Grammie is scheduled to leave in a few days and we’re desperately trying to take advantage of having an extra pack mule to help us move. So, I pack up all of our stuff (for the third time in as many weeks), and we shuttle the bags out to the corner to hail 2 taxis. Mom rides alone in one, following Neva and me in another after I give the address to the drivers. My driver races through the city, and I try to remind him that the other driver is following him, and he does slow down about 2 km/hr. We all arrive safely at the new apartment and shuttle the bags up to the apartment while Mom’s driver, Alex waits to take us to Ikea. Mom has struck up a conversation on the drive and now knows all about his family and he knows all about us. We spend a few hours at Ikea buying basics like sheets, towels, silverware, etc. and call Alex again to come pick us up and take us home. I start washing sheets (which is not a short-term project given that the shortest warm-water wash I can run is 85 minutes without drying) and Mom takes Neva to the pool for a much-deserved cool off. We eat our rotisserie chicken dinner off of plastic Ikea plates and Neva decides to sleep in her trundle bed. It’s a little bit smaller than her regular bed, but the novelty is irresistible. Mom spends the evening getting packed up and we finally get to bed around midnight. We have arranged with Alex to pick her up at 6:30 AM to drive her to the airport for an 8:30 flight. It feels a little odd to pack my mother into a cab in a new city and have her driven off, but she insists that she trusts Alex and that we don’t need to go with her. Alex is a very friendly man who speaks much better English than we do Romanian (although Neva thinks he sounds like someone from the Veggie Tales cartoons) and is a much more cautious driver than most other taxi drivers here, so we feel pretty safe driving with him. He has become our personal taxi driver and seems more than happy to shuttle us all over the city, which is very convenient for us.

Chris, Neva and I spend the rest of the weekend shopping. Saturday takes us to Carrefour for groceries and apartment supplies (sort of a cross between Target and a grocery store), and Sunday finds us back at Ikea for more apartment stuff. I’m pretty sure that’s not how Chris wanted to spend Father’s Day, but we did get a lot accomplished and it’s much easier for me to have him there to help. Even going for groceries is a major undertaking since it takes about 4 hours to get there, work my way through the store trying to decipher labels, pack everything into the bags and get back home again, either by taxi or bus depending on how much stuff I have and the weather. Bucharest weather can change quickly and drastically, going from 100° with clear skies to a pelting thunderstorm, then back to clear skies within an hour. We have quickly learned to carry an umbrella at all times and not to trust the weather reports as they have proven to be less than accurate for anything over 30 minutes ahead. The rain can also be very localized, as Chris may have clear skies at work all day, while we have had 2 separate thunderstorms pass over the apartment.

It is amazing how quickly time passes, whether you’re having fun or not. It’s hard to believe that I’ve already been here for 4 weeks. Normally, that wouldn’t seem like such a long time, but taken in the context of a year, I feel as though we should have at least taken a weekend trip by now. But who has time for a trip when there’s so much quality time to be spent at the local mega-mall? Neva was almost as happy to discover that she can still go to the play area at Ikea without speaking Romanian as I was, since we’ve been there three times in the last 10 days. They have the same great deals on food, but offer filled doughnuts instead of cinnamon rolls and have a cool soft-serve-yourself machine for ice cream. It’s very similar to the system used by many fast food joints in which you get your cup at the register, and then go fill it yourself with your choice of beverages. In this case, you receive your cone from the register, and place it into the ring on the ice cream machine. With the push of a button, your cone is lifted up and filled with a glorious dollop of vanilla soft serve. The entire experience can be yours for about $.50, by the way, so it’s the kind of thing that works extremely well as a good-behavior reward for an almost 5 year-old with no skin off Mom and Dad’s back.

We have managed to outfit our new apartment with the basic essentials and some luxurious extras (like patio furniture) with our limited Romanian, including arranging for delivery services at two different stores in the same day. For future reference, the English skills of the Ikea employees far surpass those of the employees at Bricostore (the Lowe’s equivalent), although you will get your merchandise delivered the next day from either location. Just make sure your neighbors aren’t trying to drive out of the one-lane driveway as your Bricostore delivery truck is unloading your merchandise, or you will be hauling the boxes of unassembled furniture up to your apartment yourself. I guess that’s the price you pay for free delivery, and frankly, I’m OK with that.

We were fortunate to negotiate the purchase of Chris’s coworker’s TV and DVD player as she is moving from Bucharest to Munich. She came by Saturday evening to deliver them and as an added bonus, threw in all of the dry goods in her cupboard. I am still a bit skeptical of the unrefrigerated box of vegetable fat that can supposedly be whipped into a delicious whipped cream-like dessert topping, but I will have to try it for myself if only as a science experiment. I think the aspect that is really throwing me off on this one is that it has a pour spout on the top, but feels suspiciously solid and lard-like through the box. She had a hankering for Mexican food, so we headed off to El Tortilla restaurant. We were the only people in the non-smoking basement section, but the margaritas were good and so was the food. They even had live entertainment in the form of an operatic female singer and a mariachi-style male singer performing old favorites such as “La Cucaracha” and “Besame Mucho.” Neva’s moment of insight regarding the performances came in the form of the question, “How do they keep their outfits clean?” The waitresses were quite smitten with her, even offering to watch her while we ate, and she finally rewarded their attentions at the end of the night by asking for the bill in Romanian.

When we first arrived, she would ask me how to say different phrases that she could use to talk to other kids at the playground, but has grown oddly resistant to speaking Romanian since then. Instead, she has taken to speaking gibberish as she invents her own language. Although I’m sure it gives her a needed sense of control and security, for me it serves only to add to my confusion as I attempt to sort out the established languages that are already circulating around in my brain.

As I try to get the rest of the apartment settled into some sort of order and degree of cleanliness, Neva has taken to spending time in her room playing, listening to stories on CD or watching videos on her portable DVD player. Having that space to herself has certainly seemed to help her feel more settled, which is a stark contrast from the afternoon following the visit to see her new school. She was very clear about telling me that she “didn’t want this [move],” and in fact didn’t want to move to Boston either. Shocking, I know, that we didn’t plan all of this to suit her desires, but it was nonetheless interesting to hear her vocalize it so adamantly. Although I don’t remember feeling that way about moving until I was a bit older, it was a good reminder to add a little bit of extra patience into our daily routine.