The move.

I'm writing this from our living room in Apartment Lucy -- Apt. 62, Bloc A2, Blvd. Păcii, Lupeni, Hunedoara, Romania, to be exact.  (Yes, our apartment is known as "Lucy," and I have no idea where that name came from, but I do like it.)  It's an adorable, sunny, yellow little apartment on the top floor of a five-story apartment building just next to the river and across the street from the Pentecostal church.  From here it's a five minute walk to the nearest grocery store, three minutes to the fruit and veggie vendor and meat market, and about four minutes to the FNO office.  And we can see the mountains from our living room window -- all the way to Retezat National Park, if the day is clear.

Currently, the living room is in a bit of shambles: the defunct little fridge we just replaced is sitting in the corner and being used as an end table, holding up a pile of yet-unsorted books and pictures and all those miscellaneous papers you somehow find when you move (even when you are moving with just a few suitcases).  The desk is an old metal relic without a chair, similarly covered with half-unpacked bags and piles and folders.  But I love this room, with the rug we found in Târgu Mureș and the huge bunkbed in the corner and the beautiful, beautiful view outside.  I can't wait to fill it with memories.

We left Târgu Mureș on Thursday morning, exhausted but satisfied after a week of goodbyes.  Otilia made us a big send-off breakfast of eggs and fried potatoes with garlic and good Romanian bread, and then helped us carry our many bags to the bus station, about ten minutes away by foot.  We had accumulated a number of things in Târgu Mureș, so we were definitely trundling along, huge backpacks on our backs and arms full of computers, books, and my two little houseplants.  (They got a box to themselves.)  Otilia and her daughter and son-in-law Laura saw us off from the bus station, reminding us to count our bags at each stop, eat garlic to stay healthy, and come back to visit soon.  We settled in for the now-familiar trip, settling the plants on the seat in front of us in a remarkably uncrowded bus: Târgu Mureș to Turda by bus, wait forty minutes, then another bus from Turda to Petroșani, and then another forty minutes through the Jiu Valley to Lupeni.  We ate lunch on a bench at the bus station in Turda with a strange older woman who we couldn't understand at all, to whom we gave some of the sausage and bread that Otilia had helped us pack, then watered the plants (with my Nalgene) and waited for the bus to Petroșani.  The ride was gorgeous -- Romania is fabulously beautiful in the spring, and I spent most of the ride staring out the window at the blue skies and budding trees.  In Petroșani we were greeted by a friend from Lupeni named Adi, who was driving the Bates' van to bring us to our apartment (a welcome mode of travel with all of our bags, instead of trying to cram onto a maxi-taxi like we usually do).  And finally, after a long day of lugging our stuff around and listening to incessant obnoxious music on the radio (and carefully watching out for the plants), we were here: parked outside the green metal doors of our apartment building, entering the rotten-smelling darkness of the stairwell, climbing past the strange pictures of a steepled church and a child's doll, and arriving at our front door, flanked by the neighbor's woodpile for their wood-burning furnace.  Home sweet home.

It is so good to be here.  As soon as we had dropped our bags, Jack and I looked at each other and grinned, saying, "We're going to live her for three years!"  I haven't lived in the same place for that long since high school, and I am so excited.  We will miss people in Târgu Mureș, and the beauty of the city, and its delicious pretzel stands... but already it feels right to be here, and I am so, so thankful we will call this place home.