Saturday, October 13, 2012

First Visitors - Part 1

It is a rainy dreary day today.  I am not complaining however, for it is only the second such day since our arrival in Europe and I need to be doing a number of indoor tasks today anyway.  It is time to prepare for teaching, which begins this coming week, ironic to me that I am beginning during the same week that Pfeiffer University is having fall break!

As I write this entry, my sister, Patricia, and her husband, Jerry, are in the airport waiting to board their flight home.  They spent about 3 weeks on a tour of Turkey and then came to Bucharest for 5 days of visiting with Amanda and me.  It was great fun hosting them and being both tourist and tour guide here in my adopted home city.  They arrived on Monday and I served my version of a Romanian lunch – and did a pretty good job of it.  The menu included an assortment of cheeses from the market; roasted red peppers and eggplant spread - both prepared according to my new Romanian cookbook; zacusca, a red pepper and eggplant concoction prepared by my landlady; pickles prepared by my neighbor’s aunt; peasant bread from the market; and some assorted fruits.  We mostly spent the day catching up – of course there was much to show and tell on both sides of the conversation – and planning our strategy for 4 days of sightseeing.

Herewith some of the week's highlights:

 
 
On Tuesday we went to Herestrau Park, home of the Village Museum (http://www.muzeul-satului.ro/) It is an open-air museum depicting traditional peasant life in Romania, with some 200+ buildings, many of which are open and furnished.  I especially appreciated looking at the wood carving done for decorative purposes.  Amanda, as always, found kittens to pick up and cuddle.
 







 Above, I am showing the typical information provided for most of the buildings: age, original location, photo of the original location, photos of local peasants, and written description, which is in both Romanian and English.
 




 


I will continue our week on another post, due to the quantity of pictures.

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