The midget and a chicken

So I get dressed in my fanciest attire and head to the outskirts of the city to a castle where they hold medieval dinners!! What fun. So we walk in and first they give us a shot of the Romanian version of vodka, claiming that it would give us a big appetite. All I felt it do was burn my insides. We sit down and get situated and a bad come out and play one traditional Romanian music!! What great setup for the perfect dinner. We get our food...

And it looks delicious.. This was the main course but we also had salad, bread and dessert. After dinner and before dessert we had someone in our group celebrating their birthday. So they get up and Sind the Romanian birthday song. La multi ani!! Everyone grabs the birthday boy and start dancing in a circle 

 Then out of nowhere a midget and his magical chicken runs out!! 

How cool is this.. ??? 

The dinner was very nice and .... Uhhh surprising!! 

What a beautiful evening!! 

Parties and food and Stuff

I know this posts title is a bit vague. I'm starting to feel more comfortable here and nothing is strange anymore. I haven't posted I. Two week but I can assure you that the only thing you missed is me partying and cooking. Haha 

At a club named embargo for st partty's day!! As usual some beer pong and drunk people!! :)

Me and my friend from Armenia!! :))

I'm not sure who this guy is but we look nice :))

My trip to Moldova!

Being spontaneous Quita, I brush off not travelling to Italy (long story) and I pack my stuff and travel to........ Moldova!! 

Okay, you're probably wondering where that is; it borders Romania, a 4 hour bus ride from the city I study in. Moldova is the poorest country in Europe, with that being said, I'm rich here! 1USD is 13 Moldovan LEI. And things here are cheap too! For a pack of cigarettes it's 5 Moldovan LEI. That's only 1 quarter!! Haha. And a meal at a nice restaurant costed me about 45 Moldovan lei. So we get on the train in Iasi and pay the equivalent of 15USD and have the worse bus ride of our lives! I mean seriously, we were hitting more potholes than my cousins on 4/20. Haha, but we arrive safely and we find our hostel called funky mamaliga. This. Place. Is. Awesome! Colorful, quirky and fascinating. I mean even to get here there was a small adventure because this place doesn't have a real sign, it haut has suspicious spray paintings on abandon buildings that says funky with an arrow point in the hostel'a direction. Haha, pretty sketchy eh?

Here are some photos: 

So I'll be here until Sunday which give me just enough time to check out the vineyard/winecellar that Moldova is known for. Since it's really big I'm hoping to find one I might actually like!! Haha

Pa pa for now!!

7 wonders

So Cory and John-Paul (the other 2 Americans in Romania from my school) discovered a game at a local cafe called seven wonders. It's an awesome board game that has very high ratings. I can appreciate this game because it has brought us many nights of fun with our cross cultural buddies, not to mention I beat them 4 times in a row. The place we found it at is called kiddo cafe, it's a 3 minute walk from our dorms and they have the perfect environment for an evening of board games!! 

Also this past week in the world, except the USA of course; there was woman's day. And here in Romania in the land of love and public displays of affection every woman purchased or was given a bracelet similar to this one:

These bracelets are said to be good luck in the upcoming spring! It's really an awesome tradition to see everyone participate in this and for me to be a part of it.

And of course to round off the week there is an awesome women's day party!!!

Thanks for reading !! 

The Second week of Romania

So I'm sitting in my dorm room bored out of my mind on a Friday night. Hmm.. Not good! So I text some people on Facebook and I learn of this party that's going on tonight. So I hop in a taxi with some people from my hostel and we head to "The Undrground"... Spooky eh? I walk in and slice my way through the thick fog of cigarette smoke and make my way to the coat check. The bass is pounding... Boom,boom boom... And I'm loving the music. So I walk closer to the bar and I find out this is not a club. It's a  monstrous parking garage with strobe light thousands of people and cheap liquor!

I know, I know these are all bad pictures but... They capture the night!

And later in the week there was this... A trip to the mall with Akaki, my Georgian friend and glen?? A girl I met from Moldova.

And then there are Romanian quesadillas.. Bleh! :( 

It was my first bad food experience here!! Haha so don't order this when you came to Romania! :) 

Thanks for reading, catch me if you can!

THE CIty

Okay so at this point in my story it's February 8th. This is the day I met my first friend! A guy from Israel named Yhizar. We met in the dorms and he showed me the closest places to get food.

So this leads to my second meal in Romania. Shaworma. It's a chicken wrap with sour cream, a rendition of sauerkraut, and pickles. This one here is what I ordered without the wrap to see what was inside. What a delicious lunch!

In the next few days I meet a lot of people, including the girls that I'm with almost everyday now: Priscilla and Cecile. Priscilla is from Singapore and Cecil is from France. These girls are really cool and they needed a third person to complete the group. No, just joking but they're my "roll dogs". Haha.

We do a lot together, especially go to cafés. There are cafés everywhere here! It's like a hobby they have. I've been to at least 15 different cafés since I've been here. But we enjoy going to kiddo cafe the most, to get away from all the cigarette smoke.

The only downfall of cafés, well the downfall of Romania is how much everyone smokes. Smoking here is a right, it's allowed everywhere; bars, cafés, clubs, restaurants, and they even have huge smoker boxes in the mall.  So every time I go somewhere I take off all my things and lay them on the balcony because they wreak of cigarettes.

We also go to palas, it's the big mall here. It is just like a big mall in the US, except it's in Romania.
And the gelato is cheaper! It costs about 2 LEI for a cone, about 60 cent USD.
Seaweed is a restaurant in the mall witha pretty funny slogan in English. I captured this because it represents how the signs that are in English have very bad grammar and sometimes mispelled words. But hey, I'm dlad they try!

 This was a Valentines day display and if you look closely you can see priscilla in the E.

We also toured the city!!!! These are pictures from an actual tour and our own tour that we decided to take. The first one is the train station.

Im unsure of what the next two are, but the landscaping is pretty!

The picture below is a picture of a store that sells attire that is Romanian colors. No, it isn't but I thought the flags were pretty cool.

This picture... Hmm a bit confusing eh?

This is a statue in the union plaza

This is the local theatre and below are pictures of the inside.

and then there is this guy who is just hanging out! 

and  my new friend... Ummm, well I think she forgot to mention her name.

and me on the steps of the theatre...

this is a beautiful building in town....

Here you have one of their beautiful churches

And these last pictures are pictures of  random things that I thought were cool as I walked around the city! Enjoy

These are pictures from the tour we took with the Erasmus program. Erasmus is a program for European students that offers scholarships for them to study in another European country. Most people here consider us Erasmus because the program I am with is so small. I just go along with it because it's easier to just agree that I'm Erasmus than to explain my exchange program.

P.S. These are also the coolest people you will never meet. 

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