Tuesday, October 10, 2006

This morning we were kind of late getting to the tram again. Dancu was good and bad. I worked with all the kids except Iuliana. Iuliana wasn’t horrible, but she wasn’t exactly great either. Petrica wasn’t to interested in doing anything but lying there and I had him listen to Aerosmith and Jack Johnson, which he liked. Mihai had a great time having air blown on him with this toy. We also taped the kids today on Shannon’s ipod, which was really fun. Constica was awake most of the day and I actually spent a lot of time with him. At one point, he didn’t seem to be happy no matter what I did, so I took him into the back room and held him up and just started turning around in circles. He liked it so much he laughed his head off for a really long time. Toward the end we had feeding time. It was Anni working today and she’s really great and you can tell she loves the kids. I tried to feed Mihai, but he was being a punk and didn’t really want to eat. After Dancu, we went straight to the hospital and decided to stay there for a whole 4 hours. I started off with the little boy at the end of the hall, whose name I figured out, is Alin (though I still like calling him Peter or Petru, the name I made up for him). I had a good time in there with him and the moms in the room were reeeeally nice and even offered me some of their drink. They tried to talk to me quite a bit and were just really nice. I got him to fall asleep, so I went in with Madaleina and the new baby. Abbi was in there with the new baby, so I started off with Madaleina. Then I got really tired (because she’s heavy and can’t control herself AT ALL, so we switched. Abbi got her to fall asleep, so she left. At one point the moms in my room tried to tell me something, but it was really confusing. At any rate, I figured out that they wanted me and the two orphans to go in the room with Alin and Andrei who were with Melissa. I decided later that it was because they wanted to open the window to get fresh air for the babies and the babies, of course, couldn’t be in there or the breeze would kill them, of course. Pretty soon the moms came in and had me go back into the original room and then I just left because I was going to switch with Marina and go to the new incubator baby on the 3rd floor. I never ended up staying with incubator baby because I stopped in to say hi to Holly and Rebecca who were with Iulia and they were just about to leave, so I just stayed with Iulia. Her heart rate machine kept going off and the doctor would just come in really mad and turn it off. Not quite sure why they even have it on if they could care less if she does bad. I never really feel comfortable leaving the kids at the hospital. On the way home I told Shannon about what Melissa had said and she was really great and tried her best to console me. Before going to the apartment we went by the barbecue again and I got some mediocre and kinda scary chicken. Let me actually explain what the barbecue is. Iasi is the home of Sfanta Parasceva who is a very important saint. Every year around this time Iasi hosts the Sfanta Parasceva festival and the city gets like 10 times as crowded (actual statistic). Because of the festival, there are hundreds of makeshift souvenir shops lining all the major streets and the piazza in front of Hala Centrala has turned into a giant and very packed Barbecue with like 50 stalls. It’s very crowded and lively and there’s music blasting all night long. The piazza behind hala centrala is filled with souvenir shops. So that’s what I’ve been talking about. After getting food at the barbecue we went home. Jessica was on my computer and Melissa was on hers, so I told Jessica I was going to get on after reading and read quite a bit in “Hole in the Flag” and now I’m on the computer and aaaaaall caught up on the journal! Good thing cuz I have a headache.