Real grab bag here today, folks.

First, a personal blog from a Do-Gooder missionary, writing in English but apparently Swedish, living somewhere in Bihor.

Since I never went to school here as a young child, this post is interesting because it talks about the first day of school in Romania:

The first day of school here is kind of a confusing mess, to be honest. All of the kids go to the middle school where – literally – every leader in town gives a speech. Every pastor and priest, the police chief, the mayor, the school principals – you name it, they had a speech. Is anyone listening? Nope.

Everyone is crowded together talking and trying to figure out which teacher they have. Yes, that’s right. On the first day of school parents and children are trying to figure out which class their child is in. I know, doesn’t make sense to me (or the other parents) either!

What’s with all of the flowers? Everyone has flowers in their hands! This is what you give teachers on the first day of school. Every. Single. Kid. Can you imagine how many flowers that must amount to for a teacher on the first day of school? I know, maybe a little hard to wrap your head around.

Teachers reading this…what do you think? Mom? Would you trade your usual back to school gifts from kids for flowers or ?

Quite interesting. But my favorite line is from this entry:

Then came the cute smile again….followed by some very off key singing to Jesus.

Yes!

The next entry comes from yet another Do Gooder, this one named Bob, who wrote this in his last entry:

Dorin and I will be going (Monday Nov. 1) for a visit down to historic “Alba Julia” and to see a soccer game.

Oof!

In case you’re wondering, part of Bob and his people’s mission here in Romania is to show up before Christmas and give away presents to people. What presents?

• 1 towel
• 1 long-sleeve shirt
• 3 pairs of socks
• 3 pairs of underwear
• Christmas card and photo

That last item must be personalized from the giver of this package of gifts to a needy Romanian. Interesting.

Continuing the misspelling fun, the Huffington Post has a nice photo set from “Sighisoar”. This was posted of course because it was “natural” for Halloween ;)

And last but definitely not least, it looks like the Romanian (government) Ministry of Tourism has kicked off yet another one of its insane advertising campaigns, this one on Facebook.

A few choice and very tasty quotes from an angry Romanian:

The biggest mistake they made was to exploit the stupid myth of Dracula, which is a concoction of a writer who read some chronicles written by the enemies of the great Romanian ruler Vlad Tepes Dracul.

Another mistake was to promote Romania as a wild place where people can do whatever they want.

It is like this that one of the most stupid advertising videos of Romanian tourism says that “Romania is the country where every woman can have four husbands.”

If you are interested in visiting Romania and see the promotional videos on Facebook, do not pass them by; whether you really want to go there or not, you could see some pretty nice places and could at least travel by means of internet to a really beautiful country (if you want to actually go there, do so, but be aware, Romanians don’t have the best roads in the world, to say the least; in every other respect, you will not regret!).

Sadly, this author is somewhat of a nihilist on the subject of tourism in general.

All these mean nothing nowadays. Customs are lost, tongues are made even, and if you travel from London to Moscow, from Beijing to Tshwane, you find the same people everywhere, speaking of the same things (most of them boring and taken from TV shows), knowing the same realities, having the same desires.

Yikes!

Ok one last item from here, just an odd aside from a blog that has nothing to do with Romania:

Most Americans don’t even know where Romania is, mistakenly assuming “Romania” is Olde Latin for “Rome” and therefore must be in Belgium.

:D