On the news last night, it was announced that since 1989, Romania has lost half of its forests.

In Bucuresti, there's about 10 square metres of greenspace per inhabitant. For reference, it was noted that the EU recommended minimum is 50. Warshaw has 63. Stockholm has 87. Happily, there's a group here using volunteers to plant trees by the thousands. Over the next few years, we'll see how things go.

Brita is amazing. This week, she's started having independent conversations in Romanian with strangers, calling folks on the phone, participating actively in meetings where mostly Romanian is being spoken.

Things have been changing pretty quickly for Mosulet. Last week, he got his stitches removed (and therefore got to dispense with the splint and Elizabethan collar he'd had to wear); two days after that, he was treated for worms (banner day!); on the third day, he got the first in a series of four vaccinations he'll need to stay healthy. He also learned how to sit and hai de (come) on command (he's a smart one!).

Fruits of our trip to Ikea:

Sleeping on the deflated mattress looked like this.

We set out again yesterday to go to Ikea, just north of Bucuresti, to get some things for Arina's apartment where we're staying. Why is Ikea so difficult? Coincidence, or conspiracy?

Last time we tried, we found an injured puppy on our way to the bus, and wound up taking him to surgery instead of going to the store. When we finally made it it Ikea the next day, their

We've been thinking a lot about traffic lately. 11 days ago, we found a stray dog that had been hit by a car, and a few days later we came across a more serious accident in our neighborhood: a man crossing the street had been hit, apparently by a dumptruck. Shoes knocked off and head split open, there was no evidence of any effort to provide medical care, so I assume he was killed more or less instantly. We arrived as the police were taking measurements of the scene; a few minutes later someone coved the victim with newspaper.

My brother Will visited this weekend, and Mosulet did not at all enjoy spending so much time alone on the apartment's balcony in blustery wet weather. He was nippy and anxious, barky and unsettled. Today we took him for a walk to the vet's office to get his stitches out, though, and he got to play with another dog there for a while... and already he's back to his mellow self. The vet thinks his injured leg may wind up being a little shorter than the good one, things could be much worse. We also took off his splint for good, and he's starting to re-learn to walk on the leg that was injured.

(Click on the title above and scroll down, if you want to skip directly to a picture of the little fellow.) It started out as a bit of an abnormal day - we are not very "vacation-y" vacationers, usually. That is, over the last two and a half months, there have been very few days of lounging about with books in hand, or sleeping until mid-day. This morning, however, we got out of bed after 11 and didn't leave the house until nearly one...

We returned to Bucuresti on the 2nd, to find that fall had fallen, that our building was without hot water for the third day running, and the tiny refrigerator in our apartment had been stocked with traditional preserves from our friend Lenuta's garden.

As we traveled our first few days in the Basque country, we puzzled out a few sounds and meanings (“bidea” means “chemin” means “way”), and picked up a few words here and there. We have our kind hostess at the hotel in Ainhoa, as well as our new friend Sarah from Baigorri, to thank for our somewhat more extended list, which was enough, over our time on the trail, to let people know we were making an effort – and to garner a few smiles. Here are our phonetic representations of some of the words we learned: