Discovering Romania

Tuesday, 22 October 2013

Little Kurdistan in Romania

In the high season of cold and illness our Kurdish volunteers Yusuf and Ekrem decided to organise a Kurdish night to get our thoughts away from the almost winter-like weather in Bucharest. We invited friends from other organisations and the party could start!

The table full of food showed the Kurdish hospitality very well: cigköfte, icliköfte, lahmacun and baklava. All either very spicy or very sweet, nevertheless VERY tasty. Besides the good food they also managed to create a nice atmosphere with traditional dances and Ekrem suprised us with some romantic and tragic songs.

We discovered their culture which was totally unknown to me when I first came to Romania. Now, living together with two great kurdish guys I have realised, that Kurdistan is not just a rebellious region in the Middle-East. Kurds have very strong national identity (I realised that when I referd to Ekrem and Yusuf as turks in the beginning, never making that mistake again), difficult history, vivid culture and an extremely interesting language which is nothing like the Turkish.

Probably the most important thing I have learnt in my EVS is not to prejudice anything or anybody. If Kurds are mentioned in the Estonian media, for example, the article almost certainly also includes words like "war" or "terrorist". What they don't know is that people from that "extremely dangerous" place can be one of the nicest, friendliest and the most helpful you have ever met. And sure, they love their people and region.

Wednesday, 2 October 2013

ESTONIAN INTERCULTURAL NIGHT

Estonian Night
İt was great time with my friends in our hosting organization (C.A.D.D.R.U) for Estonian night , because we have been inside a nice atmosphere with theirs culture , I mean like music presentation and sweet foods also history of Estonia about soviet union how they got their own freedom it's just the success of brave People !!! It's amazing with a few people , and that caller big success of freedom in my mind. . .

I want to write about theirs delicious food we eaten the foods Kama ; it's a drink , they are normally drinking in the morning with breakfast : it's was good , for example I liked it and kaerahelbeküpsised ; it is kind of cookie and very strong because if you want to eat you should broke your tooth while she (Eliise ) cooked it, she was used some materials like wheat , sugar and eggs but the taste was good and finally Kartulisalat : I love it normally its with pork but Eliise made it without pork for us and I helped her while she was making it , I eaten a lot salad

I spend great time with cool people :)))) thank you so much "Eliise" because we knew what is the Estonia, history of Estonia, culture of Estonia

Joseph Thuis (Yusuf Akyil)...

Tuesday, 17 September 2013

Limba română

Coming here one of my main goals was to learn the Romanian language. Not that it would be extremely useful in my future life, but I am of the mind that every language is a virtue, besides, speaking the local language would make the life here so much easier.
Fast forward in time - 2,5 months have passed, my language is a lot better than in the beginning (it's not hard to better than the level 0.0), but the better shows more in understanding than speaking the language. It's interesting to see the development in simple everyday situations.

Our neighbourhood is filled with traders who sell literary everything on the streets: from toilet paper to bananas. My favourites are the singing-banana-sellers. In the beginning I didn't understand anything what they said, I didn't even understand that they were selling bananas. Honestly, in my mind they were just crazy-people.

On the next day I understood bananas. Shouldn't have been such a difficult word to distinguish, but the sound of the Romanian language was so unfamiliar to me that really, I didn't get anything.

A few days later I heard cinci lei, because, you know, it's everywhere. Beggars ask you for five lei and you just hear the phrase every day,

After getting accustomed to the numbers I already understood quite a lot of what the banana sellers said: Sase blablabla bananas cinci lei.

I was only missing one word from this puzzle and it didn't take much to get it: dulce!

Sase dulce bananas cinci lei! (Six sweet bananas five lei!)

SPANISH NIGHT!!

The last 6th of September we celebrated the first intercultural night, and was the Spanish Night!

I showed some videos about Spain and Valencia (my region!), and we eat some allioli (a garlic sauce), jamón serrano (Spanish ham) and of course, we drank the authentic homemade sangria!

Here I leave the vídeos about my coutry, so you can discover a little bit my country and region and the character of the Spanish people!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZhVnai16MQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzUdMl4wnJo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zi6LW8djk4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO4blTHCGCA
(The last video is about las fallas, the biggest festival in valencia!)

And finally, thanks to all the people who came to the party, was really fun, and I was very happy to share with all of you the culture of my country, MULTUMESC!

Carles S.

Friday, 6 September 2013

We had a great time together!!! :)

We have been invited to the activities and it was organized by our Kurdish EVS volunteers friends hosting organisation . We made Kurdish food for the activity ; Ekrem made the Cigkofte(with a lot of spicy) and I made Babakanuc also shepherd salad :) Everyone liked our food :) Spanish friends made food , I tasted a very nice meal but I forget the food name just I remmember the Spanish omelet :) We did a barbecue with chicken and pork , then we were listened to Kurdish musics :) They asked lets play Semmame!!! It was a shock for me . Because the dance our traditional danceand I asked myself where did they know Semmame??? My Kurdish friends told me : We taught them at the on arrival training course. Thats way they knew the dance. And then I understood the semmame is going to be an international dance :) We had so much fun :) Thanks for everything :)))