Bon Azewa!

I don't have a lot of time for this post so it's going to bemostly bullet points. We're working longer hours because we have a lot to finish before our last day on friday!

So this past weekend was spent at Simleu Days, a street festival in a nearby town. It was SO much fun and I definitely think I made the right decision in going.

~Started off with lunch with Szolt's family (our Romanian-Hungarian team member) at his childhood home in Simleu. His mother made us an amazing meal of samale (stuffed cabbage), chicken, watermelon, and plachenta, a type of jam-filled doughnut. His 5 year-old neice was also there and she's just about the cutest thing ever. She wants to be an archaeologist so we were having a lot of fun chatting with her and telling her about Porolissum.
~Visited a medieval church after lunch. Lunch went really late though so we took a quick look and were out before6:00 mass.
~Headed to the festival, which wasn't very crowded that early. SPent some time wandering around, shopping, and finding WATER because it was almost 100 degrees out. We grabbed a couple tables under one of the tents and stationed people there all night so we always had a meeting spot/resting area.
~Ran into Stefan, who had invited us to his birthday party in Moigrad a few weeks ago. His friend's band was playing, so we watched them. Pretty good, though they admit they'll be better when they have a singer.
~Had the most fun when the next "band" went on...a duo called "Daggu and Kleo." Daggu had really long braids/dreads, and they were both lip syncing the entire time. They kept trying to pep the audince up but noon was very impressed. Then they brought out the free CD's to throw into the audience and people went crazy! We were really interested in hearing what their CD would sound like, so Ashley and I battled our way to the front and started dancing and pretending to know all the lyrics... it was really amusing. After quite a few tries I finally was able to grab a CD out of the air (thanks to all the frisbee practice we've been doing here!). Super excited, I ran over to show Ashley I had caught it, we celebrated, and then realized there were two different CD's. By the end of the concert we had managed to get a copy of each. Good thing we did too! The songs are terrible... one just goes "I like flowers, I like flowers" for an entire song. It's provided us with many laughs.
~Met up with an archaeology team working in Simleu, including the three who came to visit Porolissum a few weeks ago. We spent the rest of the nigth with them which was alot of fun.
~Watched some other bands... Desperado (Romanian cowboys), Cargo, and Iris. They were all really good. We ran into some of our friends from Moigrad and hung out with them during the concert.
~After the concert we went on the bumper cars! SO dangerous... they dont have a line so as soon as it stops everyone runs out onto the floor and fights over cars. I was halfway in one of them and actually got pulled out and then had my foot run over as the other guy got it. It was so chaotic, but you get really excited when you finally manage to find (and stay in) a car!

That's about all for this update... i'm out of time and that sums up most of the festival. Not much been going on in the trenches... started taking up the "tomb" only to realize the corner was a hearth. Slightly disappointing. 3 more days to excavate, then home sunday! Amazing how time seems to fly :(

Love and miss you all,
Pupici!

Lauren