Originally posted on Wednesday, July 16, 2014
This week, considering it’s only the second one, has been one of familiarity. We go to lecture, we study in the lab, we clean off gravedirt from bones. Rinse and repeat. After the spending orgy of the weekend, even the inexpensive food of Romania seems steep, and peanut butter + rice cakes becomes the standard fare. Food as fuel, nothing more. Palettable enough to cram enough calories in so I can keep the mind working. Generosity of my friends here is enough variance that the endless rows of ham sandwiches, plus the aforementioned pb+rc, is sustainable. Sandwich meat doesn’t keep very long, and neither does bread, so it becomes difficult to purchase more than two meals ahead of time. Nevertheless, apparently food is necessary still, so onwards.
Food isn’t all bad. To taste a pear or an apple here brings suddenly and stunningly to light how awful the food in the States has gotten. Bland flavorless, dried out husks which only LOOK good and can fend off bugs is no replacement for the flawed, succulent, flavorful fruits available here. of course, while the grapes ARE delicious, the majority is consumed via fermentation.
“We drink like Magyars”
A 20oz. beer is 3.00 lei. a 16 oz. Coke is 3.99 lei. A 12oz. water is 3.50 lei. Bars open at 8am, and will have patrons lining up. Bodegas have window slats to provide cold beers to walking customers. It is cheaper to just drink beer than to drink water here, and few outside of our august cadre would bat an eye were we to nurse a beer to and from the laboratory. So quickly you become acquainted with local variances. If Golden Brau is the cheap Budweiser, Ciuc (chook) is the Miller. A bottle of good drinking merlot can be had for less than 7 lei, sometimes as low as 2 if you’re brave enough. Hangovers are becoming more and more common in the group.
The week of lab work has been the final reviews of the human skeleton, arms and legs and the *gasp* carpals. We’ve begun assigning partners for literature reviews, choosing topics for annotated bibliographies, and prepping for the final presentation which we will each give in the Odorheiu library on the last day.
As time marches ever onward, characteristics of each person coalesce into focus. Some live for osteology. Some could care less. Some are destined to be academics. Some are in school for partying. Some are aware of the greater world around them. Some live firmly within their own lives and egos. It may not matter, after all, as for myself I am here for a multitude of reasons. To learn more about osteology. To have an opportunity to study skeletal formation that could never be simulated in a collection. To experience a new culture with a purpose other than vicarious observation. But most of all, to see if I really do have what it takes to work as a bioarchaeologist. And I feel that I do.