Eurojournal - 4 July 2006

Just as I am feeling ready to depart Cluj and do something else, I meet these fabulous people. I volunteered a little time at PATRIR, the peace center, organizing the literature. Their resources on gender are amazing. There is so much information on trainings and education from around the world. It was interesting categorizing and deciphering in Swedish, Romanian and other languages. They want me to reorganize the literature on their server. We’ll see what I can accomplish in 2 days. Later I had tea (and dessert!! A raw vegan dessert I might add! Fresh fruit on a nut crust.) with the American woman I met at PATRIR. We ate with some Romanian friends of hers who were really warm and friendly. Later a man at the next table heard our accents and asked where we were from. He was Romanian but just graduated from Berkeley. Great conversations. I’ve been missing the connections with other people. At home I enjoy just observing conversations and hearing others’ stories.

James has been attending the ICUU symposium. I have walked past the lectures several times and they sound so stimulating. I peeked in once and I could see James on the edge of his seat. This is a far more academic conference in comparison to the one in the states we have attended. I can see he is in his element.

The children and I played games learning colors in French and Spanish. Liam’s favorite is bleu and azul as we did an exaggeration of the bleu pronunciation “bleeeyewwww” with tongues hanging out and the like. Luna preferred to say “rojo.” They had to find four things in the room with the selected color and say in the language. It was quite fun.

Earlier this morning the housekeeper in the dorm, Elizabeth came in and offered us breakfast. Of course we could not eat it. She insisted in Hungarian and brought it to us. Byron had a feast of sliced meat and cheese. I didn’t have the heart to tell her we were vegetarian, so I told her she was very kind and thank you in Magyarul (Hungarian). Thanks to Byron! Luna and Liam learned to address older women as “nini” so they said “koszonom, nini!” (thank you, auntie) to Elizabeth many many MANY times. It became a game and she seemed to enjoy it as she picked up Liam and hugged him and tickled Luna.

I have observed that initially the people here appear very stern and rarely smile but when they connect with you they are very warm and friendly. They are open to making physical contact with children and adults. Personal space is different than in the states. On the street people will walk past you and stand close. If one walks slow, they will pass and perhaps bump a little but it’s not personal. No one takes offense. I had a hard time negotiating the meaning of all of that last week. Now I can walk down and pass someone up in a space about 18 inches wide like there’s no tomorrow. Some sidewalks, or lack thereof are so thin with cars parked there is about a foot between the car and the wall of the building.