Where oh where has my Winter break gone?

I cannot believe that it is the 4th week of the semester already. What have I been doing? Not posting about my winter vacation that's what!

To sum it up briefly... I saw some deer, celebrated the New Year in Cluj, went to a rivalrous hockey game, and through it all I carried an 8 inch plastic she-man doll around. Yep, you read that last part right.

Now a little about my day with the deer...

I accompanied my assistant director (Joe/Jóskabacsi) to his cabin in Ivó with his lovely family. Ivó is a small town at the bottom of Harghita mountain, but I was not entirely sure where it was until I figured out its Romanian name and could look it up on google maps. Izvoare, fyi. Joe is one of my favorites at the high school. I think he sees me as one of his children (they are my age). However, he doesn't speak English. He is currently in the adult English class that I teach, but we haven't quite mastered the language beyond "Good morning! How are you?" He is a nervous sort of fellow and worries unnecessarily about small things. He is always scared to talk to me and tells my counterpart "I have to tell Meg such and such. What should I say? Will she understand me? What do I do?! Here, give her this pumpkin." So when his children who speak English came home for winter break, he was very excited to be able to invite me along to their family outing. While in Ivó we visited a reserve for some deer. I believe they are special deer, but I am not an expert. Jóskabacsi was very excited to see the muflon. I did not know what he was talking about, even after we sighted them, I still have no idea. looking up the word in English didn't help either ...'mouflon'. We were lucky enough to see the mouflon from a distance. Apparently they are rarely sighted. After we went back to the cabin for some traditional Székely food. It was a kind of mushroom, paprika, and cream dish. I am not sure what it's called, but it was delicious. Another great day in the Székelyföld.

Mouflon!

With two more weeks of vacation my travels got a bit crazy as we zigzagged across Romania. First, it was off to Ocna Mures to visit Megan, then to Cluj-Napoca/Kolozsvár (Troy in pocket) to celebrate New Year's, then back to my town of Udvarhely, THEN to Miercurea Ciuc/Csíkszereda for the hockey game, THEN to Filiasi to see Lindsey's sweet pad and her cat, THEN to Bucharest to welcome another PCV back to Romania after having surgery in the states, AND THEN home. Aaaaah. Winter break you were well spent.

Soft kitty, warm kitty, gigantic ball of fur...