Apartment Living

For a few weeks now, we've all been living in Apartments 8 and 11. The transition has been a good one so far with a whole new set of challenges and joys. Probably the best challenge and our greatest joy is coming together to work as a team and really learning to interact as a community. This is a different challenge than what we faced at our homestays. There, we were interacting with our families and getting a feel for the culture--experiencing all the insider joys of Romania. We integrated into the community of Lupeni. Now that we have merged into this community, we are working on building up another kind of community. The seven of us living in close quarters feels almost like a return to a campus--complete with bunk beds and sharing closets.
As we all know, living with someone takes a lot of effort. Living with six others takes just that much more effort. Especially after all of us were spoiled rotten at our homestays. Some of us hadn't been allowed to wash our own laundry for over a month! Cooking, cleaning, laundry, sharing space and time comes as quite a shock after that. An illustrious saying on Northwestern campus says that nudity builds community, I rejoin that community can be built perfectly well while fully clothed--it just takes a lot of meals and mops and movies and games of Sequence. Doesn't sound as fun, but works just as well! and we're all about efficiency here in Romania. ;)
I've been really proud of our group so far. Not only have we all stepped up to the challenges included in living together but we've managed to have a great time doing so, even despite the lack of nudity. Ciocolata ceasul, Sequence, O Brother, Where Art Thou, Grey's Anatomy, and Rummy can win over it any day. Especially with the new addition of knitting! My ultimate favorite part of it all though is that every night we all get together around a massive wooden table to eat the meal that we have prepared. Sometimes it's delicious. Sometimes it's interesting. Sometimes it's an adventure. It's always a good time.