A ROMANIAN VILLAGE ENGLISH CHRISTMAS

The sounds of the single bell tolling and the drum beating emanate from the beautiful small painted church on the hillside, echoing down through the valley and all of the way around the village.
Those simple sounds announce that it is Sunday, December 2nd, the start of Advent, and it is the first day of a traditional Romanian Orthodox Christmas. For those who still follow the old traditions, and there are many in the village who do, it marks the start of the Advent Fast, which means that no animal products are eaten until the Fast is broken, on the evening of Christmas Eve. No meat, no fish, no poultry, no milk, no eggs, which can't be easy in a society whose basic diet is entirely made up of these items, and who's favourite vegetable is Pork!
The bell and drums will sound each day during Advent, just as they do on every important day in the religious calendar, and they will count each day away as the four weeks progress.
On December 6th, St Nicholas Day, decorations go up, small token gifts are given to those children who have been 'good' throughout the year, and small decorated sticks are given to those who have not been so good. The tradition of the sticks is that those 'not so good' children are symbolically beaten with them to remind them that they still have three weeks left to be good, and maybe still redeem themselves enough to have presents delivered by Mos Craciun (Father Christmas) early on Christmas morning.
The evening of Christmas Eve then is when the traditional Christmas family meal is eaten here in Romania, even for the many who no longer follow the tradition of fasting for four weeks beforehand.
These weeks are also when the ceremony of 'preparing the pig' takes place. It isn't called that at all, but it is the way Romanians talk about it, and even those who live in the City refer to this special family occasion with fondness. Unfortunately that also means that this is the time when we hear the sounds of pigs being slaughtered around the village. It's not nice, but it is over very quickly, and it does help us to understand the reality of things, particularly for those of us who have been used to buying meat in shrink-wrapped plastic from supermarkets and have therefore been able to shut out this essential, but ignored part of the process of getting it there. It's part of 'living a 'real' life', which is often how we describe our lives here. Once the animal is gone it is used to make sausages, it is smoked, parts are minced to make Mici, the skin and fat are dried to make Slănină (which is basically just pig fat eaten as part of the basic diet), and great lumps of meat are smoked and reserved for that ever so important Christmas Eve family meal, and the whole family gather together after the pig is killed to help to prepare each item.
It is wonderful to see and to be a small part of it, as Christmas comes slowly here, and the build up to it is such a busy time. We have been invited a few times to join in, but as yet we haven't been able to, for lots of reasons, but one day we will, and I know we will enjoy it.
It will be no worse than going to a barbecue in The Lebanon, which I have also done, when the first thing that happened was the delivery of two live sheep on the back of a pick-up truck.......first, select your sheep, .......second. slaughter it, ..........like I said, it's real life, and it was a great and very very tasty barbecue.
We try our hardest to live our daily lives as our Romanian friends and neighbour's do throughout the year, only occasionally reverting to type and cooking in a traditional English manner (in other words...curry!). The only exception to this being tea, which we just can't give up. We simply can't get good English tea here, so when we do receive the odd packet from our visitors or friends it is a real treat.
However, Christmas is different. Christmas is something that we want to do in the way we have known it for so many years, but it isn't simply a matter of going to the supermarket to buy all we need as we would have done when we lived in England. There are so many more things that we simply can't get here, and it is at this time of year that you realise it most.
So, just like our neighbour's are doing, we have been preparing for it for weeks. We may not have been doing the same things, but in our own way we have been just as busy as they have, and we have gathered everything we need to make our little Christmas perfectly English, but there is so much of it that we have to make for ourselves.
Our first essential is to have logs cut and ready for the fires to keep us warm, all done, and it is very 'unRomanian' of us to be this ready as we often hear the sound of logs being chopped around the village on Christmas day itself.
Our tree is up in our lounge, decorated and looking beautiful. Unfortunately we couldn't afford to buy a real one this year, nor did we have time to go into the forest and fell one, so it's our old artificial tree, but it looks beautiful all the same.
We actually made  a pretty good job of our traditional Christmas last year, without really  trying, but this year we determined ourselves to do it better, much much better.
We have our turkey, in the freezer and waiting for the day, we have potatoes, which we will cook in pork fat to be perfect, golden brown and crispy on the day. We have Carrots and Parsnips, as well as Brussels Sprouts, sadly not home-grown, but next year they will be. 
We can make our own gravy, we can make our own Yorkshire Puddings if we want them (and the other 'alf does make a particularly nice job of them!).
We have a still-in-date unopened jar of Cranberry Sauce and we have a few Christmas Crackers that we saved from last year, so we can wear the silly hats, enjoy the little tokens, read and laugh at the silly jokes and the not-so-wise sayings from within as we eat.
So what else could we possibly want?
It's when you ask yourself that question that you realise that it isn't actually the 'big' items that make the perfect Christmas at all, it's the small additions that just finish things off and make them perfect.
Like stuffing!
How could you eat a Christmas Turkey without stuffing? It just wouldn't be right would it?
And chipolatas to be wrapped in bacon? Where would Christmas be without those?
So we''ll just pop out to the shops and get some Paxo shall we? Oops! No!
Now I am sure that there will be many reading this (at least I hope someone else reads it!) who are good cooks and who will say 'Hey making your own stuffing isn't difficult!', and I am sure you are right, but when you have never done it before it is a daunting prospect. 
Just as it was for me when we created our own cottage garden this year to grow our own produce for the first time. Having never, ever, had any interest in gardening whatsoever in my life, it seemed miraculous to me when this rough patch of ground that we had painstakingly fenced off from our dogs and prepared produced, Spring Onions, Lettuce, Potatoes, Red and White Onions, Garlic and Tomatoes in abundance! I have really caught the bug now and I am so looking forward to Spring arriving early so that we can get on with it again, and I am determined to build a Greenhouse from old windows too!
We managed to make stuffing well last year but had trouble getting the ingredients as fine as we would have liked them to be, as a result we had chunky Sage and Onion stuffing. It was very nice but this year we will do better....why?.....well we  bought a meat grinding machine!!!
Having this marvellous tool in the kitchen has opened our eyes to a whole world of new possibilities. It has a sausage pipe, so the first, obviously, was good old-fashioned English Bangers. 
Hooray! sausages WITHOUT garlic!!!
There they are ready and waiting in the freezer. We got a bit carried away though, we have about 100 of them, of all types, plain pork, pork and herb, pork and leek, etc., and as the other 'alf, (she who must be obeyed in all things) isn't really that fond of sausages it means that John and I have an ample supply to keep us going for a while! We have now found good bacon too, unadulterated with garlic, so Pigs in Blankets, Angels on Horseback, whatever you want to call them are simply no problem this year.
Our stuffing's will be finely minced as well, so who needs Paxo anyway?
There will be three on the menu, Sage and Onion, of course, Chestnut, and a sausage meat stuffing.
We have a Christmas Pudding too, two actually, thanks to a good friend. No cream, but we can make custard OK.
We also have six PG Tips tea bags stashed away, so we have good tea on the day too. These are what remain of a box that a volunteer bought with her at the beginning of December, having heard about our plight. We have been fortunate enough over the last few years to host many wonderful volunteers and guests here, but this lady is very very special. The week she stayed with us was a wonderful one, re-awakening us to the real reasons we are here in Romania. We have all become great, lifelong friends, and one day I will write more about her, but at the moment she is too greatly missed, and I know that if I write as we truly feel then there will only be more tears, as there were on the day she left, and have been occasionally when we have spoken since. Suffice it to say that when she arrived, she bought the beginning of our Christmas with her.
We also have some new but already very good friends and family sending us parcels full of goodies to help our Christmas along, and we are looking forward to their arrival with some excitement. They will have the things that we can't really make in them, including more tea bags,   English biscuits (Ginger Nuts and Custard Creams.....what else?), a few little surprises too I should think, and a bottle of Glenfiddich from a very very generous friend.
Having all those sausages, and having found good bacon, also means that next years weekend treats of a homemade Full English Breakfast are no problem! (And here I was earlier, talking boastfully about trying to live life like a local! Oh well, the occasional treat can't hurt can it?)
Christmas Day then is sorted. We have all of the food we need to make our perfect meal, local wine is excellent and very cheap, and we can also top it up with Ţuică
We'll be in English Christmas heaven for the day, and there's bound to be a daft English, Australian, or American movie on Romanian TV that we can sit and watch as it all goes down in the evening.
Last year, for some reason we don't know, we all woke up at 3.30 a.m. on Christmas Day, just like over-excited children. Having nothing else to do we switched the television on to find a film called 'Malcolm' beginning. It's a fairly odd but amusing Australian movie about some unlikely people who commit a robbery, and it was perfect for that day and time. If we could we would have made it part of all our traditional Christmas's from then on.
However, we then have Boxing Day don't we? It is as an essential part of the traditional English Christmas as the day is itself, and it is the day that provides my favourite meal of cold meats, mashed potatoes, and pickles.
So this is an easy day huh? It's just leftovers.
OK yes, we will have the cold turkey, we have a tin of Ham (only in a tin because this year we couldn't afford the complete leg of smoked Romanian ham that were on sale in the market, but maybe next year). Mashed potatoes are obviously no problem either, but pickles??
Now I have already written at length about pickles and the British love of them on Boxing Day in an earlier Blog, 'Creating The Perfect English Christmas',  and about the fact that to have them we have had to make them, throughout the year, so that they mature sufficiently in the jars to be perfect on the day. So we have chutney, pickled onions, simple pickled vegetables, and most important of all Piccalilli!!! Along with bread and butter it will be great.
Anything that is left over after these feasts will be used to make a pie and also some curry to keep us going into the New Year, or will be shared with our dogs, which is the best way by far to recycle.
So, our Christmas is sorted, and has already started, in  a very very Anglo/Romanian manner, and all of the hard preparation will be worth it, I know.
In the 7 days we have remaining before the big day we have been invited to spend time with many of our friends at their houses in the village. 
December the 21st will also be a special day as we have agreed with a number of friends on Twitter to have a Christmas sing-a-long at 12 midday GMT. We will all be singing along to Slade's 'Merry Christmas Everybody' and then posting links to the videos on  twitter for all to see. As long as the Mayans aren't correct and it isn't the end of the world that day, it should be great fun, and it is a fantastic thing to be able to do with people from all over the world. If you fancy joining in after reading this, just get in touch on Twitter using @HolidayinRomani, it really is  a case of 'the more the merrier'.
We have also been 'told' to be at the village bar on Christmas Eve afternoon by the boss there, Gica, to join in with the singing of traditional carols, (and probably singing a few English ones in return), the drinking of hot Tuica, and lots of general merriment. It is a very very good job though that we have ourselves as prepared as we are already, because I know that spending that afternoon at the bar is very likely to render us incapable of doing anything worthwhile during that evening.
Christmas is so much more of a special occasion when it has to be prepared for and planned in this way, and with all the hard work and effort it entails. Also when it will be spent with genuine friends and neighbour's who do actually care about us and our welfare. Although I know we will greatly miss our parents, brothers, sisters, grown up children and grand-children and British friends on the day, I also know that our British Christmas could not be any more special than it will be here, in a tiny village in the heart of Transylvania, Romania. 
It would be fantastic if one day, somehow, someway, we could get them all over here so that they can experience this special time in this very special place for themselves, but we will talk to them all on the day anyway so that we can feel that little bit closer.

What could make Christmas more perfect then than this? Well everyone's dream is to have a white Christmas isn't it? Sorry to boast, but we already have that too! About 8 inches of snow lying and more to come!














So may I wish all of those of you who read this as good a Christmas as we will have, particularly those of you who will be away from family as we are.


Craciun Fericit!!!


Steve, Alison, and John


For more information about why three Brits should be crazy enough to be here in this tiny village in a remote part of Romania (Transylvania) please have a look at our websites www.volunteerromania.co.uk and www.holiday-romania.co.uk or just read some of the earlier Blogs!

HELPING A FRIEND WITH ENGLISH GRAMMAR

I have a real task on my hands at the moment, and it's one that I took on willingly and enthusiastically.
I'm really enjoying it, because it's something a little different from my normal days of working on the house or chopping wood and keeping us warm, or even just blogging and tweeting to get the word out there about our work with the children..

I am helping a good friend, John Pirva, to translate his book into English.
As well as being an author, John is also an artist, photographer, film maker, and also just happens to be the owner of our favourite bar in Deva.
It's a fascinating book about his young life as a student in Romania during communist times, and his personal drive to escape, however he could, at great personal risk to himself from the Militia and Secret Police.
It gives a genuine first-hand insight into what life was really like for a spirited young man in an oppressive communist state in  the late 1970's and early 1980's.

The book was first published last year, in Romanian as 'The Memoirs of a Frontiersman'

Now, please understand, that I am not actually translating it, my Romanian is still virtually non-existent, I am ashamed to say, and John speaks English extremely well, so he is doing the 'base' translation for himself.
My task is to take John's own translation and correct the grammar and also the 'flow' of the words so that the story is easily read and easily understood. Occasionally, I also make suggestions to John about adding in little things so that international readers who have no experience of Romania have more of an insight into the country, as it was then.
It's not an entirely simple task, but it's one that I am really getting in to, and when I start a session of reading the manuscript to begin to correct it, I really do have trouble putting it down again.
I find the story so fascinating. 
When I was young I heard so many stories about what life was like behind the 'Iron Curtain'. The propaganda I heard informed me that behind it there were millions of oppressed people whose governments wanted nothing more than to destroy our Western way of life. In some ways John's story confirms a few of the things that I heard, particularly how he was treated by the authorities, but it also tells another story of people who were just going about their daily lives as well as they could. Those people were doing nothing more than trying to do the best they could for themselves and their families, just as we were doing in the West (albeit with far greater restrictions placed upon them). The last thing on those individuals minds on a day to day basis was any hatred for 'The West' or what western ideals were, as opposed to their own governments ideals.
A number of them actually admired the perceived freedom and 'magic' of the  the West, and like John, they wanted nothing more than to escape to it.
It really is a fascinating insight into the truth of the matter for someone who was bought up in a forces family during the Cold War.
John's spoken English is perfect, he and I have many conversations, sometimes about nothing in particular, but he is great to talk to.
His writing style is simple and relaxed, and his book reads as if he is actually sitting next to me telling me the story over a beer. I am very aware of how relaxed his manner is in the book and I am trying to do everything I can in helping with the grammar to maintain that style and the easy flow of the words.
John perfected his English whilst living in America, so there are times when I come up against 'American' rather than 'English'. I say 'come up against', because I am quite passionate about English as I know it and how I have grown with it. It is, or rather, it can be, a beautiful language, full of subtle nuance and with so much variation. That is, apparently, what makes it such a  difficult language to learn, but it can also be spoiled by the use of 'movie' words as if they are correct grammar, which very often they're not.
I want to help John's book to be read and understood wherever the English language is spoken, in all it's various forms and dialects, and in my view, the best way to do that is to try my best to make sure that the grammar is correct, and English.
It is also giving me an insight into Romanian, which is helping me a great deal on my journey to discover the language better.
Romanian is a common sense language where the prime object of a phrase comes first, with anything that is descriptive following. So, for example, where we say 'red car', in English, in  Romanian you would say 'car red'.
In reading John's own translation, before I do my best to correct it, I have found this type of phraseology in his script. Often it comes over a little like 'Yoda speak' from Star Wars, but it has helped my understanding of how Romanian is structured.
So, as well as being fascinating, giving me an insight into life in Romania in communist times and telling me more about a good friends life as a young man, the task has also been educational for me, no wonder I have been enjoying it so much.

Lets hope that one day I can help him to get his book published in English, so  that you can see for yourselves what I mean. If that happens I will shout out about it!

Steve

www.holidayromania.co.uk
www.volunteerromania.co.uk

VILLAGE SUMMER CAMP - AND THE PAIN OF ORGANISING IT!

When we work with the children here in Romania, it isn't always with the orphans, or the under-privileged ones, or the special needs kids.
When we can, we love to do something with the local kids from our village and the surrounding villages.
We were able to do just that this summer when we arranged a two week holiday club for them during their school summer break.
We wanted to provide something for our friends and neighbours of all ages, it wasn't just the children either, if adults wanted to take part they could, so we told them that the age range was 7 to 77!

Having the idea of doing it though was just the easy part. 
Setting the two weeks up proved to be much much harder to do than we had realised that it would be.
Our event would be entirely free for the kids to attend, the funding that enabled us to do this came from the proceeds from having some wonderful volunteers join us from America and Ireland, during the preceeding weeks.

We set about making all of the necessary arrangements, by firstly trying to speak to our local Mayor about hiring the Community Centre in the village, but without much luck. We had a meeting with her in her office, and explained carefully what we wanted to do. She seemed supportive and told us that she would speak to all of the people she needed to speak to and would start making the all of the necessary arrangements for us, before calling us back.
Well, of course, we didn't get a call (after all it is Romania!) and the many messages we left for her went unanswered. 
We were then informed by a friend that we actually needed to speak to our local priest as he was the person who runs the Community Centre.. So, Ali went and knocked at the priest's door, which is only a few metres up the street, only to be told a number of times that he wasn't available. After another week or so though, there was a knock at our door. When we answered, the priest was standing there, dressed in his formal black gown, as if he had just come away from the church up on the hill. He had heard that we were trying to see him, so he thought he would come to find out for himself what it was that these 'Mad English' wanted from him.
He sat down at our kitchen table, refused coffee or other refreshment (which told us that he wasn't planning on staying long) and Ali set about explaining to him in her fluent Romanian what it was that we wanted to do. At first he greeted the idea with some scepticism, and asked us for re-assurance that it was a non-profit making venture, and also for full details of what we would actually be doing, on a day by day basis. Ali explained as best she could, with the Priest interjecting an awful lot, not only to clarify things for himself, but also making it fairly obvious that he hadn't set aside much time for this meeting. After about ten minutes he called the meeting to an end by telling Ali that a formal written application would be required. That written application would have to explain in detail exactly what our plans were, what each days activities would be, and who would be running and helping out during the two week programme. He went on to explain that once he had received the written application he could then consult all of the other interested parties who needed to be involved in approving the application. He listed the  'interested parties' tapping a finger for each one, and he soon ran out of hands! The list included the Mayor, Church Wardens, the village hall Caretaker, the local Police, and also seemed to include most of the grandmothers in the village too!
As he left he shrugged his shoulders in that typically Romanian fashion. It was as if he was still asking himself what it was we wanted exactly and displayed an apparent disbelief that we were actually going to do exactly what we had just described to him. It also seemed apparent that he didn't actually want to take on the burden of the additional work it meant for him.
Anyway, after Ali and I had discussed the priests visit for about an hour, Ali set about composing the required written application. 
Now, speaking Romanian fluently, as Ali does, is one thing, but writing Romanian in a formal fashion (as was required in this instance) is an entirely different, and much more difficult task. Ali did her best though, and when she had finished we took our draft application to some Romanian friends, who very kindly read it, checked it, and then completely re-wrote it for us!
It was then delivered to the priest, who seemed a little surprised to actually be receiving it, but 
the following day there he was at our door again, this time dressed in immaculately pressed black trousers and a very bright white short-sleeved shirt, he had a large black 'man bag' in his hand within which he had our formal written application.
We invited him in and this time as he sat down at our kitchen table, he accepted our offer of refreshment, so we knew we were in for a longer visit than the previous one. He laid our application out on the table and started to explain to Ali that what she had written would simply not suffice. Without explaining exactly why 'it just wouldn't do' he told Ali that, together, now, they would write it again.
So, that is exactly what they did. This time the Priest seemed to be much more enthusiastic, it was as if receiving the formal application had convinced him that we were absolutely serious about running this programme in the village. No-one had ever done anything similar to it before, the Community Centre is usually used just for weddings, or elections.
The Priest began to dictate to Ali, telling her precisely what he wanted the application to say. Ali struggled to keep up with him, but did her best to write down every word that the Priest dictated. This process was taking an age though, as quite often the Priest would change his mind about how he wanted to say something, or the order he wanted the application to run in, and often Ali had problems understanding what it was that he actually wanted to be written down. I began to realise that it wasn't only us or our friends who found this task difficult, it was new to the priest as well!
Eventually, he realised that it might be better for him to write it all himself, which he proceeded to do, but only with a great deal of deliberation and mind changing before, after what seemed like hours, he finally handed over a piece of paper with a large amount of writing on it, interspersed with a mass of scribbles and corrections.
Ali took it from him, started to read it, asked a number of times for clarification, and then set about typing it up on the computer ready to print out, with multiple copies, of course, so that every one of the 'interested parties' could have their record copy (which I suspected would become paper for lighting fires quite rapidly)
Once Ali had finished and handed a draft of the document for the priest to check and approve, a number of copies were printed out and then a very small, but quite formal  signing ceremony took place. Ali signed on our behalf, and the priest signed on behalf of the village. Once that was complete, the priest started heading rapidly for the door gesticulating animatedly and telling Ali to go with him, which, of course, she did, rushing out of the door behind him, closing it quickly behind her as she left.
I had no idea what was happening so I just stayed home and waited, knowing that Ali would re-appear at some time and tell me all about it.
It transpired that she was taken all over the village to hunt down every one of those 'interested parties', so that everything could be explained in detail to each one of them, and each could read and check the written application and be given their copy of it. This included visiting the Mayor at her house, waiting for the Police to arrive at the Priests house for their consultation, and even trudging about in the fields looking for a number of the other people who had to be consulted, after all this was a work day!
Eventually, after hours of me not knowing where Ali was, or what she was having to do, she arrived back home and sat down, exhausted, to explain it all to me. 
We had succeeded in booking the Community Centre, but we would have to pay for it, which came as something of a surprise as we had been led to believe that such community events could be held at nil cost, and that we would have to take electricity meter readings so that we could pay for the electricity we used, which we did expect.
But, at last we had it. The building was ours, we knew where to get the key to allow ourselves in and to set up for the event. Great! We were ready!
We went down and had  a look around and the Hall was just what we needed. A nice big open space, plenty of tables and chairs, a small stage, plenty of light and easy to get to. It was perfect, except for one small thing, it doesn't have a toilet! 
In all or our deliberations we hadn't even thought to ask that question, we had just assumed that there would be one there. 
As anyone who ever spends any time at all with children will know, a toilet is a relatively essential thing to have around. It seemed that this one 'small' oversight on our part would completely scupper our plans, and after all of the hard work that Ali had gone through to make all of the arrangements, it was a real disappointment.
John and I took Ali to the village bar, (which is just over the road from the Community Centre) for a quiet drink and to consider our options, which included maybe incurring even further cost of hiring a portable toilet, if we could even find one!. 
Gica and Nutsi, who own the bar, greeted us in their usual friendly and enthusiastic fashion, but also quite quickly realised that we had fairly weighty things on our minds, and asked what our problems were. When we explained, Gica, as he very often does, quickly came up with the answer for us. He would leave the cafe toilets unlocked and any of us could come and use them if we had the need, and as they were literally a minute's walk from the Community Centre, it really was the answer we needed.
So that was it, we had the Hall, we had our dates, we had toilets, all we had to do was get the children to attend.
We composed and printed some flyers and posters and spent a day going around our village and all of the villages in our Commune (District) handing them out and pinning them up on any vacant space we could find in bus shelters, village cafes, lamp posts, etc, etc.
We went to one small isolated village, Cozia, up the hill and through the forest, down a rough dead end track, and parked the car. As I pinned posters up wherever I could find space, Ali went to the cafe where she could see a number of local woman and children sitting talking to each other and looking over in our direction, suspiciously, trying to work out what these strangers to their village were up to. Ali explained, showed the poster to the lady who owned the cafe and asked her to put it up, which she agreed to do readily, then suddenly one of the young girls sitting at the table started speaking in very good English;

"This sounds great"

She went on to ask all about the activities that we had planned and told us that she and two other friends would love to join in to help improve their English. We explained that helping to improve English was one of our objectives for the week, but that apart from the plans we had for the first day we had no formal plans. We wanted the children who attended to be part of the planning for the subsequent days.
There followed an animated discussion about what this particular group of children would want, which was primarily to use Theatre and Poetry to help improve their English. This led us down a whole new avenue for our planning of the event, but Ali promised that she would find some plays and poetry for them to work on together.
Then the mother of one of the girls asked what was an inevitable question;

"How much is this going to cost me?"

Ali explained that it was entirely free. That we were doing this only because we cared, and that we would like to give something back to the community who had welcomed us with open arms, and had done so much to help and encourage us since we had arrived.
The explanation though, was greeted by furrowed brows, and disbelieving glances between members of the listening audience.
Something being 'free' here in Romania is a difficult concept for the locals to understand. There is a deeply ingrained mindset that 'you don't get anything for nothing'. So, they always assume that there is a cost involved somewhere. This led to us having some wonderful, quite animated conversations with the parents of the children when we were finalising the arrangements. It took us quite some time to convince them that it really was free, and that there were no 'hidden' costs that they would have to bear. All the parents had to do was provide their children with a packed lunch.
For two weeks we would keep their children entertained all day long and they could have some free time to themselves. 
Wherever we are working, giving the parents that free time is as important to us as our work with the children is, we always try to plan things to provide a benefit to all involved, not just the children.
So there we were, everything was arranged, our community had been informed as well as we could inform them, and we could do no more, until the first day of the Holiday Club arrived. 

On that morning we went down to the Hall early to set up our planned activities for the day. This included a variety of craft activities, as well as some songs and rhymes in English that we could all learn together, and Ali had copies of the plays and poetry she had found online for the girls from Cozia. We unloaded all of the boxes containing everything we needed from our car, arranged the hall to be as sociable and as interactive as it could be, laid materials out, and placed bottles of water and plastic cups for refreshment on a separate table at the front...........and then we waited, it was all that there was left to do......wait for the children to arrive.

Ali, John, and I as well as an Irish volunteer who was still with us, propped ourselves as casually as we could on tables, on the stage, on the front steps of the hall, and we waited.

The allotted time for the start of the day arrived......and it went. 
There were no signs of any children arriving from anywhere, noticeable though, there were no children playing in the street either, which is where they would normally be.
We have become used to this in Romania. An agreed time for a meeting is always extremely flexible. As an example, if you are waiting for someone to arrive and phone them to ask them when they will be with you, their answer is almost always;

"Immediate!"

To the English speaker, this sounds great, but in Romanian it has the same meaning as the Spanish 'Manyana'. They could arrive any time in the next 10 minutes, two hours, the end of the day, or even tomorrow, you just don't know!
So, we waited, but we were all getting more and more nervous as the minutes ticked by without any participants appearing. 
After all of the pain of making the arrangements, after planning all of the activities, after putting all of the materials that we needed together, after researching plays and poetry as we had been asked to do, after making arrangements for the toilets, after arranging the hall, after going around all of the villages to publicise our event, surely the children would come........wouldn't they?

After about 15 minutes we saw one father, walking slowly up the road, holding his daughter's hand. They were in no hurry, we weren't even sure that they were actually coming to us, there was certainly no apparent concept of them being 'late'.
Eventually they paused briefly at the door of the Community Centre, before stepping inside.
they both looked at us, we looked at them, and then Ali went over to greet them.

"Buna Dimineata!"

The father said hello in return and then asked for re-assurance that he had actually bought his daughter to the right place, it was so empty. After saying yes he was in the correct place, with a small nervous laugh, Ali got the father to provide name address and phone number so that we had emergency contacts if (and hopefully not) they were needed. Whilst he was filling our form out for us two more children came in, each clutching lunch boxes tightly under their arms.
One group, the girls from Cozia had still not arrived though. It was already over 30 minutes past the published start time and they still hadn't appeared. We were really disappointed. They had seemed so enthusiastic and Ali had done a lot of internet research to find the English language plays and poetry that they had asked for.
However, we swallowed our disappointment and set about singing some songs with the few children we had, to get them warmed up and fully involved in the day ahead.

'Morning has come, night is away, rise with the suuuuuun, welcome the day'
'La la la la................'

We were singing a  song that the Director of The Waldorf School had taught us when we were teaching English to the children there. Wide arm movements tracking the movement of the sun, standing on tip toe to signify it's height. It is a great song for getting children going in the mornings.

Suddenly the door opened again, and there stood three slightly older girls, looking red in the face from exertion and breathing heavily. It was the girls from Cozia. At first we were worried, thinking that something had happened to them, but they quickly explained that they had been unable to get a lift to be with us, so they had decided to walk down the hill and through the forest, but they had got lost on the way, which had made them late. They were so apologetic, but we were just so happy and relaxed to see them. We sat them down to recover their composure a little, gave them each a drink of water, and then got them up to sing and join in with the rest of the day.

That first day passed quickly, but very successfully. The kids made mobiles of their names out of paper, plastic, and string using water colour and crayons. Clever huh? Because it helped us too to learn their names.
Another child had joined us at lunchtime, to help us sing more songs, and to make fish from A4 paper, colouring them brightly with water colours and crayons and then hanging them on string. John and I made an 'aquarium' backdrop for the front window of the hall while the kids also made seaweed and before the end of the day we created the 'aquarium' in that front window to hang all of the fish, weeds (and a bag of chips that I made....get it?.....fish and chips?) for all of the locals to see. 

We also had two young boys in the group for whom I had made paper aeroplanes, which was a mistake, because the rest of the day for them was a riot of chasing John and I around the hall to try and 'spear' us with those planes, whilst Ali worked with the girls from Cozia on their plays and poetry, and our Irish volunteer worked with the other younger children drawing and painting.. It was great fun though, and as we left and locked the hall up behind us that evening, we looked at the window with the aquarium in it, and at the adjacent window with the name mobiles hanging in it, and considered what we had all done together during the day to be a real success. 
We had great fun doing it and even though we had only had 7 children attend, they had also seemed to have fun.
The decorations in the windows had bought the hall to life, with a riot of colour. What Is normally a drab building without life had suddenly seemed to have woken up from it's slumbers.
We also had the mother of one boy, who we saw standing in front of the building just staring at the mobile that her son had made. When Ali went over to ask her if everything was OK she just turned and said, with a look of wonderment on her face;

"I had no idea that he knew how to write his name".

She left, walking up the road hand in hand with her son, both wearing broad smiles on their faces. She was also brushing his hair with pride, praising him loudly for what he had achieved. He was the first to arrive the following day, and he arrived early! Just a she did on every subsequent day.

To tell the truth, we had helped him to draw outlines of the letters of his name, and he had cut them out, coloured them and hung them on string. Of course, we never told his mother that, but by the end of our time with him, he knew how to write his name without any help from us, along with a lot of other things.
That first day had been a real success, despite the lack of numbers attending, and we went home relaxed, happy, but totally exhausted (after a beer at the bar of course!).

The rest of the days of those two weeks seem in hindsight to have passed so quickly. Each day we had new craft activities that the children had thought up for themselves, we had more songs, and Ali worked with the girls from Cozia on their plays and poetry, and inevitably, of course, there was face-painting.

(At this point, dear reader, if you haven't already given up, you may like to read another of my blogs on the trials and tribulations a 'mature' man from the UK has with what should be, a simple task.
http://steveromaniablog.blogspot.ro/2012/10/face-painting-hidden-dangers.html
This time though, I didn't make the mistake of allowing the children to paint my face!)

Each day the numbers of children grew, as word went around that we were all actually having fun.
At some point too I also decided that I would do something with these children that I had done with the children at The Waldorf School, I made up a very simple American style marching song for the younger ones to learn English numbers with.
You know, the type of song that you see in American movies, with young recruits jogging up  a trail and their drill sergeant leading them in a rousing song in time with their movements.
Only mine went very simply;

'hup.....hup.......hup!!!
1,  2, 3, 4,  5, 6, 7!!
...8,9,10, and 11!!!

Hup, 2, 3, 4........hup 2,  3, 4'

12, 13, 14, 15

16, 17, 18, 19

and 20.....20.....20..........20!'

I lead the singing, of course, giving myself the role of drill sergeant, as in my modesty I have to say that I fit quite naturally into that role, and the children followed me around in a circle, marching in step with me and repeating each line as I sang it.

On one day, during our lunch break, we found ourselves sitting at the cafe, surrounded by all of the children.

When time came for us to return to the hall and continue our fun activities, I led those children out of the cafe, over the bridge across the stream and down the road to the Community Centre, single-file, stamping our feet as we marched, all of us singing our marching song, very, very loudly and with some vigour.

The other residents of the village all came out to see what the noise was about and watched us, incredulous, eyes popping out of their heads, having absolutely no idea what was going on. When we all got into the hall we just collapsed in a fit of giggles at the looks on the villagers faces.

By the time we had finished our two weeks with the children we had nineteen in the group, with some other odd ones who came and went.

At the end of each day we hung everything the children had made in the windows at the front of the hall, and at the end of each day it seemed as if the building itself was coming more and more to life and getting happier and happier.

We had always intended that at the end of the camp, we would hold a little show for all of the children's parents and for anyone else from the village who wanted to come and see what we had been doing. Having the girls from Cozia working on two plays though meant that this would become a much more formal occasion than we had envisaged that it would be at first.

We told all of the parents, and anyone we met in the street or the cafe that we would be holding this show on our final afternoon, hoping that we would get a fair crowd to attend. 

We weren't to be disappointed.

On that last day we had a small crowd of parents, grand parents, friends and villagers waiting outside the hall, ready to come in for the show. We had to swiftly put out more chairs, there were so many who wanted to attend.

As the crowd was waiting, the mayor drove up the road in her little red car, and on seeing the group of people in the street she decided to stop to find out what was happening. She knew full well of course, because we had made sure that she received an invitation, as did the priest and all of the others who had helped in making the never ending arrangements for the Summer Camp to happen. She mingled amongst the crowd, shaking hands with some, laughing with others and having seemingly quite serious conversations with the rest, it looked almost as if she was electioneering.

I walked over and asked her into the hall, but she declined, and swiftly went back to her car and drove on up the road to her house.

We thought it a little strange at the time that she didn't stay, nor did the priest or any of the other organisers attend. It was only later that we learned that we had upset the mayor by 'by-passing' her to make our arrangements with the priest, and that this had got us embroiled unwittingly in some local politics. We have just tried to carry on as normal since and ignore it.

The show went so well, and was received by our audience of about fifty people enthusiastically. We had an exhibition of all of the craft work that the children had done, we performed the songs that we had learned together, we did our marching song around our audience, and the girls from Cozia performed their plays as our grand finale with their faces beautifully painted in the way they had practiced during the weeks before with the face paints. One of those plays was a funny and friendly representation of shopping in our local shop/'bar/cafe with two of the girls dressing up as Gica and Nutsi, who I have mentioned previously. It was a shame that they were both too busy to be there, they would have enjoyed it, but we told them all about it later, and showed them the video too.

As we finished, to a great round of applause from our audience, there was an air of disappointment that it was all over.

As they left, clutching all of the craft items they had made, all of the children, and a number of the parents asked when we would be doing it again, and we promised that as soon as we could, we would. 

Maybe next time though it will have to be in a different hall in a different village. After the upset we had quite innocently caused with the mayor, we may not get the support and co-operation in future that we received this year.

Maybe we will even find another hall which is complete with a toilet! 

Like the one in Cozia maybe! 

After all, it would only be fair to give the stars of our show an easier time than having to walk through the forest to reach us every day again!

The following day we went down to the hall, and we thoroughly cleaned it. Walls, floors, windows and window cills. no more dust, no more grubby hand prints (which weren't from the children anyway) and no more footmarks on the floor. 

The only acknowledgement we received after our hard day of cleaning was a demand to hand the keys back immediately, so that the hall could be made ready for a referendum to be held three days later. None of the village officials offered thanks for what we had done with the children, or for how clean the hall was when we handed it back, which was much cleaner than it had been for years. This is Romania though, and that sort of attitude is only to be expected. If we had been asked to do run activities for the children, and not have volunteered our services, it would have been different.

As we left the hall though, one of the children's mothers came back to us to ask us for copies of some of the photographs we had taken during the week, she wanted to make us a special 'thank you' certificate for doing what we had done.

We didn't need thanks, but we gave her the photos later anyway, we had enjoyed the two weeks as much as the children had, and we will be doing it again, somehow, some way, without (hopefully) causing any upset next time!

Our rewards come from seeing the children who were at our camp in the street every day. Whereas in the past they would see us, many would say nothing, and pass quietly by, some might have given us a quiet, formal greeting in Romanian;

'Ciao'

'Buna Zuia'

'Seramona'

Now we get cheery waves, laughter and always accompanied by;

'Hello'

'Good morning'

'Good Afternoon'

'How are you?', and lots and lots of giggles.

It's all the thanks we need.

Steve

www.volunteerromania.co.uk

.

SO? WHAT IS SO GOOD ABOUT ROMANIA???

So?
What is so good about Romania?

This is a question we are often asked. Why do three Brits want to come from the land of 'milk and honey' that Britain is perceived to be and come to a country like Romania?
How can we be that crazy?

The really sad thing is that the people who most ask us this question are Romanians themselves.

I don't think I will be able to explain it fully in words, it is a country that needs to be experienced by others from these more 'affluent' countries for it to be fully understood. It really is more about one's own feelings more than it is about simple logic, and maybe, not everyone will appreciate it. However most of the visitors we have had from all of these 'more developed' countries, including the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Taiwan, and the Philippines have seen what we have seen, and they have felt what we feel. 

In our words they have gone home from Romania, with a Romania shaped hole in their heart's that can only be filled by returning one day.

I can also say, without a shadow of a doubt that what follows is not true of all Romanians. We have a number of Romanian friends who have returned home from other countries to settle back here with their families, and they are more appreciative now of the real truth of Romania by their own direct comparison, and they are very proud Romanian's.
There are also a small number of younger Romanian's who are also steadfastly proud of their country and demonstrate it by doing the simple things, like driving Aro's and older Dacia's, being satisfied with and proud of these older Romanian models rather than hungering for the BMW's and Mercedes that so many yearn for.

A lot of the younger Romanians we meet though express a wish to do nothing more with their lives than escape the country to the 'riches' of the West.
I have even heard one on Twitter recently who said they 'hated' this country.
Well we don't hate it, we love it, so when asked we give a simple answer, life here, at least in the place we live is 'Real'.

I honestly don't know what it is that young Romanians dislike so much about their own country, to me it is so sad, and it is as much a mystery as it is a mystery to them that we actually WANT to be here. 
I honestly can't explain why those Romanians show such a callous disregard for their country, particularly in the way a number of them are prepared to leave litter and spoil beauty spots here without worrying about what others coming along behind them will find. I am dismayed by those peoples lack of respect for their own country. I really don't understand it.
Maybe it's the lack of development, maybe it's the lack of decent roads, maybe it's the perceived corruption, maybe it's just the 'maybes' of a 'grass is always greener on the other side' way of thinking. 
Maybe it's as simple as the glamour and the lies of Hollywood movies that they have seen and believed in as they have grown up.
I simply don't know.
It may also be that these people believe what they hear from others who have returned after short stays in western countries with stories of the fortunes that they have earned. Stories that are quite simply lies, designed purely to make those people out as some sort of hero for going away and coming back 'rich'. Lies because in our experience many of them seldom do come back richer, they return to the same lives they had before they left, perhaps even worse off, living in homes that their families have fully owned for centuries, houses that their families actually built for themselves, and going back to scratching a living out of whatever they grow and can sell.
Any who do bring money back seem to use it up very quickly and go back to wishing to return to make more.

I honestly don't understand why these people can't just stand back and look at their country and see it for the beautiful place it is, so full of promise, with so much potential, and stay here and help to build it, not just for themselves but for future generations.
In our little way, I hope that we ARE doing it, I hope that we are helping to get the message out about how beautiful and how wonderful a country Romania is, particularly by comparison with the 'more developed' countries.

True, we also know a few who have actually returned with enough money to start their own businesses or to build themselves new homes, but they are very rare and only a very few.

When we are told by young Romanians what they hear from other young Romanians about what they have 'achieved' while they are away, we usually just smile and shrug our shoulders. We have learned though bitter experience that to try and refute these claims or explain the realities of this 'other' life is futile. Our words often fall on deaf ears simply because our audience doesn't want to hear the truth, they don't want to believe that there isn't something 'better' out there for them to go to. So, in a very Romanian way we often just shrug our shoulders and leave them to it.

We have tried, so many times, to explain that the greater amounts of money that these people believe they can make in 'more developed' countries also gets eaten up in higher costs for the ordinary things. How the costs of coffee, beer, cigarettes, food, rents, etc, etc are all so much higher and take a much greater lump out of the money you receive than they do here in Romania.
We know that salaries in Romania aren't very high, an average of 350 Euros per month for a teacher or a doctor for example. We also know that costs of living here are rising, but not as fast as in other parts of Europe or the UK. By comparison though, the basics of living here are still also much cheaper than other countries.
The net national debt is also much lower in Romania than in many many other countries and it wasn't all that many years ago that this country owed nothing internationally.

However all of this talk about financial comparison isn't answering my own question, it is merely arguing what I see as a mistaken point of view that so many young Romanians have.

So many of our friends and the volunteers who have been
here want to record their stay in this way, with their
handprint on the end wall of our garage.

Life here is 'Real'.

What does that mean exactly?

We live in a village, but we are close to a city, Deva. Most of the people of this village still live life from what they can grow and breed to eat, making money occasionally out of the surplus that they grow and by bartering with their neighbour's. We are beginning to do the same, we have fenced off an area of our large garden so that we can plant our own crops and this year it bore fruit, literally. We succeeded in growing 3 months worth of potatoes, a chest freezer full of cherries, onions we are still eating, our own garlic, and so many apples that once we had bottled about a ton, the only thing we could think to do with it was make cider! (not that I have any objection to that!). Next year we will start earlier, do even better and grow more, we may even get our own chickens for eggs. 
We might stop short of keeping our own pigs though, and yes we do sometimes hear a pig being slaughtered for meat in the village, but that is what 'life being real' is all about.
We also have neighbours, real neighbours. 
In the UK we had people who lived next door, but they weren't neighbours. They cared nothing for us or our welfare, they cared only about themselves, and yes, we did try to befriend them and show that we cared, but to no avail. When we did try we were greeted by an attitude that we were freaks and in one case outright antagonism, so like everyone in the UK does, we gave up, and lived our lives entirely separately from people who were only living a few feet away.
Families too in the UK aren't the close-knit groups they once were, family 'ties' are getting weaker as sons and daughters move on, move further afield. Divorce and family separation are also contributing greatly to this. I'm sure that all of this is as true in other 'Western' countries as it is in the UK, but it isn't so true here in Romania.
If we stay home for a few days and our neighbours don't see us, they call on us to see if we are OK, or they tell us off for not coming out when they do see us.
I know that if we needed help, we could go to our neighbours and get it. We wouldn't have doors shut in our faces and not everybody requires some sort of payment, they would do it because they are our neighbours and because they are our real friends.
It's also true of our friends who live in the city, if they don't see us they call us to see if we are OK, if they think we need help they offer it without being prompted in any way.
We get those offers from so many here, so many more than who would have genuinely meant it in the UK.
As a result we are prepared to do the same for them, whenever, and however we can.
Family ties are also much stronger here. At particular times of the year, particularly Easter and Christmas, sons, daughters, cousins, aunts and uncles gather from wherever they are in the world to be together at the family home. A phone call on the day doesn't suffice here, not on it's own anyway.
So, in a nutshell, that's what we mean about life being 'real', genuine mutual respect, genuine sharing, genuine neighbourliness (probably not a real word but it says what I mean), genuine unconditional friendship, genuine love.

Not a lot else I can say.
Anything that you would like to say?

Steve

www.volunteerromania.co.uk
www.holiday-romania.co.uk