Wednesday, September 6, 2006

The night of the 5th was the first night that the three of us girls shared out double bed together. It was interesting. I’m on the edge and the mattress apparently didn’t fit all the way to the edge of the wooden frame, so some girls before us stuffed a body pillow in to fill of the rest of the space. That’s all fine and good except that the body pillow is lower than the rest of the mattress, so my little section of the bed is very very lopsided. Also, the first night we only had this one really thin blanket between the three of us and the other two girls were putting up a much better fight for it. So sometime in the middle of the night I gave up on it and found a towel for my legs and a blanket for my arms and lay down. I ended up looking like a mummy (so the girls said) because I had a towel wrapping my legs tight, and the sweater over my head and my arms criss crossed on top of my chest (because I always have to have my arms up somehow) and I was right side up instead of face down because I would have had to readjust the towel if I turned because it could only cover one side of my legs. Anyway, I woke up to everyone being out of the room and awake and was surprised because I didn’t think it had been that long but apparently it had been, because it was around 11:15! Anyway, I got up, unpacked, showered, ate breakfast, and putzed around because I was out of place and not sure where to start on getting everything done. Finally around 2ish, Holly and the Podul girls came and picked us up and we all went over to this pizza place in Hala called “Magic Pizza.” Oh my gosh, it was soooo good. Possibly because I was incredibly hungry and hadn’t had real food in a long time (we realized that the only meals we’d really had for the whole trip were the airplane meals) but it had to have been the best pizza I’ve ever had. We had like 5 different kinds, plus these AMAZING cheese bread things. After that we went grocery shopping at Hala. First we went in the supermarket part, which was funny because we had no idea what anything was and we asked Holly’s advice on just about every single piece of food. She was like our mother goose and we were all her chicks who she was constantly counting and pushing along. Also, we stand out like fluorescent on white already and I can only imagine how much we’ll stand out when we’re a see of people in blue scrubs going to the orphanage or hospital. After the supermarket in scala we went over to the little inside/outside market thing which is run predominantly by cute old ladies with scarves tied around their heads. It was very confusing trying to buy our fruits and vegetables because they recently switched over to “new lei” which means they basically took off 4 zeros on the bills and 2 zeros on the coins. And see, they quote you the price in the old lei for some reason, but you usually pay in the new lei. So it’s hard enough as it is to translate what number their saying without having to go through the complicated conversion of zeroes and finally figure out what the heck to pay them! Usually I just hand the cute old lady some kind of a bill and hope she gives me good change J. After the grocery store we dropped all our stuff back at home and then walked over to Podul for the first time (first for Scala girls). At Scala we had a meeting about, well, everything and it was very interesting. We especially learned about the hospital and orphanage and Holly explained more about how the orphanage works and we looked at a bunch of different binders that have records of each kid with pictures, write ups and tests that have been done. We’re supposed to look through the binders before going to the orphanage so we’ll be able to pick which kids we want to work with quicker. It’s hard to choose for sure, but I think I’m leaning toward either Donald Duck or 2 of the apartments. There were some other interesting things that came from the meeting too. Like, technically in order to get into the orphanage, we’re supposed to do a physical. However, BYU would never stand for that because, well, it’s dangerous! So, instead, we give Mario 50 Lei and don’t ask questions (but basically, she bribes someone and we get in). Yes, this is immoral, but I guess it’s one of those lesser of the two evils things. If we didn’t do it we wouldn’t be here and being here is doing a whole lot more good than not bribing and not being here would do. Romania thrives on bribery. Also, we should be going to the hospital sometime in just the next few days but won’t be going to the Orphanage for another 2 weeks or so. Anyway, I also used the internet just for a few minutes because Podul had the internet and we didn’t at that point. That 10 minutes is the only time I’ve been on the internet since I’ve been in Romania. I’m going insane! After Podul, we all walked over to the corner store and got some things, including this amazing ice cream thing. On the walk back to the apartment I looked up and saw this man totally naked in the window of this apartment and was so surprised that I couldn’t get the right words out and was just like “Man! Naked!” and everyone’s like “what???” So I showed them and we all had a gooood laugh about the naked man.