The spring weather brings rain and sunshine in unexpected times, but this weather always brings me back to the time when I was in Romania. Here is a story about one of the first days of when I was in Pitești, Romania in the summer of 2009 when the weather was thunderous and gloomy. My roommates were living in a dormitory about 20 minutes (by walk) from the school were teaching. The three of us were the only foreigners of the building and this dorm is for everyone, families, students, workers, and random people. This is a typical day in the summer of my Romanian trip. I would wake up, teach, walk back home, swim at the local pool and then go out in the evening with some AIESECers (friends from an organization). Ah, that was the life.

“Good morning” in Romania

“Queeny, Queeny, wake up. There’s no water.” My roommate woke me up in the early morning to tell me that there wasn’t any water at all. First, we have no hot water and then this morning, you can hear the faucet struggling to pump the water through the pipeline. It was just wonderful. We used the water that we get from the well nearby. We have about 10 1-liter bottles and we walk about a mile  up a little hill to get clean water from the communal running well. We use up the water really quickly so we walk to the well every other day. Later on in the day, the water came back, but at one point I thought, “What am I going to do without water? Hmmm, this will be a new and interesting experience.”

School Training

Then, I had a training on Presentation Structure with the kids. This training had a lot of information. They were really funny acting out scenarios of what to do and what not to do while performing a presentation. The two groups were really creative and fun to watch. It was my friend’s first training, Andra, and she was very nervous. Every other training that I hold, there is an AIESECer who wants to learn how to hold and facilitate a training session, so they would prepare the lesson with me and we teach together. A usual lesson has an intro, exercise, and recap of what we taught. Andra did really well and she studied all her material and memorized all the information. I learned to just read over the information and see what examples I can connect with the body message and teach them using my experiences. It was a nice training. We did lots of acting and it was a blast.

20 Minute Walk Home

“This is what brings the world together, seeing how beautiful other people and cultures are and embracing the differences of each other.” My roommates and I were resting after the last training of the day and after eating out third ice-cream. We were talking about the kind of traditions we do in different cultures. I was exchanging information from my Chinese culture and what I learned from Japanese culture and they were telling me about Slovak and Ukrainian culture. We were listening to music from Chinese music to Ukrainian music. Then we were listening to a song in Korean called Kiss and it was when I felt the moment. A moment of WOW.  I’m in Romania…with two roommates from Slovakia and Ukraine…listening to Korean music. It felt as if the world had just come together a little closer. How it’s so nice to learn about different cultures, dealing with different kinds of people and, in the end, seeing how beautiful it was. It was a fantastic moment. A little cheesy, but fantastic!

Chaineria