Part One:
A Photo Album of Romania
The People and Places
in Book 1: To Be a Gypsy

This is the main shopping area of downtown Reghin in the Transylvania Province of Romania where a good deal of To Be a Gypsy takes place. Sunita shops here with her translator and third cousin Tootsie, a nickname for Rita Stoica. The picture is taken from the police department where Sunita was mistakenly arrested.

Shopping in downtown Reghin. The man in the foreground is Jaycee Persutti, guest minister to the John Fracker Hearts of Faith Missions to Romania. In real life he's the author's brother, John Orlando. Beyond him are the real Adi Adrian and his wife Sanda. Sanda is the Stoicas' eldest girl. Sanda and Tootsie's father are important to To Be a Gypsy because they are the long lost cousins Sunita's father has sought out. Tootsie's father is the U.S. sponsored Gypsy minister working through the Hearts of Faith Missions to Romania.

Romania is a unique blend of the modern and the traditional. Horse drawn carts are common in Romanian cities as well as the countryside. This one is passing outside John Fracker's apartment building in downtown Reghin.

This is the Gypsy village of Viile Tecii, home of Sandu Stoica. Sandu's house is the seventh house down on the right in the distance. Sunita's father discovered through the Reverend Jaycee Persutti and the Hearts of Faith Missions to Romania that his long lost cousin lived there. This prompted Sunita's father to take his daughter on a trip to Romania to meet Sandu and look up other relatives. The trip didn't play well with Sunita, for secretly she is ashamed of her Gypsy heritage. She's told no one at her school in Brandon, Florida about her heritage except her best friend Nina Luchnik, a girl of Russian heritage. But her teacher found out and told her class on the last day of the sixth grade.

This is the Stoica house in the Gypsy village of Viile Tecii. Suni's father talked her into staying overnight with her cousins. While there, she discovered a far more primitive way of life, such as using outdoor bathrooms. Standing in front of the car is John Fracker, Tootsie, and her baby brother Beni (Benny).

On the last day of her stay in Romania, Suni and Jaycee Persutti entertained Gypsy children in a park in Reghin. Jaycee made animal balloons and Sunita showed them a trick with her nose.

Sunita found it easy to photgraph Gypsy girls. As seen here, they are more than happy to pose. Suni snapped this picture in a park in Reghin.

Another Gypsy girl willing to pose. There are 1.7 million Gypsies in a Romanian population of 22 million, more than in any other country.

Wandering the streets of Reghin, Suni asked this Gypsy woman and girl to pose. Gypsies are a people without a country. They speak their own language called Romany as well as the language of their host country.