Why Romania?

I am what you would call a modern-day explorer. It all started when I was 13 and heard about a 4-H trip to Montana for the summer. My parents decided to let me go, never realizing the impact it would have on my life. Ever since then, I haven’t really been able to stop traveling. I’ve been on short term exchanges with the Lions Club to Australia, Austria and New Zealand; a long term exchange to Germany with the Rotary Club; I even traveled to Poland for a college course. All told, by my 23^rd birthday I’d visited 26 countries.

During my senior year at Alma College, I was trying to figure out what to do with my life when I decided to turn in my application to the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps was something I had been thinking about, reading up on and researching for years and it just seemed like the logical next step to feed my nomadic addiction. I thought I would have a year or more to wait around until I got a country selection, but that was not to be. Less than one month after graduation, I found myself in Ploieşti, Romania beginning my Pre-Service Peace Corps training.

Why Romania you ask? The land of Nadia Comaneci, Dracula, and 160 proof moonshine called palincă. Simple, they placed me here. One week before final exams (and three weeks before flying out) I got a telephone call from my Peace Corps recruiter, a nice guy named Jason. Jason said there was a last minute spot that had opened up and even though it was earlier than we had expected, could I be ready to leave in Mid-May? I said yes and he said “have fun in Romania.”

Since arriving here, I’ve really taken Jason’s advice to heart. I spent ten weeks in Ploieşti, a large, southern city near the capital Bucharest, for official training. While there I made friends with the 71 other Volunteers in Romania; including three others from Michigan (one guy, Mark, I had known even before leaving. We worked together in the summer of ’05 at Camp Daggett). On weekends we would take trips to other towns and places in Romania; including climbing up a mountain in Braşov, attending a rock music festival in Roşia Montană, and going to the museums in Bucharest. Life during training was work too; I taught an English summer-school class, volunteered at a local orphanage, built a drainage ditch for a Habitat for Humanity house, and had four hours of Romanian language lessons every morning.

Since training ended, and moving to Zalău, this truly has become my hometown. When I walk through town children yell “Hello Teacher Kate” from across the street, and friends and co-workers stop me to practice a few words of English, or to hear me practice a few words of Romanian or Hungarian. And although I miss Boyne City and my family and friends there; this is an experience well worth the effort. This is one Rambler who’s turned Romanian, for the time being at least.