Saturday, September 30, 2006

First thing in the morning, at 10am we had our first language lesson. They are at Scala, so Mario and the rest of the girls came over and we had a little lesson together in the living room. Then, Mario surprised us by getting food at the market to make Romanian chicken soup! So, after the lesson we all took turns going into the kitchen to chop up vegetables and help make the soup. The rest of us not in the kitchen had fun just chatting. The final product was pretty good, but very interesting and not exactly my favorite soup ever. Good though. After language lesson we had a little apartment meeting and Megan, Jessica and Melissa basically told us all their clean apartment quirks and made me, for one, really stressed about cleaning. See, they, at least Megan and Melissa, seem to be really stressed out about having a super clean apartment and are bugged by all these little things that I don’t even noticed. Like, for example, I’ve never felt the need to wash the walls. I just don’t think about it. Nor would I usually sweep several times a week. So, because I’m not really that way and just grew up differently, as far as cleaning is concerned, I got really stressed because, first of all, I felt like they were pointing the finger at me, and second of all, I don’t know how I’m going to live up to their standards because it isn’t natural for me at all and just isn’t a strong point. I’m trying though and think I’ve been doing better for the past few days at least. Anyway, so Megan and Jessica wanted me to put everything in the room on the bed and also clean up because they were going to de-flea the room and everyone was cleaning after the meeting and so I kept having to answer “whose are these?” questions and didn’t even get started on what I was supposed to do for a while. Plus, I needed to take a shower and Megan wanted me to even clean the bathroom (my weekly chore this week), and all of this before the picnic. Well, I told her I just might not get to the bathroom before the picnic but would make sure and do it later on at night. So, I went to work and really worked as hard as I could, but like I thought, didn’t get the bathroom done. So, we went to the picnic. First we had to meet at Tirgu Cucu and take the tram to this cemetery by the hospital. We all waited and talked out in front of it for a while and we walk to this “park” and set up the picnic. I swear, sometimes Romanian Parks look just like, I don’t know, county wilderness property or something. Definitely not the same as a good ol American park. So we get to this park and we walk over this dam and through this forest path to where we want it to be – there is, of course, trash everywhere. The picnic was pretty good. At some point we all started passing a volleyball around a big circle, which was fun. I eventually left the circle to try and go fishing with some random kids that were there (there are always random kids at everything we do, and I’m never quite sure if they belong with us or if they’re just gypsy kids or something). Anyway, eventually we all left and we just ended up walking the whole way home instead of taking the tram. It was nice because it gave me a chance to take pictures of this very interesting country. Some of them turned out pretty good I think. We didn’t have much time after we got home before we had to get ready to go over to Podul for conference, so we just got ready as quickly as we could. The rest of them got ready quicker than Shannon and I, so they left first. Well, not long after they left I was looking for my pillow and I couldn’t find it. I figured Megan might have it because she’d left hers at the apartment, but I didn’t want to take hers without asking. So, instead of just taking it, Shannon and I were nice enough to call Podul and tell them to call us when they got there. Well, I was in the bathroom when they called, so Shannon answered. She asked Megan if she had my pillow and Megan said the weirdest thing. She said “yeah, but first come first serve.” Shannon was really surprised and kind of offended, so she was like “well, Sheri just called because she thought you might’ve and she didn’t want to just take yours without asking you, so WE waited this whole time for you just so we could call and ask.” Yeah, it was the weirdest response and made me kind of mad. At the very least, it made me feel like Megan doesn’t have the kindest thoughts toward me, which has been kind of frustrating for me lately. I don’t know why she does and I don’t know what to do. Very very high strung person. Anyway, so we went over there and watched conference in their living room. The first session was really good and I got a lot out of it and really enjoyed it. The second I didn’t get as much out of because fell asleep.