Touring downtown Medias with Tanya and Kay.

Cata's uncle is the first priest (white hair). He'll be conducting our engagement ceremony at this very church in September.

Easter midnight mass was a new thing for me. Everyone brings candles and light them beginning with the priests (who walk out of the church with lit candles). Then everyone walks around the church for a few loops.

Above, Christina (Cata's niece) and his mom on the far right.

Viorica Abagiu, April 2011.

After boiling/decorating the eggs we then eat one at each meal. First you say to someone "Christos Anviat!" to which they answer (while simultaneously hitting the top of your egg with theirs) "Adevarat a inviat!" This translates to "Christ has risen!" , response: Indeed he has risen!". The egg cracking continues until there is one person left who's egg survived all the beatings. The winner can either save their egg for later or just crack it themselves and eat.

I spy something Romanian.

BEFORE: My mini masterpieces before their red dye bath.

AFTER: Ta-da! We had a lot of fun with the eggs. Placing the leaves just right is tricky but I like the fun designs.

This was our Easter feast. Cata was grill-master extraordinaire. We ate grilled squash, mushrooms and onions with pork, beef and mici (meech). Delicious. Mici are like a very tasty sausage w/o the casing, get more info about them here.

Easter:
My first Romanian Easter was fantastic. We spent the holiday at Cata's mom's house in Medias and invited my friends Tanya and Kay (K-eye) along for the trip. The city looks even better now than in the winter. Everything is blossoming and the air was refreshing compared to Bucharest smog. Our five day stay was felt like a relaxing vacation. Viorica was overwhelmingly kind and generous to us, her 'guests'. Every meal was filled with delicious homemade food, bread, desserts and wine or brandy. I think she was on a mission to make us gain several kilos before we left. She totally succeeded.

Easter is a very important holiday in Romania (at least for the religious). I partook in some new traditions, such as dying eggs with leaves and getting sprayed with perfume the day after Easter. The eggs I have in photos but the perfume spraying event was not documented. The tradition is that on the day after Easter boys and men come to the homes of women they know (and in the case of young guys, girls that they like) with perfume bottles in hand. Once they are greeted and welcomed into the house they say "I hear you have a flower in your garden, I've come to water it so that it doesn't wilt". That is when I got sprayed on the head and neck with perfume. The next step is to offer your visitors a drink such as wine or brandy. Once they are done, they go to the next house, and repeat. By the end of the day, all the women smell terrible and the men are liquored up. It was bizarre but fun.

Easter Highlights:

• No Easter basket this year, but Cata did hand me a 2.5 liter bottle of coke since that is what I had given up for lent. I was high on sugar the rest of the week.
• I tried and truly enjoyed eating smoked pig fat. Honestly, with a nice chunk of bread, it tastes like the best butter imaginable.
• I went to Dracula's dad's house. He wasn't home though...
  
• The weather all week was perfection. It was about 70 degrees and sunny everyday we were there. Everyday!

Piata Victorei.

We sat in the sun like lizards. It felt so good!

The dahlia is painted onto Dalian's name day cake. Nice touch.

Everybody likes pictures, but a little bit of video is fun too. Catalin is much better at remembering to shoot video than I am. Here are a bunch of short clips. The highlight for me is video #1 which documents our peddle boat adventure at Cismigiu Park.

Homemade burgers. Tushi Doina gave us the pickles (which she actually pickled) last time we visited.

At some point you just have to embrace winter. The other day we found a "work out" area in the park near our apartment (Cismigiu). Dorkiness ensued...

Above right: This is the cake after I shaved the bottom and flipped it.

I played hostess a few weeks ago and threw a birthday party of Catalin at our apartment. Why our apartment? Well here in Romania if it is your birthday tradition calls for you to pay for everyone's drinks...the *entire night*. This can be a bit pricey if you decide to party at a bar, especially since Romanians know how to throw a few back. An added incentive was that we wanted to welcome/introduce everyone to our new apartment.

To prep for the party Cata and I made a list of booze to buy. Early on I told Cata that I'd bake his birthday cake. Of course I would, this is what we do in America- bake birthday cakes from boxes. Little did I know what lay ahead at the grocery store. Betty Crocker is not an international flyer, I found out. Also, Romanians don't seem to care too much for pre-mixed box cakes. I could not find anything but a chocolate bread mix that was pictured in the shape of a bread loaf. Desperate, I grabbed that and a powder package of "frosting" (no pre-made tubs of frosting available either).

So there I was, a box who's directions Catalin had translated, a gas oven w/o any listed temperatures, no mixer and a funky powdered frosting. I cooked the cake a day in advance to play it safe. Needless to say, I burnt the crap out of the cake. Oven temp was clearly too high, but hey can you blame a girl?! I refused to give up but also refused to bake another darn cake (first round of cursing). Solution? Grabbed a knife and shaved off all the black from the bottom and sides of the cake. I then flipped it over--at which point the darn thing cracked straight down the middle. After letting it cool I made the frosting. Well, I thought I was making frosting but actually it was a cake filling (more cursing ensued). To boot, I ran out of the powdered sugar needed to make the frosting. So the frosting tasted weird, whatever. I slathered it on the cake and whipped up some white icing with which I intended to write "Happy Birthday Catalin!". Since I was short on space, icing and sanity I ended up writing "Happy 31st Cata!". The letters looked like they were written by a 5 year-old but no matter, the cake was done. I slid it in the fridge and plopped myself down on a sofa chair. The whole process took forever. It was somehow frustrating, stressful and exhausting!

I am happy to report that we had a wonderful party though. I decorated the apartment with tons of balloons, streamers and birthday banners. Everyone came over, drank, ate and danced. Catalin, ever a wonderful boyfriend, said he "loved" the cake. Actually, by the time we sang and ate cake it was late enough in the evening that everyone was happily content with my cake. Hosting success, I'd say.

p.s. An extra perk to having everyone over was getting all these beautiful flowers from guests. That has to be one of my favorite Romanian traditions so far.

UPDATE: Songza stopped working in Romania (possibly Europe?) but another site works just fine for me, it is called Jango Best of luck!

Unlike a lot of people, I do not have a large music library. Call me lazy, but I just don't feel like having another massive thing to pour money into, backup and maintain. Photography serves that purpose just fine, believe me. This is why I love pandora so much, it does the work for me, is free, and it kind of knows me by now.

Too bad you can't get pandora in europe (technically you can if you use a hack but I've found that to be an unreliable method) Good news is that I've found a comparable alternative- Songza. You can type in an artist and create a station to your liking, just like pandora, but so far I have been enjoying stations made by other people. Stations like: "2011 Grammy Winners", "George Straight", and my favorite by far "90's One Hit Wonders".

In other news:
-With the help of google maps plus a real map I am starting to find my confidence moving about the city. It feels great.
-The weather is starting to suck less. C'mon winter, get over yourself already.
-I am volunteering for an NGO
-I am working toward getting a residence permit.

UPDATE: Songza stopped working in Romania (possibly Europe?) but another site works just fine for me, it is called Jango