Wedesday, September 20, 2006

This morning I actually woke up when I was supposed to and got to take a shower! I’m not even going to mention how often that doesn’t happen. I also got to eat a leisurely breakfast. Love getting up early, but it’s so hard. First thing we did was go to the orphanage!!! We walked over there and changed before going into a meeting with Mario and Dr. Ciobano. Changing, in and of itself was interesting because one wall of the room is taken up by a huge window with a very see through curtain and another includes a door that has a window right in the middle of it. It’s Romania. The meeting didn’t actually end up being much of a meeting because about five minutes into it Dr. Ciobano got called away and didn’t come back for another 15 minutes or so. In the meantime Mario just explained pretty much everything we needed to know. Then when she got back Mario and Dr. Ciobano just talked in very animated Romanian for about 10 minutes and then Dr. Ciobano said “well, it sounds like Mario has already told you just about all you need to know, and I am a very busy woman (she says that a lot), so I’ll be going now!” And that was that. First, we were shown the Day Care. Then we went to Donald Duck, where we were actually able to take the kids out of their cribs. Actually, they left three of us in there while the rest went on to the other rooms and oh my goodness, I really have to say I am SOOO partial to Donald Duck. I fell in love with the kids right away. They’re mostly babies and then there’s a few who are just so severely disabled that they are still in that stage of development. Like, they can’t move much and they don’t speak. Also, I’ve decided that for some reason I just LOVE kids with Down Syndrome. Like, I almost think I want one of my own someday although that’s a weird thing to want. But honestly they are just soooo sweet. There’s a little girl with Down Syndrome in Donald Duck and I just loved her. The room is set up like this. You come in and there are two rooms on your left, with doors. Then there’s a little tiny living room sort of a place followed by another room with a door that’s in the left corner. There are a few rooms on the right but I get the impression they’re just for the workers and we didn’t go in them. Each of the three rooms with doors on the left have kids in cribs in them. There’s generally like 4 – 6 kids per room. After spending some time in Donald Duck, we went to Mickey Mouse one and two and then to Bambi one and two. I get those four rooms a little mixed up because they weren’t quite as distinct as Donald Duck. They had older kids in them. I think it was Mickey Mouse that had a lot of kids in wheelchairs, and then Bambi had a lot of really active kids not in wheelchairs. Some kids are autistic, some are blind, some have cerebral palsy. There was also one room in Bambi that had just a few kids in it. Actually, when I first went in it was just two kids. One of them had an abnormally large head (as in a type of disorder big, not just passingly big) who was really smart and talked to us in Romanian and held our hands. The other kid was in a wheelchair in the corner. We went and talked with him a little but he wasn’t too responsive. I’m not sure what almost any of the kids names are because there were about 70 total, soooo yeah. After the orphanage we went back to the apartment for just a little while before heading over to the hospital. We were at the hospital from about 1:30 to 4:30. It actually went incredibly fast today. I started off on the 6th floor with Radu. He has down syndrome and is so cute, but it’s sad because he’s really skinny and floppy and has a fever and his skin is having issues. Also, his diapers stink like noooo other. Megan had a fun experience with that later in the day. She opened his diaper to see if he’d gone and he decided to just go right then, so she got some urine on her hands. The moms were laughing. Anyway, when I was with him I just would go sit on the bed or crib and hold him on my knees usually and sometimes rock him. He was a little fussy but not too bad. Mostly just weak. After Megan took over I wandered around for a little while looking for a kid with no one with him, but there weren’t any, so I just ended up with a new kid, Ionut who is like five and was already playing with Bri when I got there. He’s adorable. He’s got long eyelashes and a dimple on one of his cheeks. He’ll also repeat anything you say so while we were blowing bubbles we’d have him say “The Church is true!” each time before I blew. We had a lot of fun and he was endlessly amused and laughing about the bubbles. After Bri left I was trying to teach him the colors with some crayons that were there, but he wasn’t picking up real fast. Then while we were playing with the balloons, the other mom in the room came and said something to him that didn’t sound particularly mean, but maybe it was because after that he was just really quiet and wouldn’t really do anything except stare at his legs even if I had his car driving all over him. I was really sad to have to leave him like that, but I had to. After the hospital we went straight to the market and I got sooo much yummy food. That has to be one of the best things about Romania. For the first time after I go shopping and pretty much always I have food in the pantry that I’m excited to eat! In fact, today, I bought like 20 plums for 50 bani which is about $0.20. Happy day. Also, the piazza is so fun to buy fruit from. It’s just this little outdoor fruits and veggies market with cute old ladies and such. Today I bought some potatoes from this old guy who just could not figure out what language to speak to me! First he was like “sprechenzie doitch?” and I’m like “nu, spun engleaza si un putin din italiano si romane (No, I speak English and a little Italian and Romanian).” After that he spoke like a combination of Italian, Romanian and German to me, but nooo English J. I liked him. Once at home we just, you know, got stuff done. Around 7:15 Rebecca came over with her husband. While they were here Mario’s husband came and worked on our light and fixed out toilet. When he left our light still didn’t work and he told us we needed to buy better bulbs (which doesn’t really make much sense). Well, we went about our business, and then all of a sudden we hear “uh! Guys! Come here!” and we all look over and see that the light had randomly turned on!!! You should have seen all of us skid into the hallway and then just take off toward the living room. We were so happy! Also, Jessica and Megan ended up fighting for the chair that was left which was really entertaining. Since then I’ve just been in here enjoying the light while I write in my journal.