Adventures Adventures and More Adventures!

Last weekend we got Friday of and we went to Transylvania to explore more parts of Romania!  To get there we left Thursday night and took a sleeper train!  It was so much fun and I loved it because it was easy to sleep through the eight hour train ride!  On the train there was a narrow hallway and then there were small rooms with six beds in it; top, middle, and bottom.  It was super squishy but you did not need a ton of room cause you were sleeping the whole time.  In our room there was only four of us so on the two middle beds where a older couple.  One of them snored really loud but other than that they were super nice! hahaha.

The sleeper train brought us to Bucharest and then we got on another train for 3 more hours that brought us to Brasov, a city in the Transylvania region. We arrived in Brasov around 9:30am Friday morning. The Hostel that we booked for our stay in Brasov ended up being called The Evil Clown and at the front desk there were tons of clowns and dolls it was so creepy!  Luckily there were non in the rooms and it ended up being a really friendly place but the name and the paintings were just a little scary haha.  After we got settled in we took a bus out to Bran where Draculas Castle is and several souvenir shops! We spent the rest of the day out here but it was super cold!  By the time we got back to our hostel we were frozen and the heater in our room didn't work so that night I slept with my coat on!
Saturday was a nice and relaxing day.  We got breakfast, toured an old church, took a Gondala to the top of a hill that overlooked the city and looked at the cute shops around the center square.  It was really nice to just have a nice relaxing day!  And it was super cute because it snowed the night before so the city was covered with a thin blanket of snow.  To end the day I went and got dinner at a Dominos pizza place that was close to our Hostel and it was sooooo yummy!! Nice to have some food a little more like home!
Sunday we spend the whole day from 8am to 7pm on the train back to Iasi, I wish we would have thought to take a sleeper train back Saturday night! This last week I enjoyed every minuet with my kiddos!  They continue to grow and also teach me every day what true love really feels and looks like!  My love for them and all their silly little habits and personalities grows every day!
This week I decided I wanted to make Pumpkin Pie for Thanksgiving so Tuesday I went to the store to get all the ingredients.  I could not find shortening or cloves so instead I got butter and this wired drink mix that looked like it had cloves in it.  Wednesday after working at the orphanage I came straight home and started on the pie.  I made the pie from a real pumpkin so I had to start by cooking the pumpkin in the oven.  The oven is a gas oven and does not have a thermometer in it so I had no way of knowing what the temperature actually was so I just had to eyeball it.  Once the pumpkin was all cooked I separated it from the skin and tried to blend it up but I did not have a blender so it was still pretty stringy!  Luckily I had the thought to ask my neighbor and sure enough, she had a blender she was willing to share!  As I continued to make the filling for the pie I realized that I had bought sweet and condensed milk instead of  evaporated milk so we had to run back to the store to try and find some!  Luckily they had it!  For the crust of the pie I did not have a pastry cutter or a rolling pin so I used a metal wisk to cut in the butter and then a saran rap roll for my rolling pin.  Luckily it all worked out and the crust turned out amazing!
Thursday we went to KFC for dinner and then everyone came back to our apartment for pie!  I was so happy because everybody liked the pie and were all still able to celebrate thanksgiving together even in another country!
Sunday our neighbor grandma offered to teach us how to make Sarmale, which is a traditional Romanian food that is kinda like cabbage rolls,  and Mamaliga, which is just cornmeal and water boiled for a while.  It took almost 4 hours to make but it was so worth it!  It was so yummy!  We have had Sarmale before but it never tasted this good!  I'm loving all the fun adventures we have been able to have here in Romania!