Christmas - meeting day

I spent Christmas Day on the road. I first went to my grandma which I haven't seen for almost an year and after that to my auntie, which is like grandma for me. I was very happy to see they are fine and healthy, as much as their age can afford to be :(

Later in the afternoon I stoped in Craiova where I met my good friend Raluca which I haven't seen since September 2004.

A reason to speak about lots of things that happened to both of us during this time, her extraordinary life experience in Sao Paolo, Brasil, and now in Wroclaw, Poland, my traineeship in Turkey, to renew old and funny memories and make plans together. If everthing goes as we planed, I will visit Wroclaw this spring :))) Insallah!!!

I also met Simona and Iulia, fortunatelly I'll meet them again, cause we didn't have time to tell everything ..

New Year's Party overcame my expectations. Kemal and I went to Craiova for AIESEC New Year's Party. I was afraid that I don't know so many people, but fortunately I met Bancheta and Claudiu, former @ members which I haven't seen for a long time. Kemal and I had a nice time in Craiova and we were about to make some commitments to come again, but I couldn't find a mobile number of a cute girl, so he reached the conclusion that it's easier to stick to our life in Bcuharest, for now ...

The end of 2005 was definitely marked by reviewing (revedere) time for me, and I am so glad that I saw my relatives and friends.

May you love and be loved, share, dare, win and be happy and successful in 2006.

Christmas and New Year's Party

My boss and his brother in law visited Bucharest the week before Christmas and on Saturday we went for a short visit to my parents, in Caracal, just for getting to know the familly.

My boss's brother in law surname is Deliorman ("crazy forest" in turkish) and on the way to Caracal we passed through Teleorman county. His ancestors come from north of Bulgaria which is just near Teleorman county. Due to this strange coincidence, we stoped on the road and he took some ground from Teleorman to put on his ancestors' graves.

The visit to Caracal was short, but enough to taste my mother's home made goodies :)))

Night life in Bucharest

There is already 1 month since I moved to Bucharest for work. Last weekend Kemal, few of his friends and I went to Coyote Cafe, who is actually a night club with live band and karaoke.

Tables were full, though club was not as crowed as I could imagine. An US singer and later the owner of the club entertained us with nice ever green songs, one of them is Feel - Robby Williams, that my Indian friend, Natraj, likes so much to sing :)))

After Coyote, we all went to Salsa Club. Oha, it was amazing :))) it was like a salsa school, there were lots of couples who seemed they were teaching salsa lessons. Althoug I was told I dance pretty good, I just sit and admired them, and thought about taking salsa lesson and come back :))

Yesterday evening Kemal and I attended Planter's Cafe, pub and club, with nice atmosphere. We enjoyed the nice music and moved on music rythms for a few hours, later on, after a short visit to Everest Fast Food, we hit the road to home.

Night life in Bucharest is becoming day by day more interesting and captivating for me. I like it, and I enjoy every moment of it.

Back to Romania

After a long period of silence, here I am, motivated to start posting again.

After great life experience in Turkey, I am back in my home country, Romania. I visited my familly couple of days in Caracal, ate delicious food home made by my mother, attended Local Training Seminar of AIESEC in Craiova and now I am in Bucharest.

I started work 3 weeks ago at INTERTIM WOOD SRL, romanian branch of INTERTIM LTD, the company I worked for in Turkey, and I have similar JD.

I'll come back with details about Bucharest and my life here.

Golden Temple, Amritsar

Golden Temple, Amritsar
Originally uploaded by Dragos TUTA.

wedding, young indian couple

wedding, youg couple
Originally uploaded by Dragos TUTA.

Old Church, Goa - India

Old Church, Goa
Originally uploaded by Dragos TUTA.

Taj Mahal, Agra - India

Taj Mahal, Agra
Originally uploaded by Dragos TUTA.

Pictures from a good friend who is having her traineeship in India.

Cory and Gabitza have arrived in Mersin

Cory, my good and old friend from Craiova, and Gabitza, ALUMNI of AIESEC Craiova,have arrived in Mersin yesterday at noon, after a long and exhausting 14 hours trip.

Yesterday evening, Cory, Gabitza, Joe and me went out for having dinner on a boat, first time for us, romanians, went for a walk on the coast and admired the big waves that were breaking by the rocks and tryed delicious but very heavy Turkish sweets.

Welcome in Turkey, Cory and Gabitza, and enjoy your time here.

Cappadocia Study Tour

Last Thuersday I went to Ankara for attending Cappadochia Tour organized by AIESEC Ankara and I meet Betty (Mexico), Luboj (Slovakia) and Marc (USA), trainees in Gaziantep. After processing and obtaining Syrian visa with the help of Christiane (Germany) and Tim (USA), some of us went to Atakule Tower, 30-40 m tall, and we could see all Ankara sightseeing from the top of the tower. On the top, there is a restaurant who spins around making a full rotation in less than 2 hours.

We've spent the rest of the day in AIESEC office sitoated in a 2 levels rent house with front yard and benches. In the same frontyard, UK trainees organized traditional UK evening and we served Sheppard Pie with turkish beer, being accompanied by AIESEC songs and dances. Shame on me, Dragostea din tei - O-ZONE was one of the songs, but I don't know the lyrics nor the dance ...

Friday morning we met the other delegates. First stop in Ankara was Ataturk Mausoleum, an impressive rocky building that contains personal objects of Ataturk, landscapes from the Turkish Independence war and victory celebration. We continued Ankara study tour with visiting Museum of Anatolian Civilization and Ankara Castle, important places in the history of Ankara city and Turkey. The day ended with nice but too short party outside the town, where we also organized a kind of glovall village, but most of the delegates came unprepared. Romania was reprezented by Cristina (from Cluj Napoca, trainee in Bursa for 3 months), me and Romanian flag, Blue-Yellow-Red!!!

Saturday morning, study tour started with a short visit at Salt Lake, second large lake in Turkey and a longer visit at Derinküyü, a 7 levels Underground City, fully equipped with food storage rooms, stables, wells, air inlets, chimneys for smoke from the cookfires, wine presses, salt-grinding tables and even huge churches. Around 6000 people were able to live in the underground city for more than 3 weeks. Both, lake and underground city are in Cappadocia region, called Horses Land by arabians, situated in Central Anatolian region.

After seeing the sunrise on Nemrud Mountain, in Cappadochia we saw sunset up on the natural rocky hills. We could stay there for hours admiring the beautifull landscape, but traditinal Turkish night at The Yaşar Baba Cave Restaurant was waiting for us. Turkish Folklor, dances around a hugh fire, belly dances, turkish marriage brokerage play, traditional food and the party made the evening to be excellent. As it was not enough, we continued the party at the hotel, playing bitches-bitches and drinking Turkish wine :)))).

Sunday morning started with a refreshing swimmimg bath and a copious breakfast. Devrent Valley, Zelve (the oldest Christian village and church), Goreme Open air Museum were the places we visited Sunday morning. After lunch we went to see hand made Turkish natural coloured carpets and rugs, and a potery for half price very interesting ceramics and glass objects.

For Adana delegations study tour ended here, as we had a bus to catch from Nevsehir via Niğde (I will not forget this town anymore!!!). As we took a wrong bus to Aksaray, instead of going to Niğde, we met again the delegates at Aksaray when we were waiting the buses to Adana and Mersin in a wrong place. Finally, the transportation to Adana and Mersin was taking care by AIESEC and we went back home, me in Mersin, and the rest of the delegation in Adana.

Turkish Wedding!

Following Joe's invitation, Saturday evening I joint Sebi, Bouchet, Serkan, Pinar, Kaya and Joe to their former work coleague's, Iclim, wedding party.

Lots of people attended the event, about 400 persons, organized in one hotel near the coast. Few minutes after we were welcomed by the bride's mother and wished her and her children all the best, the bride and the groom walked the red carpet being accompanyed by nice fireworks and guests clapping.

After traditionally tour around tables, they signed the official papers and sweared to love eachother unconditionally, for better and for worse ...

After admiring their nice wedding dresses, we have tryed traditionally turkish appetiser consisting in 2 kinds of yougurt with cuecambers, olives salad, a red (russian) salad, lam salami, and few other traditional salads who's names I don't know in English nor Turkish :)))) E vorba de un fel de zacusca, salata de vinete, si alte 2 feluri de salate, dar nu imi amintesc exact ce anume ... Everything was accompanied by a glass with turkish red wine, care nu se compara cu vinul rosu romanesc ...

As people came on the dance floor, we also moved our bodies on Turkish and a bit of foreign music rhythms. I admired the way how Turkish women and men move their bodies following the music rhythms, it was a pleasure. I even tryed to get into their rhythm and if I was more insistent maybe I would have succeded, but second dish was served, so we had to try lam and chicken with rise, as it is used at most of Turkish weddings.

After another dancing round, a 7 or 8 levels cake was served together with summer fruits such as watermelon and melon, cherries and apricots. The cake was pretty good, and I will describe it in Romanian, as I don't know the words in English :))) Tortul a fost bun, cu crema intre 2 straturi de blat obisnuit, deasupra fiind frisca decorata cu ciocolata.

During the wedding, there were very beautifull fireworks who delighted everybody. It is very common in middle and upper class Turkish weddings to have fireworks at wedding party, as I noticed almost every weekend at the weddings organized at hotels nearby my flat.

As midnight had come and people had left, we wished happyness to host familly and I even wished traditionally Romanian 'Casa de piatra' in the official 'sugar cube' :) notebook, said good bye and hit the road to Tarsus, after few tryes to continue the night in one night club on the coast.

It was a lovely night and a new cultural experience for me. Thank you, Joe, for invitation, thank you all, guys, for the excellent night.

PS: I will come back with pictures!!!