Alright kids, so, after 10 days in a hellishly polluted New York, I am back in the Old Country, Romania, visiting parents and friends. On the good side, it's not as awful as I was expecting it to be: the people look nice, the neighborhood looks ok, my family is doing fine. On the bad side, the food is just ghastly. I have a theory as to why this is so, which I will share with you later on.
Also, my paternal grandparents are distraught that I am living with a man without being married. They believe that marriage is good because knowing that their union is state-sanctioned forces people to stay together, even if they may be tempted to stray. When I asked my grandfather whether it was the concern that his wife might suffer or the knowledge that the state would punish him that kept him from straying, he replied: "the knowledge that the state would punish me!" You gotta love an ex-Colonel!