Christmas is coming and I am here, not there where I supposedly want to be. But, as I am staying here, I have to think of something. In the Christmas Eve Justine and Luis visited us (Praise and me). We had a nice Latvian dinner-rasols and piragi. My first time baking piragus, but in the end it turned out pretty good. A bit burned, but eatable. And rasols-oh my God! I missed it so much, but more than that I miss my mom’s salty cake-sala torte(bez silkem).
So, we ate, exchanged gifts. Justine and Luis gave me a CD with 150 manele songs. What is manele? Even I can`t really understand, because some says that only gypsy`s have manele-gypsy manele, but some says that there is also Romanian manele. So.. It`s a traditional music. (A hint-when I come home-a manele party is guaranteed)
Next day Praise and I went to our mentor’s house.
| T |
iganii vin cu capra-three gypsy`s, one is playing drums and singing, one is dressed in bright colorful clothes, holding in his hands goats head made from wood , dancing along, the third one is a woman, who is simply standing in the background and after this show-takes the money (because all of this is made in order to earn money).
I was sitting in Catalins (mentors son) room and talking through Skype. Suddenly i heard some kind of singing outside. Not giving any attention and continuing the previous thing with Skype. After a minute my mentor comes in and tells me to go outside and look. I went outside and saw the situation i described in the beginning. It was fantastic. After this performance my mentor gives them some money and with this it ends.
| B |
abele impart colaci-an old lady is sharing with round(looks like hamburger) bread (and in the bread is a candle),vine, meat, in order to honor the dead. They believe that when we eat these things, the dead are eating also. Exactly this i experienced today. Then, when you take these things from the old woman’s hands, you have to say „Boda proste” (God, forgive the dead).
I`m sitting by the table with Praise and our mentor and we`re eating sarmale. Suddenly somebody is knocking on the door. An old lady comes in, holding in her hands a basket. In the basket there is everything I mentioned before. (We found out about this tradition few minutes before it happened to us, because our mentor put on the table round bread and explained why they baked the bread round today) We took the things and thanked the old lady.
Unfortunately no snow for Christmas in south and that really is bad, because the feeling is not so strong without the snow on the ground and in the air.
But the grate news is that it snowed here, not much but still. First time was when we had an activity in Clubul Copiilor (Children Club)-Pictura si jocuri (Painting and games). We were making Christmas cards for the kids in hospital, suddenly kids started to scream ???„nindja”??? (Don`t know how to write the word correctly) and ran out of the room. Of course i heard “ninja, ninja” and thought “What the hell? Is there an actual ninja outside?”. So, it turns out that ?nindja? is a synonym for zapad which is snow.
Good to know now!
A picture from a fast food restaurant next to gara in Craiova.
