that scary-a** lab

went back to the doctor today. i wonder why they didnt draw all the blood from my body when i was last there cause i had to give more today. after all they could have done these tests at the same time. so then i have to go to the lab for another fun blood experience

again, at the reception desk was that tray of scariness. last time i stayed kinda close to protect my bodily stuff from the eyes of others. this time i tried to keep away, but damn peripheral vision. lots of scariness include poo and numerous vials of varying shades of scary yellow. alls i gots to say is that many people are dehydrated.

then it came my turn to give up my precious blood. and let me tell you my body wasnt having it. this and every time i've come i let them know that its very difficult to get blood out of the my arm and that it may be better to get it from stuff close to the surface like my wrist. as always, they dont believe me and proceed with the torture. they spent 40 minutes trying to get a vial out of me. in the process they stuck a needle in and jiggled it around 3 times. each time they thought they got a nice fat vein. but my body likes to fool them and cause me pain cause the go in hiding as soon as the needle goes in. last time they had so much fun that i have a keloid scar - one of those nice shiny raised ones that never go away. thanks!

ah . . . the joyousness of Radiohead

radiohead recently released a new album. anyone who knows me knows the serious love i have for the band. one of the great things about this release is that they did it all online allowing users to pay what they want to download the album. oh and they only gave 10 days notice before the release. of course i was there!!!

am also writing a paper at the moment about nation formation .. . . blah blah . . . for a political geography course am taking and it makes for great listening. since the 10th of this month i have listened to little else. and its beautiful. definitely my favorite album since okay computer which came out in '97. its really beautiful - no whining annoying singing, lots of melody and other beautishousness.

its like they made something awesome just for me birthday.

muse! muse! Muse!

just got back from the Muse concert and i hafta say that it was pretty damn great. especially since tickets were about 15 bucks. they had this really great stage show and lights and ahhh. . . . during my favorite songs, i closed my eyes and got a spanky light show behind the lids. the music and voices were great. its amazing how much sound 3 dudes can produce especially when they sometimes stop the guitar and give some piano action.

a couple of things sucked - sadly, no pics as my camera is woefully out of date and i need to replace it. i would have liked to have a couple extra inches in height so i could get a super clear view over all those gigantor headed people (its amazing the number of people out there with this deformity and they were all standing in front of me). maybe i will receive that as a b-day present this year. and dear lord general admin sucks. pretty much waited, that is standing up on my poor feet, for almost 4 hours before the band actually played. but the hurtin' disappeared once the music started flowing.

i danced, and possibly annoyed the people who were nearby - they were standing too close anyway - i personally think that much of Muse's music is great to dance to. the heavens threatened to provide us with moisture but it held off and it was a gorgeous nite for a show. we were outside and the temp was just right to make it okay to be packed so close with people

funny how times change. on one of the ballads people took out lighters and cellphones to give light.

afterwards, starving, i made my way to a 24 hour McDonald's. i had forgotten to eat and i practically inhaled my fries and cherry pie (they have cherry here!!!) i swear to god, at midnight, the McD's workers think its a club - dance music blasting.

all in all a good nite - even if they didnt play my favorite favorite song.

free hugs

i know. its been ages.

today i went to meet saskia for a little hanging out and lunch. we went to a cool outdoor restaurant and had traditional romanian food - okay pizza. while we were there shooting the breeze we saw some college kids walking around with signs that said free hugs. when i inquired after the signs i got bill ole hugs from 3 people. apparently they were trying to encourage affection in the city.

gotta love bucharest!!! but hey i totally felt loved.

tosca

wow! its been a month since my last post. that is total craziness. school has started and the first couple of weeks were crazy-tough. my body was just not used to working and gettin up at a set time and all that jazz. but its been good seeing the kids again. though am again reminded at how much work it is to teach. i am physically wrung out sometimes. time is getting on and i have decided to set about enjoying y tiem in romania.

yesterday, i went to see Tosca, an opera by puccini. it was pretty awesome. the acting was good, the singing great and te music was excellent. plus, one of the great things about here is that this stuff is crazy cheap. the concert hall was nice without being gaudy. and of course the opera was a tragedy - cause it aint good if everyone doesnt die at the end. synopsis: love triangle, prison breaks, murder, execution, and suicide. what more can you want. with that saidm, i guess some kung fu, wire work, and explosions would be okay too.

one of the funniest things aobut it ( i know its not supposed to be funny but am a total pleb) is one of the lead male. hes a painter and in love our heroine (Tosca). his lastname in real life is Cassanova but he looked anything but. he's a very short and portly (very) man and Florina Tosca is very tall. so when they were hugging and kissing and pledging their undying love, i had to giggle cause . . . . you get the pic

plum brandy and other scariness

my neighbor and landlord asked me to chec the water meters and report the info.
what followed was a night of plum bandy, marriage proposals, politics, dinner, and other assorted huh?'s that i have to sort thru

at this point in time, am a little drunk and cant remmber it all but it was all kinda fun and eye opening. will write more when am more sober.

1st day of school

today was the first day of school. now this school does things a bit different. on the first day, all we do is have an opening ceremony and kids sit with their homeroom teachers and chat i guess.
kinda not the most fruitful day but i did get alot of work done since i stayed there for the whole day. it was great seeing the kids back and how they (especially the boys) can change over 2 months. new teachers were introduced and all that good stuff. but it started raining and that cut it short a bit - which was nice.

we also said goodbye to one of our students. over the summer one of the students in year 9 died. it was one of those totally ridiculous and senseless things. apparently he was changing a light bulb with wet hands and got electrocuted. now this is crap! and i guess faulty wiring from buildings put up with lax safety standards. some of his friends said a few words for him. they had been together since year 1 and it was really hard.

at the end of the day, i found myself thinking about how funny emotions can be. i found out about Ahmet over the summer and was shocked. I got a little choked up when the kids were talking about him (others in the audience were also crying). i later went to go and say a few words to him mom (she school presented her with a picture/plaque thingy for remembrance). she was all broken up and crying. when i went to her, she hugged and kissed me and told me that Ahmet said that i was his favorite teacher and how he would spend loads of time on the computer doing work for my classes. I told her how great he was (he really was a lovely kid) and i would miss him - i just kinda have a mental picture of his seat being empty. i taught him two subjects and he sat in the same place for each class. Now, if you'd asked me my reaction before hand, i would have said ehh, nothing much. i left the woman and i was bawling. somehow, her comment, the situation just cracked my hard outer shell.

language lessons

so i finally managed to get off my duff and resume romanian language lessons. the best thing i learned today (other good stuff too) was the correct pronunciation of lemon. its kinda like the diff between roof and roof (if pronounced more southern style as ruhf) except that lemon with the OO means oral sex. looking back, i really really like to order ice tea with lemon. sometimes they have had me repeat my order.

which brings me to when romanians learn english. it makes me wonder who their english teachers are and to damn those half-assed translators of movies.

when i first moved into this apt, the landlord (who lives next door) invited me over for a drink. its kinda like the offer you cant refuse. we had wine spritzers (very popular here) and got to talking. he informed that he was still a communist and that life was better under the regime. i tried to talk to him but realized that i'd better hold my tongue. a movie came on - something about sex and race relations on college campuses - its about 15 years old. about the time when ice cube started flexing his acting chops. he then turned the conversation to race relations in the u.s. (its amazing how people - not just this country - feel the need to discuss american race relations but ignore racism in their own countries)

now the language issue is the romanian translation of black into english. somewhere along the line they were taught that negru (black) = nigger. every time he used the word, i flinched (for obvious reasons). feeling massively uncomfortable, i attempted to explain that this is not a word used in english unless one was trying really hard to offend the person speaking to. the funny thing is that he seemed to have this mental block. i had to ask like 4 times. finally i said if it would be nice if i referred to his wife as 'bitch' whenever i spoke of her 9i felt bad syaing this because she is a nice old lady). he then paused and finally asked if it was offensive. and this was after i told him this repeatedly.

did he actually learn anything? who knows but thats me - cultural ambassador and damn me if i'm not diplomatic.

been on my mind

a friend of mine in the Romanian army was deployed to Iraq a few days ago. since he's in the army, he has to go where they tell him to. and i was just thinking how kinda shite it is that he is going to be there for the next 6 months. lots of people in the States are now against the war, but the U.S. is committed and pretty much has to stay, until the situation over there is somewhat stable, given that it was the driving force behind the whole invasion. What gets me about Daniel's situation is that no one really supports it but apparently 5 years ago the Romanian government said they would send people - probably to curry favor with the US. its seems even more senseless that he is being taken away from his family and his life put in danger.

a few months ago at Daniels birthday party, i was talking to his friends - obviously many of his friends are in the military and talk shop. These guys are career military, are officers, (Romania did away with the one years mandatory military service this year) and had served their tour in Iraq. they were talking about the situation and stuff. one of the things that struck me then that i can remember (due to my massively faulty memory which i blame on my thyroid problem), one commented on how poorly some of the American soldiers were doing. he said that he felt so bad for some of them because they were really young people and they're thrown into this situation completely outside of their experience that they are totally unprepared for. they joined the army to pay for college and they wound up in the desert psychologically unprepared.

funnily enough, though i had thought about it and sorta gotten involved (in the UAE, i have my yr 9s run a charity and one class decided to send materials to a school in Iraq and we had an Iraqi speaker come and explain everyday peoples livesat this time) plus crazy inflation in the UAE since many Iraqi refugees came (but only the ones with money/connections to get out). it really struck me this time. He's leaving behind a pregnant wife and will miss the birth of his first child and i still wonder for what?

off the soap box - next post will be travel stuff.

Bucharest, Romania (pt 2)

ah. . . more of bucharest. before wwII and all the bombing, bucharest used to be known as little paris (i really hate when cities get named after other cities as if they dont have their own identity) because of the nod to classical architecture and stuff. have to admit that it did look nice from the photos i've seen.

which brings us to blvd Unirii and piata Unirii (you can pretty much find one in EVERY romanian town. i wonder whether they were named during communism or after the revolution). Ceausescu really really wanted bucharest to be on par with the other great european cities to do this he and his crazy wife went on many building projects (see previous post prt 1). one of which was blvd unirii. so they tore down what was there and built up some new stuff. due to his megalomania (to be fair he did seem really proud of what romania had to offer) he wanted to be BETTER than paris so the made unirii blvd longer and wider than

Champs-Elysee and it has lots of fountains.

during this summer some nutter artist from austria convinced the mayor of bucharest to let him add dye to the fountains. on an exceedingly warm summer day there was an magazine shoot taking place. enjoy the documentation of the day.