Romania week 17 - National Romania Day & A Winter Wonderland!

Hello everybody!
It's short and sweet this week....I really didn't know what I was going to write this week, until we had a major snow fall on Friday, and then the celebrations for the National Day of Romania yesterday, (December 1st). This week has been less than busy due to me being a little sick with Romanian 'flu', they only have one word for 'flu' / 'a cold' here, and it means flu (grippa) so I'm not exaggerating!!! I'm fine now though, so please no lemsips through the post!
So, Friday's snowfall led to great excitement from all three of us volunteers, (but perhaps not the patients, who can be cold enough in the hospital). At finishing work at 6pm, the usual total darkness was illuminated by several inches of wonderful thick, white snow... and after taking great delight in walking through the huge piles of shovelled snow on the pavements we got home. After calling several of my neighbours, to try and organise a mass snow ball fight, us three volunteers, our friend & neighbour Deli, and some of the foster kids from the orphanage engaged in a fun half hour game of 'let's throw all our snowballs at Dan!', I'm not quite sure how this came about, but hey it was fun! I think these kids had been practicing!!!!

Saturday (December 1st) was national Romania Day, and on Saturday morning I went with Deli, to the local supermarket car park...and not to do any shopping! (let me explain)... ...some of her brothers / sisters, Ben, Timi, Naomi & Ildiko were playing in a band, and were joined by a kids choir from a school. They performed a half hour concert, including the Romanian national anthem... to celebrate the day.

I subsequently learned that with a very mixed population of Hungarian & Romanian people, these events are not exactly widely celebrated... there were several large Romanian flags being sporadically hung outside houses in the town. After these supermarket festivities, and later that day, I again got involved with the fore-mentioned kid musicians, in 'Round 2' of snowball fighting... again i must admit defeat due to overwhelming numbers of opposition, but me and the kids Dad put up excellent resistance for a while!!! I must also report a further food parcel from one of the neighbours, of fantastic cakes and desserts, which have been devoured without delay! (Who needs chocolate advent calendars?!)

I have been enlisted in helping Sari (my neighbour) with her English Test preparations, which I'm glad to be helping out with, especially as her mom also sends food round to our house! hmm.. hmm... I love Romania!!!

Here this week on December 5th or 6th, they actually have socks full of presents for the children, as well as Christmas day... so I'm hoping to hang some socks on the front of our house to see if anyone will give us anything... I'll let you know how that goes!!!! Hope everyone is well.
Regards from Romania!
Dan