Today was kind of the day that we made our leap from being visitors to being real members of the community. It started off as a normal day. The sun was out and it was bright and warm. Liesl did school in the morning and I spent the morning working on my writing and posting.
We knew that there was some chance that the kids would be coming to the house again today so we worked to make sure that Liesl was doing school early and I was getting lots done in the morning as they might come back at any time. We had little idea when they would be likely to arrive, if at all.
We were supposed to go on a picnic today and had made all of the food for it and the girls were so excited but we never managed to make it.
We were right, in the middle of the afternoon suddenly a huge group of kids, about sixteen of them, came down the road and into the house. Suddenly it was a massive party at our place. Kids all over the house with toys and kids all over the hard.
An older girl, thirteen, came over today who speaks English very well. She spent a bunch of time hanging out in the kitchen with Dominica. Since they were able to communicate nearly fluently they just talked and talked.
I tried my best to work through everyone in the house, but it was hard. In the later afternoon the neighbour from next door came over and said that I was to go over to his place. We had not met yet. So someone came and got me and told me to go out and meet him. I grabbed Dominica’s interpreter and across the “road” we went.
We went over for at least an hour. The cognac flowed rather generously which made for quite the start to the afternoon. My neighbour makes the cognac himself from his own wine. I got a tour of his farm including his “secret” winery. He hooked me up with two litres of his homemade wine, too. The grapes grow right up on the hill behind the church. I got a tour of his home and all of his antique furniture as well. Good insight into Romania life, the house has a lot of original stuff.
I was over there for a few hours before there was a group of kids going to get ice cream because the ice cream coolers have been brought into town now. So my interpreter and I went back to my place, dropped off the wine and a lot of other things that were given to me like a tomato spread and tomato juice and I grabbed cash and we ran down to get ice cream.
We returned, met back up with the neighbour and were set off to go see his gardens down the road a bit. We ended up getting side tracked and taken to my interpreter’s home where I was introduced to her parents and grand parent and promptly was sat down on the porch and a glass of their own homemade cognac, tuica and wine were all brought out!
We were there for quite some time before I finally managed to return home. But that did not last for long. My interpreter’s father had been sent down to fetch me to go meet what I can only best describe as the deputy county executive who wanted to meet me and had wine stores to open. So I went down there, it was dark now, and the three of us sat out testing out his wines (he had red, white and rose of his own) until nearly midnight.
I was in very rough shape by the time that I got back home. Not only had everyone insisted that I try their wonderful, home made drinks all afternoon and all evening, but I had been interrupted and never even had a chance to get any food all day, either. We had been just about to leave to go to lunch for the picnic when the kids first arrived and we had been trying to do the picnic somehow all day. Dominica and the girls ended up doing an indoor picnic late in the afternoon after all of the kids left without me. My sandwich was saved for tomorrow.
Dominica and I have to be up early tomorrow because our neighbours, not knowing what my night was going to be like, invited us over for coffee at nine. Originally they had asked us over for coffee at six, but that was just a bad idea. So we made it nine. Tomorrow is going to be a very difficult day.