Can you teach an old dog new tricks?

Sometimes I feel like an old dog. Ed often describes living in Romania like dog years. For every one human year, there are 7 dog years. That would make us 14 years older than when we left the US. So that's why I'm so tired! Another "side-effect" of life in Romania is that I can't remember. Our kids would say that was always true, and they're probably right, but I think it's gotten worse. I like to excuse my forgetfulness by the extra strain of living in between two languages and two cultures. However, having Ed's dad here for the last 10 days has made me realize that may not be a reasonable excuse. One, he's way older than I am. He's also lived half his life in this culture and half in America. (They were Saxon Germans living in Romania until they fled communism in 1964 with their kids--Ed was 4.) He speaks 5 languages pretty fluently and can use several more. And he remembers! Everything! Earlier this week we visited the place where he grew up. As we entered the town, he pointed out that so-and-so lived here. The mill was over there. They played in this creek. And then he said, "This house up here used to have children's faces above the windows." We all shook our heads in unbelief when we drove by and saw the stone cherubs fixed above each window. All week he's told stories of how his mother prepared her mamaliga (polenta, a Romanian staple); of what people wore when he lived here (often commenting, "I can't believe the girls are wearing jeans!"); of the bike he and his brother made out of scraps of wood (the only one in the village); of what it was like to train home on his free weekend from the labor camp where he spent over 3 years (which is actually not far from our house)...
So, I decided that if we didn't write these things down, his stories and our own, we'd surely forget them. This blogsite is an attempt to keep that from happening. Plus, some of the things that we experience are worth sharing.
I realize remembering doesn't really have anything to do with an old dog and new tricks, but we had a neighbor over a few nights ago and we were discussing whether they have that saying in Romanian. So, it was on my mind.