How come I arrived to Romania?

In our culture, great emphasis is placed on the family and its importance; we live with our parents until we get married, we celebrate all birthdays, events, Easter, Christmas, New Year's and more with our families.

Our people are the most loyal regarding social norms from all points of view; clothing, manner of speaking, workplace, working hours, college application age, college major, marriage age, partner's religion, age to have children and many others.

After high school, each student must pass a national exam and receive a suitable score to attend college. In the 10th grade I announced  my parents: "I will not take this exam at all". It was a shock to them and to the whole family but they never  believed - or wanted to believe. However, overtime I became even more determined not to take the exam in order not to stay here for studies but abroad.

After graduation, I was determined in travelling to any other country where English or French is spoken because I already knew 4 languages and I had no intention of learning another language! Afterwards, I chose to go further to college in the field of music therapy.

I searched in every possible country; The United States, Australia, Great Britain, Canada and others.. The annual costs in those countries for international students was equivalent to the cost of an apartment. It was extremely expensive and they had a scholarship for a few students for a single spot.

I lost hope in those countries and all I wanted then was to leave Nazareth and study anywhere else! Summer came and my father had announced the planning of a vacation in Romania. I have not heard of Romania until now, and my father convinced us: "It's a very beautiful country and it's also accessible." I asked him: "how accessible, how do you know?", my father replied: "let me show you, I was there 20 years ago, you can live extremely well with 100 lei!". Wow! I was amazed! How cool! Then, dad comes up with his extraordinary idea: "you know what?, you don't have to bring clothes with you, we buy everything there". It was "too good to be true" but I believed it, unfortunately.

In the end, I found the subject of music therapy in Romania only at the Master's degree, so I had two possibilities for the bachelor's degree; music or psychology. I preferred to choose to study psychology in Cluj, and after that to move to Brasov for a master's degree in music therapy.