Tis a sad day....

The hard drive on my laptop had a catastrophic failure today. I have had my Powerbook G4 for almost 3 years now. All of the information that is on there is effectively lost to me now. Luckily, I saved my thesis on Gmail months ago and all of the important photos that I had are either saved at home or on my Flickr site. I am kinda stressed out right now about how to go forward but I am working on it and will let you know what happens.

This means I will have to use Microsoft tainted computers for the foreseeable future......

all that jazz

Hello my adoring audience. Life is pretty good here at the edge of the world. I have enough in my belly, I am kept busy all of the time with many projects, large and not so large. School is school. As all of you remember from your days as a student, there are classes that are great and the students are well-behaved. And then there are the "other" ones. On Mondays, I have mostly the "other" ones. After getting out of those classes, I feel like strangling the closest thing to me. Other days, the good classes are engaged and actually want to learn. Here is an example. Suppose I give a test that week on different types of fruits and vegetables, all in English of course. Well, there might be eight out of a class of fourteen that are prepared, meaning having pen and paper, and actually know the material. The rest are not so prepared and I have to spend the entire test period telling the kids not to cheat and they will get a 3 on their test for cheating (The Romanian educational system is based on a 1-10 grade scale instead of the 0-100 one that we use). So you can imagine the frustration that I sometimes feel.

On to other things. It has been fairly cold here lately and my heating bill reflects this fact. To heat the water for my shower and to wash the dishes, I have a new water boiler that does a really good job of heating up. The only other source of heat that I have is an electrical radiator that the Peace Corps gave me. Well, without going into detail, my electric bill for December was through the roof. They sent this bill a couple of weeks ago and I paid it. On top of that, they sent me the bill for January today, and while it is not nearly as bad, there is just no way that I can pay it until money is put in my account for February. Needless to say, I am not too happy about the situation.

Ok, enough grumbling. Other than money issues, I am a pretty happy person. I will be taking photos of my town in the near future so that you can get a better picture in your mind about where I live. Lately, I have plenty of books to read due to other volunteers having a large supply books that they have already read. Umm, what else? Ohh, I have been proficient at making pancakes from scratch. None of that boxed mix that you have no idea what is in it. Since it is wintertime, my diet is full of winter foods. Plenty of pasta, potatoes, bread, eggs, and other things that I get to buy when they decide that the poor folk of Ciacova wouldn't mind buying some of it.

Thanks to my family for the cards that I have received for Christmas and my birthday. I love getting them and I love getting emails.

Ok, that is all she wrote. See y'all next time, which will be soon. I promise.

Ciao