I vant to suck your blood...

Hello. I come from Transylvania where I saw Dracula's Castle!!!! It was so cool! It is called the Bran Castle and is huge and scary looking (see photos) and amazing. There were secret passageways and all sorts of cool things inside. Lots of low ceilings and scary looking lamps. The bed was huge and black. But the best was the view from outside. Romania is so beautiful. Transylvania is a gorgeous area with mountains. With the fall colors the scenery was amazing. Estera's friend Nicoleta took me to see the castle and then she took me to this really cool fortress that sits way on top of a hill. It has a big sign on it like the Hollywood sign, so it was pretty exciting to climb all the way up there and pose by the sign. The fortress was really cool. The whole town used to live inside there. They even had a well that went all the way down through the hill and to some sort of water source below. They made two prisoners dig the well and promised to release them upon completion. 17 years later they finally finished! :-) The fortress had a beautiful view of the city. They stayed very protected in that fortress through several seige attempts. They even had some torture devices around, apparently for those they took prisoner. Kind of scary. It was really neat to see the fortress and the view from way up there. And it was a nice hike up there too. I'm getting used to a lot of hiking and climbing, so I'll have to find things to climb when I return home. After the fortress and Dracula's castle, Nicoleta and I went back to her house and joined her family for pizza Romanian style. My veggie pizza had carrots, peas, corn, and green beans on it. :-) And they like to put ketchup on their pizza here too, so I had to do that. Nicoleta told me that when she went to America her favorite pizza was the pizza at Sam's Club. :-) I love it! I had a great time with Nicoleta and her family. It was so nice of them to show me around. They tried to take me to a cave too, but it was closed (hence the sad face in my pics.) But we had a great time laughing after we drank our mushroom hot chocolate (don't ask) so we didn't mind. And a word to the wise for anyone traveling abroad: don't mention anything about the gas prices being high in America... I would suggest just saying, "They have increased, but I'm sure they're still nothing compared to what you pay for gas so I feel incredibly lucky and if I can assist in your gas payments in any way please let me know." Memorize that and you will be fine. :-)

All in all, I have found Romanians to be incredibly kind and generous and their country is beautiful! I have really enjoyed my stay here in every way, shape and form.