Hello all. Life is starting to settle in here in Ciacova. I am (slowly) building up the arsenal of things that one usually has when they move into a new place; pots and pans, furniture, and the like. It has started to get colder here at night, one night was 2 C. That means I have got to test out the heater that the PC gave me. Lest you think that this is an ordinary space heater, you would be mistaken. It is a Whirlpool radiator with seven individual compartments that in little time puts out enough heat that I have to turn down the dial to stay comfortable. That is another excellent feature that the heater has; the dial on it is like that of a clock, you can turn it from naught to sixty and everywhere in between.
That said, I have had a myriad of small, little problems that are in various stages of being solved. The electricity went out for a while a couple of days ago. I bought here in town a multi-socket outlet plug because there is just oen plug-in in the kitchen that I would like to be able to run the hot water there as well as the refrigerator. This was not to be with my new purchase. When I plugged in both at the same time, poof, all the sockets in the apartment where without electricity. We got an electrician to look at the fuses here (they are different here than in the States) and figure out which one was the problem. All of this taught me a valuable lesson to me; buy anything involving electricity in Timisoara, which I did just that yesterday. I bought two multi-socket outlets there and I am happy to say that I still have electricity.
I am hoping that I am buy a dehumdifier here because the apartment stays a bit damp and towels do not dry in the normal amount of time. I also need to buy a rack to hang my laundry from while they dry. This is but a sampling of the things that I need (or want) to get in the near future. The bad thing about this is that to get these things, I need to go to Timisoara and that usually means that I go by bus and am limited by what I can carry and the relatively high costs of consumer products here in Romania. I will keep you posted on my adventures.
School is going pretty good at the moment. As well as teaching, there is a project that I am going to have going on over the course of the next two years. The library does not have a single English book in it and I am going to start having people from home send in books that they wish the school to have. There will be more about this on here soon. I promise.
I am coming up with a list of things that I would like to have but I am still in the phase of determining what I can get here. There will be a future post soon on just what I would like the wider world to send me here in little Ciacova.
Overall, I am pretty good. Things here are a lot like home when I was a child. The only difference is that I don't have the family and social network that exists at home and and I am pretty sure (for the moment) that I will not me able to get the net in my apartment; at an internet cafe at the moment.

Ceau!