in the afternoon, we walked into cluj. they live a bit outside of the city, and the road they live on is actually not paved. the snow was all melted that morning when we woke up, so the road turned out to be sooo muddy.
it was the walk of mud, and all our shoes got all muddy. once we got into town, it was fine though. i got to ride on a romanian bus. here you can either have a monthly pass or you have to buy tickets, which is interesting, because in china you pay for every single bus ride whether you have a bus card or not, although a bus card does give you a discount. and in china you can pay in cash for every bus ride if you want to, but here you have to buy a ticket. and then there's a little machine on the bus that you have to punch your ticket with. if they ever check and your ticket has the wrong pattern punched into it (different busses have different patterns), that's when you would get into trouble.so we walked around cluj after we got off the bus.
notice the romania flag in front of the building in the background
our original intention was go to to a souvenir shop, but a lot of things turned out to be closed around here during the days surrounding christmas.
there were hardly any people walking around on the streets, although we found a bunch of people ice skating in the middle of downtown on a man-made ice skating rink! 
we watched them for awhile. we went inside a few different buildings.
and then we walked up a bit of hill to get a view of the city, which was really nice.
it was a beautiful clear day. i don't think i've had a day that clear since i left california!
and then the next morning, it was snowing again!
so i got to see romania covered in snow, romania without snow, and romania when it was snowing too. =)that next day, we had lunch with friends of john and laura's in the mall where auchan was. i can't remember if i already said i went to auchan here! they have this department/grocery store in china too. here they pronounce it like "ocean" and in china it's "oh-shawn." they have a food court in the mall with lots of different foods that i could never see in china! (i've eaten so much cheese and milk since i've been here, by the way, it's been great!) i had this pita bread wrapped around chicken and lettuce and a garlic sauce, and there were also french fries in there. =) i'm told they put french fries inside of things a lot here.
after lunch, we went to their friends' house, and we played the bean game all afternoon there!
it was so fun, and relaxing. john is much more capitalistic (as he likes to say) with that game when he plays with just me and laura. the bean game can either by quite capitalistic with everyone out for themselves, or it can be a very generous game with everyone giving to everybody, or some combination of both. john and laura's friend has a very cute little daughter, and then she also has a brother much younger than her, who turned out to be the first romanian to ever win the bean game!
or so we suspect, since it's doubtful that the bean game has been played in romania before. although it's possible... but it's fun to pretend he is the first ever. =)then that night, john and laura and i shared various videos which other related to our lives, and laura and i watched a movie together and went through pictures that we'd taken since i've been here. my access to a camera and time to upload pictures has been sporadic, which is why there have been no pictures in these posts. i think when i get back to china i can do a picture post with some of the best pictures.
Interesting architecture.
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