May 23 - Epistemology/Paradigms (The Way of Knowing)

Pack and leave for Poienari Castle, or Vlad the Impaler's castle.

1480 steps... Whew!

Grocery shopping fiasco

The professors asked to see if anyone would be willing to cook, I offered. They then took us to the grocery store, told us to decide what we wanted for meals throughout the next few days, and gave us 500 lei.

I think everyone is quick to comply then criticize... I attempted to take the lead to no avail. I tried formulating a plan with no luck. I proceeded to break our goals down into smaller projects, assigning two or three people to each, again, no positive return. I finally just walked away and let everyone try to figure it out then came back after the shopping cart had been abandoned assuming they had given up.

I sifted through the cart, put a couple items back, got some extra milk and some cereal, then checked out. Checking out was a nightmare as well due to the cashier's limited English which only extrapolates my non-existent Romanian. We had to pay to rent a cart and buy each one of our grocery bags so as we were checking out the cashier's counter got to the point it was entirely covered in unbagged groceries but our cart was still half full. We were reluctant to pay to rent a second cart to set our groceries in so the cashier would have enough free space to ring up the remainder of our groceries just to put them all back into the second cart only ever really needing to utilize one cart. One student reached over to grab some groceries bags to start putting our things into bags and the cashier began to get very angry with her as the cashier needed to ring the bags up as we used them. Everyone was getting uptight, we needed a second cart and an indeterminate amount of bags... I couldn't communicate with the cashier beyond gestures... Eventually a security guard saw what the issue was, unlocking a second cart for free, and proceeded to help bag our groceries... What a life-saver!

Elena's cottage

Next to nothing left in the propane tank for the stove... Couldn't cook.

Pizza party!

Ping Pong! With wasps...

Chess!

Very little sleep... Ugh.