The activity was remunerated. The maximum sum I ever got was 47 lei for 3 weeks of '?practice?. My colleagues got as much as 250 lei each.

The same category of chores would include to ? cut leaves? for the silkworms. I think every school had silkworms, who had to be grown by pupils under careful supervision. We had to bring mulberry leaves for the worms. They were stored in a classroom, and every day two pupils were ? on duty?.

Besides these ? cultural and educational? activities, we participated in washing and cleaning our classroom for the program? our classroom like a flower?, and in cleaning the schoolyard.  We didn?t consider these tasks unpleasant, for us they were a kind of mini holidays, we were exempt from school. We did not consider this unusual, it was even fun. (11)

As a child and adolescent, I used to stand in a queue for hours. I felt that a part of my existence was wasting away, and I couldn?t understand why it was so painful to obtain food. I couldn?t understand why people were so rigid and mean when I came to food, and why they bustled in the queue. Sometimes they would exchange curses or get into fights. Shop assistants gave orders to people, telling them how to stand in line, offended them or told them what to do. I remember once, there was a queue in Zgarla, and the shop assistant was screaming at the people. A little girl tells her mother that when she grows up she wants to be Zgarla. Even more dramatic was that, after hours and hours of standing in a queue, you sometimes didn?t get to buy anything. I kept telling myself that I would never stand in a queue again, but we had to eat, so ?

We ran and stood in lines for our daily bread. In the country side, bread was sold based on a ration card: half of a loaf of bread per person per day. Each time you bought bread, they marked it on your ration card, so people who lived in the countryside used to come to Bucharest to buy bread. That is why in 1987 a decision was taken to give only 3 loaves of bread per person. Those who lived outside the capital came with the whole family, and bought bread from all shops, returning home with sacks full of bread. Trains were packed with such sacks.

The basic food: sugar, oil, flour, chicken and eggs were all rationed. Families with many members were envied because they got more food. My family agreed with the ration, otherwise they wouldn?t have any food at all.

Oil came in barrels; I was very careful when they weighed it, because I didn?t want to be cheated. Sugar and flour were already packaged.

People from Bucharest were not allowed to buy bread and food from the countryside, not even if they were on a delegation. If you were, for instance, from Breaza, you couldn?t buy anything from Campina or Sinaia.

You had to stand in a queue to buy the rest of the food. Sometimes they specified a day: Tuesdays for chicken, Fridays for pig bones. It was a surprise when they sold chicken on a Thursday. There was no queue, because people didn?t know. A neighbor would let everybody know. People would then leave aside whatever they were doing and went to the food store. Some would even leave work earlier.