Countdown for me-- three months!
Countdown for the Inauguration -- It's TODAY! --January 20, 2009

Circuit City and many other businesses are closing their doors, one of my favorite painters Andrew Wyeth died recently, Soldotna's Kenai River Bridge has finally been completed, and my son Grey is now an available single daddy again, so obviously life in the USA is going on without me. But my time here is getting short, and my thoughts turn homeward more and more every day. Last month Sara, the 28-year-young daughter of my sister Lee in Seattle, died unexpectedly and we were all devastated. I send my deepest sympathies to Lee and to Sara's two sisters Leslie and Lisa. But I am glad I got to see Sara before I came to Romania. This is yet another reminder of how fragile life is, and how hard it is to be so far away from my family for so long.

The Obama inauguration will be today, and I was amused recently to see the following sign at my neighborhood shaorma joint (Romanian fast food with a decidedly Turkish influence -- thinly sliced chicken with french fries, cabbage, cucumbers, and garlic sauce, all together in a wrap). This one has cheese (cascaval) and it says, "Truly a taste of changes":

Many apartment bloc buildings are getting fifth floor additions (in the US we'd call this a sixth floor). Romanian law says that buildings more than four stories are required to have an elevator, but many buildings don't. These wooden top-floor apartments are much cheaper than the usual concrete ones, so they are creating more affordable housing for young couples (about $60,000, instead of $200,000 or more), but owners will be climbing lots of stairs. Here's the new view from my apartment terrace:

Other interesting observations -- My students can't conceive of a jury of one's peers, since in Romania jurists must have law training to get paid jobs to sit for all juries. People can't understand how a jury of peers could possibly know enough about the law anyway, and it isn't likely that the system will change anytime soon. Case law isn't the rule, so each case is decided separately. Also, there is no such thing here as bail, so offenders go to jail and stay there, where they may be waiting a long time.

I wish I hadn't baked yummy homemade chocolate chip cookies last week. My students love them, but our seminar is finished this term, so I better find someone besides me to eat these! Quick! But thanks so much to Lucy and Jane for sending me brown sugar and chocolate chips so I could share this taste from home. Too bad I keep tasting them!

A New Year, and only a few months left in Romania!

I was able to travel to Munich to spend Christmas with my son Peter and his family in Germany. It was good to connect again with my own "real" life, and I was delighted to see my grandchildren Mimi, Zarah and Janek. I was happy to see Zarah learning to walk again on her new foot and sadly damaged legs. We are so grateful that she survived that horrible bout with bacterial meningitis in the spring, that just watching her walk again seemed like a miracle to me.

Back in Romania again, I have been really sick. Every time I catch a cold it seems to settle into a bad bronchial infection, ever since I acquired asthma in the 90s. So now I'm coughing my guts out and hoping the antibiotics will work soon. My university class will have their final exam this week, and after that I can take more medicine, then go back to bed and pull the blankets over my head.

I am happy to share some pictures from Christmas:

Janek with his mother Judith, and Peter working with Mimi to label smoked salmon for his Alaska Wild customers:

After returning to Constanta, I went to pay my electric bill, and this is what I found... the line of people waiting to get in the door to make their payments! This is the way life is in this post-communist world that is still based mostly on an all-cash economy. I guess I'd better go get in line myself, and use this new quality I've acquired since living in Romania -- patience!

I was so happy to get 2008 photos of my daughter's family in Oregon, so here are some pictures of Dara, her husband Matt, and her children Sabra, Gus, and Vivian: