dinner with the ambassador from the united states to romania

For Thanksgiving as I hae mentioned before we volunteers were invited to attend dinner at the new Ambassador and his wife's home in Bucuresti. Over thirty of us made the trek to the capital city, booked ourselves into hostels and took a chunk out of our monthly allowance to attend. The meal itself was less than impressive to me but then again I'm a picky vegetarian and formal meals like that include alot of meaty heavy entrees and side dishes, though I must say the grilled pumpkin went famously with the white wine they kept bringing out.

Now originally I had a place at a full table of cool people who I hadn't seen in months and was excited to get to chat and catch up with, but sometime between putting my wallet down and standing in the buffet line my chair got taken and so the other refugees and I started our own party of three at another table. To our benefit the AMbassador decided to go for a smaller group than the larger one with an open table and so we got the chance to talk casually and learn all about him and his history. He is a very close friend to Joe Biden, a first time overseas diplomat and is embarrassed that he can't speak more Romanian seeing as he wants to talk to his non-English speaking house staff. He's quite funny too and very interested in building up a more co-operative relationship between the Embassy and Peace Corps. His wife is just the perfect little hostess too, even allowing me up into their private quarters to search out band-aids for the poor ladies to put over the blisters their heels gave them.

In true fashion when more than five volunteers get together, we all headed out on the town and ended up at a pub-style establishment(something rare here) where the special of the night was a wagon wheel which held 11 half-liter halbas for only 30 lei ( or the equivalent of two cases of beer for only 10 dollars.) We played new card games, took pictures and started our dance party of course. All in all a good night.

I would love to share a picture of the wagon wheel, but sadly mine didn't come out, but I'll do my best to get a better copy since its a sight to see.