Iasi

We finally made it! Iasi is our final destination and its good to finally be here. We spent our last day in Bucharest walking around, we walked down from Arcul de Triumf and around Herastrau park then to piata charles de gaulle. We continued down Calea Aviatorilor which is a big boulevard with large trees and stopped by a ice skating rink, we didn’t skate but it was kind of fun. After that we found a starbucks and went in for some hot chocolate and gogosi (go-goush) which is like a donut. The hot chocolate tasted a lot like Milo but just a bit sweeter. Brittany didn’t really care for it, it wasn’t sweet enough, I thought it was good but I think having been exposed to Milo helped. This was are first experience at an American institution in Romania, it seemed pretty normal just in a different language. After starbucks I have know idea the way we traveled but somehow we made it to Piata revolutie and Piata enescu we’ll both admit that some of the areas we walked through seemed a bit shady, but hey we made it! Piata enescu is named after a Romanian composer and is attached to Piata revolutie, this is where the big new years celebrations were held just a few days earlier. When I say a piata I mean basically a giant intersection or sometimes there is a large plaza. We spent a while looking at the monuments to the Revolution which was a little bit emotional for me as I have been reading a book about the revolution. Someone referred to the revolution as “embarrassing” for Romanians the other day. I’m not sure that that is totally true I think that they are very proud of their revolution. I think that it is incredible. We looked around for bullet holes as you are suppose to be able to see them still but we didn’t see any, it was too dark. At this point we were a little confused about our location especially because I won’t use a map much to Brittany’s chagrin. We made our way down to Regina Elisabeth street and finally got our bearings, we had been down there the night before. I realized that I was completely turned around but now having my cardinal directions correct we headed to Piata Unirea (plaza one) there were a lot of people down there, ice skating, singing and selling things. We walked down Bulevardul Unirii which is based on the Champs Elysees in Paris except that it is 1 meter wider. Ceasescu (Romania’s past dictator) was always trying to one up everyone else. There were little shops set up along the boulevard with vendors. We walked down until we made it to the people’s or parliamentary palace which is the 2^nd largest building in the world next to the Pentagon. I’m not sure who one upped the other in these endeavors, the US or Romania. After this I started feeling sick so we headed back towards home. On the way back we grabbed some water at the Unirea shopping center. Which is a huge mall, the shopping complexes here look so much different than in the U.S. that we never would have known what the building was if it wasn’t for a book that I had read. Then got some soarma which is a pork sandwich with cabbage, onion, pickles, mustard and mayonnaise. I ate a little bit but was feeling pretty crummy ever since I ate breakfast next to a cat. We caught the 300 home and went to bed.

     In the morning we woke up and got moving, we headed to the train station at Gara de Nord in Bucharest we waited in line for a while and then the guy behind us asked us a question which we couldn’t understand so he cut in front of us ?!!! the guy that was in front of us talked to him and he said something about limba Romana (Romanian Language) I guess if you don’t speak Romanian you get pushed back in line (ha ha). Getting tickets was a lot easier than I thought as was getting to our train. It was a seven hour train ride, kind of funny that you can get across the world in a plane in 7 hours but only a few hundred on this train. We are suppose to ride first class because it is safer but didn’t mention it and were booked in 2^nd which turned out to be just fine, we had to ward off people who tried to talk to us but other than that it was great, much better than the plane to London and roomier. We talked to one guy for a while in English, he had just gotten back from Oklahoma doing some military training so that was fun to finally talk to someone. Around 7pm we made it to Iasi! We waited for a bit and finally were picked up and taken to our new home. It is a large apartment, 2 bedroom 2 bath with a large dining area but small kitchen it’s a little dated but it works great, we’ll spend some time cleaning a bit tomorrow and hopefully it will begin to feel like home. In Romania the don’t open windows because they believe the current will make you sick, you can’t sit on the floor either because the current travels on the ground. Its kind of an interesting concept but we will probably be opening some windows.

    Today we went to church there are about 10 regular members. When you add 6 missionaries (2 sisters and 4 elders) plus 9 BYU students it is quite an influx. We had missionaries translate for Sacrament and Sunday school but we didn’t have them translate in RS and Priesthood meetings, I was really lost but Brittany seemed to do better than me. I think that we both realized we have some work to do when it comes to the language. The rest of our group showed up in the afternoon, it was fun to see them. We had dinner and talked a bunch before returning home for the evening. Brittany and I took a nap then walked around the city for awhile before returning home to hook up our computer to a computer monitor that is here (for some strange reason I brought my monitor adaptor) and watched “The Ultimate Gift” and now we are headed to bed. This is a really long entry! I don’t think they will be this long in the future. So if you are still reading, don’t worry we won’t write so much in the future.

La Multi Ani!!!

Justin si Brittany