Blowing Smoke

Word Count: 1810 It’s been an interesting week in Romania. What started out as a one-note story, that 27 people died in a fire at a club/disco soon morphed into wide-scale protests, and the “sudden” resignation of the Prime Minister (and a few other minor hacks). The Western media has been scrambling to knit these facts into a cohesive story, all without success. For low-attention-span … Continue reading Blowing Smoke

Dill Heads

WORD COUNT: 530 One of the unexpected bonuses of learning Russian is discovering just how how much comedy exists in that language. I was always raised to think of Russia as a dour, dull place, but underneath that grey exterior exists a beating humorous heart. Russians engaged in fighting Ukrainians have come up with an interesting nickname for their opponents: Укропы or “Ukropi”. This comes … Continue reading Dill Heads

The Curious Case of the Half Ambassador

Word count: 421 What happens when the United States appoints a new ambassador to a friendly, allied country? There’s a little ceremony and then a press release goes out. Right? Well that’s sort of what happened today. The United States now has a new ambassador to Moldova and here he is, saying hello to the people of RM in both Romanian and Russian with professional … Continue reading The Curious Case of the Half Ambassador