Elizabeth Bellows

Dec 4, 20236 min read

November in Transylvania ❄️

United Nations Day, Fulbrighters visit Cluj, Ethnographic Village Museum, Birthdays and Halloween, Dancing, Ukraine House, Thanksgiving with Friends

United Nations Day!

The Royal School hosted a school-wide celebration in honor of United Nations Day on October 27. This special day is one held dear by the Royal School each year. The entire school community is invited to come together to celebrate and honor each country represented by the families. You can read more about United Nations Day here. Because the Royal School community includes families from 33 different countries, this special day allows us to teach others about our home nationalities, and learn about culture, traditions, and food from our larger school family. The day began with student and parent teams delivering brief 5-minute presentations in their grade level classrooms about their home country. You can see the presentation Max and I gave in his Year 3 class. We also learned from Max's colleagues about India, Romania, Hungary, and Turkey! Next, students took a break while parents took over different classrooms and put together "stands" for display and tasting. Scott and I chose to make jambalaya, an American creole dish of African, French, and Spanish influence. We thought this dish exemplified the diversified culture of the United States. We also created a poster to display at our U.S.A. stand. You can see a list of the countries we learned about and the food we were able to try on this special day! After feasting around the school for a couple of hours, student ambassadors were invited to carry flags from countries around the world for a special flag ceremony. Students paraded through an outdoor aisle of flags into the assembly space where each grade level presented information about the nationalities represented in our school community through google slideshows, song, and dance. I recently reached out to the author of Social Studies and the Young Learner about this experience, and have begun writing up a practitioner piece about how we might consider creating a similar event to celebrate United Nations Day in the United States.

Fulbrighters Visit Cluj-Napoca!

In late October, a partnership with the Journalism and Digital Media Department at Babes-Bolyai University and the Romanian-U.S. Fulbright Commission brought 55 Fulbright Teaching Assistants together for a seminar on Media Literacy. We met our Fulbright friends at the Panoramic Citadel Restaurant perched atop the city to welcome them and fellowship over an amazing meal. You can read more about their experience here.

The Ethnographic Village Museum (Ethnographic Park Romulus Vuia)

We met up with our friends, fellow Fulbrighter Joby Patterson and her husband Jim Patterson, at an extension of the Transylvania Ethnographic Museum in Ethnographic Park. This Village Museum is open-air and features traditional houses and structures grouped by Transylvanian county, according to their regional establishments. The oldest pieces date back to 1678, and were carefully moved from their original locations to this park. The park was founded in 1929. There are 34 technical peasant installations, 5 workshops, 3 wooden churches, and a cemetery gate among the structures. This has to be one of my favorite places we have visited in Cluj. It didn't hurt that it was a beautiful, crisp fall day when we wandered this special place. Even Max had a good time! (Claire chose to stay behind and meet a friend at the mall instead of joining us). 😊

Birthdays and Halloween!

We had another opportunity to attend a birthday party, this time a double birthday party for two of Max's classmates! The party was fun, and we are getting some ideas about how Max might want to celebrate his birthday come next spring! Birthday candles are more like mini-torches, and characters dressed as superheroes are a big hit with the kids. I always enjoy any opportunity to meet with other parents outside of the school building.

The Royal School allowed the kids to dress up for Halloween with a 5 RON donation (about $1) to Cry in the Dark, a local organization that aids in supporting children living in dire circumstances. Max was an astronaut 🧑‍🚀 and Claire was an angel 👼 . Fitting!

Claire turned FOURTEEN (I know, seems impossible)! We got her a few small gifts, but her biggest wishes were a haircut and a ride to school (we usually walk about 1.2 miles to school every morning). The day before her birthday, I picked her up an hour early from school (surprise!), took her (got a taxi) to a hair appointment complete with a conditioning treatment and style, and allowed us to take a taxi to school the next morning. She was a happy camper! Her friends at school came with balloons and treats, so she had a great day. 🥰

DANCING! 🎶 💃 🕺

Scott finally moved from crutches to a boot, and we were able to go dancing with our friends two Saturday nights in a row! The first event was a retro (think 1980s, 1990s pop music) party in the basement of a restaurant. Before the party we ate at our favorite pizza place, Storia, in Piața Unirii. The second and most fun event was a culinary evening hosted by a local Romanian cuisine restaurant, Roata Făget. We joined our friends Carmen and Imre, and Joby and Jim. We paid a price to enter the restaurant, which covered our entire meal--served buffet style--all our drinks, and dessert. I called it "all-you-can-everything." There was a fancy gin station, local wines, țuică (a strong plum brandy), and of course, unlimited sparkling and still water. I think this was the most I have eaten in one sitting since we moved here! After dinner the dance floor opened up, and we danced until we could no longer keep up! Jim and Joby are in their EIGHTIES and cut a rug as well. We have learned that Romanians LOVE to celebrate and have a good time!

Ukraine House

Through the connections I have made thus far, I was very fortunate to meet Kseniia S. from Ukraine. On her own volition, Kseniia has created, and now directs, Ukraine House, a hub in the center of Cluj-Napoca for Ukrainian refugees. A Ukrainian refugee herself, Kseniia moved to Romania with her mother and her nephew when the war broke out in March of 2022. Her sister had to stay behind due to work. Kseniia is a bright, determined, and friendly person who has a strong will and desire to help others. She started writing letters, making phone calls, and applying for grants to create Ukraine House, which is now funded by the Peace, Action, Training and Research Institute of Romania (PATRIR) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). We had a lengthy conversation with Kseniia about her work and the Ukraine House, and believe we have found the heart of the research project with Ukraine House. For now, I am making amendments to my IRB, and getting involved in the work and events at Ukraine House. One of our commitments to Kseniia (she made us promise) is to participate in her vision of a Multicultural "Colours of Christmas" performance at the Christmas Market in the square on December 16. We will be singing Abba's Happy New Year with other folks in the community on the big stage! I mean, why not? 🤷‍♀️ More to come...

A Proper (chicken) Thanksgiving in Romania ❄️ ⛄️

We are so fortunate to have been invited by our new friends, Dan and Kymber, to their place in Cluj for a proper thanksgiving dinner! Dan is here on a Fulbright as well, and he'll be teaching at UBB in the spring. As it turns out, Kymber and I have a connection from back in the states, as Dan is at James Madison University, and one of my good social studies colleagues works there as well. Turns out my colleague and her family are neighbors with Dan & Kymber, and their kids play together in the same neighborhood! What a small world! 🌎

Though none of us could find a turkey, our friends cooked two chickens and the rest of us brought along all the fixins. (I even got to have pumpkin pie!!) It was lovely to relax in someone else's home and share a meal together, all of us happy to bring extra forks, substitute ingredients for those we are unable to find here, and share in our various experiences in Romania thus far. It was a beautiful evening, and the kids gathered on the couch with their devices, as this generation tends to do. We had our first snow shortly after Thanksgiving, so here are some pictures of the kids making a snowman on our rooftop patio!