A goodbye to the park: I have two more days left at the park. This past fall, a staff picture was taken and I thought I'd share with you a picture of the group.

L-R

Bogdan (the park's marketing consultant)
Me
Ovidiu (the park's director)
Cristian (ranger)
Paula (accountant)
Sabi (ranger)
Adina (ranger)
Anca (ranger)
Marian (ranger)
Gabi (biologist)
Paul (education/toursim)
Oliver (ranger)
not pictured- Dani (IT)

Last night the park threw me a goodbye party. The staff and their families came, along with a few volunteers in the area. Everyone brought food and homemade wine (and moonshine) and it was really nice.

The photos of the party were taken by staff and I don't have the best versions yet-but since I have a couple of days left I thought I'd post a few even if they aren't the best.

Hai sa dansez! (Let's dance!)

There was even a little music! Sorry about the size and quality of this picture-I didn't have have original. The park gave me several really nice gifts: the traditional hat I'm wearing in the picture, the pan flute I'm playing, some wooden miniatures, a staff photo, and a traditionally made bag. It was very generous.

Two thumbs up on the party!

Gata! (Done!)

The final garage loft and my final project at the park is finished. All that stuff in the loft was on the ground--with the boat trailer. You couldn't even walk in their when the boats were in. But its much better now.

Tomorrow night the park is tossing me a small goodbye party. Several other volunteers will come in too, so it should be a nice get-together.

Since we rarely use the kayak, we hung it up on the ceiling.

Hopefully it will stay clean and open. In my time here, I've never been able to walk all the way to the back wall while the canoes are in the garage- you can now!

Today is Romania's Independence Day. There are festivities downtown-mostly military ceremonies. I was going to go down but decided to stay out at the park and keep preparing for packing up. I've got a lot to go through and since the park staff isn't here today, I thought I would take the day to start on it.

So happy Independence Day! FYI- this group is from Satu Mare (northern RO).

Email Subscription Notice

I've got a new tool up on this blog that I want everyone to know about. On the right hand toolbar, below the comment box is a place for you to type in your email. If you type your email in, every time I update my blog, you will get an email saying I've updated. You won't get any junk mail- I've been testing this for a couple of days and its legit and works good.

I'm going to stop sending out emails to everyone saying I've updated my blog. So if you'd like to be reminded, this is the best way. Just type in your email. You'll be sent an email from Feedburner that you must confirm. After that, if I post, you'll be told. :)

If I find myself going to Mongolia like I hope, this will be the norm on that blog too. FYI. :) So sign up today...before you forget!!

PS. I know, I've only got 2 more weeks in RO, but I'll probably have several more posts and this blog may carry me through the holiday season too.

Bike Loft

Today I finished one of the two lofts that I'm making before I leave RO--my final hoorah at the park. This one was to finalize the bike garage. A year ago, this garage was a natural disaster. Bikes were leaning against each other, gear would get broken or lost easily. Today we finished "operation clean garage #2". Below are a few pictures of the loft.

The finished product from the inside. We bolted the loft to the wall and the board in the front is an I-beam to account for weight. As you can see, we've already put the park's drone plane up there. We'll eventually reposition it, but its nice to have that thing up and out of the way!

As you can see-Shaggy and One-eye helped with the project.

This is the work station for the rangers when they are maintaining the bikes: the bench and a nice back rest. It doesn't look like much, but its really comfortable.

It actually looks better in person-ha. But we put in a place for helmets and water bottles to be stored. Before this, they were just in bags and boxes and it was hard to keep them organized.

My Christmas Pie Request

The bar has been set ladies and gentlemen. November 2, although early, marks the official beginning of the pie requests!!!

For those of you that come across this post, that aren't in my family, I assure you that I'm still sane. Every year my family requests pies and my gracious Aunt Marsha bakes us all our very own pie. This year, it was suggested that we make our pie request via song- preferably from a parody.

I'd also like the to take this opportunity to apologize to my Aunt Marsha for some of the rhymes. The word "klutz" in reference to pie cooking is in no way connected with her cooking skills! But artistically it seemed to be the perfect rhyme for that line. I'd also like to say that although the line, "open up your oven and satisfy me" may sound like a directive, I'd like to state for the record, again, her generous gift of pies every year and how much we all enjoy it. Again, artistically I feel it was the right choice. :) I am looking forward to my pie very, very much!

Calendars

So its a little early...not even Halloween. But I thought I'd put this up on the site anyway and tempt you with it. I've made two calendars available for you to download and print at your pleasure, if you so choose.

You can see the entire calendar by scrolling threw it and if you want to download the pdf, just click on the calendar's name below the Scribd box.

If you want to reference this later, just look under the labels "calendars" to find them easily.