Christmas Frolics

Last night was the Christmas party, it was weird. Not speaking Romanian I needed Serj to act as translator but at one point I'm sure the proceedings led him to lose the will to live so at these points I was left to wonder what the devil was going on.

Getting there was an adventure in itself, the taxi had a spoiler and racing stripes, and the driver actually shouted at me for doing something as ridiculous as to look for a seatbelt in his car. However, I did arrive in one piece. One of the first people I saw was Leo, this was my second dealing with him where he gave me a glass of whiskey, my first dealing with him was when he gave me money from the finance office to pay my bills so only good things happen when you speak to Leo.

Before carrying on with this bit, its important to point out that you can be confident of seeing certain people in certain areas. For example there is a kid who walks around Unirii with a lamb in his jacket and you give him some money and you can touch it, which supposedly brings good luck. Another group are some native Americans who dance on Unirii. Well the guy who runs the school was there dressed as an American Indian, he had given himself a name like running bear or something. We all had to vote on who we felt was the most enthusiastic member of staff was during the week, he brought up the candidates and made them sing a song in Apache. He then probably introduces them, but not knowing what he was saying it came as a surprise to me, the American Indians come dancing down the room in fully wear and dance for the next fifteen minutes, why people tried to copy. Haven' t these people suffered enough? One of them was Romanian and you do wonder how she fell into this. Why they were dancing another Indian who was just in jeans and a shirt was in the DJ booth shouting the Romanian version of 'Shubba'.

They disappeared as soon as they arrived and then it was time for the teams to vie for the title of most enthusiastic. There was a play about Santa being sent away by Mrs. Clause until he learnt to speak English, but Santa had the last laugh, not only did he learn English but he also met a new women, the sly dog. There was a puppet show, a mock news programme, people enacting cartoon characters (Bogdan's roadrunner being a highlight), the guys from fast track kids sang a song, one group did accent impersonations and then danced in the style of that country, there were more but I can't remember. Ana become convinced we weren't going to win as 'we don't dance around enough', we had gone for the different approach of IF YOU DON'T STOP USING SO MUCH PAPER THE WORLD WILL OVERHEAT AND DIE. The film started with pictures of pretty trees etc and then we ran on and pretended to fight for seats on the stage. After 30 seconds we took our seat and pretended to read a paper before the video voice over starts at which point we look around wondering where it is coming from. Eniko then comes on as an air steward and goes through the routine while the voice over talks about global warming we then all run off. The film then cuts to the foliage planting with 'Big Yellow Taxi' being played (I chose the song so don't knock it). Then we had boards shoved into our hands and one by one we had to prance across the stage holding the damn things, my boards read save resources. With both hands full all I could do was some kind of funky walk, which I will demonstrate when I'm home as it was banging.

We didn't win, but we did come a very respectable third. The group doing all the different nationalities won, I think the girl belly dancing and another doing a full splits is what clinched it. The puppet show was second. I think Ana's hard work has been fully justified. We were pulled on stage and again as it was in Romanian so I didn't know what was going on until we came off and Serj filled me in like Craig David. What I've been led to believe is that we have won a camping trip in the mountains, but I don't have a tent so I'm left to dream.

It then progressed into what was in effect a wedding disco. There was 90's disco, a small scuffle and I preceded to humiliate myself in front of my new employers by attempting to dance in public, the Botswana did not make an appearance however, that would have probably got me deported.

They will be giving me a DVD with pictures and a bit of film and jazz, so hopefully it will be on here soon.