by How long could I stay in that positive frame of mind? The answer: not very long.
Dad passed out again. He was out for about a minute; Mum could see the whites of his eyes and she thought she’d lost him. She called the ambulance which took half an hour to arrive. (This is Geraldine.) They did some tests: his heart was working as it should and his blood pressure was normal. He didn’t even have a temperature. It was all a mystery until yesterday when he received the results of a blood test. He’d picked up a bacterial infection that sent his warfarin levels sky high. He’s now been given antibiotics which should do the trick, and has been told not to take warfarin for two days. (He’s had to take warfarin ever since the aortic valve replacement he had done in 2005, which I touched on in my last post.) Dad regularly gets severe headaches, so when he gets sick like this he often suffers a double whammy. It doesn’t help that he also has a wife who only really starts caring when she thinks he might die.
The euphoria, or close to that, which I felt after my last English lessons, is well and truly over. Mihai, who is one of the nicest people I’ve met in Romania so far, has had to go to Bucharest so I won’t be teaching him tonight. I don’t know if and when I’ll see the first guy again. December 1st is Romania’s national day. The celebrations of all things Romania will be interesting to see, but people tend to use them as an excuse for an extended holiday, making things a bit awkward from a teaching perspective. I’ve heard nothing more about the “conversation club” due to begin on 9th December, so at this stage I’ll assume it won’t happen. The old guy who said he spoke no English pulled out of his lesson – twice – and only when I called him right before we were due to start to ask him exactly which apartment he lived in. Somebody called me yesterday to ask whether, when I said in my ad that I could “give you a hand”, I meant the left or the right hand. I hung up on him. Somebody else rang me at 4:20 on Sunday morning; I didn’t answer. Still more people have showed genuine interest, but were put off the moment I said I’d need to visit them rather than the other way round. This hotel room is in no way suitable.
I need to move out of this place soon. I’m using “need” accurately here. To get a registration certificate enabling me to live in Romania legally beyond early January, I need a fixed address. I was planning on sorting out all my paperwork at the immigration office this morning, but yesterday I spoke to the people at the hotel who said in an unnecessarily forceful way that they won’t let me name this place as my fixed address unless I commit to living here for six months or more. As I can’t teach here, that’s out of the question. Whether I rent a place through the usual channels, which have all kinds of pitfalls, or get something through Airbnb which would be safer but more costly, I haven’t decided yet.
Despite my recent frustrations, one thing is clear: teaching English is something I really want to do, and I really want to do it here in Romania. Making it all happen won’t be easy – there are barriers everywhere I look – but it’s all a lot more doable when I know the what and the where. For more than a decade I didn’t have a clue.
