the countdown begins

alas . . the summer is over for me. its amazing how quickly 10 weeks of vacation can pass.

this summer i
- sweated alot - i do mean gallons
- learned lots of romanian - though my speaking leaves much to be desired
- dream come true - radiohead in concert
- saw lots of art and other culturally important (western european) stuff in italy
- read dozens of books (mostly pulp)
- lazed about pretending like i was gonna be productive tomorrow

sadly my tomorrows are at an end and will need to actually start doing worthwhile productive stuff. monday, i go back to work for the week of preplanning. will be a shock to the system

funnily enough, have been listening to lots of peter gabriel. not the sledgehammer stuff (i truly detest that song) but the score from the last temptation of christ, the really old stuff - the four albums named peter gabriel, and scores from movies birdy and rabbit proof fence. i love the world music aspects and well, the instrumentals are beautiful.

slowly slowly, i must prepare.

russian style

tonite we had a bit of a reunion of the summer program participants in bucharest. we started out at a terasa with a few drinks and cake (it was the birthday of a friend of a friend) and sang happy birthday romanian style - which translates literally into "at the many years."

afterwards cristina suggested that we go this club "deja vu". the name has nothing to do with the music experienced. it was pretty cool (translate - okay) but the funny thing is that it is a moldovan/russian club. didnt realize there were that many in town but hey. they played techno dance music, about what you would expect. but they also played some traditional eastern european music. and most of the people on the dance club did the circle dance. you know, the one you have seen in the movies that people do at weddings and stuff. there were also ballads and then techno dance music again.

got home around 4.30 am and felt so bad for my neighbors because of my codependent cat who screeches like shes in heat whenever (even after a 10 minute break) i come home.

oh-pa!

in the end . . .

i wound up doing two interviews. one for another paper and one for the local news. the paper went well. i could make eye contact and the reporter was smiling and encouraging. looking into the lens of a camera is unnerving. i started to sweat and when am nervous, i started to speak quickly, which is not that good in a language one is just learning. and i did not watch it.

program was crazy good and met lots of peeps and imbibed prea mult.

on returning home, i return to a somewhat frantic and manic kitty, which is not that unusual. i go in the kitchen and i see these huge chunks of things all in ziggy's bowl and on the floor. i look more closely and realize that baby kitty ran out of food. now i left plenty, but i also realized, upon seeing her again, some added heft to the formerly slender kitty's frame. i think she spent most of the past few weeks comfort eating and gaining weight.

and those chunks in her bowl? well someone looked around and found some dehydrated stuff and put it in her bowl. sadly, it was my food - dehydrated textured vegetable protein. me thinks ziggy was not enamored with the food selection so she took matters into her own paws. i found feathers all over the house and i dont own feather pillows. from the amount of feathers in evidence, am pretty sure that the bird did not make it out alive.

but i ask myself, living on the 3rd floor - how did ziggy, hungry kitty get the bird?

in the news

so we were all learning really really hardcore in class the other day and the Transilvanian Express newspaper came in to do a bit of a human interest story on us. They took some massively flattering pics of us studying (only my class) and i also had an interview with the journalist. All in Romanian no less. she spoke crazily fast and when asked to speak more slowly, she slowed down for about 1 second before she sped up again. am not directly quoted cause i think there may have been some grammar issues. but hey, an interview totally in another language. you can see and read it yourself here. Sadly, there is also a picture and it was an extremely bad hair day. am supposed to have an interview with the tv station today. will try to get out of that one.