Year One

Yup, so it’s been over a year now since we left for Romania.  I guess to sum things up (especially since I haven’t blogged anything in like 3 months) we’ve rented or stayed semi-permanently in no less than 4 apartments, got engaged, went into “exile”, had a wedding, got married and got a job.  It’s been pretty eventful, or so it seems… it’s tough to know what to blog after all of that.  Apparently you get to have less adventures the more stable you are in life.

After being here for a year it’s tricky to remember what would be interesting to write for people although one of our good friends continues to hound us for more info.  It’s because of him that I’m writing this right now (thanks Andrew!). 

Maybe it would help us to remember some of the things that we haven’t done for a year:

driven a car ● worked more than 18 hrs in one week ● gone to Wal-Mart ● ordered wings from Wing Zone ● eaten at an all-you-can-eat buffet ● got carded when buying alcohol ● used a microwave* ● dried our clothes in a dryer* ● used craigslist ● gone through a drive-through ●  got a free refill on pop*● talked to a telemarketer or other solicitor ● met a vegan or Jehovah’s Witness ● been in a fire/safety drill ● written a check ● got asked for 25 cents ● used a vacuum cleaner ● rented a movie ● eaten blue crabs or have anything with Old Bay seasoning on it.  

I’m sure the list could go on but I think that’s fairly impressive so far. 

*we were in the US Virgin Islands for a week where we had the chance to engage in these activities

So what are we up to now?  Well, our job is finally paying us for certain things and we have gone a couple of solid months without dipping into savings so far.  Like I said earlier we went on a short trip to the US a few weeks ago and I will write about this later, but for now we have a lot of free time on our hands and we don’t really know what the next step in our lives will be.

I spend a lot of my free time playing computer games and Amanda has felt bored and direction-less for the first time in quite a while.  I suppose we are both a little bored but we both definitely want to continue to live here for a while as Romania continues to impress us.  We do have a number of ideas that we are tossing around but unfortunately all of them will take a bit of a financial investment and we are hesitant because both of us are fairly miserly with our funds.  On the other hand, starting a business is a sure-fire answer to the coveted visa issue.

Sandu and Jiu-Jitsu

My good friend and former student from Moldova, Sandu, is here in Bucharest now.  He had been attending the military academy in Chisinau and got a scholarship to attend the academy in Bucharest.  As I understand he was one of only 10 Moldovan cadets who got accepted due to academics and behavior.  It is very rare for kids to get out of their village/town in Moldova let alone make it out of the country legally.

Anyway, Sandu encouraged me to start training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu again.  I talked with my friend who owns a BJJ school here in Bucharest and he said that Sandu could train there for free since he knows of Sandu’s circumstances.  Sandu entered in the annual Romanian BJJ championship and took second place, beating plenty of talented opponents and losing to one of them as he hadn’t trained in BJJ for a couple years at that point.  It was a fairly significant win.

I’ve been training for about 3 months now and my back has been in surprisingly good shape.  I am more aware of what will give me pain so I wrestle more conservatively but of course at least I am networking and working out and all that.  I avoid IB profin and other stuff because otherwise I tend to over-train because I feel good at the time which leads to bigger problems in the end.

At the end of this month we will host a guy from Denmark who is traveling around the world giving free Jiu-Jitsu seminars/lessons in exchange for a place to sleep and food to eat.  Since he linked our blog I feel we should link his as well: http://www.bjjglobetrotter.com/.  It’s a really good idea and worth checking out.  We will take him to Moldova, to the village with us so he can see the project I started a few years back during my Peace Corps stint.

The Trip to the US

As we mentioned earlier, we took a trip to the USVI about a month back now.  This involved us flying to Belgium, heading up to Amsterdam, flying to London, Miami and then finally St. Thomas and spending a week in St. John.  As usual, we had a good time.  But those of you who know our visa situation may ask “Wait, so how did you circumvent the 90-day-within-180-days-issue that has traditionally plagued you guys before,”?  Good question.

So we heard through the grapevine that although the 90-day-within-180-days law exists on paper, like most things in these parts, nobody is really checking or cares.  Still, this was kind of a big risk for us since we didn’t want to miss our flight out of Romania due to some border official who actually wanted to do his job.  We found out that you can overstay your visa in so many ways if you have a doctor’s note saying that you need to be in Romania for medical treatment.

I won’t go into details but we happened upon a doctor’s note with proper official stamps that said Amanda had to be in Romania due to the emotional trauma of having a miscarriage (not true).  In case that didn’t work I had one that said I was having back surgery (also not true).  It turns out that we didn’t need either one.  The Baneasa airport (the other airport that our wedding guests did not come in to) is probably the most third-world-esque airport in Europe, and in case you are wondering I am including Chisinau’s airport in this statement.

First of all, Baneasa doesn’t have lines, or at least they didn’t when we flew out; they just kind of funneled people toward the customs officials and “security point”.  Despite going around to the front of the funnel and being astounded that others were still voluntarily waiting in the back of the funnel, we got our passports looked at and stamped without having to bust out our fake doctor’s note.  We thought we were doing pretty good as we were still early for our flight.

Our optimism was shattered when we noticed that at the end of the funnel was an enormous backup and still no line as you started the process of going through the security line.  As half the security staff was sitting around telling jokes and flirting with the cute female security staff, the other half was running a remarkably inefficient security process.

While people were sitting in a hot room, with all their winter gear on of course, the security guards were allowing all people with small children to go to the front of the line, all the way from the back of the line so as more people piled up in the front, all the families were taking their kids through the security check-point which is time-consuming as nobody starts to take off the necessary gear before getting up to the metal detector.  Obviously people started to complain and the security had to bust out their biggest security staff guy to push people back.

At most airports they ask people to be prepared to go through the metal detector by taking off belts, coats, second coats, jewelry, hats, boots, shoes, or whatever else needs to come off and to do this way ahead of time.  Not here.  The metal detector would go unused for up to 10 minutes at a time while ladies with fur coats, earrings, furry hats, sunglasses or whatever else is necessary to look good on the airplane waited to take everything off when it was their turn to go through the one working security point.  To make a long story short we waited, sweating for about an hour standing up next to irate Romanians who couldn’t understand why things were taking so long.  But we did make our flight.

When we got to Belgium we had to somehow get from near Brussels to Utrecht as we were Couch Surfing.  Coming out of Eastern Europe we were initially stunned by the prices of everything in Western Europe, including public transport.  We decided to hitchhike in the freezing cold to avoid paying for a bus and the first guy we hitched with was an Albanian dude whose English was limited but he did “love America”, so much so that he took us as far as he could and bought us coffees.  We met a Dutch family at the gas station who crammed into the back of their car so we could get where we needed to go.  Nice people so far.

The first guy we surfed with in Utrecht is a young composer who composes that slow, epic music you hear in movies and video games.  He had a dog, which Amanda liked, and as she slept her cold away I went and wandered around Utrecht.  Very nice city.  Our next stop was Gouda (pronounced “how-duh”) which is obviously famous for its cheese.  We stayed with a very nice couple; a Dutch guy and Romanian girl who now live in the Netherlands.  They were really nice and we spent 4 days there, including Christmas where we went to a community center and helped hand food out, clean up and provide a very nice dinner for the folks there.

Our next stop was Delft which is famous for their blue and white ceramics.  We went to check out Rotterdam on the way which is like a brand new city with modern buildings because it was bombed out during WW2.  The rest of Holland is really old so this was a big contrast.  In Delft we stayed with a younger guy who was finishing up school to be an architect.  He was really cool too, so we really lucked out with hosts in the Netherlands.

Eventually we made it to the Virgin Islands, just in time for the New Years Eve firework show.  As usual the USVI was a bit of a shock coming from freezing Europe.  We did the normal stuff: kayaking, swimming, chillin’, seeing the family and all that.  I was disappointed that only one of my brothers could make the trip but it was good seeing Luke all the same.

Our trip back was less adventurous.  We only had two days to make it from Amsterdam to Brussels so we stayed a night in Amsterdam and a night in Brussels but didn’t really get to see much.  We couldn’t find Couch Surfing hosts and Amanda didn’t want to hitchhike again so we shelled out some cash and it wasn’t in Romanian Lei.  We were a little worried about getting back into Romania due to the passport issue but we had little to fear as the customs agent didn’t even look at us and stamped our passport, reminding us not to overstay our visa.  We assured him we wouldn’t.

The good thing is that we avoided a second round at the Baneasa airport because there was too much fog on the runway so we landed in Otopeni.  We got back to the apartment, took a few days of naps and got back into the swing of things.  That’s where I’m leaving off for now.  I have a class in a couple hours so I will play a little bit of “Bloons Tower Defense 4” before heading out.  Take care for now and we will post something else at another time.