All By Ourselves

Yep, Curtiss and I are on our own here now. We drove Mom and Dad to the airport yesterday and we found out this morning that they had a safe trip and are now visiting with Daniel, Whitney and of course Baby Nate for a few days. We had a safe and interesting drive through the Romanian countryside yesterday both on our way to the airport and on our way back.
Let's try and make a list of unusual things we saw, One truck tipped on it's side in the ditch, it must have gotten to close to the side when it was going up the hill and over it went.
Two VERY rusty, VERY dented 55 gallon drums being filled with gas.
I don't remember how many near head on collisions we saw, (but then again that is a fairly usual thing to see around here)
Many, Many construction sites where one or both sides of the road were closed. Romanian road construction is always very interesting and most of the time incomprehensible. Ok, picture this you are driving down a main road and you get to a constuction site and you wait your turn to go through (by a red light or a man holding a little ping pong paddle with a red and green side) Not too unusual your thinking right?
but then you go half a mile and there is another section that is all torn up and being worked on. And so on it goes every few miles or so there is another section of road with either one side or the other torn up or perhaps both are and then you have some kind of by-pass that you need to go through. One time yesterday we went through a site that had both sides of the road torn up and they had us drive through the parking lot and by the gas pumps of a working gas station. Now where do you see that in the U.S.? Life is never dull around here, there is always something happening that makes life interesting.
Today Curtiss and I are taking it easy after spending most of yesterday on the road and we are also getting ready for church on Sunday and doing a little laundry (well Curtiss is doing the church prep and I am doing the laundry:)

Oh Brother-in-laws, Thou Art Weird!

What can I say, I love my brother-in-laws, but sometimes they are a little strange. Now I can't say anything against them, because I am a "little strange" myself. But I think that these pictures will prove that my brother's-in-law are a little bit weird!

Celery wrapped in a pancake... Yes, that is what he is eating. Now this concoction was kind of my fault since I am the one that gave Curtiss all the celery. But I did not have him eat them together, I may say that that was completely his idea.

Joanna's face is priceless... She looks really weirded out!

I think he looks rather proud of his concoction.

Josh said he fell into my closet and this is how he came out... I don't think the closet was completely responsible though. Maybe I should ask Joanna if I should give him that bath robe to him for is birthday, I think it fits him very nicely.

Our Address

I added the address for Curtiss and I here in Romania on the side panel of the blog for those of you who might want the info :)
I will add it again here so that you don't need to go looking. If any of you do send anything please make sure that you copy the address exactly or else it won't make it ;)

Fam. Archer, Charles

sat Bretea Romana

bl.1 sc. B, et.1, ap.9

Judet HD, Romania

Picture My World

I got enough "GOOD IDEA" comments from everybody that I thought I couldn't let you all down now :) After thinking about it, I decided that the best place to start would be where I live while on this side of the pond :)

THE BLOC

(pronounced bloke)

This is the apartment building where we own a small, three room apartment.
Consisting of:
one living room
one bedroom
one den/family room
a kitchen
bathroom
and hallway connecting it all.

It is about 700 square feet and is considered large for living space here.
In the picture above you can see our porch where the clothes are drying on what we would consider the second floor.

It is the only apartment building in the village and is right in the middle of the town,
it is hard to see from the picture below but the other side of the apartment building is the town park. This spring we got permission from the mayor to care for and spruce it up so that everyone can enjoy it.
In previous years the only time it had the grass cut was when someone wanted it for hay.

The people here have no idea/no desire to care for much of anything that isn't their own
(and all too frequently they don't care for that)
So it is a very different idea for them to see someone picking up and caring for something that if they don't have to.


(Next time I will move inside the building:)

A Quick Hello

Howdy from Bretea Romana Romania. I just had to share the wonderful, wonderful news.

Are you ready????

Ok, here goes.

We have FAST internet!!!!

Exciting isn't?

Well, I think it is.
Curtiss and I were so excited when we learned that fast internet was available in the village a few months ago. But knowing the way that things are here we didn't really hold our breath that it was completely true.
I mean what is fast? does that mean it is just faster than what we already had?
Which, by the way, took a good 2-5 minutes just to load a simple page
even longer if you wanted a few pictures to load.
A small video clip? forget it, it will just stutter it's way through if it does anything.
And don't forget that the connection might space out at any point and you have to start all over again.

Last summer I tried several times to have voice chat
(don't even bother with a webcam)
with my family and we got it to work a couple of times,
(that was after trying for an hour and a half)
and then it would die and we would have to try again or just give up and type everything.
(which isn't the easiest when you are trying to plan a wedding:)
Don't get me wrong, we were very thankful that we had any but that doesn't mean that we won't celebrate now that it is even better :)

Curtiss and I are like kids with a new toy,
we'll just smile at each other and say "did you see how fast that went???"
We can't wait to get on the computer.

Anyway, I thought you might all enjoy a small glimpse into some of the way of life here
I was thinking of having a special (maybe weekly) post called
"Picture My World"
where I would have a post about some aspect of life here that might interest all of you.

Whether it be some kind of food, what traveling is like or maybe what it's like to cook on a stove that has no temperature gauge.
What do you think? Would it interest you?
Let me know and I start working on it.