The Love Story of an Eastern European and the US (Part 2)

I'm pretty sure we were the only people in my city who had American friends. This was 1993ish if my memory doesn't play tricks. Only 4 or so years after the Revolution, so imagine people's disbelief when my parents would tell them about THE Americans! It was like befriending demigods pretty much. I'm not exaggerating! The Romanian people hoped the Americans would come save them from communism for a long time (not that it's America's job to save everyone from everything. Take it as a compliment). Don't be surprised if, as an American, you are greeted by a Romanian stranger with: "We've been waiting for you!" Now you know what they mean. ;-) And they mean well by it.


Neither one of my parents could speak English, so how do you think we kept in touch with our very own "demigods"? At first, we paid a high school girl to translate my mom's handwritten letters into English, and the English letters we received into Romanian. After a while, however, it got expensive and our translator wasn't always very reliable, so my mom took it upon herself to write her own letters with only the help of a dictionary. And hey... it worked! I still have that dictionary as a matter of fact. She did that for YEARS and I mean... many years. It was hard, time consuming work, but she enjoyed doing it. It was an honor for us to be able to tap into the life of an everyday American family. These people weren't millionaire. They didn't even live in a big city. However, they were caring, honest, genuinely interested in the Romanian culture and people, and extremely funny. How could you not enjoy forming a friendship with such people? The myth of awesome American people was true.

They visited Romania for the first time in 1994ish (jeez... my memory is shaky) and what a great time that was. I don't remember everything (can you tell?), but my memories are definitely dominated by Pringles and a huge pink stuffed bunny rabbit (which... yes... I still have to this day). I think I did the Pringles duck face in every picture we took. I was hooked! Anyway, we did our best to make our guests feel like home or better. We hosted them in our apartment so they didn't have to pay for hotel; my mom cooked them homemade, traditional meals everyday; we took them sightseeing; we laughed; we bonded; we introduced them to other Romanians, and everyone enjoyed themselves. My mom learned bits and pieces of English, but during that visit, we mainly relied on a translator who went with us everywhere. Unfortunately, there's bad guys in every story, and since this is a "love story," there had to be one coming up fairly soon... I'll tell you about it next time, though. :-)

To be continued..