian goulash that we enjoyed during orientation week (this pot seriously has a diameter of 2 feet!). "Real" goulash is more of a soup/stew.

While in the city Saturday afternoon, we stumbled across a human chess game. Interesting!

And the obligatory picture of the famous Chain Bridge, linking the two original cities of Buda and Pest into the one modern-day city of Budapest (there are actually 7 bridges).

Happy Blog-Day!

I'm back. Are you surprised? Jenny says I need to post, and she's probably right. It has indeed been awhile. For a while, nothing was happening. And then, too much was happening and I just didn't have time. Now...well, I'm just out of the habit. Then I looked at my post history and realized that today is the one year anniversary of my first post...Happy Blog-Day!

Maybe later this evening I will post something of a little more significance...

Forewarned is Forearmed

After much hassling by a few certain someones, I'm caving and posting, even though I have nothing to say. Don't say you weren't forewarned...

So what have I been doing for the last two weeks? Mostly, the same thing I'm doing right now, sitting on my couch with my computer on my lap, typing. One of the first steps in a translation project is developing a simplified English version of whatever is going to be translated. We're hoping to make some serious headway this summer, so I needed to get the simplified English versions of several books finished so that translators can keep working while I'm out and about for the summer. So, over the last two weeks, I've "rewritten" two 120-page books. Add in a quick trip to Bucharest to renew my passport and another trip to Cluj (2 hours each way) to drop off a friend at the airport, and that's pretty much my life for the last couple of weeks. See why I haven't posted? Really, there's not much to say!

But I did promise a brief list of ways to torture yourself in Romania, so here goes...

1. Try to drive. Anywhere. At any time of day. It was bad when I got here two and a half years ago, but I'm pretty sure everyone of legal age has purchased a car since then. This city (ok, this country!) was not built for cars. The police are valiantly trying to bring order to the insanity, but what do you do when there are 3 times as many cars as there are parking spots? Stop in the middle of the road, and leave your car there, of course! The other drivers can figure out how to get around you.
2. Try to be a Romanian woman with smooth legs. Most women here don't shave. Nope, they have another great invention for maintaining smooth legs and, at the same time, torturing themselves. It's called an epilator, and it grabs each individual hair and yanks it out by the root. They tell me it gets less painful as you get used to it, but I'm not buying it yet (the "less painful" part, that is...I already bought the appliance). The "less painful" logic says that, because those hairs you yank out the first time have been rooted in your leg for, say 20 years, it really hurts when you pull them out. The next time, the root will be young and not so strong, so it won't hurt as much. Uh-huh...we'll see.
3. Have a white kitchen. White anything isn't the greatest idea, but white everything? Pure torture, especially if you have obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Cabinets, refrigerator, washing machine. They were all beautiful, sparkling white when I bought them two years ago. And the white walls were freshly painted as well. Not so beautiful anymore. Seriously, I don't know where all of the dirt comes from, but I've never seen so much of it (it's not like I live in the desert or in a village with dirt roads!). But I do know where most of it goes...into MY kitchen! Now, I realize that this is my own fault...I chose the white. But all I can do is plead ignorance (I really didn't know when I moved in and purchased all of these things!) and hope that no one else notices that everything is really more of an "off-white" color these days. Despite days like today spent keeping the entire cleaning-product industry in business.
4. Ummm, that's all I can think of right now. I'm sure there are more, but really, I don't notice most of them anymore, at least enough to remember a couple of hours or days later. That's probably because I've already tortured myself into a state of insanity. Pretty sure.

Flying By

Yet another week has flown by. "They" say that the older you get, the faster time goes. So apparently I am VERY, VERY old because time seems to fly by these days!

I don't really have much to say today. The last week has consisted mostly of meetings and bonding time with my computer and the photocopier. Not the most fun days, but really the meat of my life! Too bad you only read about the "fun days" here.

The most exciting thing that I have done this week is bake cookies. LOTS of cookies. Now my freezer is full and ready for summer. Hurrah for summer! (And, hopefully, a little less bonding time with my computer!)

As Promised

Amazing

As I was driving home from Arad on Monday (a 6 hour drive), I spent some time thinking about how privileged I am and how many things I take for granted. I have so much to be thankful for, and I often don't even realize it. This line of thought was prompted by the opportunity to visit Vienna this weekend with some friends. Really...who gets to just drop everything and visit Vienna for a weekend? Not most girls from Grand Rapids! I don't spend a lot of time or space on this blog with either serious writing or "devotional" writing - but I do want to encourage you to stop and think about all of the good gifts that our Heavenly Father showers us with. I had to stop and realize that I really am a spoiled brat, often wanting what I want and ignoring the good gifts I've been given. Ungrateful. Unthankful. Lord, change my heart.

For the first time since I bought this camera, I filled up the memory card (this is not due to the fact that I take few pictures, but to the fact that I almost always have my computer with me and download from the camera frequently!). Just a few pictures for now...maybe more to come later. The one above is actually a composite of 4 pictures of Schonbrunn Palace, the former summer home of Austrian royalty. The next two shots are of the "backyard" of Schonbrunn.




Also in the "backyard" is the Schonbrunn Zoo, "one of the world's oldest and most modern zoos." It was founded in 1752. A little bit different from the zoo I visited last weekend...


The jellyfish tank under black lights.


The giant panda exhibit is huge. Yummy bamboo.

More later...

My hero

After a weekend spent with the teenagers, this is my new hero. Or, at least, the "one" to whom I bear a striking resemblance.



I'll refrain from posting (or even taking) any pictures, but suffice it to say, yes, I am red, and yes, that hurts. The sun and I have a love/hate relationship...I love the sun (at least when I am inside), and the sun pretty much always hates me.

The youth group from a church in Alba Iulia came to visit with our teens this weekend, so we spent all day Saturday outside. The original plan included a picnic and hike in the woods. What actually ended up happening was several hours of sports, hanging out, taking walks, etc. where there was no shade. So, while I was thinking bug spray, what I really needed (and obviously did not have) was sunblock. At least I can say that I got the first "good" sunburn of the season out of the way!

Where's the Self-Respect?

On Sunday afternoon, we went to the zoo with the teenagers from church. I have to ask...where's the self-respect? Seriously, these animals are pathetic.


First, there are the monkeys who will take sunflower seeds straight out of your hand (ok...that's probably not too unusual). But then...,


...there's the buck who will walk straight up to you as long as you wave some leaves at him (forget the fact that he is surrounded by trees with leaves in his reach).


And what self-respecting lion willingly shares his cage with a dog? Although rumor has it that he is regularly fed the stray dogs picked up on the streets around town...


At least the tiger seemed to keep a bit of her self-respect. Like any good cat, she was napping away the afternoon. We figure she earned the right to do so since she had just given birth to 3 little tiger cubs the day before. If you look closely at the second picture, you can see one of them nursing and the other two up near mama's front paw.

Just what you always wanted to know!

I occasionally "browse" through the online version of The Nine O'Clock, an English language newspaper here in Romania. Most of the content is (bad) translations from a variety of Romanian newspapers. And every once in a while I learn something interesting...

Tonight I was reading an article about the town of Sinaia(really more of an extended travel advertisement), and I learned that President Gerald Ford was here in Romania the day that I was born. For your reading pleasure -

"If you travel by train, the first contact you will have will be with the Station. It is one of the places with an important historical past. The first one was built by the Demeter Cartner company in 1913 and the second one a little later and was exclusively reserved fro the Royal House and its guests, such as foreign heads of state. On the platform of the Sinaia train station you will find a commemorative plaque for the Romanian prime minister I. G. Duca who was murdered by the Romanian Iron Guard in 1933 here. The death of the Romanian high official could be easily turned into a crime film script. Immediately after election, Duca was mysteriously summoned to Sinaia to see King Carol II. He caught the first train without being aware of his assassins’ travelling in the next carriage. In Sinaia his talks to the king was reduced to two hours as the PM was needed back in Bucharest on the 9:15 PM train. At about 8:30 PM, I. G. Duca was informed that his train had been delayed for more than an hour. At 9:30 PM, while he was walking to the official carriage, a cracker was fired in front of him, and it caused a blast. In the panic of the moment, Iron Guard activist Niki Constantinescu tapped him on the shoulder and than fired five bullets into the back of his head. Duca died instantly. The first one to run away was exactly the man who had the task of guarding the President of the Council of Ministers. Niki Constantinescu immediately put his hands up and surrendered himself.

Apart from this episode, the place is an important stop, the halt of the Orient Exprses or Arlberg express in the beginning of the century. As for the Royal Station standing a few tens of metres away, it was built after the plans of architect Duiliu Marcu in 1939. It is a stone building in the Romanian style that used to carry the royal signs of Kind Carol II at the time. The building was designed in such a way as to accommodate the entire royal train. In front of the station there is a large square where the heads of state would be greeted. The central hall of the station accommodates a mural painting (5,50 x 5,50 m) representing a noble wild bore hunting scene with eight characters riding horses, in natural sizes, with an inscription in Latin: Basarab Voievod 14th century.

The station continued to be used during the communists as well. A presidential train took US President Gerald Ford and Nicolae Ceausescu to Sinaia, on August 6, 1975. The Royal train station is not open for the public."
by George Grigoriu

www.nineoclock.ro