Friday, October 27, 2006

This morning we went to Penilla and it was fabulous! We got there and were told that the entire school was taking a field trip to Copou Botanical Gardens and we were invited! I love Penilla! It’s such a great place for these kids! Well, right as we got to the kids, 2 kids pulled Shannon and I in separate directions. Catalina from Dacie 7th pulling me her way and Catalin from Dacie 3rd pulling her his. Reason #1 why I love Dacie: It’s so laid pack that the kids can actually go in different rooms as they choose and aren’t forced to be in the same stuffy room all day, let alone forced to stay in one specific chair all day. So we helped them get all ready to go and then everyone crowded into a maxi taxi thing. There were no empty seats and I sat with Georgiana on my lap. I distinctly remember, at one point, just looking ahead of me at the carload of Romanian children, one on my lap and out the window at Romania and thinking, is this really my version of going to class right now? How cool is this! Yeah, it only got better. Once we got there, Shannon and I were in charge of the 2 wheelchair boys, I with AD and she with Andre. The park was filled with kids on field trips. All our kids were holding hands in little chains and they were all so adorable and excited. AD is like one of my favorite kids ever. He’s just the sweetest little boy. He has such a good attitude and he always has this huge smile on his face. He’s really quiet and weak and everything he says just sounds so pitifully sweet. We all wandered around the park for a while and took lots of group pictures and everything too. At one point they found this wooden platform thing and all the kids got on and just started running around pell mell. Our wheelchair honeys couldn’t get up, so we started wheeling them around it on the leaves. We had races with them and played games and they loved it so much! Acolo! Then, later, we went off the beaten path and found this area with TONS of leaves under this big beautiful tree that was just all different colors. I have this beautiful picture in my mind of all these sweet little disabled kids running around under this beautiful tree throwing leaves at each other and just having the time of their lives. All kids should play in the leaves and I can’t explain to you how it feels to see these kids who, without this school, probably wouldn’t ever be able to leave their houses more than once a month, let alone ever play in the leaves and here they were! It made me yearn so bad for all of our kids to be able to do that! I seriously feel like crying for happiness and for sadness right now as I remember it. Another moment that really impacted me was this. We were toward the end of the group with our wheelchair men and Catalin was holding Shannon’s hand. Well, we got to a fork in the road and the group started to go toward the left. Catalin stopped, with this pained expression on his face and said he wanted to go the other way in his adorable way (about 4 years old and with the cutest little lisp). Well, normally, he would’ve been slapped around a little to give his some discipline and forced to go the other way. Instead, the incredibly wise worker, who is like my hero now just said “go ahead.” Catalin, an institutionalized child, who is used to never making his own choices and having to act out to get attention, was so surprised he hesitated and almost didn’t believe her. She gave him the go ahead again though and he got the biggest smile on his little face and just started running off down the path. She didn’t even go with him, just let him explore on his own and watched from afar (there are so many orphans in Romania no one ever worries about someone actually kidnapping a kid). It worked so well! He didn’t even try her patience, he just went down a little ways a turned around and came back happily! It made me soooo happy. Also interesting to note is the difference that this shows between traditional Romanian practices and those newer less superstitious ones (that are still VERY uncommon). What I mean is, when this happened there was another, quite old worker there at the time who began to protest the action. She was worried and it made her nervous and had to be pacified by the younger worker while Catalin trotted away. I don’t blame the other worker, because she’s incredibly nice and she tries sooo hard and loves those kids and just gives them her all, but she comes from a different system and there’s only so much she can do to get used to the very new. Well, after a while we all packed back into the care again for another maxi taxi ride, this time with Catalina on my lap (or off it actually, depending on how well I controlled her). After we left Penilla we were both in just the best of moods. Penilla is right next to the cemetery, so we walked through the cemetery on our way to the hospital. It was this gorgeous Fall day and the leaves were so many different colors. If you could have seen me while we walked through you would have seen my mouth just gaping wide open the entire time because it was just that beautiful. Shannon was listening to the theme of “Somewhere in Time” and she had me listen to it once too and it was all just so peaceful and beautiful. I wish I could go there like every week. After walking through the cemetery, I kind of felt like ending my Iasi experience, pre-Budapest with that, so Shannon and I didn’t go to the hospital. I don’t entirely remember the rest of the day, but I do remember that at 7pm we had a missionary fireside. When it started, the Elders told us that there was a problem in the mission and the President asked them to come right away to Bucharest and they didn’t know when they’d be back. They said they wanted us to write our testimonies and our information. I kind of didn’t believe them, but they just seemed like they were acting a little weird for if it really were that situation, and yeah, they were lying. It was a stupid object lesson thought up by Elder Sorensen. It made everyone pretty mad, because, hello, you’re dealing with a lot of new members who are really unstable still and you’re dealing with a people whose country has in the very recent past had a lot of political unrest and you’re implying that there’s something going on like that. I mean, totally different than doing something like that in the states. And I’m pretty sure that the fact that it was Sorensen’s idea made it even just that much more unacceptable. Not only was everyone pretty mad, but one of the new members stormed out of the room crying and her boyfriend, another new member followed behind her. All the other missionaries were just like “it wasn’t my idea!!! I was just being a team player!” Ah Sorensen. And that’s about all I remember for that night.