Romania 2003

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Warning: This newsletter got blocked to at least three recipients, possibly because of The 23rd Channel poem containing a reference to "sex and violence" on TV.

Newsletter Ten

Date: Tuesday 23 September 2003.

So this newsletter has hit double figures. To celebrate, I present the photos that probably shouldn't have been taken...

Warning: Some photos may offend, or gross-out, or whatever.

Just after I took this photo of a lovely Dacia (the national car of Romania!) a guard with a big bun, er, gun, told me that taking photos was absolutely prohibited because it was a military zone. (Well, how was I to know all those fighter jets that fly over at night come from the local international airport?)

Tools we broke in just one day gardening at the Boys' Home - from the left:

1. A shovel head (the only one of these tools that we owned ourselves).

2. The handle of a fork-rake thing, which required a LOT of whittling to fit the slightly shorter handle back into the head. And then we were too scared to use it vigorously.

3. The socket of a gardening fork - it just wouldn't stay straight after that.

Went touristy at one point, including visits to a castle ruins in Deva and an intact castle in Hunedoara, both inhabited from the 1300s. Found one of those "extreme tourists" trying to get the most out of his NZ$1 entry fee.

I hope Santa was skinnier back in the 1400s.

(Seriously though, there were good handholds in there, probably for medieval chimney sweeps.)

A very dead frog found in Orsova, by the Danube River. (And I've found more than a few good sized live ones, too.)

The "bathroom" at the Boys' Home has been a loo with a view ever since the foundation trench was extended through the pig pen, requiring a bit more demolition.

Rest (room) assured, thanks to my height I have a much better view over the walls than this chap does.

I thought the Halliday family might get a bit of mileage out of this one. Yes, that is a brand of laundry powder.

"The 23rd Channel" - author unknown.

The TV is my shepherd, I shall want.
It makes me lie down on the sofa.
It leads me away from the scriptures.
It destroys my soul.
It leads me in the path of sex and violence, for the sponsor's sake.
Yea, though I walk in the shadow of my Christian responsibilities,
there will be no interruption, for the TV is with me.
Its cable and remote, they control me.
It prepares a commercial before me in the presence of worldliness;
It anoints my head with humanism, my coveting runneth over.
Surely laziness and ignorance shall follow me all days of my life:
And I shall dwell in the house watching TV forever.

Ian.
8 )
http://www.boyshome.ro/

"Lapte buna."
- an English-speaking friend when saying good night on the phone recently.

It actually means "good milk" but sounds a lot like the Romanian for "good night" (noapte buna). Yes, he can speak Romanian most of the time.

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