Happy Independence Day!! Terribly sorry that you haven't heard from NNPCW in almost a week... don't worry, though, because I am back in the country again and will be posting all the way up until the Leadership Event (and maybe with some technical genius, we can manage to get you access to that event, too).

So I just made it off the plane in Cincinnati and drove home a few hours ago. My day started this morning in Bucharest, Romania, and is still going strong this afternoon in Louisville after almost ten hours in a plane. How was my flight? David finally beat me in chess, making me very irate, and then the French flight attendants ignored my repeated requests for a customs card. But hey, all's well that ends well. They did feed us, after all.

Tomorrow I'll fill your ears with more ruminations from the trip, but for now I'll leave you with Kelsey's hello to Romania story. Being a considerate tourist, I wanted to learn a couple of the words spoken in Transylvania so that I could answer people when they greeted me, etc. So David taught me the two Hungarian words he knew (more later about why some people in Romania speak Hungarian)-- "chokolom," which means hello, and "cusunem," which means thank you. My problem? I got them a bit mixed up. I started saying "chokolom" for everything. So a common conversation between me and the locals went something like this:

Man Loading a Car: May I help you with that bag?

Kelsey: Hello!!

Waitress in a Restaurant: Can I bring you another Fanta?

Kelsey: Hello!!!

David finally pointed out the problem to me, I think after someone gave me a funny look and chuckled a bit without me knowing why. So that's how I said hello to Romania. Until tomorrow!!

"There's no place like home." --The Wizard of Oz

Kelsey

That would be szia for hello and köszönöm for thank you.