We live in interesting times

The countdown's running, and we've got a day left with the team. Tomorrow (Friday the 24th) will be the big party, with all sorts of good foods and good music. It'll be a nice time, even if it is a prelude to sadness.

Monday was Rob's birthday, or Robanalia as we like to call it, so we all went down to Otilia's bar and had cake and wine. We stayed up, had a lot of laughs and a fabulous time. Took the party back up to the camp and had more laughs. Sean continues to have a love of tuica and decided that faceplanting on the floor of our room would be a good idea.

Tuesday was Sober Day, designated so because there are so few of them. (It's interesting to compare party habits between the seasons I've been here. Last year it was more steady and small, a little bit of tuica and wine with nearly every dinner, and the very occasional party. This year, it's way more wild, and we run out of wine and beer pretty quickly. I'm still careful, of course!)

Wednesday, Ioana (the one we work with in the trenches) invited us over to her house in Zalau, which also has a swimming pool. So we had a great dinner (sarmales, mici, placinta) and some time in the pool. They also had a ping pong table, so I had great fun scaring people off with "Ping pong is in my blood!", though I did lose a couple of games - I get overeager with the slam attempts. We played games and chatted well into the night, though a handful of people left around 11:00 and Val was one of them, but I'm usually up for a good time. We got Brian to sing some Frank Sinatra, and a few guys got thrown into the pool.

Today we're making poutine as a side dish for dinner, so we'll have to leave for camp pretty soon. Val brought three St. Hubert poutine packets, we asked Eric to buy something approximating mozzarella cheese, and Teresa & Ioana are making french fries (cartofi pai! I'm learning more food names this year.)

I finally found something good in the trenches: three bronze shards - something not pottery or bone! It's been so hot lately, it must have been in the upper 30s today.

I have also finished The Sword of Shannara (all 726 pages of it), and have begun Soul Music by Terry Pratchett.

Right now we're looking up ways to get to Constanta, since we're planning on spending a couple of nights there. We need to look up flights and hostels and all that. So I'm gonna leave this post at that and I shall write again.