Work, Run, Travel

It's Sunday morning here, and I'm munching on my Müsli with yogurt and sipping my German coffee. The Romanians are surprisingly big fans of all things German, particularly their luxury cars. Half the people in this city live in the crappiest apartments you can imagine but also drive BMWs. It's a little ridiculous.

I'm finished with my first week of work. I'm working in the Public Diplomacy section. As the website will tell you, the Cultural part of that department (which I primarily work in), "arranges lectures, seminars, workshops, and training programs in various fields with an emphasis on the rule of law, civic education, women's issues, international affairs, and free market economics." We also work with educational institutions, like Fulbright, and with high school and college students. I call it the "we love America and so should you!" section. :) For example, June 10th is Flag Day (who knew!), so 51 teams of Romanian high school students have created projects representing each of the U.S. states (and D.C.). On the 10th, they all get to go to the Ambassador's Residence for Pizza Hut pizza, games, an American movie, etc. The job of PD is a little easier in Romania, because, for some reason, the Romanians LOVE Americans.

As some of you know, I'm training for the Marine Corps Marathon while here in Bucharest. This has been quite the challenge for several reasons. The stray dogs get jumpy when someone is running near them. Romanian drivers have NO respect for crosswalks and have nearly hit me a couple of times. The sidewalks are treated as roads and/or parking lots, depending on the time of day. They have "bike lanes" which they set up right before the NATO Summit was hosted here, that no one knows how to use correctly. Oh, and Romanians don't run, so they all look at me like I'm crazy. However, I do live next to a beautiful park, which makes it easier.

So far, I've just stayed in Bucharest. Next weekend, I will be hitching a ride with Kevi to go to Brasov, which is a city in Transylvania, north of Bucharest. Apparently, it's a really gorgeous old German city. I'm also making plans for other trips in the future. I would really like to visit Bulgaria and Turkey at some point.