I was invited for a fairwell party for the other interns. I had to meet them at Napolean, a pizza restaurant/disco. It's in The Complex, the university centre.

Romanian university centres are a world unto themselves. Having went to a small university in a university town, I didn't know what the university experience would be like here.

It was a virtual city itself! The residences are covered with advertising murals advertising Coca Cola and who knows what else. There were paths between the buildings lined with shwarma stands, burger joints, a strip club, various cafes and restaurants... It was surreal!

Drunken old men staggered about and dogs ran everywhere. I felt sick to my stomach when I saw some shabbily-dressed teenagers sitting on the side of the road breathing in glue. I knew I would find that in Romania but I expected it to be in some seedy corner, not in the centre of the student "compound".

The party itself was a lot of fun. We got tonnes of beer and wine and sang and danced and drank. We danced "traditional" Romanian dances to "traditional" Romanian music, but this was basically us doing the can-can to bad folk music.

One of the other interns, a Romanian, started standing very close to me. Everyone had their arms around each other so I jokingly put my arm around him. Bad idea. I must have given him the wrong impression or something. He insisted on dancing with me for the rest of the night. It was actually very sweet. I wasn't interested in him but everyone was enjoying acting crazy so I was jumping around and laughing like everyone else.

I had to take a rest from dancing so I sat on the couch and started talking to his little sister. She kept asking me what I thought of him. She would give thumbs up or thumbs down sign after each of my answers, so I knew he was watching.
"What do you think of my brother?"
"he's ok" (thumbs up sign)
"do you think he's cute?"
"I don't know" (thumbs down sign)
"do you think he's nice?"
"sure!" (thumbs up sign)
"do you have a boyfriend?"
"what's that supposed to mean?" (thumbs down sign)
"do you have a boyfriend in Romania?"
"no" (thumbs up sign)
"are you interested in my brother?"
"not really" (thumbs down sign)
"why not?"
"because I just met him and I don't know him" (thumbs down sign)
"oh. Do you think you could be interested in him?"
"um...he's a lot younger than me [I thought he was 19 or so], so probably not" (thumbs down sign)
And on and on.

Then I found out that he was 16. I felt like a paedophile.