January Village Scenes

Life Slows Down ...

January 2000:

Celebrating the New Year Singing in the new year, we traveled to Ogna Sugatag where the children's dance ensemble from Sirbi performed for the well-to-do at the Ogna hotels.

Ensemble among the tables

Young Dracs

Young "Dracs," natives to Ocna, also performed for the midnight revelers.

President on TV

We retired to a Calinesti home. There we shared that family's new year's: watching the number one TV program in Romania: Surprise Surpise.

The president of Romania tried to grab some free TV time ten minutes before midnight. But the family flipped to something else, checking back only to see if he was still on.

Contact lens

Getting late, and with a wood fire providing the heat and a small amount of smoke, Henry needed to clean his lenses.

They've never seen anything like it before.

Dance Ensemble

Before the holiday flair worked out of people's blood, our village ensemble gave an outside performance for a camera crew from Bucharest.

Ensemble at the Gate

"dragu-mi unde am zinit."

Catholic 'Old Christmas'

Priest by the River

On January 6th they celebrate the baptizing of Jesus, the only time in the entire year they allow themselves to put cold water on their face.

Blessing with Water

Here the Catholic service of the village Sirbi is held outside since they don't have a church.

More work with manure

With the holidays finally over, the villagers got down to the business of spreading their manure.

Manure sled

It's like a veritable manure freeway.

Frozen water wheel

The cold seems to stop the unstoppable forces of nature.

Death

Except of course, death, which seems if anything to have sped up.

(This boy was killed by a drunk driver sliding on icy roads. His funeral was held on New Years Eve.)

Shoveling snow down into the river

Clearing the snow cannot stop. If they don't keep on this, they run the risk of their roofs collapsing, or being snowed into their compounds, unable to get out...

More snow to the river