It's the last episode! My Fulbright, and therefore this podcast, is officially done. Thank you to everyone who has made this such an amazing experience.

In this episode, I reflect on 9 crucial moments, one for each month I spent here. There are 3 bad, 3 good, and 3 "...mkay" moments.

Thank you to the Fulbright Commission as well as my family, friends (American, Romanian, and all the rest), and mentors for your support. And thank you for listening!

Amazing theme music: Romanian Hora by The Underscore Orkestra is licensed under an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. 

In this episode, Maria, my former Romanian teacher, explains why she became a linguistics instructor and what it's like to be a young university professor in Cluj. Maria is simultaneously such a lovely person and so good at throwing shade. One of my favorite parts of the episode is when I ask her whether she'd rather live in Romania's capitol or literally anywhere else in the world. Another of my favorite parts is the word she taught me: vrăjeală, which refers to a charming boy's lies.

Amazing theme music: Romanian Hora by The Underscore Orkestra is licensed under an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. 

Monica Cure (a different Monica from the Monica in previous episodes) discusses her journey from Romania to the U.S. to Romania again and why she's decided to live in Bucharest. Monica and I both have Romanian heritage, and both of our families left in part due to religious persecution. On this podcast, we discuss what that history means to us.

Monica is also a renaissance woman and professor, so we also cover a lot of other ground including her work translating Romanian poetry and her book on postcards. Thank you to Monica for being on the podcast and teaching me my favorite Romanian word: "zori."

I recorded this podcast in a different location and unfortunately I placed the mic too close to Monica so she comes in a bit louder than me. I tried to fix the levels but it's still noticeable. Sorry about that!

Monica on how to read poetry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6irYRriLvgA

Monica's book on postcards: https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/picturing-the-postcard

Pictured: Monica, me, and our friend Vlad Dracula.

Amazing theme music: Romanian Hora by The Underscore Orkestra is licensed under an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. 

Dominic and Monica share how they met and fell in love. This story has strong Swan Princess vibes at the beginning with a childhood rivalry turned friendship turned romance. You might remember Dominic and Monica from my first interview episode, where Monica describes her life and her research on Chicana literature.

Pictured: The three of us in Bucharest.

Amazing theme music: Romanian Hora by The Underscore Orkestra is licensed under an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. 

Shehide is a brilliant biologist from Kosovo who is volunteering and conducting research in Cluj. In this episode, we talk a lot about the political and social context that comes with being Kosovan. Notably, Shehide sometimes can't go to places that don't recognize Kosovo's independence from Serbia such as Spain, a country with its own autonomous region woes (Catalonia). 

We also debate what kismet means. I've heard members of my family use "kismet" as a synonym for "happy accident" or "meant to be." People in Kosovo use "kismet" to describe something you hope for that likely will never happen. Which of us is right? I looked it up after the recording and it turns out "kismet" is derived from "ḳismat" in Arabic, meaning portion or fate. So I guess it's kind of a rorschach test-- who would have thought the Jews would come out as optimists?

Pictured: Shehide with my favorite cozonac (kind of a Romanian challah/cinnamon bread) and egg recipe.

Amazing theme music: Romanian Hora by The Underscore Orkestra is licensed under an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. 

It's my 25th birthday and since I'm working instead of celebrating , I thought maybe I'd throw my own little gratitude party (is that the opposite of a pity party?) here. In this episode, I share 25 things I'm grateful for about my Fulbright and living in Romania. They are broken down into five categories:

1. Food and drink
2. Romanian/Transylvanian/Cluj culture
3. Daily life
4. My research, aka the reason I'm here
5. Personal growth ("study abroad changed my life, you simply must go to bar*lisp*celona")

Thank you so much for listening. And thank you to all the mentors and friends who have been so supportive before, during, and (hopefully) after Fulbright.

Photo cred: Eric, who has made this experience infinitely more exciting and magical by using all of his time off to travel with me and most of his free time to send me memes.

Amazing theme music: Romanian Hora by The Underscore Orkestra is licensed under an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. 

With her PhD in comparative history and lifelong relationship with Cluj, Lily is definitely the best unofficial tour guide I could have asked for. That's why she's the perfect person to explain a little about Romania's history on this episode, where we discuss the different regions of Romania, what the census tells us and doesn't tell us about the people who live here now, and how foreigners perceive Transylvania. Thank you so much to Lily for sharing your time and impressive knowledge with me.

Amazing theme music: Romanian Hora by The Underscore Orkestra is licensed under an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. 

An upbeat episode on historical revisionism.

When I read* Ron Chernow's Grant biography, I didn't expect to learn anything about my ancestors living at the time, mainly because they weren't living in the U.S. But I was wrong-- President Grant did his best to help Romanian Jews. It's possible that if the changes his Consul General Benjamin Franklin Peixotto strove to enact had truly taken hold, my family would not have ended up coming to New York. Learning about this bit of history is a reminder that progress is not linear. 

*listened to the audiobook of

More info on Peixotto: 

• http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11993-peixotto#anchor1
• https://ro.usembassy.gov/our-relationship/policy-history/io/

Amazing theme music: Romanian Hora by The Underscore Orkestra is licensed under an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. 

This episode was really fun to make because I got interview to one of my best friends in Cluj: Doriana. We talk about her childhood memories of New Year's, her favorite modern psychology theory (Doriana is a psychology researcher and student), Romanian curse words, and accents. Specifically, we discuss my experience living in Cluj and Doriana's experience attending college in France. 

Doriana: Thank you so much for recording this with me when you just got back from Iasi and are about to run a book club and attend a conference. You're the best!

I realized I didn't have any photos of Doriana and I together so the picture on this podcast is of a bar called Yolka that Doriana and our friend Mădălina showed me and has become my favorite in Cluj.

Amazing theme music: Romanian Hora by The Underscore Orkestra is licensed under an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.