Culture shock of the day

I might make another post later today, but I just wanted to put this into words while I got the chance...

So today was the my first day at CRIOMEC, the company that I'm interning. It was my first day and neither the company nor I knew what to do with the new situation, so I didn't do anything greatly productive today. But here's the culture shock of the day: I can get off work at 3:30 P.M. here. Here people start working early in the morning, between 7-8 A.M. or so, and keep working without a lunch break until 3-4 P.M.. They eat light snacks but no one-hour long lunch break or anything. And then after work, people eat a fairly large meal. This meal is neither lunch nor dinner. Dunch, maybe? So there's no big meal after this "dunch" but people normally eat snack, according to Mihai. So I need to get used to this system soon.

My superior at work, Cristi (his name is probably Cristian) said that this system is "heaven" compared to 8 A.M.-5 P.M. working hours. It allows you to be more sociable, gives you more time to do something you love, and therefore making you more "complete" person. OK, I guess this is my chance to be more "complete" for once!

So I swore to myself that I'm going to carry my camera at all times. I forgot to do this once again when I went to the lake for fun...but the pictures are uploaded on AIESEC Galati blog so check it out if you want to see people in bathing suit :) We had a lot of fun at the lake. Swimming and BBQ-ing. It was probably not the safest place to swim but it didn't matter...we are invincible.

We went to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. Kai was not very happy that they didn't bring everyone's meal at the same time (there were about 20 minutes between the first and last dish), but food was ok. I am spoiled by the Chinese restaurants in Atlanta (and I say CHINA INN on Peachtree Industrial Bulevard is the best) so the restaurant did not impress me as much, but I guess the people at the table made up for it.



Then I learned how to play Texas Hold'em - it's funny, I've never even imagined that I would learn how to play "Texas" Hold'em in Romania. I was terrible at it but with the beginner's luck, I succeed to stay in the game for longer than I thought. I need to learn how to bluff. Then afterwards we played some dice games that everybody participated. We had loads of fun last night and I think these pictures can explain it better than my words.



Lastly, I want to thank Mihai and his family for letting me stay in their place and eat their food. Mihai's mother is a great cook! I think I'll miss the food a lot when I move out of this place. One thing I noticed in Galati is that vegetables are very tasty. Mihai prepared a tomato salad this morning (or noon, I slept in this morning) and it was great. I don't know exactly why veggies in the States are so tasteless. Or maybe it's a seasonal thing.

A note to myself:

Always carry my camera and act like a tourist. I need pictures!

Since I was up until almost 2 A.M. last night playing a German card game with Kai (Germany), Dirk (Netherland), Herman (Netherland)(spelling?), and Frank (Hong Kong), I'm going to make a post in the morning (it is aound 9:15 right now). We ate a giant watermelon together to start out the night and it was awesome. The game shall be passed on when I go back to the states.

So yesterday. I spent the first half of the day in Mihai's place, checking emails and taking a nap to adjust my internal clock. Then we went to the office of AIESEC Galati. It was HUGE. They have about five rooms for AIESEC and can even hold a LC-scale meeting in there (they have about 60 members). At GT we are grateful just to have an office space but man...they are on a completely different scale!

At the office I met Roxana my traineeship buddy and we walked around the city for a while. We went around and saw a lot of things, like Botanical Garden, university buildings, cathedral, etc., and this is exactly why I need to carry my camera AT ALL TIMES!! Well, I can get those pictures later. I made Roxana nervous by getting on a wrong bus WITHOUT her but we were soon reunited, so I hope she would forgive me. I found out that although she has been speaking Romanian all her life, Roxana cannot make the "r" sound in Romanian words (the rolling "r" sound). So Romanian can be spoken without it! Too bad I can already make the "r" sound.

Then I played some valley ball with other AIESECers for a while, then played some card games with other trainees afterwards as it was mentioned at the beginning. We had a good time and I learned a lot from other trainees. Once again, no pictures. What a shame, considering I'm an Asian traveller. But from now on my camera shall become a part of my body.

Arrived. Galati.

So I left the States on the 25th of June to fly to Netherland, and then to Romania. The trip went quite smoothly, no lost luggage or delayed flights. While I was in Amsterdam, I had about two hours to look around the airport. I found a Casino and a Museum inside of the terminals, which was quite a shock.


But I didn't have too much time there. After I paid 12 euros to use internet connection for 90 minutes, they started making passengers go through a security line, and while I was in that line I wasted about 60 of the 90 minutes. Oh well, that happens.

Then I arrived in Bucharest, where I was welcomed by a representative from AIESEC Bucharest, named Alin. He had my name written in Japanese on a paper to catch my attention at the airport, which was very effective. Then we hopped on a bus to reach the actual city of Bucharest to use the metro. The bus was hot because it was not equipped with air-conditioning, and the driver was not very happy with the brakes so he made the passengers work out in the sauna bus with his braking technique. I sweated A LOT. Disgusting.

After switching between a few metro lines we magically arrived at a train station, where catched a train to Galati. I would have been so lost without Alin's help, and I cannot express how thankful I am for what he did. So I gave him one of the fans that I bought in Japan to show my appreciation. I hope he liked it.


Then I arrived at Galati around 19:20. I was welcomed by more than 10 local AIESECers (and Kai) at the train station, and I was shocled by the number of people who showed up just to welcome a trainee. I think we the AIESEC GT should do that too, because when I picked up the past trainees from Atlanta airport, there was not nearly as enough people to greet them.

Then we ate some pizza and drank some beer. The Romanian beer, Ursus, was fairly cheap and good. Better than cheap American beer. But one thing I should note here is that I started to sweat while I was eating this somewhat spicy pizza, and it has not stopped until now. Weird.

After the meal I went to Mihai's apartment with Mihai himself, where I stay until I get an apartment on July 1st. We relaxed for a bit and then went to a bar, where we met some other AIESECers to watch the soccer game, Russia vs. Spain. Needless to say, Spain owned Russia with impressive score of 0-3. Go Spain!

And I just relized that I'm taking too much time to update my blog, so I'm gonna stop for now. It's a long post but all I'm trying to tell is that I arrived safely and I'm doing ok with everything here so far.