Michaela's Lensography

My name is Michaela Cernescu, I was born in Europe, in a communist country, it does not matter which one as all communist countries are the same.
Well, I don't want you to think that I have something to hide. I was Born in Romania, a country I love for his beautiful mountains, Black Sea shore, Danube delta, my friends and so on.

By 1980 I felt like that was the last straw, and made a crazy move that took my family by surprise: I emigrated to the USA, and I left behind my greatest friend - my husband and the best mother somebody can hope for.

I am thankful that God give me courage and strength to do it. I am thankful that after 3 years I was able to bring in States my mother, after another 2 years my husband.
I emigrated to the States alone but I took good care of my family and the three of us had a beautiful life on the American East Coast.

Looking back after more than 25 years, I have to confess that my decision was the best ever. I have had bumpy roads but I had good skills, a degree in Mathematics, and a couple of years' experience as a Programmer Analyst, so I had no problem finding a job and starting a new life. My first job was Programmer Analyst at Sony Corporation of America.

My general background is designing Software Applications on Main Frame Computers. For years I worked in the United States as a Programmer Analyst, IT Consultant and for 10 years I had my own IT Consulting Company.

When I did IT consulting work, my husband and I traveled a lot in USA, we meet wonderful people, we enjoyed the mountains, Parks, and shores, we saw the best of America which is in small cities or country side. That type of people is closer to my hart. It was an amazing life for us, experience, learning curve. We considered the big towns tiring, but the small towns were so different. We have meet Americans that care about this country, honest people working hard, having big dreams. I love, respect them, and I firmly believe that they are the biggest asset of this great country.

In 1986 I became American citizen, and I am proud of it. I love this country for the liberty, opportunity, equal treatment regardless religion, skills, or ethnicity. I also love this country for how many friends I got in 28 years living in States

We Americans are the most generous country on earth, and we do a lot of good work all the time when a tragedy struck anywhere on the globe: tsunami, earthquake, famine, we really are the first and the most consistent to help other people.

At some point in time my husband was diagnosed with cancer; a brutal fight followed for 6 years and 7 months. I decided to give up Corporate America jobs, where as a consultant, I had to travel a lot and worked 12-14 hours daily. I started working from home in my spare time as my presence was needed on a daily basis to take care of him.

I have no regrets; there is nothing more precious in life than a family who needs you. Now my husband is not among us any longer, the brutal illness took him away, but I am still working from home, dedicating all my time now to my work and to a beautiful 94 years old mother who is still living with me.

When my husband was sick, I started my work at home as an eBay seller and buyer; it was 2002. I qualified as an "Education Specialist trained by eBay" in 2003. Gradually I moved on from Main Frame to PC Internet Marketing. Since 2005, I have begun working full time as an Internet Marketer. I still work to diversify my portfolio.

Let's see how I got where I am now on the Internet.
When web was just a curiosity, I designed Web Sites in my spare time. From the very beginning I was fascinated with Internet eCommerce and later even more with Social Marketing revolution.

In time, I have added to my portfolio: Internet Marketing, Affiliate Marketing for Digital Products. I am a DP writer as well, even though English is my second language, as you probably have noticed.

I am curious by nature and as soon as the word "Web 2.0" started buzzing on Internet jargon, I wanted to learn what was in it for me, so I kept my eyes open on Web 2.0. and with good reason.
Using the Web as a platform that supports and encourages participation was a brilliant idea which changed the users' mentality and the Internet culture.

As a consequence: A new type of sites have appeared, we call them interactive sites, people have started to allow participation and accept the idea that other people can add value to there sites Social - networking capabilities appear like mushrooms after the rain A friendly user interface has been created. All those arguments were enough to make me jump on the Web 2.0 endeavor.

I have had a lot of ups and downs in my life, and I have always prevailed with a positive attitude and hard work. I really love my work!

I promise more picture, I have to create digital pictures from old films.

Regards,
Michaela

Mom and Dad wedding.

My Mom was so beautiful; Daddy so happy and they made a lovely couple.

Sorry for the poor quality of the picture, sometime when you create digital photos from old pictures you lose quality.

As soon as they were married, they moved to Bucharest, where I was born.

Those were happy times for them until the Communist regime replaced the Monarchy. At that point my father lost his parents, and all his family possessions and a long chain of problems marked our entire family.

I never met my paternal grand parents. I only saw pictures of them and listened to my father's respectful stories about them. Sometime Daddy had tears in his eyes; and I was too young to understand why.


One year old with my maternal grand parents.

They were incredible good grannies for me. I spent 4 years with them, between age 8-13, and I was a happy kid. All my gratitude for them, I admired their unconditional love, and effort to provide a better life for me during a period of time in which I was fatherless and mom could only visit us twice a year as she was working very hard in Bucharest.

This is my Father.

I definitely look like my father. If you look at the one year-old little girl and at my father it is clear that I am Daddy's girl.

Unfortunately I didn't grow up on his watch for a long time.
I can tell your without hesitation that the Communist regime in Romania destroyed my father life.
I am not telling this to collect pity; I am telling my family story to make a point for the enthusiast crowd of "change" lovers. Sometime deep regime changes are as bad as wars are. Since I was 8 year old my mother raised me, with some help from her parents.



This is a picture from my first vacation in College, I was 18 year old.

At that age I did a lot of crazy things like:

• Climbing Mountains, the beautiful Carpathian Mountains in Romania
• Playing the organ (pre-classic music and my favorites: Bach, Handel), and
• I wanted to go to the Academy of Music.

Mom was very sweet but she handled my education issues with an iron fist - she decided that Music Academy is not an option, and I ended up with a degree in Mathematics from Bucharest University.

Actually it was a great choice, she was right.



In 1980 I arrived in New York City USA.

This picture was done on the second day on USA soil.

Oh God! I was so young, so happy that I was in USA and so determined to change the life of my family (Mom and my husband).

Thanks God, I did it!

My husband John Cernescu was born on Constanta, a port at the Black Sea in Romania.

This is the reason why we had a lot of vacations on the beach, on lake shores, on the river. He really loved to have water around him and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans fascinated him.

I am a mountains lover myself and from time to time we had a vacations in the mountains. In this respect I think I influenced him and made him love Mountains as well, he always respected my favorite places, and made me comfortable with our decisions.

We traveled a lot and enjoyed people, places, heritages, and John always told me that I made this possible, and he was proud of me.

I try now to organize modules by trips, we have hundreds of pictures. I cannot post everything, actually it is a struggle to select what I want to publish, and I have to do it in time.


In the first picture we are waiting to get aboard on an old fashioned boat for a trip on Mississippi river.

In the second one is John on the boat waiting for refreshments, it was humid and warm.

The boat stopped to let us visit 2 great Plantations, which are now museums.




The beautiful New Orleans - French Quarter, one of our favorite Cities in USA.

"The Court Of Two Sisters" one of our favorite restaurant, John had sunburn, it was hard to sit down...


Typical John - always ready to go!

We loved to camp, we were very well equipped with 2 tents, one inflatable, and a mobile "kitchen".

This is the second tent, my favorite, small and easy to install. We used this one only on high elevation trips.

John is preparing his new toy - an inflatable! In the background was our big tent, very comfortable, we can stand up, but not my favorite

We were in Adirondacks, close to Lake George.

The lake is a very small one, I don't know its name, it's not even of the map.

I loved it; the inflatable was so easy to maneuver, and the little lake so peaceful, just us on entire lake. It was freedom and beauty.

Now I am cooking, I like to cook, and after 3 hours on the lake we deserve a good meal!

This was a 5 day trip on Labor Day - for us, 3 day weekend = 5 days , under the pretext that we need to go one day earlier and stay one more to avoid traffic (as you can see, I am a very good mathematician!).

As religion, I belong to Greek Orthodox Church which includes several churches within the larger communion of Eastern Orthodox Christianity sharing a common cultural tradition whose liturgy is also traditionally conducted in Koine Greek, the original language of the New Testament (this is the best definition from Wikipedia).
The Eastern Orthodox Church is the second largest Christian communion in the world with an estimated 225 million members worldwide.

Our Greek Orthodox Church is part of Great Church of Christ in Constantinople, headed by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

The Greek Orthodox Archdioceses also exist on England, Italy, America, Australia, and Russia. The term Greek Orthodox has also been used to describe all Eastern Orthodox Churches, as part of the Greek heritage of the Byzantine Empire through 8 centuries of Christian history. The practices of the church of Constantinople were adopted by all Eastern Orthodox Churches and still provide the basic patterns of contemporary Orthodoxy.

Christians celebrate two major holidays during the year: Christmas and Easter. The Christmas falls each year on Dec. 25 but the Easter date celebrations do not occur on the same date every year because it is based on the lunar calendar, I don't know exactly how is calculated.
We observe the Easter this year on 18th April, one week after the Catholic Easter and next year both will be in the same Saturday.

The celebration of Easter commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his resurrection from the dead, which is the cornerstone of the Christian faith. We know from the New Testament of the Bible that the Jewish authorities became disturbed by the teachings of Jesus, who called himself the Son of God, and enlisted the aid of the Romans who controlled the area we today call Palestine and Israel to stop this "false prophet."

When Jesus came to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover, he was arrested. Since the Romans basically wanted to keep the Jews quiet, they allowed him to be tried and executed by being nailed to a cross until he died. This most likely occurred on a Friday, as is now commemorated by Christians and called "Good Friday," because of what they believe happened next. After the crucifixion, Jesus' body was hastily entombed in a cave, with a stone rolled in front of it. When his followers came on Sunday to take his body and give him a proper burial, they found the stone rolled back and the cave empty. According to the Christian faith, Jesus had arisen from the dead, the miraculous event now celebrated as Easter.

Greeks mainly color eggs red to signify the blood of Christ. I use to paint my own boiled eggs and bake traditional cakes as you can see in my pictures. (In the pictures: eggs and the Eastern table of last year.)

Happy Easter my Squidoo friends, we wish you and your family a blessed and enjoyable weekend.

After a long snowy, windy, and tiring winter, the Spring arrives in Verona with an extravaganza of flowers. By the way, my favorite seasons are Spring and Fall.

This is the what I see from the window of my tiny office at home:

It is a superb Magnolia tree which in some years has gazillions beautiful flowers.
This is a close up.

Spring in Verona is really beautiful, refreshing, the flowers are all over.

Verona park is attractive for sports, gatherings, free concerts, and craft exhibitions. I play tennis, and take long walks around the lake.

Verona has beautiful houses, historic houses.

Those are 2 historic houses in excellent condition. By the way, Verona is 100 years old. Last year we celebrate the Centennial.

It is so much to say in a lensography, and I realize that I cannot keep adding all in just one lens.

I start to create other lenses which I consider being the continuation of our chat here.

They are:

• http://www.squidoo.com/romanian-heritage This is a lens in which I am talking about the Geography and History of my native country and some amazing Architectural Heritage.
• http://www.squidoo.com/Romanian-monasteries-churchesJust visit we me the beauty of Romanian Monasteries, Churches
• http://www.squidoo.com/micheys-lenses This is the lens in which I organize all my lenses on Squidoo and present them

Enjoy!