Nicolescu returns

Nikki met me in Paris. We shopped for shoes, ate a lemon tart, and hung out in Eric and Susanne's beautiful, sunny apartment. Eric and Susanne are the lovely people who let me stay at their place for a whole week. I painted a really crappy picture of their back courtyard on a cheap canvas I bought from the Carnival D'Affaires down the street. Acrilyic paints with pen and ink. The final tableau was quite hideous, but it was very relaxing until it was actually finished. Nikki has adjusted well to Bucharest by simply removing most of her clothes and lying inert on the couch with a fan on.

How's the Film Coming?

Oh, my favorite question. Everyone keeps asking, so I don't want to deprive my vast reading public of a critical update. Thanks for caring.

Well, I am in the process of wading through 43 hours of footage. "Wading" means watching, transcribing, logging into final cut pro, and digitizing so I can edit something coherent. As I watch, I try to edit in my head. What is emerging from the footage is two different films, as I see it.

1) A SUBJECTIVE FILM ABOUT ME, THE KIDS, AND ROMANIA--FOR AN AMERICAN AUDIENCE
One of the things I know to be true about myself is that I simply like to include a little bit of everything. I like poo-poo platters and buffets and survey classes and samplers and variety and basically, a little one of everything rather than one big thing. I also like to approach things from my personal perspective, maybe because I consider myself the authority only on my own experience, and including my own voice and acknowledging my presence seems more honest somehow. The problem (okay, maybe I shouldn't think of it as a problem) is that the subjective documentary style (personal voiceover, on-screen presence) is often more difficult to get funding and acceptance for. There is some degree of condescension, discomfort, or dogma in the documentary filmmaking world about the "personal documentary," even though that's what we're all making ultimately. The thing is, a lot of filmmakers and funders consider that the personal perspective should be implied, rather than stated or made obvious through voiceover. In writing, the memoir is becoming a more accepted form. But in filmmaking, it's very tricky to do well. Nevertheless, I've found myself making a subjective film about my experiences in Romania, with the kids, with Romanians in general (and how they feel about my film), and with the bigger picture. I am the only link between the footage of the kids from five years ago, and the footage I've shot this year. Can I pull it off? I guess it depends on whether I'm able to edit myself into a likable character and weave in all the different threads. Ultimately, it's a question of taste, right?. As an American, I see this subjective film addressing an American audience who knows little about Romania. Given that many films have been made about children in Romania, will distributors or festivals even be interested? I guess I'll see.
2) A "PUBLIC SERVICE" FILM ABOUT FOSTER CARE IN ROMANIA--FOR ROMANIAN AUDIENCES
A local production company has expressed interest in partnering with me to do a film about Romanian foster care for a Romanian public television audience. This would mean focusing (in the editing process) more on two or three kids and their immediate environment, rather than the six in the version above--which means cutting out Zoro and Anton because they aren't in foster care. This shorter film would let Romanian viewers know about foster care in Romania: how it works, how children with disabilities are being included in the larger community, how the system is becoming a model for other Eastern European countries. I would not appear in the film, but let the subjects speak for themselves.

I am supposed to meet with someone from TVR (Romanian public television) soon to talk about these options. I would like my work to air on TV here in Romania, but the universal disgust and frustration I encounter from Romanians when they ask me what my film is about has made me unsure how best to approach the general viewing public. I hope the TVR people can help me figure out which version they think their audiences would be more receptive to or interested in. Would they watch a film about Americans dealing with child welfare issues in Romania? Or will it just piss them off? Would they rather see a film about foster care in which my identity as an American is not obvious--something that a Romanian could have shot instead?

We'll see...

Paris

I know it's a cliche, but I LOVE PARIS. LOVE IT. I just got back from the land of delicious crispy croissants and cute shoes to 100 degree temperatures in Bucharest. It's hotter outside than it is inside, so I have a choice of opening the windows to let the hot, smelly, heavy heat waft in (less like a breeze than a wooly wet blanket) or keeping the doors shut and blinds down and recircling the stuffy air with the grimy fan I just discovered on the balcony. When I returned from my week of Parisian living, my apartment in Bucharest had been sealed shut during a week of record-breaking heat, which allowed the distinctive smell of moth-killing spray my landlady doused the place with three months ago to be released from the fibers of the rugs and furniture. I wonder how many years it has taken off my life to live here.

I know it gets hot in France sometimes too, and that no city is perfect, but then why am I so happy whenever I go to Paris? Is it just the lingering positive associations I had with France from my early twenties, when I studied abroad? Is it the wide selection of paper supplies in the ubiquitous papeteries, the cafe culture, the language that was my first love? I never developed the interest in Romanian or Bosnian or spanish verb conjugations that I had for the French ones; I never fell for another culture quite the same way. The thing is, only visiting from time to time allows me to retain my romantic feelings for the city--like dating long-distance. I never get to know it well enough to discover its real flaws. All my French friends tell me that if I lived there, I would get over the infatuation. They point out how expensive it is, how it also gets too hot in the summer, how the traffic and noise wear them down. There are only so many paper supplies one can have, they insist. But I am not sure about that.

People also say, "Well why don't you move there?" It's that tricky work permit issue. Not so easy as a non-EU citizen. I could live on the lam, renewing my tourist visa every three months and doing work under the table...My camera is NTSC, so I'd have to trade it for a PAL model...But I don't think I have the energy for that kind of life right now. No, I'm afraid I'm going to have to return to the good old US of A. It's a big country; surely I'll find somewhere bearable to live, until I save up enough money to move to Paris.

The visit

Zoro Found-part 2

The video jogged Zoro's memory. He started to cry. I hugged him, and he rubbed his hand up and down on my back. He said in Hungarian that he wanted to go back to the school. His mother said that he couldn't go back; if he went, she'd never get him back again. Zoro's father agreed; if he let Zoro go, they'd never get him back. She began to watch me warily, not letting Zoro out of her sight. Eventually, I asked if we could come back the next day so that we could talk more about the whole situation. I needed to regroup. What had I done?

When I sat with Zoro and his mom the next day at the bilingual neighbor's house, she explained to me that she had to take the youngest of her five children, Zoro and one of his brothers, to the orphanage in Satu Mare when Zoro was two years old, because his father left her for another woman. Since she was homeless, she had no choice. She had no money or transportation, so she rarely visited the orphanage. One day she went to visit and found out that Zoro had been transferred to Beclean a month earlier, which was impossibly far away for her. She didn't know how to get there, and she didn't have the money anyway. While she was recounting this, she started to cry, and this got Zoro crying. She said he had never heard all this before, because she hadn't wanted to tell him how hard things were for her.

Her parental rights were eventually terminated, because during the years Zoro spent in Beclean, she never visited. So when social workers from Satu Mare contacted the aunt, the aunt legally adopted him so that his mother could get him back. Things are better now for the family; they have a house, though ten people share two rooms and two small beds.



The floor is bare dirt. It has a strong smell because they have no plumbing, water, or electricity, and the goose and pig wander in and out of the house when the door is open. The 4-inch black and white television is connected to a car battery. Every social worker is required to evaluate the family's living conditions before reintegrating a child into the home. Zoro's social worker evidently decided that these were acceptable living conditions.

Zoro doesn't go to school anymore because-according to Zoro and his mother--he is alays getting into fights. His mother says that he suffered a breakdown soon after arriving in the village, and that he is supposed to take medication--but she can't afford it. She gets $44 dollars a month for Zoro from the child welfare department--$14 of which is for medication that costs over $40 a month. If Zoro had been placed in a foster family, that family would have received $273 per month plus a clothing allowance. They would have been required to have a certain standard of living, including electricity, flooring, and running water. The $44 a month is a significant amount for Zoro's family; they have been able to make a few additions to the home. His mother makes a living by canning vegetables, which she then sells in the village. This is summertime work only; in the winter, things are very hard.

The situation is so complicated, and by making myself the only link between Zoro's present and past, I now feel an obligation to follow through. But how? The living conditions are so difficult; I can't imagine how the family made it through the winter. The neighbors' homes are even less solid, some roofless, or with plastic for doors and windows. But what is the alternative for him? The system will not take a child back unless abuse is reported, and even if that were going on (which I could not determine from such a short visit), where would he go? He has been legally adopted by his aunt. While Zoro liked living at the school in Beclean, he couldn't stay there forever. Given his emotional sensitivity and his intellectual limitations, I don't know how he would have fared at the age of 18 when he would be on his own. The children in Beclean raise this question a lot--what happens when we turn 18 and we're out the door? It's a scary prospect, when you have no family to help you.

The filmmaking aspect blurs ethical lines even further; I want to include Zoro's story, because I feel it's important to hear about his experience, as well as his mother's. Ninety percent of Romanian gypsies live in dire poverty, which is why about 70% of the abandoned children (approximately 5,000 per year) are of Gypsy ethnicity. These children have virtually no chance of being adopted by a Romanian family, so they are generally raised in the state system until they're old enough to be returned to their biological families, whom they've often never seen. Zoro's mother doesn't want him to leave, though I can't tell which reasons are most important to her. Is it that he helps around the house and in the fields? That he brings the family a little money each month? That she loves him as she says?

Quite telling was Zoro's comment to me, when his mother was out of range. I said, "Zoro, you told me three years ago that you wanted a family. Is this a family for you?" He said something in Hungarian that I have to have translated, but I think he said "I wanted a family, but..." Then he gestured at his mother and said, "Tiganca" ("Gypsy") and kind of shook his head and shrugged. Like many children of Roma (Gypsy) ethnicity, he grew up associating the Roma, or Tsigani, with crime and disrepute. They were shady characters to be avoided, not emulated or lived with. The word "Tsigan" has a pejorative connotation in Romanian that the English word "Gypsy" doesn't have--it is somewhat like "nigger" depending on the context, and is used as an insult by Romanians and Roma alike. However, many Gypsies refer to themselves as "Tsigani," and some have never even heard the more politically correct word "Roma." Roma children raised in an institution do not identify as Roma or "Tsigani," and the look on Zoro's face as he said this was so subtle...I can only interpret from my own limited perspective. It was half bemused, half resigned. Surprised, like he wondered how the hell he got here. When I showed him some video I'd shot of him that day, he said, "Who is that?" and his mother said, "Zoro--that's YOU!"

Zoro Found-part 1

I found Zoro.



In this picture, we both look happy. The golden sunlight is highlighting our hair; Zoro's sweater looks clean and bright. In reality, we were both pretty traumatized. Oh, the hazards of filmmaking.

I sent a very long and detailed account of my production trip to Satu Mare to my family and Kim and Sorin and some others who know Zoro from our time at the camp with him. It's much too long to publish here, but here is a shorter version.

The working title of my film (though unlikely to be the final one) is "Finding Zoro: Journeys in Romania." I knew before I came back to Romania that a number of children from the summer camp (www.copiiproject.org) had either been placed in foster families or "reunited" with their biological families. My film is about the recent (2002-2006) push in Romania to deinstitutionalize children who grew up in large facilities by placing them in family settings. I have spent most of my time here at the Scoala Speciala in Beclean, where we originally met all the children. Four of the five children in my film still attend school there; three are in foster families, and one is still living in the school most of the time. In November, I was able to obtain the address of Zoro's aunt, whom I was told had agreed to take him. According to teachers and students in Beclean, Zoro had wanted very much to stay at the school, crying for two weeks when told he had to go. The school's social worker said that Zoro had been stealing and misbehaving at school which made it difficult to place him in foster care. Also, a new law required that children in state care be returned to the counties of their birth, so Zoro, along with several other children, was transferred to neighboring Satu Mare County in 2003. Sorin and I tried to go find him around Thanksgiving, but the weather was bad and we had a minor accident on the road, and decided that navigating the unknown rural countryside in our poorly insured and extremely expensive Budget rent-a-car was just too risky during snow season. So I have been impatiently waiting for the snow to melt, and when Nikki got back from her monthly jaunt in Eastern Europe, we decided it was time to go find him.

We rounded up a Romanian translator and set off for Cluj, where we rented another poorly insured rental car from a sketchy company and drove to Satu Mare, billed by Lonely Planet as the ugliest city in Romania (not true--it's Bucharest, hands down.) The scenery was really nice; I miss my car and it felt great to drive, even given the nerve-wracking driving conditions. Once we actually got to Satu Mare, which is about 3 and 1/2 hours from Beclean, it was not hard to find Zoro's village, although it was a long and bumpy ride over unpaved roads full of potholes that would indeed have been unnavigable in the snow without a four wheel drive. We were stopped by the border police near the village; they later came to Zoro's house to see what we were up to. Zoro's village is only about 5Km from the Hungarian border, which is why, as we soon found out, no one there spoke Romanian--including Zoro.

I expected that Zoro might be living in poor conditions. I expected that his aunt might speak Hungarian, that the Roma (Gypsy) community he lived in might be hostile to outsiders. But I was totally unprepared for the fact that Zoro not only did not recognize me, but no longer spoke Romanian. As it turned out, we received a warm and curious welcome from most of the neighborhood, who stood by as I attempted to communicate with this boy I had spent so much time with, who two and a half years ago spoke only Romanian, and who now registered nothing when I told him, through the only fluently bilingual neighbor, who I was. Did he remember Beclean? No. Did he remember the camp? No. Kim? No...The kids? No. He was totally bewildered. The 30 or so onlookers were fascinated. Who were these foreigners in a blue Daewoo, waving cameras around and speaking through a chain of translators? I was simultaneously trying to direct Nikki-who had never shot video in her life--to capture this strange scene on tape so I could talk to Zoro, and trying to figure out what was going on. Turns out Zoro's aunt turned him over to his biological mother and father, who had both appeared on the scene. Figuring it was too late to turn back now, I decided to use my camera to show him the video we had made in the first summer camp, called "The King Who Wanted a Boy." It's a fairytale written by Adelina, another child from the camp. In it, Zoro plays a prince living in a faraway land who is called to resolve a family dispute. Here is a picture Nikki took of him watching it. His mother is watching over his shoulder.

Thanks, Christ

A year ago, I celebrated Easter with Sorinescu at a Romanian church in LA. Well, celebrated isn't really the right word--I think I complained most of the time about being cold. But back then, I learned this little exchange you're supposed to have on Easter (which I think I am spelling and/or translating incorrectly-Sorinescu please correct if so):

-Hristos a inviat! (Christ has risen!)--(Thanks for correction, S.)
to which you respond:
-Adevarat, a inviat! (True, he has risen!)

I am not so sure it's true at all--the Christ being alive part--but I'm willing to humor Romanians on their special day. However, I hadn't had the chance to say it for a whole year, so when a neighbor in my apartment building greeted me with "Hristos a inviat!" it took me by surprise and all I managed to say was "Multumesc!" (Thanks!)

I assume she heard my accent and realized I was just an idiot foreigner--an amusing anecdote to recount during the family's Easter meal.

Later that day, Nikki and I took a very nice stroll through Herestrau Park, where Nikki took pictures of the spring flowers and the red plastic egg-balloons that were hung throughout the park. The red eggs are an important part of the Romanian Orthodox Easter celebration; they symbolize the blood-soaked eggs supposedly lain under the cross when Christ was dying. They've got the chocolate bunnies too, but Easter here is a serious affair, more about religion and ritual than in the US, where the capitalist enterprise has made it mostly about marshmallow Peeps and plastic grass.

Documentarian as Neurotic Sociopath

Nikki can't stop laughing at me. She laughed so hard tonight she almost peed in her pajamas. I'm just glad she has a sense of humor, because others might have more readily wrung my neck.

The people who know me well, and tolerate me anyway, know that I can be a wee bit dramatic. I am given to periodic fits of despair and self-deprecation, during which those around me feel compelled to offer consolation and encouragement, which I vigorously refute in my determination to convince them that things are every bit as awful as I think they are. I can't say I am proud of this little routine; frankly, I think it's acceptable to act that way when you're 13, but ideally you grow out of it. Some of us are late bloomers, I guess.

Anyway, the precipitating event for my crisis today was a phone call I made to Denisa, the director of the school where I'm shooting. I truly dislike making these phone calls, as it is even harder for me to speak and understand Romanian over the phone than it is in person. When Sorinescu was here, I made him do the dirty work, but now I am on my own with the phone. So I called the school, and Denisa came running breathlessly to the phone, and I asked her what was up. She said that none of the kids were back from Easter vacation yet. I asked her if Anton (one of my main film subjects) had stayed in the institution over the break, since he doesn't have a foster family. She said no, that he had gone home over the break for the first time with his biological parents. I said, "No way!" (or some approximation thereof in Romanian) and she said "Yes! It was time to simply insist," and I said, "I can't believe this development happened when I wasn't there!" and she said, "Yes, it's a very big development!" She said that he would be back to the school tomorrow, but he would not be going back to the family again for a while.

I got off the phone, totally flabbergasted. Anton reunited with his biological parents? I had just planned out my shoot for this week, which was to highlight the contrast between Anton's life at the institution and lack of a family with the home life of some of the kids in foster care. Friday is his birthday, and I was going to shoot the monthly party they have at the school for all the kids born that month. Then I was going to follow Anton to the farm where he works on weekends, with a rural family who feed him and let him stay for a few days in exchange for milking the cows and shoveling manure. I was already disappointed that I had missed something important a few weeks ago--when Anton located the biological brother that even the social worker didn't believe existed, and brought him to the school asking if they could let him stay there because the brother is homeless. I began to be angry with myself for not calling Denisa before Easter break; for avoiding that task because it stressed me out. I played out the scene in my mind that I had missed: Anton being told that his biological mother had been located; being taken there by a social worker, meeting her for the first time. In his interviews with me, Anton said that he had never met his mother, and just wanted to know what she looked like. I imagined the other siblings looking curiously at him as he appeared at the house, reaction shots of curious neighbors, the awkward first moments. Having a meal with his real family. I plugged myself and my camera right into this missed fantasy scenario, as though I would've automatically been granted permission to film the whole thing (which actually, I probably would have--since people in Romania are generally pretty camera-friendly.)

Then, lying in despair on my bed, hot tears of frustration welling up as I berated myself for not living in the tiny grim town of Beclean where I could be capturing these moments; for not raising more money to hire a production manager to plan things for me, for not calling before Easter, for not being able to control the universe and script out real people's lives in a way that was convenient for my production schedule, I told Nikki very convincingly just how awful it all was. She listened patiently and compassionately, trying to tell me that I was being too hard on myself, that it was very challenging to be doing this on my own with such a small budget, and that no one had mentioned any possibility of Anton being reunited with his mother. She then realized that she needed to go buy a plane ticket before the agency closed, so she had to leave. When she was gone, there was no one left to convince that things were irreparably, horrendously, terribly awful, so I got up and ate some chocolate. Then I decided that I would call Denisa one more time to see how long Anton would be with his biological family. Maybe I could still get something on tape.

The social worker Emishe answered rather than Denisa, and I told her I was surprised that Anton was in the family. She said yes, he'd be back from Rebrisoara tomorrow. "Rebrisoara?" I said. "Yes, he's at the farm," she said. "I thought he was with his biological family!" I replied. Apparently Denisa was listening in, because just then her voice came on the line too. "Amy? I said Anca went to her biological family for the weekend. Anca Nicoletta." "Not Anton?" I said, relief making me go weak and tingly. Indeed, Denisa had misheard my earlier question, though I can't imagine why she would think I was asking about Anca. I don't even know who Anca Nicoletta is.

So once it had been clearly established that Anton was still legally abandoned, and therefore still conforming to the story structure I had laid out for the film, my anxiety lifted and I began looking forward to the shoot again. Perhaps other documentary filmmakers would read this and understand and not think I am a terrible heartless beast, but other human beings would have to wonder. Of course I hate to see Anton longing for a reunion with his mother while shoveling manure in BFE, and of course I want him to realize his dreams. Only I would prefer that if this happens, I am there with a blank tape and a charged battery and my release forms, so that it can all make it into the final cut.

The Kids

Nikki finally got her pictures back from one of our last trips to Bistrita. Here are some of the kids I've been stalking this year:

This is Anton (center) with a couple of friends.


And Mihaela:


And a few of the little ones at the school:

Blooms

I had never fully appreciated springtime until this year. Growing up, the Springtime Tallahassee Parade was a big annual event, where much ado was made about blooming azaleas and whether the figurehead of Andrew Jackson should be allowed to lead the procession since he was a racist and a slaughterer of Indians (www.springtimetallahassee.org). I don't know whether the parade was fun to watch because I always had to be in it, doing back flips, twirling a baton, or playing a saxophone--in my progression from Tumbling Tot to band nerd. Spring in Florida means that summer is about a week away, which means that the backs of your legs are going to be sticking to the car seat for the next four months. What's fun about that?

Since spring in Florida was so short as to be almost undetectable, I just didn't know how great it could be until I spent the winter in Romania. It's kind of wimpy of me to say this, because Romania's winter is pretty similar to Pennsylvania's. But with the gray concrete buildings and the drizzly fog, it just feels longer and colder. People slog around Bucharest in rubber boots with their faces all scrunched up, looking mean and grouchy. And then, during the five days I was in Italy, a miracle occurred. The sun came out, the snow melted, the leaves sprouted from the tree branches, and the dog turds thawed on the sidewalk. I have been watching this reawakening with fascination and relief. The flower shops seem to have doubled in number. Dandelions have sprouted along the roads. Kiosks for books, sunglasses, and Easter kitsch have emerged in front of the KFC in Piata Romana, and the slogging and scrunching has eased into a stroll. The beggars are returning to the streets; homeless gypsy mothers and babies and children, old women in headscarves, alcoholics and amputees.

One of the most impressive things of all is the transformation of Herestrau Park.

At some point during the thaw, the city must've sent out an army of Pansy Elves to do a massive landscaping job around all the fountains and gazebos. Bucharest can't get its shit together to fill a pothole, but they sure know how to plant their flowers. Herestrau+springtime+outdoor cafe+vanilla frappe=happiness.

Right Before He Escaped

I just found all the photos that Sorinescu downloaded from his camera while he was here. Since this blog has been pretty colorless since the digital camera went back to the US with S, I thought I'd insert them here and there. Right after this photo was taken, the puppy wriggled loose and stepped in the freshly poured cement that was to be a new sidewalk, then I stepped in it myself as I was trying to keep the mother dog from getting out of her pen. She bolted too and it took the owners of the hotel 15 minutes to track her down. She had had enough of nursing 8 hungry puppies and just wanted to visit the neighbors.

Dear Readers

I don't have any, do I? :)

I just got a spam comment to a recent post. Not sure how that happens, but I have no idea who the guy is! I got kind of excited for a minute, though--I thought maybe someone had actually looked at my blog!

Pisica si Pianul

This evening Nikki and I went with Adina to a free concert at Palatul Sutu, near Piata Universitate. The two piano players performed a sonata written by Mozart at the age of 9, while the resident tabby cat sat in front of the piano carefully cleaning between each of her toes.

Healers

I finally went to the doctor to get rid of my lingering scourge. It had simply been too many days of feeling exhausted and feverish. I went to a fancy new clinic in Primaveri this time, and paid $10 for a consultation with a very pleasant Romanian doctor who took my blood pressure, listened to my lungs, and prescribed me antibiotics, which cost $30 at the pharmacy. I don't know if it's because I was a foreigner, but there was no paperwork, no waiting in the waiting room, no filling out of medical histories, no questions about allergies. The no waiting part probably had to do with my being able to pay the full price of the visit, which for many Romanians is very expensive. But I'm still not very clear on the workings (or lack thereof) of the Romanian health care system.

The first time I went to the doctor in Romania, I went to the first place on the list given to us by Halfbright at our orientation. It turned out to be in Ghencea, a Bucharest suburb full of muddy puddles, gray cement high-rises, skinny stray dogs, and building supply stores (a pretty typical Bucharest neighborhood, actually). The doctor there was a newly arrived missionary from Texas, about my age, whose wife had long "had Eastern Europe on her heart." So he, his wife, and their three children had moved to Ghencea so that he could minister to street children at this clinic. He was particularly concerned about the abortion rate in Romania, which is currently equal to the birth rate. Alarming indeed, but so was this poster in his office (which I can't seem to insert right-side up):



The first panel reads, "God, why haven't you sent us people to cure cancer and AIDS, to solve the problem of world hunger and all our social problems?" God replies from above, "I sent them!"

In the second panel, the man asks, "Well, then where are they?" and God responds: "They were aborted!"

This is a good, clear, realistic message to send to the people of Romania, don't you think? Your unborn child is the next Jonas Salk. Therefore, if you abort, you're effectively killing thousands of the disease-afflicted at the same time, not to mention pissing off God.

Anyway, I genuinely appreciate the fact that the doctor loves the Lord enough to live in Ghencea and provide low-cost medical care to Romanians. I would have a very difficult time making that kind of sacrifice. I also agree that abortion should not be used as a form of birth control, and that reducing its very high rate here is an admirable goal--through ACCESSIBLE FAMILY PLANNING SERVICES. Not through bullshit religious propaganda that only serves to lay a guilt trip on an exceedingly poor and already God-fearing population. Stating that an unborn human life has potential is one thing; naming abortion as the cause of cancer and AIDS is another, and putting such a poster in the waiting room of a doctor's office is medically irresponsible. Needless to say, I did not go back to see Dr. Texas.

Fortunately, Alexander Fleming (who discovered penicillin) wasn't aborted, so at least my bronchitis is cured.

A Little Sickly

I have some sort of flu thing for the first time since I arrived in Romania. It's most unpleasant--headache, upset stomach, fever, extreme fatigue. It wouldn't be so much of a problem if I could just sleep for a few days, but the problem is, I've scheduled a trip to Bistrita with Nora, a Romanian cinematographer who is ever so difficult to pin down because she is talented and in much demand. I've coordinated meetings there and a place to stay. I am supposed to leave on the night train tonight, which is a nausea-inducing experience even when one is perfectly healthy. I feel like I can't cancel! So wish me luck, dear reading public, in making it through the next few days...