The In-between

I've caught something. I don't know what it is, but I've been stomach sick since the plane ride leaving Lima. Cipro isn't working, but maybe it's just a time factor.

On another note, the Madrid Barajas Airport is the LARGEST airport I have ever been in! I had to take a bus that runs every 30 minutes and gets on the highway to get from terminal 2 to terminal 4. Then at terminal 4, I had to walk through the entire terminal, which was several stories high, get on a metro that took me to a satellite portion of terminal 4, which had three letters worth of gates (with numbers that went to at least the forties). It's crazy HUGE!

So now I'm here in Bucharest, Romania. I have yet to meet with the organization here, but an interesting conversation occurred when I first arrived:

My taxi driver and I got to talking and he eventually asked me if I have faced any racial issues in the US concerning the fact that I am Chinese. I replied no and he continued by telling me that they have problems here concerning different "behaviour." He said a group of people called the "gypsies," who were mostly of Indian background, steal everything here in Romania from the Romanian population. They steal water, they steal electricity, and there is no legal consequence for what they do. He complained that no one did anything to get rid of these "gypsies." I told him that I've learned a little bit about this "Roma" population and he replied that he really hates the new term for them--it suggests that they are Romanian, when they are not. This term, he speculates, may have been derived from the term "Rom," which is what the Romanians use to call them. He says they are really awful people and he wishes they would go away because they are threatening the Romanian population when the Romanians have done nothing threatening to the "Roma" population. (Hm, fascinating.)

Then we briefly touched upon the Ceauşescu regime and he seemed adamant about the fact that Ceauşescu really formed this city, even though it was through extravagant means and he doesn't understand who is writing stories about the regime, but a lot of them are lies. (A little prideful?)