I'm Going to Europe!!!

Friday, December 1, 2006

2006-12-02T14:32:00.000+02:00

This was another really really hard day. I’ll actually tell you about this one. So, it was Friday and Fridays are supposed to be good and usually are, but this one was bad from the very beginning. I wasn’t woken up by Melissa again – she seems to just not wake me up on days when she uses the computer, which is pretty frustrating, but I’m going to just let it go since we only have like a week left with her and 2 weeks total (weird!). So then I was also still frustrated from the night before and I don’t even know what all, but I was way frustrated, like with everything. To top it off, when we got on the tram, I realized that I’d forgotten my book and so then I was just like “ahh! Kill me now!” So then Shannon let me listen to her ipod J. Music always really helps. I usually don’t like bands like Yellowcard, because they don’t have very good vocal quality, but just then it was perfect. I needed something new and I needed something slightly angry, but not actually angry. I didn’t want to stop when we got to Dancu. Anni and Nuti were working. Anni was one of our favorites in the beginning, but now she really isn’t. The kids were pretty good, but not greeeat. I started off with Petrica, and just sat with him by the TV. The TV was actually really interesting because it was Romania’s Birthday and so they had all this patriotic stuff on the TV. After that I played with Mihai for a bit with the walker. He can move slowly, but surely, if he’s really trying and if you have his legs all the way back. He use to move them from the back to the front if you stuck them in the front, but now he just does a doggy paddy kind of thing with his feet. Wow, this song I’m listening to is making me so distracted (Such Great Heights by Postal Service)! Well anyway, after that I stuck him a little ways from the toy shelf, with the intent that he would be motivated to go get the toys and be able to get himself there by himself. I knew he wouldn’t if I were in the room, because I’d be a distraction, so I went in with Costica. He was good for a little while, while I sang to him, but then he got upset and wouldn’t be comforted. That’s always the sign that he’s done with you, so I went back in the other room to find Shannon with Petrica! That made me pretty happy, because I always like to share my favorites with other people. So I decided to get out my computer, which I’d brought, and turn on some music. By the time I got it on and was able to play the music, Shannon had just picked Mihai up and was starting to play with him. Well, when I turned it on (to Garth Brooks specifically) Mihai totally started crying! It wasn’t like a “play with me!” whine or a “I can’t get the toy I want” whine, it was a distressed and troubled cry! We turned off the music and were like “woah woah woah! Hey! What’s the matter?” So, we’re not sure whether it really was the music or something else, but either way, we finally slowly eased him back into the music by playing Jon Schmidt first and we got him to stop crying and be normal again. But while he was still upset he was acting really institutionalized! You may be like, “um, he is.” But the thing is that he’s one of the amazing kids that don’t ever show it (like Mihai at Dacie 7th). But started like moving his head from side to side over and over again (which is like comparable to rocking – a behavior they turn to either to stimulate or when they’re upset) and just being finicky. Like, he wasn’t interested in what he usually would be and would alternate really sad and really happy really quickly (like Iuli). That was a little worrisome. After a little while, he was still being pretty weird and Iuli started to get upset, so I took Mihai and got him pretty happy. At around 11:30, Nuti came it and asked us to leave early because she wanted to move everything around in the living room and that’s hard to do with people in there. Before we left, we told her that our last day is going to be Dec 13th and we told her wanted to have a Christmas party on that day, with decorating and Romanian Christmas music and treats (we’re going to make the gogosi things that Corrina gave us the recipe for and sugar cookies) and she seemed pretty excited about it. We got to the hospital by like 12 and were like “well, I thiiiink we’ll be the first ones to the 6th floor!) So, I started of with Andrei, because I’ve never been with him. When I got there I changed his diaper, which he didn’t like at all and he started screaming. Just as soon as I’d calmed him down again the nurse came and took him for an injection. I could hear him scream all the way down the hall from the nurse’s room. When she brought him back his eyes were all watery and he was kind of whimpering and I just held the gauze to his head (yeah, the injection was in the HEAD – ow!) until it stopped bleeding. Finally I got him calmed down for good and just played with his arms and stuff until Shannon came in and started chilling with me. About that time the nurse brought the bottle in. He doesn’t suck right, so I had to just squirt it into his mouth manually (um, I kind of hope at least one of my kids is a dysfunctional eater so I can show my skills, because that’s one thing I’ve definitely learned techniques for!). It was really funny though, because one time I was squirting it and one time I missed and totally squirted it all over him and myself and Shannon and I just started laughing! Around 2:10, I left Andrei with Shannon and went to go see Gigi, who is quickly becoming my favorite! The first few days with him, I was totally intimidated, but now I can handle him like a pro! He’s really warmed up to me too and wants me to hold him more and more, whereas in the beginning he was pretty standoffish and would pull away. I love holding him and turning in circles, because he just laughs his head off! I want to get a picture of it. Oh, I hope he’s still there on Monday!!! Also, and this was the best, he has shoes, so I decided to take him for a walk! I’d stand behind him and hold his arms up and he’d walk in front of me. We went out into the hall and started to walk around and before I knew it, all the nurses and a few moms had congregated at the end of the hall that he was walking toward and they were like cheering him on (yes, example of how the nurses really are kind of lax on working)! He started going straight toward them and when he got there one of them swooped him up and started throwing him up above her head. He was laughing sooo hard and it was sooo cute. While this was all happening though, I was just thinking about how, yeah, it’s good that he’s not shy with strangers, but on the other hand, it kind of is. I mean, mom kids have their mom who they latch onto, and everyone else they have to get used to. But with him, all of these people collectively make up his mom and he doesn’t have any more attachment to one than to the other. Anyway, so then we went back down the other side of the hall again, then turned around and went back to the nurse again. This time we walked into the nurse’s room (usually not aloud, but they love this kid) and there was one nurse on a cell phone and she gave it to Gigi and was trying to get him to stay stuff into it. While we were doing this, Jenna walked in and she was probably like “ha, woah, Sheri’s in the nurses room with a kid who’s talking on the nurses phone!” Like, I can’t explain how unusual this is. Usually the nurses just say “nu e voie! (not aloud!)” about everything and are not affectionate with the kids and we aren’t aloud to go anywhere or do anything with them, so this was kind of weird. Well, we walked a little more, but finally he got tired and just sat down. So, I picked him up and brought him back to his crib and played with him a while more. He was really tired, so all he’d ever want to do was be held, and he was getting pretty cranky, so I tried to either rock him to sleep or get him to lie down in his crib, but he wouldn’t and finally I had to leave because I was supposed to meet Megan and Jess to take Nicu. Well, on the way up to the 6th floor from the first, I was walking up the stairs and saw this little kid by the pay phone, with the receiver in his hand, stretching as high as he could, trying to stick a phone card in the slot. I thought it was really cute and was just watching him and then when I got a little closer he turned his head around and looked at me and it was Ionut! What a cute kid! I stopped to try and help him out and found out he was trying to call his dad and was trying to get the phone card in because he knew if you stuck a phone card in you could call people. I don’t think his 4 year old brain had realized that you also need a phone number, but he wouldn’t listen to me, so I told him to stay there and that I’d go get Meg and Jess (because they hang out with him like all the time). So, I went up and got Nicu from Meg and Jess and told them to go get Ionut and I spent the rest of the time with Nicu. The moms in there are really cool and good at helping you figure stuff out, especially this one. Well, apparently this one mom (who was pregnant and had 2 kids at home) had gotten her cell phone stolen, so she was using the cell of one of the moms in my room to call the police. I also figured out the to call the police, you call 112. I had a good long convo with them all and they were all four gathered around my crib explaining stuff to me when Shannon walked in. She came in and all she could see were 4 moms gathered around Nicu’s crib and she could barely see me, so she says, in Romanian “Sheri? What’s happening here?” in a kind of comical tone and “ya alright?” and all the mom’s turned around and realized how funny it looked and we all started laughing. After the hospital, Shannon and I walked home and had a good little talk and when we were almost home I felt someone rip my water bottle out of my backpack and I turned around and was about ready to deck em, when I saw Jess holding it and laughing. It was pretty funny. I got home and started making pasta and it was juuust about done and I was getting so excited to eat it, when Melissa walks in and is like “hey, we’re going to Magic Pizza, wanna come?” I’m like, “dang it! Yes!” So I put the pasta in some Tupperware and the whole apartment went to Magic Pizza (that doesn’t happen often). We had a good time laughing and chatting and decided to call it our apartment closure activity. The 5 of us ordered 2 x-large pizzas (which are like larges or mediums in the US) with 8 slices each and 8 pieces of cheesy bread. That’s about 5 pieces each. Well, we were so hungy when they brought it that we ate the whole thing in 10 minutes flat. If the people couldn’t tell we were American before (and I’m sure they could) they could tell then! Romanians DO NOT eat like that. After dinner, we came home and I wanted to get one the internet computer, but Shannon got on first, so I used mine for a few minutes and used Melissa’s for like 10 minutes before Megan demanded to get on. By the time the 10 minutes were over I went back to mine and Shannon was on! Keep in mind I’d had computer time earlier, but it was forfeited by the Magic Pizza outing. So then I was all frustrated and she said she’d get off at 7:30 and then we found out that Jess was scheduled at 8 anyway and I was like like “aaaah!” So then I was all frustrated and Shannon got frustrated at me for being frustrated and that on top of everything else just made me feel like just exploding and I was about to just walk out on the balcony and then changed my mind and was going to go sit out in the stairwell instead, when as I’m walking out the door Jessica thrusts the phone at me and says “for you!” and I’m like, “who is it?” and she’s like, “I don’t know!” So I answered and it was my mom and I was like, “yes?” and she like, “hi, how are you?” and I’m like, “bad.” And she like, “what’s wrong?” And I’m like “nothing (even though, for the record, I know that makes no sense), why did you call?” And she’s like “because I felt like you were upset.” So I went out in the stairwell and we talked and it wasn’t like I poured my soul out to her and she gave me like incredibly wise advice or anything, but she just talked to me a little and was a mom and it helped. She had to go though, because the Relief Society Presidency was on their way over for a meeting. By the time we were done, I was still frustrated and upset, but not quite as much. I decided to just go to bed right then (it was like 8:30) and then wake up really early and use the computer. Well, first I went in and started reading, because I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I distracted myself a little. Then, just as I was laying down my head, Shannon started to open the door, saw that it was dark, started to close it, then changed her mind and opened it. She stood there for a second and then said “are you awake?” I raised my arm and said “yeah.” And she was like, “I just want you to know that I love you and I don’t hate you and you’re not a horrible person and I’m sorry I got frustrated.” So she came in and lay down on the bed and we had a really good conversation. We talked a lot about spiritual things and the atonement and she helped me to feel better and not like I’m eternally flawed and we worked things out again. Hallelujah for Shannon! After that I started lying down to go to sleep again, but then I realized that my mom had wanted her to give me a hug for her and so I ran back out and by this time she’d taken a shower and she was in just a towel, and so we had a good laugh about the irony of that and then she just got dressed and gave me a hug and I fiiiinally went to bed.

Thursday, November 30, 2006

2006-12-02T14:28:00.000+02:00

Um, skipping this day :-).

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

2006-12-02T14:27:00.000+02:00

Wow, leaving is coming upon me like a big heavy wave, knocking me backwards and flipping me over and over and getting me all disoriented and wet. I just read Holly’s blog about closure and detailing everything that’ll be happening in the next few weeks and what all we need to do and basically, the plan. I need to eat a snickers. Anyway, it all just came upon me like a huge wave and I’m realizing how bittersweet it’ll all be. I say that in the future tense, because I’m the kind of person who generally doesn’t start feeling intensely emotional until an event actually happens, or even sometimes not til after. Like, it’ll be all the changes and the closure activities that finally will make it all hit home and that’ll make me well up with tears. But I can feel a little of it now too – now that I know what all is going to happen and I can visualize it. This Sunday we’ll have a big meeting on closure and how we’re going to achieve it. We’ll talk about what our last activities are going to be with the kids and the branch. We’ll wrap presents for our kids to give them as we leave. We’ll write thank you notes, we’ll get gifts for the outreach girls and a few more things. The week after that is…the last full week. That…will…be…hard. The week after that, we’ll probably only go until Wednesday. Since half the group leaves on the 12th, their last day at the orphanage will be Friday, the 8th. When they leave, Podul will close down and we’ll only go over there to use the internet. As a side note, Shannon has Michael Buble’s “Home” playing on repeat right now and I’m pretty sure that’s affecting my feelings too. Anyway, I don’t know what else to say that’ll express my feelings, but I think you all understand at least a little bit. Everyone has had to say goodbye to something or someone. Before I move on, I just have to throw in that I actually did almost cry when I was reading the blog, at the end, when Holly said, “you know that old saying ‘last best of all the game’ you guys have been my best group by far (she’s been here 3 semesters and is going home for good). I don’t know why, but that just made me lose it. Anyway, yes, ok, so I need to move on. Starting with this morning, Dancu was really really hard. Iuliana was in possibly the worst mood I’ve ever seen her in. No matter what Shannon did she would just scream and cry. Finally, about a half hour before we were to leave, both Shannon and Iuli fell asleep. Costica was also a bit of a pill and could not be comforted either. Mihai, however, was surprisingly good and content and Petrica, well, Petrica is always good. Today he was just sitting on the couch, all slumped over and rocking and I lay face down on the couch and slid right up to him. I put my head right next to his and put my hand close to where his chin would come to when he’d rock forward. I coaxed him into not rocking anymore and got him to rest his chin on my hand. Then I just lay his head against my shoulder. He let out this big sigh and just relaxed onto me. All I can say is I love him more than I can explain. Today, Maria and Dada were working and we got fed an amazing lunch. On our way out of Dancu we saw this teeny tiny adorable little scared puppy on one of the side roads. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a dog that small. He was a little afraid of us, especially at first, but after trying to coax him for a few minutes and managing to get him to let us pet his face a little, he trusted us well enough so that when we decided to leave, he started trotting after us. It’s a good thing he was really slow and we were really fast, because should we have let him follow us across the street, he may have gotten run over. At the hospital, we found out as soon as we walked in, that Ionut passed away either last night or this morning (for all of those who are reading this and can’t place him or don’t know which Ionut I mean, he’s the baby with hydrocephaly). I had a feeling, yesterday, that he may and so I went in there specifically to say goodbye to him. Melissa had been with him and told me he looked particularly bad, so I went down there and just rubbed his tummy a little and gave him a little kiss and left. I’m sooo glad I need because otherwise I would have felt just horrible, like I’d passed up on a this huge opportunity – spending time with this kid when he had so few hours left to offer us. It’s good that he died though, because he was always in so much pain and was always so uncomfortable. I’ll be excited to see him when I die. And besides, this way he didn’t have 3 lonely weeks without any of us to comfort him. After I found that out, I went on the first floor with Shannon to see Gigi. I was with him the entire time and he was such a pill! He’s definitely institutionalized – it shows. He’s very moody and wary of people and seems to be actually afraid of a lot of things. Shannon and I did get him to smile a little, but he probably whimpered and cried more. Most of the time he just looked at us like, “um, yes?” At some point I noticed that he would freak out if a nurse came in and didn’t stay with him and left. There was especially this one nurse, who he seemed to really like. She’d come in and he’d start making all these noises like, “oh no you don’t, come here to me!” And she’d usually just watch him from the door or something and then leave and when she left he’d start bawling and be so mad! It made me mad too, because I was like, “geez, stop coming here if you aren’t going to play with him!” I mean, I don’t think she was trying to be a problem, but she wasn’t exactly being insightful. While Shannon was still there, a nurse came and brought a new baby in, and it was rooster baby! Shannon rocked her for a little while and then decided to go elsewhere, so I was left with the two kids. Gigi was good for a little while, but when he started getting fussy I had to put Petronella down and try and calm him down. After a while I noticed that he was sleepy and so I held him and rocked him and sang to him. By this time, though, he was to the point where if anyone (including the moms) so much as walked toward the door he’d have a fit! It was really frustrating, especially since at one point he was aaaalmost asleep when one of the went out again and he heard the door open and woke up and started screaming bloody murder! I was just like, “my goodness, is it really necessary for you guys to walk in and out so much? You can see how much trouble it is making!” Not only that, but he was heavy and I was getting tired. After a while a nurse came in to check on the kids and had me put him down. While she was in there Jenna came in and told me the doctor was coming and I had to leave. Apparently there’s a nurse who warns her when the doctor who doesn’t like us is going to come so we can leave and he won’t even have known we were there. By that time it was pretty close to when I needed to leave, so I just wandered around for a few minutes and left. I had to walk home alone because, Melissa didn’t go to the hospital, Shannon was going straight to Dacie and Jess and Megan had already left at 2 to go to Gima. After I got home, Jess, Megan and I went over to Moldova Mall and got Kebabs. I’m really glad we’re getting along lately and that Megan and I’s fight actually kind of had a good effect. After that I used the internet for a while. That’s when I started thinking about closure and then wrote in my journal a little. Shannon got on half way through this though, and I took a shower and thought a lot about all of this. Then I just kind of took it slow and read a little bit of “Peacock or a Crow.” It all kind of hit the spot. I mean, I’m still really emotional, but I think it’s healthy.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

2006-12-02T14:21:00.000+02:00

This morning I got up and took and shower, used the computer and then Shannon and I got out on time. She bought a gogosi and we bought more tickets and then headed off to Dancu. Dancu was alright today. Now Mihai and Petrica are sick. I spent the first hour or so with Mihai and had quite a nice time. He’s so cute! It was great because I never ran out of ideas on what to do with him and he was always happy. I blew bubbles, blew on his face, bounced him around, laid him on me and brought him close to the toys etc. etc. etc. I spent a pretty short time with Iuliana, a goodly amount of time with Costica and some good time with Petrica, who was just a doll again. Nuti and Dada were working and unfortunately at one point Nuti blew up at Mihai. He’d done that thing where he pulls the table cloth off again and she didn’t think it was quite so funny as I did. She came in and just started railing on the poor boy. He started just sobbing and it was sooo sad. I mean, he barely ever gets yelled at and definitely not like that so his poor little spirit was so hurt. After she left I went over and gave him a hug and the water bottle to play with and he cheered right up. My two favorite parts of Dancu were these. For the first one, at one point Petrica fell off the couch and got stuck in between the chair and the couch and was just wedge in there with his sides all squished and his arms all up and I looked over at him and just started laughing and he just looked at me like, “um, I don’t know what to do or what’s happening.” It’s hard to imagine without knowing the boy, but yeah, he’s just generally really clueless and that made it classic. The other favorite was swinging Mihai in the blanket. At the hospital, I started off with Nicu. I was with him for a good couple of hours too. I fed him and then he fell asleep for a few minutes and then was awake the rest of the time. After I left him I went down with Gigi on the first floor. He’s so cute! When I got there the poor guy was crying with his head down on the mattress. I went over and wiped away his tears and picked him up and gave him a toy and he was fine. He’s really easily upset though. Like all I’d have to do was turn around and he’d start whimpering. Holly came in and told me something really interesting though! Apparently he was there here first semester here (a year ago) and he was just a newborn and this one girl fell in love with him and spent like every day with him. So, I took pictures and we’ll send them to her. That makes me sooo happy, because I can’t imagine what it would be like to see one of these kids a year from now. Especially if they were just a newborn then. So then I met up with Melissa and Jenna (Shannon met us there) and took the tram to Dacie. Before we went up the stairs to the apartment, Jenna and I took a bunch of pictures of the area, because it was all foggy and pretty. Dacie is right by the gypsy village and it looked gorgeous in the middle of this huuuge field in the fog. At one point there was even a horse drawn cart that galloped past. It came from the fog and was going at full speed with the mad yelling and snapping the whip and then disappeared into the fog again. Soooo cool. Dacie was…different. Georgiana and Mihai got fostered, Marian goes to Penilla now and we got a new girl from Mickey Mouse. I’m glad that Georgiana and Mihai got fostered, because it’s sooo good for them, but I’m sad that I won’t see them again and that I didn’t even get to record their voices! I’m also sad that Marian isn’t there until the kids get back from Penilla. The new girls is really cute though! Her name is Andrada and she’s wheelchair bound, but you can pick her up and stuff. She’s really happy and smiley and pretty and she gives the cutest little laugh when you tickle her feet. I seriously don’t think I’ve met many sweeter little kids. It’ll be interesting to see how it all pans out for Dacie, with half of the kids being different. After Dacie, I actually really enjoyed the tram ride home. Jenna let me listen to one of her earpieces for her ipod and I just listened to whatever songs she played. While I listened, I just watched the tram move and looked outside and thought. It was great and I realized a lot of things about Romania and how I feel about this experience. One of those things is that I’ve discovered that I really do truly love this place and it really has become a part of me. I was thinking about how I’ll be upset when I get home and I can’t explain it to anyone so that they’ll understand the way that I do and I realized that it feels like it does when there’s a certain aspect of your personality that you can’t explain to someone and it was then that I realized that Romania, the Romanian way of life, all the silly things they do that are just caused by superstition, the mentality, everything are actually a part of my personality now. I will look at things the way I always did, but also in an added, different way. No, I don’t completely think like a Romanian now, and definitely don’t agree with a lot of things that they tend to think, but I can’t help but at least see some things the way they do. And when I get home and I see things that way there won’t be anyone to discuss it with like there is here. I also realized that traveling is very therapeutic for me. When I say that, I don’t mean visiting different cities and seeing all these great sights, I mean just the actual act of walking, flying or sitting in some kind of transportation vehicle is therapeutic. I loved just watching the tram sway as it moved. I find long car trips refreshing, etc. etc. So, maybe, the reason why I need to travel, is not that I need to see all these great things (though I like that too), but because the getting there and the getting back are so good for me. Well, tonight was really beautifully foggy (it has been for a couple days now), so Shannon and I decided to go over to the Palat and photograph it in the fog. It was soooo incredible! I felt like I was in a dream or something. I mean, there’s this huge, gorgeous Palace in the fog, with the turrets disappearing in the mist, not to mention all the beautiful melancholy trees and the Orthodox church with the mood behind it and the horse statue with the beams of light shining through it. Yeah, no explaining.

Monday, November 27, 2006

2006-12-02T14:16:00.000+02:00

This morning I got up and used the computer, got ready and went to Dancu. We were a little late, because apparently when I told Shannon it was 8, she heard 7. Dancu was pretty good. The kids were all better except for Petrica. Petrica was suuuch a sweety. I wish I could remember what he looks like in all his different views because it kills me to know I’m going to forget them all. I shouldn’t be complaining – a hundred years ago, almost no one had pictures of anyone and they definitely didn’t have pictures of people’s every move! Thank goodness I wasn’t born then! Anyway, I spent time with pretty much all the kids. At one point, Shannon was in the other room and I had Iuliana on my lap and couldn’t go anywhere. Well, Mihai was in the chair by the TV and he decided to pull the table cloth off the table next to him. He’d pull it slowly and when one of the animals that sit on it got close to him he’d throw it on the floor. He slowly pulled all of them off and then just threw the tablecloth on the floor and got a big “I’m cool” grin on his face. I thought it was funny and showed Shannon when she got back. At the end of the day, we took Petrica into Costica’s room and swung them in the blanket. It always makes me soooo happy, because they like it soooo much! Corrina was working and she gave us the recipe for her gogosi things that she made that one day! We were sooo happy! I can’t wait to make them! I’ve decided that when I have a family, we’re totally going to eat certain Romanian foods. I had a really interesting day at the orphanage. To begin with, I went to the 6th floor, just to see Shannon off basically, but when I was walking down the hall this orderly came to me and had me put my back pack down and follow her. She led me down the hall and had me pick up this really big baby from one of the cribs and then follow her again. The baby was adooorable and I’ve decided I wish I would have big kids, though they’ll probably be little. Anyway, he was asleep at first, but one time I looked down and he was just staring straight up at me and smiled. I was smitten. Anyway, so I follow this orderly out of the hall and down the stairs. As I’m going down the stairs I see Bri, Abbi and Melissa coming up. They asked me where I was going and I was like, “nu stiu! (don’t know!).” You have to understand how funny this was. See, we generally aren’t aloud of the specific rooms, let alone to a different floor with the kids and here I am holding this random baby, following this orderly and I have no idea where I’m going. Anyway, so we ended up going to the 3rd floor and she walked into a room and closed the door and told me to stay put. So I just stood there outside the door, rocking the baby, with all these people looking at me. Finally she called me in, they gave a quick check up to the baby and then we took the elevator up to the 6th floor again. It was the first time for riding in the elevator, by the way, because we aren’t aloud to. The orderly was way nice too. She was like a grandma and would lead me by the elbow and hold my hand while we walked down the hall and stuff. It was cute. She explained finally, that she had gotten surgery on her stomach and couldn’t hold the babies. Well anyway, so after that all the babies on the floor were taken, so I went with Marina and check on a bunch of floors before finally finding a kid on the 5th. He was like 15! I was just like, “um, mom or no mom, I’m pretty sure this kid has no need of me.” We had some supremely awkward moments, Marina and I, in between walking in the room and figuring out what to do, while everyone just stared at us. Finally we got out her ipod and let him listen to it for a while. Then we thought we’d try and explain phase 10 to him. Some things got lost in translation (like, the meaning of a “run”) but it still worked well enough. Apparently he didn’t like them though, because finally he was just like, “uh…gata (I’m done).” After we left him, we went to Raluca’s room on the 4th floor. What a zoo! Raluca comes from Bambi at the orphanage, so that’s why Marina was there, because she works with her in Bambi. In her room there was a craaaazy (for sure institutionalized) little girl named Daniela, an adorable little girl named Adalina, and 2 or 3 more. There were also a couple older girls. I played and talked to pretty much everyone and the two of us would just try our best to keep it all under control and keep Daniela from our backpacks. She was veeeery naughty. Oh, and for the record, not all of these kids are orphans, but even if they have moms, we sometimes try and entertain the other kids too. One good thing was that I had quite a long conversation with one of the girls in Romanian (woot!) before Daniela got so back that we decided we’d better just leave. When we left there was only like 10 more minutes left, so we just went down and waited. I walked home with Shannon, but also Jessica, who came because she was going to go with me to look at glasses. Well, so we went to this place behind Hala first, but they told me that we’d have to go to this place in Moldova mall because my prescription was too hard and they didn’t have the lenses or something. So we went over there and the lady spoke English and we spent all this time looking at all the glasses and finally deciding on a pair, only to find out that they’d have to order the lenses too and it would take 3 weeks! I leave in just a little less than 3 weeks! Aye, so frustrating. I’m just going to cross my fingers and hope that this virus is gone by the time I go to Italy, because I’ll want to be able to see! Well, when we got home, I used the computer. I felt sick (had a fever, among other things) and had a lot to do, so I just stayed home from FHE. When everyone got home, I decided to go move everything back to the right place in the living room (because Megan had vacuumed under the couches). So, I go in there and try to fix it, but I had to ask Megan a few questions about where she wanted things and such. Somehow we got in an argument (I could detail why, but that would be tedious) and she started yelling at me and it was really frustrating, because I was trying really hard not to get in an argument, but it was just happening anyway. Well, so finally we calmed down and went our separate ways. I was pretty upset, but I calmed down and got on the computer. I checked my mail and still hadn’t heard back from the Campus Lane place where I really wanted to stay, so finally I decided to call them and I’m so glad I did! It worked out perfectly! I was so worried that it would be gone or that something would be wrong with it or something, but no! The spot is still available and it’s perfect! It’s this adorable little San Fransisco style townhouse, with three floors. I’m on the 2nd floor in a MASTER private bedroom, with my own bathroom. The kitchen is on the ground floor and then there’s another room in the basement. I know there’s one more room (for a total of three) and that it’s probably on the ground floor, but I don’t really know. There are 4 roommates, because there are 2 private and one shared room. There are 4 parking stalls, one for each person and it’s even close to campus at 582 N 500 E! Oh, and I can sign the contract online! All that for only $300 a month! The only problem is that I only have one picture and that’s of the outside, so I got the phone numbers of some girls who live there and I’m going to try to have a friend go take pictures and email them to me. Yeah, so after I found that out I was SOOOO excited! I was like giddy and just laughing for no reason and hugging Shannon’s knee. After that, I wasn’t even mad at Megan anymore, which was good because she wrote me a really nice note and put it on the pillow. It basically said that she was sorry and that I’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time and she doesn’t hate me and respects me but just has a hard time showing it. Yeah, I don’t think either of us is completely at fault because we just have opposing personalities. She’s really short and firm and comes off as rude and offensive to a lot of people, which bothers me. I’m really cautious and don’t like to cause problems and so she feels like she doesn’t usually know what I want and wants me to be more firm. Anyway, Shannon was in a trunky mood and wanted to gab, so I ended up talking to her til like 12 because it just seemed right and it was fun and enjoyable and she needed it. I went to bed incredibly happy.

Sunday, November 26, 2006

2006-12-02T14:14:00.000+02:00

Although Thursday was technically Thanksgiving, it didn’t feel like it at all then, and although today technically was not Thanksgiving it felt like it all the way. Before church I got ready and had some time on the computer, which I mostly used for apartment searching and blogging. Melissa and Jessica went early for choir, Megan just plain went early and because Shannon stayed up til four last night cooking for our Thanksgiving dinner, she just didn’t go to Sacrament meeting. The day was foggy and gorgeous, so along the way to church I just stopped and took pictures whenever I liked. Foggy days are quite possibly my favorite. In Sacrament meeting, Bri and the Messenger gave talks. Bri struggled a lot because she was reading it in Romanian and didn’t know how to pronounce things and was crying (I don’t think she was crying because of that, but because she was feeling the spirit maybe). There was a new guy who I’d never seen before passing the sacrament and I could tell it had to have been his first time, because he wasn’t sure what to do a lot of the time. It was really endearing actually. Also during sacrament meeting I did the worst job conducting that I have done this entire semester. The song started with a pick up note and a half, so I was off from the beginning. Usually that’s ok though, because I get off at the beginning all the time J. The problem was that the song had kind of a weird beet and so I kept trying to get back on beat, but even if I was doing it right it would sound wrong and so I’d think I was off again and I’d get off beat and then yeah, I went all over the place the whole song and was soooo confused and just like at a complete loss as to how to conduct it so I just smiled really big at all my friends who were laughing and conducted however I felt like conducting! That includes 2/4, ¾ and 4/4 times at different points throughout the incredibly slow 4 verse song. Classic. At the end of Sacrament meeting, Elder Sorensen passed his manuscript over to me. He’s apparently started writing a fantasy book and wants me to read it and tell him what I think because I’m an English major. Sunday school was taught by Sora Maria and was on like strengthening your marriage or something. So, basically the Romanian women told us how marriage isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but that you should still do it because it’s still a good thing to do and they don’t regret it. They did add, however, that maybe it would be for us because we are going into it with the Lord and they were all converts. Either way, I have high hopes, especially since I know that I deeefinitely won’t have a fabulous marriage if I dooon’t hope and I don’t think the hope is going to hurt anything. Besides, I tend to be a dreamer. After church, Shannon and I were walking together (how we always end up together I do not know) behind the palat and this man came up to us and started spouting off a sad story in Romanian and fake crying at us (very common). We honestly didn’t have money with us because we just had church stuff, so I was like, “Nu am, uite” and showed him my purse. He still didn’t seem to believe me for some reason, so I pulled my Book of Mormon out to say “look, see, this is all I have,” when I realized, “hey, hey can have that.” So I handed it to him and was like, “there, you can have that if you’d like!” He seemed really happy and almost didn’t believe that I’d actually given it to him and I was just like, “no really, it’s yours!” Then we walked away. I figure, hey, even if he just sells it, it only has the possibility for good! When we got home from church I had called computer time, so I did a number of things on there. At one point Shannon and I looked up the lyrics to Rigoletto and sang them all (good memories). I also blogged and looked for apartments for myself and Shannon. I easily used all the time I had (never enough time) and then it was time for dinner! We all grabbed our dishes and walked over to the Villa (once again, everyone staring). Not too surprisingly, along the way we had a little gypsy girl try to get us to give some of it to her. When we got there, the missionaries were there, because they’d just finished setting up the ping pong table for us, so we invited them to stay and convinced them by telling Elder Hackett that he needed to cut the turkey for us. It took forever, it seemed, to get everything set up, partly because a lot of people needed to finish cooking things and heat things up. We took a bunch of pictures of the group and of Hackett cutting the turkey. Then, finally, we ate! Oh wow, what a fabulous experience. It was all so festive and exciting and I think it made us all a little home sick. It didn’t help that we all went around and told things we were grateful for and then later told about family holiday traditions. I got some good ideas for things I want to do with my family when I have one of my own. We all feel pretty trunky. The food was great too and I think my favorite dishes were Shannon’s candied sweet potatoes, the turkey of course, and the biscuits that Jenna made. Happy day. Oh, and I forgot to mention that the dinner didn’t start until Bri recited her hilarious Thanksgiving poem. After the dinner was over and we were all absolutely fat, we started cleaning up. I washed all the dishes and would give them to either Bri or Jessica to dry. Melissa and Megan went home early and Marina, Holly and Shannon were in another room talking, so Bri, Jessica, Abbi, Jenna and I had a great little chat in the kitchen. We talked about all kinds of things, from food and traditions to the usual, dating. Abbi has a pretty serious boyfriend who she’s absolutely in love with and will probably get engaged to. I approved because Abbi’s great and they seem like a great couple. Jessica’s missionary comes home in the summer, so though she’s open to dating, she’s not really particularly looking forward to it. Bri and Jenna pretty much want to get married, though Jenna has like never dated in her life. I’d have to say that the whole day had quite the marriage and dating theme. I mean, our lesson in Relief Society was on marriage, we had that conversation about dating and marriage in the kitchen and on the way home and we talked a lot about families and traditions and our future families during the dinner! Well, once I got home I cleaned my room and read a little of the manuscript and now am writing in my journal!

Saturday, November 25, 2006

2006-11-27T20:42:00.000+02:00

This was what a Saturday should always be like. I woke up leisurely at 8:30 (because I’d gone to bed the night before at 9:30). I took a shower, read a little and then found out that language lessons had been cancelled. Melissa’s computer wouldn’t turn on, so we all prayed, and it turned on! Yay! Church is true! I didn’t get an email back from Campus Lane, but I got emails back from 2 other places. One was the Avenues and that one isn’t going to work out and the other was an apartment at Omni, which was probably my seconds choice and which sounds like it could totally work out! I think I’ll wait and try and see if the Campus Lane one works out (because that’s really where my heart lies) and if not, I’ll just go ahead and take the Omni one. I’m not too worried about it being taken before I act, because the girl is going on her honeymoon like, tomorrow and will be gone for like a week. Around 11 Shannon and I went off to run errands for her. She needed to go to Podul first to talk to Abbi. On the way we were both just in the best of moods! The morning had been leisurely, we’d gotten out of the apartment by exactly the time we’d wanted to, the day was gorgeous and everything was looking promising! I made the observation that it was one of those times that everything in your life looks as if it’s going right! Like, I had hopes of getting the best apartment ever, I had hopes of getting glasses and of having a great day and just having everything work out great. I knew that chances were not everything would work out the way I wanted it to, but the great thing about that moment was that nothing hadn’t worked out yet. It was all still intact and life just looked wonderful! I told that to Shannon and was like, “you know what, I could not get the apartment and I could not get my glasses, etc., but right now, I don’t know that I won’t, so I’m just going to take this moment and milk it for all it’s work, because these moments don’t usually last.” It was great. After Podul we went to Hala. While we were getting groceries we heard some kids singing and it sounded live and like it was coming from right upstairs, so we decided to go check in out. By the time we got there the concert was over, but there were kids eeeeverywhere. It was seriously such a happy moment. There we were, standing in this mall with Christmas decorations, freshly hung, all around us with hoards of laughing, screaming kids running all around us. I took some pictures. I’ve definitely learned more about true joy and true pain here than I ever have before. I’m so glad I came! Well, when we got home, Megan and Jess were already back and I took a nap for a little while and then the three of us went over to the Palat to see another one of the museums. We decided to go to the Art History one and I actually really liked it! I think I may even want to go back! I really wish that all of my homework wasn’t on the computer, because one of my favorite things to do is to take my homework and go somewhere special to work on it. And I’d love to be able to just go to that art gallery and sit there and do my homework surrounded by it all. First we looked through all of the international art. I was very impressed, because they had both a Reubens and a Vernet! I was so surprised to see the Vernet, because he is one of my favorite artists and I just totally was not expecting for him to have this random painting here in Iasi! I quite enjoyed that section and wrote down a bunch of paintings that I really liked in my notebook. At the end of the hall they had a section will copies of Greek and Roman sculpture. It was set up like this. If you’re standing there starting at it, there the Dying Gaulle in front of you, athletes on your right and left and then in continues on in a circle, with different gods making up the circle, including the Venus de Milo, and then right in the middle of the circle was the head of Zeus. Pretty cool. They also had a Romanian section. Some of it I didn’t care much for, but there were a few artists who I just looooved. I wrote them down and I hope I can find some of their stuff online or something. Lastly, they had a special exhibition, which opened yesterday, of a Romanian artist named Corneliu Baba who I just looooved. Like, he seriously has to be at least one of my favorite artists! His work is just so stark are real and INTERESTING! Like, every piece I turned to I’d just love. Well, on our way out we ran into Marina and Bri who’d just finished with the Archeology museum. Then I got home, took another nap (J) and then Shannon and I walked to Gima. It was quite the enjoyable walk actually. We talked about music and then when we’d just crossed the street at the foot of the hill we walk up to go to the hospital, we saw this gorgeous pink sunset right above this pink building and it was just so beautiful. We both tried our best to capture it with our cameras, but the lighting was just so that we couldn’t get the coloring quite right. It was either the pink building or the pink sky, but not both L. As we were there snapping shots, a cute old man walked by said something we didn’t understand, pointed up at the sky with his cane and smile and I just tried to say “da” that happiest I could! I could tell he must have been saying something about how beautiful it was and I was so glad that he appreciated it too and wasn’t just annoyed that we were taking pictures. Once we got to Iulius Mall we went looking for a heated blanket. We had great fun looking, but found no blanket. I wish I’d known how nice the mall was before! It really was just as nice as a mall at home and I can’t say that about much of anything here! You could also get so many things so easily! Like, there was a store with school supplies and one with toys and one with books and one like bed bath and beyond and everything! It was amazing to me, because before that I’d always found it sooo hard to find all these ordinary things. We’ll have to pass the tip onto the next group. We also ended up getting shaworma from the food court and sharing a soda. See, they had this adooorable little cokes in these little glass classic bottles with straws. It made us happy. Finally we went to Gima and I got stuff for the peach cobbler I’m making for our Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow and stuff that I plan to take home with me. We took a taxi home and then couldn’t get in, so we sat on the step to wait for someone to open the door to the building. While we were sitting there we starting talking about the taxi ride and Romanian driving and the fact that it’s rude to wear a seat belt. Well, Shannon got offended at something I said, and it surprised me, because I wasn’t meaning to be offensive and I said so. Well, since Shannon and I have this whole friendship thing well enough worked out, we didn’t get in an argument, but instead had another session of psychoanalyzing Sheri. It was fascinating! Really, we have deconstructed so much about me since being here and I love it! Listen to this. We’ve decided that my personality and my mind do not go together! Let me explain. See, my mind is incredibly logical and analytical and causes me to be great at math and great at debating and such things. I am so logical and analytical that I analyze everything and just feel the need to be logical about even the tiniest of things. It’s a part of me and I hate it and love it at the same time. On the other hand, my personality is a combination of free spirited adventurism. I’m incredibly curious and enthusiastic, artistic and carefree. This is not the case with most people. Most people that are very logical and analytical are very strict and square in everything they do and they fit a certain type. They may debate all the time, but since this is their personality, people expect it of them and it doesn’t tend to be much of a problem. Most people that are very carefree and free spirited do not tend to be intensely logical. They are artsy and more concerned with emotion than logic. That is not to say they are not intelligent, no, they are just two different kinds of intelligent. They rarely get in arguments either because, well, they just don’t feel the need to argue things, or if they do it is only because one of those really analytical people forced them into it. This combination of the two makes me one conflicted person – something I’ve always known but that I’ve never known the “why” of. In everything I do I have these two sides of me pulling me opposite directions. For example, while one part of me will whole heartedly want to just spend a day doing whatever in the world comes into my mind, the other part of me has this intense desire to make a list, or a schedule, and follow it religiously. As a result, I am rarely satisfied. That also explains why I want to be a writer and yet am so much more skilled at something like math, though I have no desire to go into math. Now let me explain why that makes it so that I tend to get in arguments with people over stupid things. See, the analytical side of my mind makes me very observant and causes me to ponder a lot of things. A lot of the time, I’ll bring up something I’m pondering about and get in a discussion about it with the person I am with. If they disagree, that’s fine with me, but I’m so logical that I feel the need to debate it from a strictly logical standpoint. I am not upset, I’m just going through the motions. Usually at the beginning of these discussions, the person I’m talking with is totally fine and has no problem with anything. At some point, however, it turns into a debate. They usually don’t notice the transition, but they generally notice at some point that somehow we’ve arrived at a debate. One of the reasons that they don’t notice the debate until we’re right in the middle of it is because I’m so carefree and curious that it resembles the other side of my personality because it sounds like I’m just being curious. Well, anyway, at some point all of a sudden the fact that we’re in a debate suddenly hits them and they become disoriented. People aren’t used to having to deal with the two different kinds of people at the same time and so they don’t know what to do. If I were just the carefree kind of person, the conversation wouldn’t be offensive, because it wouldn’t be taken as serious or important or what have you. If I were just the logical kind of person, it would be expected and non threatening, but when it’s a mix of the two people don’t know what it is or how to react and yeah. Yeah, I’m sure it makes a whole lot more sense to me. But seriously, what a cool thing to figure out! Yeah, I’ve always known I was different. Anyway, so later in the night I cooked my peach cobbler for tomorrow. Shannon was in the room cooking too and she introduced me to one of her favorite bands, “Indigo Girls” who I’d heard of but never listened to and who I think I really like. While I was listening, Marina and Abbi came over to use the phone and I chatted a little with them and used the computer!

Friday, November 24, 2006

2006-11-27T20:38:00.000+02:00

This morning I woke up early, like I have been lately, and started using the computer at 6:30 and was able to use it for a good 2 hours before I had to get ready, because I was going to Penilla again and didn’t have to be ready until 9:15. Penilla was good, but not quiiite as good as last time we went. I’m pretty proud of the fact that I’m probably the only one of the group (aside from maaaybe Holly) who has figured out exactly how to get there and even know several ways. We were with the gruppa mic (little group) today, where Maria and Catalin from Dacie 3rd floor are. They were so cute! I’d say the age range was anywhere from 1 and ½ or 2 to 5. When we first got there they were in the play room with the ball pit and I kind of wasn’t sure what to do. They were already all playing, they were all kind of scared of me, aside for Maria and Catalin who were playing with Shannon anyway, and I was scared of them too, so I just reverted to my old trusted friend, tickling. It worked better than anything else I could think of would, but I still kind of looked like an idiot. Luckily the play room was almost over though, so soon we were off to a different room with desks. The teacher had all the kids sit down in a circle and taught them Christmas poems, while Shannon and I sat at her desk and wrote American children’s songs for them to learn. We decided to throw in a couple of children’s church songs too, just for good measure and because we couldn’t think of any other ones J. While we were sitting there writing the songs, we’d occasionally look over and gaze at the little circle of kids and be like, “*sigh,* they’re so cute!” This was especially satisfying because Shannon’s mom had a daycare and she used to be totally not like that and take pride in the fact that she wasn’t one of those girls and there she was going right along with it too! Well, after a while we finished with the songs and went and sat with them for a while before we all went back to the desks to paint! The kids were learning about the color orange, so they were given a piece of white paper and they were supposed to paint it all orange. I never knew there were so many ways to paint a page orange. The kid I was sitting next to had a very specific method. He would dip the paint brush in the paint and then paint in a very concentrated area, probably the size of a 50 cent piece and then, though his brush was still completely filled with paint, he’d redip it and put a tiny bit more on. He was obsessed with getting every little piece of white on the areas that were already mostly orange, but didn’t seem to much care about the huge spaces of white. He was definitely the last one done. I loved it. Child after my own heart. I think his name is David and I noticed that he and this other kid named Paul tend to still together like superglue. Paul is one of the youngest kids (maybe 2) and he’s probably the cutest one (strictly looks wise), but pretty petulant. He’s wary and moody and shy. David on the other hand is really even tempered and has kind of a quiet strength to him. So, even though Paul has the strooonger personality, he’d really be nothing without David, who basically watches over and protects him. You know you’ve been working with kids too long when you talk like that. Provo is going to be such alien land to me! People are going to be like, um what are you doing? Eh, I’m over it. Ce sa faci (what can you do)? So, anyway, while we were painting, the teacher was helping this one really little boy do his painting, but she’d occasionally help someone else too. Well, one of the times, she went to go help someone else and by the time she came back, this little kid had paint just aaaaaall over his face. It was hilarious! Painting with babies – never a good idea if you like everything to be clean! Well, after painting we got all the kids changed into basically their snow clothes, even though Shannon and I were outside in our t-shirts and were absolutely fine. I started off swinging with Maria, then after a while the other kids came out, including Catalina from Dacie 7th, and I swung with her too. I’d been hoping to see Georgiana from Dacie 7th too, because I don’t think she’ll be at Dacie from now on, but she wasn’t there because she was with her new mom. After a while we went and did a bunch of other things too (half of them involving tickling of course). My favorite playground moment was this. I’d started chasing Catalina and tickling her and in the process I’d tickle any other kid in the immediate vicinity too. So, after a while I was just running around tickling all kinds of kids. Well, at one point Catalina was running up the hill and I go to chase after her and I look back and there are probably like 7 laughing, screaming little 4 years olds chasing me. It was soooo cute! Another interesting observance I happened upon while I was there was that Andre (the more verbal of the 2 wheelchair boys) is like, the cool kid on campus. All the kids always want to play with him and he just leads them around in his little wheelchair. I don’t blame them, he’s pretty personable, and I think it’s great! I mean, how fabulous of a place is it where the kid in the wheelchair is actually cool? Later on, I was stationed at the see saw for quite some time. I don’t remember how exactly I procured the job, but somehow I came to be in charge of it. A kid would come up and I’d ask them if they wanted to get on it and they would always say yes. So, then I’d put them in the seat and strap them in and manually operate it (because, well, kids aren’t all the same size and they definitely aren’t all highly functioning enough to push the ground and get the thing going by themselves). Claudio, the down syndrome kid was in it the whole time because, well, let’s face it, down syndrome kids are usually kind of off in their own world and are generally content with most anything, and so since he was content to sit in the chair, I was content to leave him! He just sat there and chewed on his hat the whole time and I’m still not so sure he was even aware that he was going up and down. Well, after that we all went back inside and took everyone out of their jackets and hats and shoes and washed their hands and had gluing time! The teacher cut all their orange pages into strips and, the kids ripped the strips into smaller pieces and then they were supposed to glue them into a shape that resembled a flower. After that, they were shown how to draw a stem (Maria, who I was helping, chose to draw about 5 stems) and then they glued on a leaf as well. It was high art. After that, all the kids had a little bit of time to just play with toys and then it was time for lunch and we left. We had to go home before going to the hospital, because I was going to try to get my glasses prescription and I needed to print off my prescription at Podul and Shannon had a bunch of things to do at home before going to the hospital too. After we got home, I decided I just wasn’t going to go to the hospital, because I just wasn’t feeling it and I’ve decided that I think I tap out at going 4 times a week, especially since I go to Dacie on Tuesdays and Thursdays too. You know what bothers me? Part of the reason why I don’t go to the hospital is because I have so much homework to do and not really any time to do it, what with Dancu, Dacie, the orphanage, church stuff and everything else. So it bothers me that the homework I have actually really interferes with the experience and actually takes my focus off the kids. Shouldn’t it compliment it? I mean, I just feel like I can’t do both and so neither of them get my full attention. Anyway, so I stayed home and was actually incredibly productive. It’s always horrible when I stay home from something and am not productive anyway. I looked for an apartment online and made sooo much headway. I now have a list of probably 15 apartments that I’d be ok with staying in if everything works out the right way, so now I’ve just started emailing them, starting with the ones I like best, until I find one that works out. The one on the top of my list is a town home at a place called Campus Lane. It’s aaaabsolutely adorable and looks really nice. I would have a master private room (woot!) and possibly my own bathroom (don’t remember). The place even has a washer and dryer and I think it might be more than one level! On top of it, it’s pretty close to campus and is south of campus (which I wanted) at 582 N 500E. As far as I know it costs either $295 or $300 a month not counting utilities, which is way good for such a nice place. I cannot even express how happy I would be if I could get this place. I mean, the place I live and how pretty and clean it is has a huuuuge affect on how happy and optimistic I am and I’ve always wanted to live in a cute town house. Plus, I’ve had enough problems with roommates that I think I deserve to have a private room for once. And it’ll make it so much easier for me to be not stressed and be able to focus on school. Back to the original topic, another reason why the computer time was great was that I was listening to the classic Christmas music station on launch cast! Anyway, so at 7 we all went to the missionary fireside put on by the soras. I dressed up all nice in my nice pants and such because, well, I like dressing up on Friday nights, especially when I wear scrubs all week. For the missionary fireside we all made gingerbread houses. We were separated into groups of 3 or so and given supplies and left to go to work. My group was Marina, Madalina and I, with Marina being the chief architect. Our house was the boooomb. It was really pretty and orderly and creative. We made a bush out of this green glob of marshmallow and even made it look like it had Christmas lights on it! I was pretty impressed with everyone elses though too. Like, I don’t even have a favorite. And it made me so happy that Sora Lydia’s was pink! She’s so great. Oh, and as a shout out, I love Madalina too! What a sweet girl! Mmm….yay for outreach girls! The missionaries were really funny the whole night because they were all so happy and just going around taking pictures of everyone and everything. Like, at one point I looked over at Dubling and he was just standing there looking around with this HUGE grin on his face and I was like, “hey Dubling, ya happy?” and he’s like, “Uh huh!” Favorite part of the night though was with Toomie. He’s a total greeny, is from England (has a killer accent) and looooves Justin Timberlake and other rock and pop people a liiiiittle too much. So, someone was saying something to him in Romanian and he had noooo clue what they were saying and so one of the bilinguals translated for him and he just looks back at the person that had been talking to him and in a very Elder Toomie kind of a way that I really can’t explain through words he points to them, winks and just goes “da.” Like, wow, it was just such an Elder Toomie moment. And one of the other girls told me a funny story about Hackett. I guess Toomie was talking to a bunch of girls because, well, he’s just entertaining (it’s great, because I loooove to watch him, but am not attracted to him at all) and Hackett comes in and is like, “ooh, look at Elder Toomie, talking to all the girls!” Then, understandably, everyone was kind of awkward and quiet and Shannon goes, “good job Hackett, Sorensen has officially worn off on you.” And he’s like, “yeah, but not completely or else I would’ve then said ‘don’t blush!’” Ah, I love Hackett, and I love that he totally sees how awkward Sorensen is like we do. I totally plan on hanging out with him in Provo when I get home because he gets home in December too! But again, not attracted to him either! Woot! So, after a while I got a little bit of a headache and we left, all 5 of us together. By the time we’d gotten home my headache was pretty darn bad and so I just had to go straight to bed.

Thursday, November 23, 2006

2006-11-27T20:34:00.000+02:00

You know what? Today was a good day! As Joey would say, Dancu, good; hospital, good; Dacie, good; outreach, gooood! Even this morning before I ever even left home, it was pretty good. I got up early to use the computer and I was actually pretty productive! I finally emailed Roberta! I also updated the blog a little, which made me feel a bit better. Shannon was feeling sick, so I made the decision to go to Dancu by myself. The thought scared me a bit, but I wanted to. Anni and Nuti were working and it was great! One of the reasons why I was a little worried about going without Shannon was that I almost never work with Iuliana and I was afraid she’d throw a fit and I wouldn’t know how to calm her. She was great thought! When I first got there I spent like 10 minutes with Petrica. Then, I spent quite some time with Mihai and had a ball. We crawled along the floor (since they aren’t aloud on the floor, I lay on the floor and put him on top of me and slither around, usually camping out by the toys), looked out the window, and read among other things. When I was reading to him, I couldn’t find the normal “Catelusi Veseli” book, so I had to use this one that they have that for some reason is in French. But, instead of reading the French, I would just tell him whatever I wanted to tell him and I used it as an opportunity to just pour out all my feelings for him. Roberta mentioned in her “closure” assignment to tell the kids your feelings for them, even if they don’t understand and that was the perfect opportunity for it. After Mihai, I spent some time with Iuli and it went fabulously! First, I jammed with her, singing and patting her with the beat. Then I tickled her, and then I just held her and rocked her and sang to her. While I was doing that, the workers came in for a while and just played with the kids. Anni came in first and saw Mihai leaning over the chair backwards about to slide headfirst onto the floor (his constant goal) and she just slid him down and let him be on the floor! Then she proceeded to play with him being on the floor and would practice having him pull himself up! It was sooo perfect! Then, if I was hearing correctly, I think she and nuti had a little argument about whether or not the kids should be on the floor! That may sound like a bad thing, I mean, it’s an argument, but no! It was so good! Finally, one of the workers realized that it was a bad them for them to never be aloud on the floor! I may be wrong, but I think Anni was saying that if they’re never aloud on the floor, they’ll never progress and I think Nuti was just arguing that it’s bad for their health. Well anyway, after they left I was with Iulia for a little longer and then went in with Costica for while and then back out with Petrica. While I was with Petrica, the workers came back in and put Mihai in the little wheely chair thing. You know, those things you put babies in where they can just walk with it and push themselves around. Well, it kind of worked, like he could push his legs from the front to the bag, but he wouldn’t bring his legs back up again. It was really cute though, watching both workers trying so hard to get him to do it and just having so much affection for him. I worked with him on it a little bit after they left and with Petrica a little took and then I went and had lunch! It wasn’t as bad as usual! The soup had no galuste (cornmeal ball things) and lots of potato, and the bread was fairly normal! At the hospital, I started off with Nicu on the 6th. He was crying when I came in (I can see institutionalization starting already) and I changed his diaper and then rocked him for a minute. Pretty soon the orderly came in and gave me a bottle, but right before I could give it to him, a nurse came in to inject something in his IV, which is in his foot. When she started to inject it, he started crying and screaming bloody murder, so she was like, “un pic moment” (one minute) and took him away. When she brought him back in, his feet had little shot punctures in them and the one that had the IV in it had a big lump that looked like an enlarged vein and she wanted me to keep pressure on it with a cottonball that had alcohol on it. It hurt, so he cried til it stopped bleeding and I took the cottonball away, but he calmed down real quick and almost immediately started to fall asleep. Like, in between taking off the cotton and sticking his bottle in his mouth, so I blew on his face a little to keep him away and successfully got him to finish the bottle. He, of course, promptly fell asleep right after and I handed him off to Bri! Then, I went with Marina to the 3rd floor. She was with Iliuta and I was with Daniel, who are both in the same room. I’d never been with Daniel before. He’s like 14 and has Down Syndrome. He’s incredibly skinny (you know, like the malnourished kind), he’s blind (you can tell because of his cloudy white pupils), and has scabs on his neck because of scratching himself (typical of the blind kids. He doesn’t talk and is really out of it and he likes to move his head, jerkily to one side and clench his jaw each time. He just likes mashing his teeth together and making that noise I think. He got surgery on is stomach and so I could see the tip of a very hastily sewn (Romanian stitched) wound because his shirt wasn’t fully buttoned. It’s amazing how strong of a stomach you can have when you need to have one. At first he was laying down and I’d just hold his hands or tickle his armpits (love his laugh). After he heard a bunch of nurses and orderlies come in, he sat and then stood up. When he was sitting he would get really excited and try to basically pull me in. He would grab hold of my watch and use it as an anchor to pull me in. I was pretty good about derailing it his efforts, although I did get one scratch close to the watch (he digs in with his nails). I also got a little scratched on my face, because I wanted him to feel my face and he just grabbed it and dug his nails in. After that I had him touch my face with the back of his hand. Ok, so I also have to mention an interesting scenario that I came across. Marina left after a while to go visit another kid, so Iliuta was by himself. He’s institutionalized and therefore pretty bad tempered. He has a ton of toys on his crib, but he always wants more. He came to the edge of the crib and started point at my bag and asking for more toys. I said I didn’t have any and he got upset and went over to the other side and started just whining/crying. So, I’m sitting here looking at this kid and I’m wondering what to do. On the one hand, my mind says “he’s institutionalized and is just going to get upset no matter what I do. There’s no way I can just keep giving him toys and that’s not really going to make him happy either, it’s just a quick fix. I know the only way he’ll be comforted is by giving him a toy and so I would feel silly leaving Daniel, just to probably make him more upset.” On the other hand, my mind says, “ok, institutionalization or not, this is just a poor little four year old kid who is feeling lower than low and I can tell. He’s got a burn wound and is stuck in a hospital all day and other than that is stuck in an impersonal facility without a mother. Give up all your excuses and just go try to comfort him.” What’s the answer? Well, after a while, I left them and went to the first floor. I took over for Abbi, who had been with Ionut. He didn’t look so good. He has a net around his head (like a hair net), he looked really uncomfortable, kept squirming, had reeeeally dry skin and kept spitting up. Sad child. I think he’d be so much happier in heaven and that’s really his only home, because his condition can only get worse. There were two other moms in the world. One had a child of about a year who had Hoffman’s disease. I’m not sure exactly what that is, except that it makes your muscles weak, so you can’t really move much. The other mom had the most adorable twin girls Lois (after Anthony’s grandmother in the Bible) and Sarah (Bible again). I spoke with her a lot because she spoke pretty good English and found out that her husband is a Pentecostal preacher and she’s from around Vaslui. Jenna came in and talked to us too and we held her girls and put these little animal hats on them that Jenna brought for the Dacie kids. It was adoooorable. We met Melissa at 4 and took the tram to Dacie. Along the way, the tram ran into a taxi. As in, the taxi was too far to the left on the road and so when the tramvie went by in scraped along the side of the taxi, right below our window. I’d say definitely taxi’s fault. Either way, the driver got out and was all mad and yelling and they were arguing. Then he got back in and slammed the door shut and sped off. A little while later, somehow we caught up with him or something and he got in the tramvie and started arguing with the driver again. That makes one pedestrian hit by a car, 3 car accidents, and one fist fight over road rage that I have witnessed in these 2 and a half months. Remind me again why people here don’t believe in seatbelts? Oh yeah, it’s Romania. Dacie was fabulous. I sure love those kids. We had them all try on the hats that Jenna brought. They included one moose hat, one bear hat, on princess headband thing and one green eye mask. My favorite combinations were these: Costica with the princess headband, Marian with the moose hat, Viorel with the bear hat and Mihai with the mask. Apparently Georgiana is getting fostered, like, tomorrow, which is crazy. I’m really happy for her and it was great to see her so excited about it, but it’s hard to just say goodbye just like that. I love leaving Dacie because the kids all go to the table to eat, but try as the workers may, they never eat much til after we leave. They just peak through the kitchen door at us putting on our shoes and such. Even when I don’t pay attention to them in an effort to get them to focus on their food, I still hear the occasional, overexcited “pa!” And when I look over they all ring out in an enthusiastic chorus of “pa’s” and “te iubesc’s” and “sheri’s.” It’s just precious. Jenna, Melissa, Shannon and I all happened to catch the same tram to outreach. I was the last to walk out the tram doors and just before I stepped out, Jenna asked me to look back to make sure she left nothing on her seat. I turn to do so and turn back just in time to see the doors shut in front of me! I panicked for a second and then pushed the button and luckily they reopened! We had quite a good laugh after that and I had flashbacks to the New York subway (that one’s for mom!). Outreach was fabulous too! I spent the first little while talking to Raluca and Sora Wright, who were making pumpkin pie, while Stefana did my hair in a crazy hippie braid thing. After that, Jenna and I (and sometimes other people) started talking with Elder Toomey, our cool new British elder. He’s so fun to listen to! Like, I think I could be entertained for hours by just watching him, even though I’m not attracted to him an all. Like, the way he talks is just so cool! I’ve decided I could never marry a Brit, because I’d never really be in love with him. I could never take him seriously and would just constantly be like, “hehe, coooool.” So, I was fascinated by his utter Britiosity (cool new world, thank you very much) and he got an incredible kick out of the fact that I’m from Orange County and have the last name of Money on top of it. Oh, and on top of the fact that he has a great accent and says really funny things, his name is Ashley! That, quite possibly, just completely made my day. During our conversation, Elder Sorensen would occasionally pipe in with the occasional awkward comment. You know, I really don’t mind him at all any more and I think he’s really quite entertaining in a very interesting sort of way. I never really diiiisliked him, persay, but he’s always been weird and I think I’ve learned how to fully appreciate that. At the end of outreach, we all tried on the hats (everyone loves them!) and took pictures! Yay! Um, hehe! Ok, so I think I finally reached the end of writing about this day! Now that like 2 hours have passed! Hey, it was worth it!

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

2006-11-27T20:32:00.000+02:00

This morning, Shannon and I actually got out on time! Actually, we got to Dancu early! Dada was working all by herself today for the first time in a long time and it was good! The kids were really low key again today. I spent a lot of time with Petrica, as usual and just sang him Christmas songs and such. I also spent time with Costica, just rubbing his back and cuddling with him. And with Mihai I just did a bunch of random things. The day went really slow. But the kids were dressed really really cute! Dada also fed us lunch….lots of lunch! We had soup, bread (normal actually, not nasty) and a whole plateful of what she called spaghetti. From what I could see it was angel hair pasta (kind of) with a reddish orange sauce and there was so much sauce and the noodles were so soft that it was just this big orange, odd tasting mush. Nice of her though. At the hospital, I stared off with Nicu and I fed him (very difficult, but I succeeded!) and then lay on the bed and took a nap with him. While I was doing so, Marina came in and switched with Shannon who’d been with Vasilica and she decided to go see Iulia. Well, a little time passed and I was still napping with Nicu (who was finally out cold) when Shannon came in the room looking highly distraught. We asked her what was wrong and she said “Iulia died” and just started crying. I slipped my arm out from under Nicu and ran over to and just held her (Marina came too). It was such a surprise and I had such mixed feelings. Iulia has been with us this entire time. I’ve spent so many hours with that girl and tried so many things to make her happy. She broken my heart over and over and I’ve put so much into her. I’ll miss her and it’s a shock, but at the same time, I can’t say that I’m actually sad. I’m actually really happy. For a moment while I was holding Shannon I thought about Iulia and George in heaven, walking and talking and looking beautiful and just being happy and I started smiling. I mean, I’ve NEVER seen Iulia smile and to think that she’s smiling now – I just can’t explain what that means to me. You know, her situation was one of the saddest that I’ve seen and I’ve actually had many times when I went it her room and just prayed that she would die. I mean, she had no joy in this life, no future and was always in pain. I want one of my kids to have “Iulia” for a middle name. Well, anyway, Shannon was really upset and decided to go home. Marina and I talked for a little bit about Iulia and then Melissa came in and we told her. We left Melissa with Nicu and Vasilica and went down to go make sure that Iulia wasn’t just moved to a different room. Shannon said that she’d gone down there and no one was in Iulia’s room and it was all nice and tidy and cleaned up. So she asked a nurse “Unde este Iulia?” and the nurse pointed to the room and was like “in there!” and she’s like, “no she isn’t.” So then the nurse asked around and one of the mom’s said that she’d died the night before. So we went down there to make sure the mom was right and that she wasn’t just in another room. I was pretty sure, but Marina wanted to check. It was kind of traumatic because Iliuta, the little boy in the room next door wanted us to give him attention and the nurse always tries to get us to play with him (not that we don’t want to, but sometimes we can’t) and so she tried to and we asked her where Iulia was and she didn’t know that she’d passed away either and that same mom just casually was like “she died. She died last night.” And I felt really bad because the nurse looked so sad about it like we were. The traumatic thing was that this whole time the nurse was changing Iliuta’s pad because, well, let me explain. He has this big huge wound (bigger than a really big grapefruit) on his stomach. I saw it for the first time today and it was the worst thing I’ve seen here so far, aside from the dead man in Bucharest. It’s pussy and has these big red globs. One of the globs looked like it had slid down to his side. It looked like a really mushy, bright red cherry. Later I found out from Megan that he’s a burn victim and the cherry that I thought had slid down is actually always there. I didn’t have my contacts in, luckily. But they had to change him because his pad was soaked and it had soaked through his church which had a big wet spot on it. Yeah, so this whole time she was changing it and he didn’t seem to be upset or hurting at all and was just being active and trying to get our attention and we were just not able to give it to him. We didn’t stay with him either because not only were we not up to it, but we wanted to try and find Holly to talk to her about it. We went down to the first floor and found Abbi instead, who told us Holly wasn’t there yet. I decided to stay in that room with her. She was with a baby named Andrei or Adrian or something and there was another baby who’d just woken up that I went over with. He was reeeeally adorable and we found out his name was Gigi, but we weren’t sure whether he was a boy or a girl. We asked the moms, knowing they’d laugh at us and they did and we found out he’s a boy. The shirt he was wearing was way too small and his tummy was hanging out, so I gave him a shirt that was his size. He was reeeeally shy and just looked at me like I was huge and scary and tentatively played with the toys I gave him. I wasn’t really quite sure what to do with him and then Abbi left, so I went and held the other baby who started crying. I wasn’t too worried about Gigi, because I could see the other mom’s loved him and gave him lots of attention. After a while a nurse took Gigi and all the moms left the baby (who we’ll call Andrei) fell asleep. So I put him down and went to go try and find Megan or Jess to see when they were leaving. I couldn’t find them, but on the way out I found Bri, Mihai, Jenna and Holly who were all just getting there. I talked to them for a while and then discretely told Holly about Iulia and she told Bri and probably the others later. It was pretty sad and after that I walked home alone. On the way home, I started jogging to get across the street before the light changed and this street dog saw me and started running at me and snarling. I immediately stopped, didn’t look at him, acted calm and kept walking, paying no attention and amazingly he didn’t bite me. I was really surprised, because he was so ferocious and he was right at my heals. The look in his eyes said he wanted to, but he didn’t. When I got home Shannon was still there and didn’t look so good, but went to Dacie shortly thereafter. After a while Megan and Jess came home too and I spent a lot of time on the computer looking for an apartment and planning italy. About the time they left to go to Outreach, Shannon and Melissa came home from Dacie. Shannon didn’t feel well and got right into bed and was tossing and turning and moaning. Sad day. I eventually switched computers and have been on here ever since.

2006-11-27T20:31:00.000+02:00

This morning I was kind of frustrated with Shannon. See, last night when she didn’t go to the hospital, she asked if I had any money and I gave her a 50 on the condition that she buy me some bread. Well, she came home and fell asleep until after the bread lady was gone and didn’t get me bread. The reason I need bread is because making sandwiches is the only way I’ve thought of to have something substantial during the day. So, she was like “I’m really sorry I’ll wake up early and go get you some tomorrow morning, I promise!” Well, she forgot and slept in late, as usual, and didn’t get it again, so I was frustrated because not only does she make us late all the time, but she didn’t follow through because of her inability to get out of bed and that bugged me too. So yeah, I brought it up and we talked about it and it wasn’t like hoooorrible, but it wasn’t good either and I was pretty annoyed with her by the end of the conversation, so I went into Dancu a little upset. While at Dancu, we talked about it again though and had it lead into a whole conversation on friendship, and now I’m fine…as long as she’ll wake up now (she said she would)! The kids were even sicker, which made them really docile and sweet. Even Mihai wasn’t being real active and would let you just sit there and do nothing with him which he neeever lets you do. Half way through the day this really nice neighbor (we think) came over and was sooo cute and just was so excited over the kids and was making them laugh and stuff. She also left us these little applie pie things. Like, apples, enclosed in a pie-ish round thing. They were good! We found out later that it was because apparently Ceausescu’s daughter died and they were funeral cakes. They didn’t seem real sad. Though, apparently she wasn’t that bad of a person. She and one of her brothers were educated in London and when they came back they realized how horrible their parents were and spoke out against them (the son fully disowned them). Their lives are quite miserable though, understandably. After Dancu, Shannon went home and I started on the 6th floor with rooster baby. This time the adventure was trying to feed her. She’d suck, but nothing would come out and I spent a good 45 minutes trying all different kinds of things and probably only got her to drink about 10 grams, and all of that was probably just milk that spilled on us. After a while I switched with Abbi and let her have a turn at it. I took Vasilica from her. He’s cute, but I just don’t get him as much as I do other babies, so I had a hard time with him. After a while I just switched with Marina because she does really well with Vasilica and I do really well with Nicu, the baby she had. By way of explanation, Vasilica is somewhere between 6 months and a year old (hard to tell when they’re institutionalized) and is from Donald Duck. He can’t sit up or anything like that. He’s got a big upper lip and looks like a little Englishman. Nicu is a newborn and I’d been with him the day before too. He’s really sweet looking and reminds me of Ionella who used to be at the hospital. I’m pretty sure I just stayed with him until it was time to go. I walked with Melissa and Holly to the tramvie station (holly came because it was Mihai’s bday) and we rode to Dacie. Once at Dacie, we discovered that they weren’t celebrating his bday til the next day, but they gave the two of us cake anyway – it was nasty J. Holly and I had a lot of fun, especially with Viorel, who always says “oweeoweeooooo!” because he can’t really talk yet. We decided when we see each other on campus in the future we’re going to hail each other by cupping our hands together at our mouths and going “oweeoweeooooo!” It provided the theme for the rest of the night during which we’d just yell it out every once in a while. I brought these little cardboard animals with holes in them that you put shoelaces through. Basically, you sew around the edges of the cardboard animal. I thought they were kind of lame and that they wouldn’t like them, but they kept them occupied the whole time! Those kids are just so great. Like, it took me a little while to get to this point, but now, I look forward to going there sooo much. It’s like a treat. I mean, Costica is so cute and hilarious and cuddly. Viorel is such a sweety and he just melts my heart and is one of the sweetest kids ever. Marian is a terror, but just sooo cute that you can’t help but love him. Mihai is just so smart and I respect him so much. Catalina is so vulnerable and tries so hard and my heart just goes out to her. And Georgiana is a little bit of a black sheep and I feel bad for her because of that and want so badly to help her because I see how happy she is when she does something well. Anyway, after Dacie, we all met up and took a tram to tirgu cucu and a taxi to Little Texas for Jess’s birthday. It was sooo much fun! The place is great. It has all these Old West decorations, including a lifesize cutout of John Wayne and it has such nice food J. It’s American J. I got a salad, enchiladas and shared a brownie with icecream and an apple pie with Jessica. The conversation was great and I loved it especially because I feel like right now I’m getting along with everyone and that everyone is getting along with everyone! What a great feeling!

Monday, November 20, 2006

2006-11-27T20:29:00.000+02:00

This marked the first morning of Melissa and I’s new plan where she wakes me up every morning except for Wednesdays and I used the computer from 6:30 til 7:30ish and on Wednesdays she wakes up and uses it and I don’t get up til 7:30ish. I’m doing really well so far at actually getting up and doing too which makes me really happy. It’ll be nice to be able to go home and just use the computer for however long I want. Dancu was really really hard yesterday. The kids were more sick than ever and it made them pretty grumpy. Mihai wasn’t happy almost no matter what you did and if you weren’t playing with him he would just cry and cry. Iuliana was really moody too and screamed a lot and Shannon couldn’t figure out how to make her happy. Costica cried a lot more than usual and even if you did things that would usually make him happy, he’d still cry. Petrica was just loud J. Yeah, so there were times when we’d just be like, “aaaaah! I give up! There’s nothing else I can do!” As a side note, Anni and Nuti were working. At the hospital, I started off with Iulia because I hadn’t been with her in a really long time. She didn’t look so good because she had some brown residue on her face and some of her spit had a brown hue and there was a tube in her nose that emptied into a jar and the jar was filled with this nasty brown pussy liquid because every time she’d blow out of her nose, brown stuff would come out and go down the tube. At least she cried less than usual! After a while she fell asleep. About that time, Marina came downstairs and we decided to try to go to the 6th floor. Well, 3 girls were already with Radu, Vasilica and a little newborn boy who’s up there, but the nurse told us that there was another baby, so we went in there. Well, it turned out that it was none other that rooster baby! She was back! When we came in she was wearing this nasty dirty jumper and so I was like, “hey, I wonder if I have any clothes that would fit her!” So, I looked and the only thing I could find that would fit her was this yellow thing that had long sleeves, but didn’t cover the legs. Well, we figured that’d work, because we’re not paranoid about babies getting cold like Romanians and, well, the hospital is stifling anyway. So, we take the poor girl out of her clothes and put her in this and then the mom is like “nu nu nu nu! E frig!” (no, it’s cold!) and we’re like, “well, how bout if we wrap her in the blanket?” Well, she didn’t approve of that either. So then we’re like, “well what do you want us to do?” While we were trying to figure that out we discovered this other jumper lying on the bed that would cover her arms and her feet but then the mom was like “no, that belongs to this other mom.” Well, we were really skeptical because it looked way familiar and the mom’s sometimes (like, all the time) steal our clothes, but we didn’t want to just take it, so finally we were like, “whatever, what do you want us to do?” So eventually the mom is just like “put her back in her regular clothes.” This, of course is all being communicated through histrionics and broken language. So we start putting her back in the old clothes, then the mom is like “no, put the new clothes under!” So we undress her and start to dress her again when the other mom walks in and is like, “no, this outfit actually isn’t mine.” So then we realize we can put her in that and undress her again and start to put her in that. But of course the mom wanted the new outfit under it this time too, so we undress her again and dress her again and finally she was just dressed!!!! Yeah, by the end we were like, “how many times does it take two BYU girls to dress a baby?” Well, shortly after that Abbi came in and was ready to switch, so we went in with the other babies and I took the newborn (this is the kid I was with on Friday where I had to hold Radu and this kid at the same time) and Marina took Vasilica and Megan was with Radu. It was really great, because I just listened to Marina’s ipod and stared at this beautiful little baby boy as he slowly fell asleep in my arms. He’s seriously such a sweety, like possibly my favorite newborn so far. I don’t know what it is about him, but he just seems really pure and he also is a smiler. Well, after the hospital Marina, Jess, Megan, Melissa and I went to Gima. It was fabulous finally being able to get all these things that I’ve needed but that Hala and the corner store just don’t have. I was in heaven. There’s nothing better than coming home from shopping and having all this food. Well, after that I had a little bit of computer time after getting home and then went to FHE. We were supposed to be playing this game called “Fugitive”, but it didn’t really happened, so we all just talked. I talked to Stefana, Elder Hacket and Raluca the most. I love Stefana and I think she should go to BYU when she graduates. And yeah, I love all three of them. They’re all favorites. Mihai walked me home and we had a nice chat. He’s an ok guy. Like, yeah, he’s awkward sometimes, but he’s got a good heart and tries really hard but just gets misunderstood sometimes. The rest of the night was a little frustrating because I was going to use the computer after Jess, but while she was on in I fell asleep on the couch and then tried to write and just fell asleep again and had to go to bed. Romania is tiring!

Sunday, November 19, 2006

2006-11-27T20:25:00.000+02:00

This morning I went to church with Shannon and Megan. I was pretty early, but didn’t want to choir, so the only other option was being late to church by going with Shannon and Megan. I missed the first song, so Marina had to conduct and apparently it was hilarious. Elder Sorensen, Marina and a man from the Mission Presidency gave talks. When the guy from the mission presidency got up, he started talking really excitedly and pointing at Marina and Elder Hackett (who had translated for Marina’s talk). Marina was just like, “ah, why is he pointing at me!?!” Then, Hackett told us that he said that he’d really liked Marina’s talk and wanted to get it translated and put it in the mission magazine and also wanted President Popovici to have a young adult fireside and to have her give it then. She was like “wooooah.” Imagine if I’d given my talk while he was there – hehe. He was a really great speaker too and he told this really cool story. Before the revolution he was a really famous Pentecostal preacher. Somehow he got like 500 smuggled Bibles and he started passing them out secretly to people. Well, while he was out passing them out the police arrested he and his wife. They were in jail for two days and the whole time he was really worried about his kids and how they were going to eat and stuff. After two days they were released, with no other punishment (veeery unusual) and just told not to do it anymore. When they got home his kids were sitting at the table and the table was filled with all kinds of food. Apparently when he converted he converted his entire congregation too. I’d have loved to talk to him more. During Sunday School I looked through this mission cookbook that Elder Hackett had with a bunch of recipes you can make from the stuff that they have in Romania. I also started thinking about the Italy trip, which Shannon and I need to get working on. The man from the presidency joined us in relief society too and at one point he got up and like went off on something having to do with the lesson and he was just such a good speaker and I just really liked him. He was such a good guy. After church Holly, Jessica, Abbi, Marina and I went to Sora Genoveva’s for lunch/dinner. It was…interesting. For one thing, it was really awkward, because you could tell she had no clue what to do with us and we had no clue what to do with ourselves afterward. Plus, she didn’t eat with us, she just sat us down in the family room (where he son was right next to us playing computer games the whole time but never talked to us) and served us. And at the end when she did come in, we’d try and talk, but it was really awkward and difficult. Plus, she’s no ordinary Romanian. Like, with most Romanians, you eat everything they put in front of you and offer lots of praise and tell them it was amazing and everything. Well, we’d tell her that and she’d be like, “well, would you have the courage to tell me if it wasn’t?” Ha ha. Fun times. She’s like cynical and very outright with it. Also, I ate soooo much food. Welcome to Romanian meals. To start of with she gave us bread with this stuff called “Salata de Finetti” that you’re supposed to spread on it. I had like 4 or 5 pieces of that. Then, she came out with soup, which I had two bowls of. Then, she gave us each a plate with liver (ick) and mashed potatoes. Then there were also some pickles, prajitura (kiiiind of like brownies, but not) for dessert (they’re little and diamond shapes and I had about 6 of them) and lastly, flower juice (which was a lot better than it sounds and homemade) which I had 3 glasses of. And I’m small. In between being served, when she would walk back into the kitchen, we’d all talk and discuss it and encourage each other to just keep eating and such. Like I said before, after eating she actually came in for a while and talked to us and we had a nice awkward time of it. Finally it ended and we all went over to Scala for dinner (which none of us ate) and our meeting. The meeting talked a lot about money, our schedule this week and plans for leaving. We will probably also take a trip to somewhere in Transylvania (likely Cluj, Timisoara or Sibiu) in the very beginning of December. Tuesday next week is Mihai from Dacie 7th and Jessica’s bdays. We are going out to dinner at Little Texas right after Dacie for Jessica’s. Thursday is Thanksgiving, but we are going to celebrate in on Sunday instead. Each of us is going to make something and bring it to the Villa after church and we’re going to eat around the Ping Pong table. I’m bringing Peach Cobbler. Ok, so the program is ever quicker coming to an end and it’s really weird. I am excited and dreading it at the same time. I wish I could just go here and there whenever I want to. Since Marina can no longer go to Italy early with me I won’t be leaving Iasi til the 16th and I will then leave Bucharest on the 17th. That week everyone will be living in Scala and Podul will only be used if we want the internet. We can all still go to the hospital and the apartments, but the girls at the orphanage won’t be going. It’ll be so hard. And I feel like I have so much to get done before then. So many little things aaand so many big things. I want to have pictures of everything, I want to have learned as many Romanian songs as I can, I want to go to Copou again and the cemetery again, I want to learn how to make certain Romanian foods and just so many more things. I also want to get as much homework done as possible and I need to plan Italy, and look for a job and an apartment I Provo. I hate this feeling. I want to just have a leisurely experience and be able to get out of it what I want to get out of it instead of what other people want me to get out of it because of homework.

Saturday, November 18, 2006

2006-11-27T20:23:00.000+02:00

I woke up this morning at 7am and got ready to go to Bacau. First we all met at Tirgu Cucu and took tram 6 to the Gara. Then we waited for a while and took a two hour maxi taxi ride to Bacau. It was really foggy, so you could see much out of the windows and my legs were on the hump, which was a little uncomfortable. I sat next to Abbi and I read “Each One a Miracle” the whole way and almost finished it. When we got to Bacau, there was a missionary and a Romanian man waiting for us. All they said was that we were going to a park for 30 minutes and then a museum and then the Villa. We were really confused as to why exactly we were going to a park and a museum, but we didn’t ask questions and just followed them around the city. The city looked pretty much the same as Iasi. We got to the museum, and walked through a tiny street corner park across the street from it, but all they did was check the museum’s hours and then we went to the Villa. Theirs looks a lot like ours, but is nicer and bigger, even though Bacau actually has less members. Everyone else was already there, so we quickly reunited with them and then ate breakfast. They had pancakes! They weren’t the best I’ve ever had, but they were still sooo good. After that we stood around for a while and then decided to go to the museum. The museum was really interesting and I walked around it with Raluca and kept asking her questions. At the beginning it was a lot of biology stuff and species of animal and stuff. Then there was this random room with like, Romanian artifacts, kind of. It had some Orthodox stuff, some gypsy stuff and then different spices. With the Orthodox stuff, there was this cake that was white with sprinkles and a coco cross on top which Raluca said was really good. It was only for funerals though. And then there were these covrig things that she said you had to have specially made and I can’t remember what else. She told us though, that there are special days, usually like certain Saturdays, that people reverence the dead and they will go to their graves and bring food for other people who come and give food to the dead. Then, there was some stuff about gypsy magic and then she just read off what all the different spices were. I also thought it was interesting that in the species part, there were these moth cocoons and the caption called them “gogosi!” After and before the museum Raluca and I also talked some more. Once we got back to the villa, they had a bunch of games set up. I wanted to play risk, but no one else did, and eventually they just replaced it with something else, so I played UNO instead. Melissa won twice and then that was over. I saw that risk had been reassembled and that people were playing with real cards right next to it, so I decided to do both, since risk can be kind of slow. Bri, Holly and Jess were playing Nerts on teams with the cards and I would go in and out being on Jess’s team and we still won. Risk never really got off the ground. Like, we set up and explained it and put our pieces out and started playing, but by the time it was my turn, the game was over. Lunch was actually really good. We had this tuna pasta stuff and Salata de Beuf. Oh, and while we were playing Nerts, this really weird Romanian kid came up and started talking to us. He like got way to excited about everything and was waaaay too obvious about the fact that he was in love with Jessica and Holly and was just aaaawkward. Like, he was obsessed with the fact that Jess was from Las Vegas and was like “you’re a shiny girl from a shiny city! Ha! Shiny girl from a shiny city! Ha ha!” and we’re all like, “ha…ha…yeah…wow.” There were many more very interesting comments like that the whole time. And while we were sitting there trying our best to concentrate on the game he kept just being like, “Holly, holly, guess what? I’m your cheerleader! Holly, holly, guess what, you’re a pretty girl. Holly holly…” He was nice and all, but soooo awkward. After lunch we played do you love your neighbor. After that we Shannon and Jessica kiiind of taught us to do the cha cha and swing, but there were only like 2 or 3 couples and it didn’t really work. Then we all took a taxi to the maxi taxi and went for another 2 hours! This time I had to sit up front with the driver. I was in the middle, on the hump with my purse at my feet and my jacket and books on my lap and another lady next to me. I was sooo uncomfortable because there was no where to put my feet and I was feeling claustrophobic and nauseous. Then, lastly, we took a tramvii home. I reunited myself with Shannon on the way because we hadn’t talked in like…gasp…a day.

Friday, November 17, 2006

2006-11-27T20:22:00.000+02:00

One month left. This morning Shannon was too sick for us to go to Penilla, so I went to Donald Duck with Holly. It was really weird because I’m so used to going to Dancu now that it felt totally different. Like, even going to the hospital felt different because I didn’t go with Shannon and I didn’t come from Dancu. When I first walked into Donald Duck, I came in by myself because Holly was talking to someone, most of the kids were gone! Like, there were only 4 kids in the first room, no kids in the second room, 2 kids in the living room and one kid in the back room. In the middle room where there were no kids, they were cleaning all the beds. Well, right when I walked in I saw a kid all the way at the end of the hall (fuzzily, since I can’t wear contacts) and from what I could make out he looked like he had a big grin on his face. So, I called to him saying “hai la mine!” or “come to me!” He ran up to me and help up his arms, so I picked him up and just carried him around as I went to the different kids. Welcome to Romanian orphanages, where random kids that you don’t even know attach to you immediately. Sometimes I feel like a holding machine. At first I just wandered around with him on my hip trying to figure out what I wanted to do first. I walked in the living room and Matteo was sitting in his chair, so I bent down to give him some attention, but as soon as I looked at him he started working up to crying, the way kids do, so I was like “oh shoot!” and just ran out so he’d stop so the workers wouldn’t get mad. Eventually Holly came in and we got to work. I held almost all the kids sometime throughout the day. The little boy I held in the beginning I soon found was named Salim. He’s 2 and a half and his mom just died of AIDS. His dad can’t take care of him or his brother (who also has AIDS) and so he was dropped off at the orphanage about a week ago. Holly says he’s gotten progressively more sober and whereas is the beginning he only ever wanted to play and wasn’t too interested in being held, now all he wants is to be held and loved and it’s hard to get him to play. It’s horrible to see the very beginning of someone getting institutionalized. Like, he’s a perfectly normal adorable little boy and I see him going through all this pain and becoming scarred for life and there’s nothing in the world I can do about it though I’d be happy to do anything in the world to help him. It’s kids like that that I can’t stand to be around unless I keep reminding myself to have an eternal perspective. Well anyway, so most of the time I took care of two babies at once. Sometimes it was Salim and Carlos. Sometimes it was Cosmina and Andreia and sometimes it was Carlos and Emmanuela. As soon as I could get a chance I held Matteo because Holly said that would probably make him happier. At first he would do nothing but cry, but he stopped after a while. When he stopped, I spun him in circles and he actually laughed! Carlos, too, has such an adorable smile. Cosmina, a beauuutiful little girl with Cerebral Palsy, gave the most intense stares I have ever seen. While we were there they moved Emmanuela and Andreia’s cribs into the living room, which was odd. At one point I was really proud of myself because I was able to get Salim to play a little. He was standing with his arms folded, leaning against the table, with his head in his arms, crying. So, I went and got one of those toys, where you have these round plastic doughnut shaped circles that you place in graduated order onto a platform with a thin cylinder coming up from the center of it. I’m sure that makes no sense, but oh well. Anyway, Holly said he liked it, so I went and got it. I started playing with it and acting like it was sooo much fun and being loud and excited and saying I needed help and eventually one time I specifically asked for his help and (he’d been watching me for some time now) he got the biggest smile on his face and tentatively came over and started playing with me! Such a success! Well, eventually he got distracted because one of the workers had chocolate and she saw him watching her and gave him a piece. I didn’t see him for a while after that because he was just behind the wall. Eventually I started wondering where he was so I got up and turned the corner and there he was…with chocolate alllll over. He had it all over his face and his hands too – so cute. At lunchtime I fed little Carlos, who is usually a horrible eater, but actually wasn’t too bad this time. I also stroked Emmanuela at the same time because she was crying in the crib behind me. Holly was feeding Matteo, so neither of us were looking and then one of the workers came in and started exclaiming a bunch of thing because apparently while we weren’t looking, Mihaela and Salim, who were sitting at a little table eating out of bowls, had switched their bowls! It was so cute! Speaking of cute, before that, when Matteo was upset, Salim got this bottle of the table that the workers always give to Matteo when he’s upset and he started trying to give it to him. He had this concerned expression on his face and just kept trying to comfort Matteo. That, right there, is when you know you are dealing with no institutionalized child. Well, anyway, so when feeding time was almost over Holly got a call from Mario saying that Cristi was coming over to fix our drain in like 5 minutes and someone needed to be there. Shannon was there, but was taking a shower, so she didn’t answer the phone, so I went. He’d already been let up by Shannon when I got there though. After a few minutes, all of which were taken up by the drain problem, Melissa came by to pick me up to go to the hospital and she wanted me to just come down. I would’ve, but we had to figure out who was going to give Cristi the key, so we had her come up. She still seemed pretty pissed from yesterday and finally I just decided to not let it affect me. I knew I wasn’t being difficult, so I decided to stop caring what she thought. We decided I’d give my key to Cristi, I made myself a sandwich, and then we left. As we walked out the door, Shannon realized that she need to borrow money, so we had Melissa wait again while we went to the ATM. After a few minutes of walking though, she took out her ipod and wanted me to tell her everything about her that was bothering me. We talked all the way to the hospital and for quite some time at the hospital, in Octavion’s room. It was both good and bad, but I guess on the whole it was good. It’s never going to be completely satisfying to have a conversation like that until you know someone comfortably enough, and I have no idea what she thought about it, but by the end, I was more ok with her. Well, when we were done she left me with Octavion. He was really sleepy, but I was supposed to feed him. At first I tried to get him to wake up and eat, but it would NOT work, so I finally just gave up and put him back in his crib. I sat there and read for a while. Occasionally he’d wake up for a short time and I’d feed him a few gulps of formula and then he’d fall asleep again. After I was tired of reading, I was just sitting there waiting for him to wake up, and I fell asleep for like 45 minutes! I didn’t think I was going to at all and when I woke up I was really surprised. Octavion was still asleep, so I just…got up and left! I’m sure the other mom in the room was like “she came all the way over here just to sleep in the hospital?” Next I went to the 6th floor, to the room with Vasilica, Radu and another newborn whose name I do not know. Jess was with Vasilica, so I took Radu. After a little while, the newborn woke up and started crying. I wanted to hold them both, but although it’s not that hard to hold two babies, it iiis hard to get the other baby into your arms. After awkwardly placing Radu in several positions, making a go for the other baby and realizing it wouldn’t work, quite a few times, I finally just put Radu on my legs and picked the other one up. After a while Vasilica fell asleep, so Jess took Radu. At the end we gave poor Radu a new outfit, since his was in rags and changed their diapers. Seriously, Radu’s skin is the saddest skin I’ve ever seen and I wish I could help it to heal. We walked halfway home with Melissa, Megan, and Bri and then Melissa and Megan went to drop Bri off while Jess and I went straight home. Once we got there, however, we realized that neither of us had keys! We decided to go try and head off Melissa and Megan incase they were going straight to the Palat (we weren’t going). Once we got home, I made the amazing pasta that my mom sent, read from “Each One a Miracle” which I really like, and wrote in my journal while cooking the brownies that Shannon had made. I was so proud of myself because it was the first time I cooked anything like that in our retarded oven and they turned out perfectly even though I can barely cook brownies right at home! Around 7 we all headed off to the Relief Society activity, which ended up being pretty good. By the end I really did feel like I’d had a good experience with the Romanian women and had a stronger connection with them. We did a few activities. For the first one we had a list of attributes and we had to walk around and talk to people and figure out who fit which attributes and write their names next to them. Then, we went around the whole circle and each person told a little about themselves. Cute little old Sora Maria just went off forever about the things she likes and though I was content to just sit there and listen to her, finally Sora Wright cut her off and had Sora Baker go. I wanna take Sora Maria home with me. After that, we just ate the refreshments and made Christmas cards. At one point I went in the kitchen and found Jess talking to the Relief Society president, Sora Maria’s husband. We tried to understand him together and did tolerably well. Then, when we all left, I was right next to a new Sora whose name I don’t know. She talked to me nonstop from the villa to to the gogosi stand where we hand to separate and I had no clue what she’d said the entire time. All I did was just say “Da” in various tones and laughed at appropriate times. I’m not quite sure whether she actually thought I understood her or whether she went home and laughed her head off at me, but I got quite a kick out of it. I sometimes wonder whether people just tell sit there and make fun of us because they know we’ll just be like, “da, da.” After we got home, I did some journals and then we all watched “Sweet Home Alabama” together, the four of us on Shannon and Melissa’s couch bed.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

2006-11-27T19:59:00.000+02:00

Last night I went to bed early because my eye was hurting really bad. When Jess and Megan came home from Outreach they woke me up to give me my package and to say apartment prayer. My package had my blue shirt, Baking Soda, Baking Powder, pads, taco seasoning and pasta mix. I woke up in the middle of the night and realized that my eye was swollen. I went back to bed, then woke up and decided not to go to the orphanage because I had a cough and a swollen eye and figured that they’d probably take one look and send me home anyway. Shannon wasn’t feeling well either (we probably got it from the kids) and so we both stayed home. I called my parents who gave me the number for Bishop Rice and he told me I probably have a virus and that it probably won’t go away for at least a few weeks and that I can’t wear contacts. So, I decided to try to buy some glasses instead since I should probably just have glasses anyway. Then we realized that my purse is at the orphanage and I wouldn’t be able to get it til later if I didn’t go get it myself and that we also needed the number for Dancu, so we called Holly and told her we were going to come get them from her. Well, when we got there she seemed a little frustrated at us which made us feel like total crap. Nothing worse than Holly being mad at you. We got home, called Dancu and were told that if we were sick we couldn’t come tomorrow either. Then I took a shower, made some faaabulous pancakes and read a little from “Each One a Miracle” before Shannon and I headed off to run errands. We first went to the glasses store and looked at those. The lady was really nice and spoke English, but I couldn’t tell what I wanted, so we decided to decide when I come back with the prescription. After that we went to the corner store and then to Hala and we finally had groceries! So exciting! When we got back Melissa was home and Shannon and I put away our groceries and then started talking about how to fix my messed up computer hours. Well, for some reason Melissa pipes in with something like, “why do you need to fix them, didn’t we figure it all out in the beginning?” And we explained how we didn’t notice certain things in the beginning when we first assigned them. Well, then she says something about how I could always just wake up and use the computer in the morning. I’ve been incredibly frustrated with that because I feel like she always says that to me and I always say “well, wake me up when you aren’t using it and if you are just wake me up at 7:30” and she almost always wakes me up at 7:30, so I just took that as either she was using it or she wasn’t and didn’t wake me up anyway. Either way, I haven’t gotten the opportunity. So when she said that I said, in a nice way, but nevertheless bluntly, “Well, I’d like to but I told you to wake me up if I can and you never do.” So then she responded really angily and in a very snappy tone how she does wake me up and I just don’t get up and stuff and so then I was really frustrated but said, “you know what, I disagree, but I’m not going to say anything.” Then she was like, “no tell me.” And I was like, “no, not when you’re mad.” And she was like, “I’m not mad.” That was just absurd to me, because it was soooo obvious that she was and I was like, “well you sound mad to me.” And she was like, “I’m not mad and you have something to say, so you should say it.” So then, I still didn’t want to say anything, but what do you do with someone in denial? So I was like, “fine, you promise you won’t get mad or offended?” And she’s like, “yeah.” So then we had this really frustrating conversation where she was both mad and offended and I was frustrated. She kept conceding things, then using them against me as if she hadn’t just conceded the point and I was like, “what the crap!” Finally I was just like, “you know what, you aren’t making any sense to me and I don’t feel the need to talk to you anymore and I walked out.” Shannon and I finished with the hours by ourselves and then I went to try and do my laundry. Well, while I was doing my laundry I was sorting clothes and I saw something on my jacket and was about to pick it up, when something stopped me and I pulled my hand back and then I realized that it was this big cockroach, lying on its back and just then its leg twitched! I was so traumatized! I seriously like couldn’t move! I’m glad I wasn’t wearing contacts, because I don’t think I would have been able to handle seeing it more sharply. And the thing that scarred me the most was that it was just lying there, in my clothes, and I didn’t realize what it was and just about picked it up by one of its legs. Something about that just totally creeped me out. Well, I, still in shock, went outside on the balcony where Shannon was. At first I just stood there looking terrified while she kept asking me what was wrong. It was really hard to speak and then finally I told her. She thought it was awesome and was really excited and took pictures and stuff. Then, she was really helpful and disposed of it for me and looked through all my clothes for more. Then, I even had her look under a pain of lone capris that were folded in the corner of my room and had been since I left for Budapest and low and behold, there was my watch! It was underneath the capris! Why it was so casually there under the folded capris I do not know, but it was! We decided that the cockroach was a blessing in disguise. Then, we had to get ready to leave really quick because we were running out of time. Then I went in the kitchen and did my dishes and just finished getting ready to go really quick. We ended up leaving Melissa because she said she didn’t want to go to Dacie (by the way, by this time my eye was significantly less swollen) and we just walked fast to the hospital and met Jenna there and took the tram to Dacie. Dacie went really well today! I brought 2 chalkboards and first made the kids wait before they played with them. It was only Mihai and Marian to begin with. I told them if they were good for a while I’d bring out the toys that I brought. So, they were, in fact, good and I did bring them out after a while. It went over really well because there was one for each of them and they played nicely. Mihai and I bonded while I showed him how to do some numbers and letters. Oh, I also told them they had to have the tv off while we played with the toys and I was pleased when that worked too! After a while they got sick of them and I let them turn the TV back on. About that time Costica and Viorel woke up and we played with them a little. Then, shortly after that Catalina and Georgiana came home and so they got to use the drawing boards because Marian and Mihai were sick of them About the time Viorel wanted to use them, Catalina decided she wanted to play with the bubbles, so I blew bubbles with her and Costica (who looooved them and was soooo adorable) while Viorel drew on the board. He was so cute and would show it to me each time he drew something. Time really flew by and before I knew it it was time to leave. I was really sad to go! Shannon and I walked Jenna home, which turned out great, because Marina had just finished making dinner and gave me some. It was this delectable chicken broccoli casserole. Then, Shannon and I walked to outreach, which went pretty well too. I played rummikub with Abbi, Raluca and Elder Hackett. Hackett and I wanted to play the American way, but Raluca and Abbi wanted to play the Romanian way, Hackett and I kept being bitter together. I walked home with Abbi, Bri, Holly, Shannon and Mihai and we met up with Rebecca along the way. After that I just walked home with Shannon and Mihai and that’s been about all.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

2006-11-26T14:39:00.000+02:00

This morning I woke up at 6:45 to take a much needed shower and then was pretty much all ready, including making sandwiches for lunch, so I went back to bed from 7:45 to 8:15. When I woke up at 8:15, Shannon still wasn’t up, no big surprise. We were late again, but Christina and Dada were working, so that was good. All the kids were actually sick today, like we could tell. Petrica was really raspy and more tired than usual. Most of the day we just sat there and cuddled with them. I spent time with everyone but Iuliana. Also, around 11:30, the workers came in and started saying to clean up. I was all confused, but did it anyway. I gathered that someone was coming to visit, because at one point they looked outside and seemed to see someone arrive and then they started cleaning up even faster and kind of frantically. After cleaning I went in the other room with Shannon and Costica to be out of the way. The visitor ended up being the doctor. He inspected all the kids, then he and Cristina sat down and talked about a bunch of things, and prescriptions I think. Then the tree of the went in the kitchen and talked for a loooong time. At about 12:30, they still hadn’t come out and so finally we decided to leave. Luckily Dada came in right then, which made it easier, beause otherwise Iuli would have freaked out. Shannon told me she was going to go home before going nto the hospital because she needed food and after a long and frustrating time trying to figure out what to do, I decided to come too. My eye has been hurting especially bad and I was running on low sleep and also wanted to get things done and go to the store. At first I was still going to go, because I’m tired of missing hours, but then I decided that instead of not going to the hospital tomorrow, like I’d been planning I could just not go today. Shannon and I decided to drop by the corner store to get food on the way home, and I picked out all this stuff I need because Hala is out of all these essential things and I still don’t have my wallet back (just have a credit card), so I haven’t been about to get stuff. Well, when I went to pay, it said my card was invalid! I was so upset, I just wanted food! And I’d already gone through so much trouble to work out the plan for the day and it could only go just so or I’d be missing something essential and there it went! On the way home I was really upset, so Shannon tried to comfort me and told me she’d just give me some of her food and call it interest for letting her borrow so much. She was really great and told me to just go to bed when we got home. Then she woke me up when she left and fed me a balanced lunch then made me get on the computer so I’d get stuff done which made me feel a lot better. I got soooome stuff done on the computer, but mostly got sucked in by the cuteness of down syndrome babies and looked at a lot of pictures. I wish I didn’t do stuff like that! I also wrote Jim and emailed Roberta though, so that’s good. Now I’m on here, then I’m going to call my mom (because apparently my package arrived and the girls are going to bring it back from outreach) and to see if she can call the CC company for me! Hopefully I’ll get to bed reeeeally early! Anyway, well, that’s all for tonight!

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

2006-11-26T14:38:00.000+02:00

Wow, today was quite the day. What DIDN’T happen? So, we got off late to Dancu again. Shannon woke up when we were supposed to be leaving, and only then because I woke her. Dancu went really well. Before the professors came I first played with Petrica, but I also played with all three of the other kids at some point. I almost never take Iulia, but for some reason one time when she was throwing a fit I asked Shannon to get her, but then for some reason I decided to instead and without even saying anything just started being with her. It went REALLY well. Shannon said that was the longest she’s played with the xylophone since we’ve been back from Budapest. We were really excited for the professors to come over because then we felt like we’d have more people on “our side.” So, when they rang the apartment Shannon came running into the room smiling. Well, the visit went pretty well. Mario got the workers to be ok with the kids being on the floor if we could get a heat blanket, so we’re going to get one! Yay! And time goes by so much faster when you have distractions like that. Also, having them there helped us feel so much more helpful because we got to see us from their perspective and while they were and as we were telling them all about the kids and everything we do I actually came to the realization that, hey, we do know what we’re doing and we are doing a good job. Very good feeling. Not surprisingly, they really loved Mihai especially. While they were there we also were informed that Mihaela from Donald Duck is going to come to Dancu! Yeah, that is going to be insaaane. Mihaela is like 2 or so and she’s this tiny little adorable terror with attachment disorder worse than any kid I’ve ever seen. It’s going to change the dynamic of Dancu soooo much. Like, 1 kid who is super active in this little apartment with 4 other kids who aren’t mobile at all. We talked about it on the tram ride home and decided it’ll definitely be good and bad. Good for her and bad for the kids and the workers. It’ll be great for her because she’ll get more attention and she’ll have more stability and better workers and better toys. But bad for the other kids because they really need the attention that they already have and they’ll definitely not get as much. It’ll be especially hard to give attention to Costica and Petrica who don’t demand it and I am afraid for the kids when the next group comes because I’m afraid that since they won’t already have a connection with the original Dancu kids, they’ll never be able to form them and they won’t get much attention. Also, I just don’t know how it’ll work having Mihai, Mihaela and Iuliana all vying for attention! And I don’t know how much more progress we’ll be able to make with them. Shannon said something about how in Bro. Botts “Sharing the Gospel” class he always would say that instead of just coasting out the end of your mission, the best way to do it is to work harder than you’ve ever worked before and I think this’ll be the perfect opportunity for us to do that here as well. Anyway, after they all left and we were playing with the kids like normal again, Nut(z)i came in and gave us each this little scone thing that was soooo good. It was pretty much like an extra good gogoasa with nothing inside, sugar on top and straight out of the oven. I didn’t want it to end. We liked it so much that afterward I went in and praised it and asked if I could get a recipe for it. She seemed really really pleased and told us that if we waited a few minutes she’d give us pizza too and that she give us the recipe and I was like “oh, we’ll wait!” So, not only did we get amaaaazing food from workers who almost never feed us, but we had this amazingly positive conversation with them as well. Then, they let us stay extra long, so we didn’t actually leave til like 12:30 and as we were leaving Corrina told us that she’d get the recipe and bring it tomorrow. So, in high spirits we went to the hospital and talked about Mihaela along the way. We started off on the 3rd floor. Shannon went in with Iulia and I was about to play with Ilie, but first the doctors and nurses (who were all so nice) wanted pampers and while they were doing that, Megan and Jessica came by. We started playing with them while the two of them started talking about Tomesti and all the things they’d found out after the professor’s visit. While they were talking one of the nurses had us leave because they were feeding Ilie, so we went out and talked in the hall for a while. I stayed because I wanted to talk to Jessica and Mihaela. Well, after they finished, Jess and I first went to the 6th floor, where there were already kids with girls. Then we went to the 2nd to see Ionut. Well, he was in the play room, which we didn’t even know existed, so we went in there. One of the ladies that run in started talking to us and just talked to us like the entire time. She always said “I know” this and “I know” that, but a lot of the time she didn’t. Like, she was convince that we were part of Dan Ferguson’s program, which we aren’t anymore, but she didn’t believe us. And she kept bring up things and saying “American’s do this” or “American’s like that” and we’d be like, uh, no. She’d say things about Romania too that wasn’t true, like that they have great fashion and great water . Like, she wanted to know a lot of things and thought she did, but was actually just incredibly naïve and uneducated. She also kept trying to get us to do things we didn’t want to do and would get all mad at us when we wouldn’t do them. Like, she wanted us to go play with these kids who have moms because their moms don’t know how to play with then and we’d be like, “no, the orphans need us more, that IS who we’re going to play with” and she’d just keep trying to convince us. She was well meaning, but I didn’t like her. By the time we got out of there it was time for me to leave, so I didn’t really spend any time with kids at the hospital! I left early because I wanted to go home and get coloring books before going to Dacie. On my way there I met up with the Soras and talked to them for a minute. Then, right before I got home I realized that I didn’t have my key. I decided to go up anyway, just in case it was in my backpack or the door was unlocked or something, but no such luck. Then I decided I may as well at least drop by Hala for something to drink and it wasn’t til I was in the motion of swinging my backpack off my back to put in the locker that I realized, mid swing, that I don’t have a wallet and I just swung it right back up in one fluid motion. All I could do after that was just go to Tirgu Cucu and wait, except I didn’t have a watch. So, I waited there for what felt like forever, before I finally got worried that they’d left me and I decided to walk to Podul and see if Bri was home yet because I figured she’d walk with them. Well, she wasn’t, so I grabbed these plastic bowling pins that they have for Dacie, got some water and waited. Eventually, Marina, instead of Bri, came home and I rushed out, but they were already far ahead, so I just met them at the tram stop. Dacie actually went really well. When I got there Marian asked if I had toys and I said I did, but that they’d have to be good first and then I’d bring them out. Well, they were! And while they were good I got some great quality time with Costica. When I decided they’d been good long enough I brought out the pins. I had them wait, sitting a little ways away while I set them up (big step), then got them to take turns rolling the ball to hit the pins while they stayed in the same place. That is until Costica decided he wanted to just knock all the pins over. Not too long after that, though, Professor Nelson, Holly and Mario came over, which broke it up a little. Holly used to work at Dacie, so she’s great with the kids and it was good to have Mario there to translate. I love those kids. I think Viorel is my favorite. After that, I left early and went with them to Dacie 3rd and played with all of them too, which was fabulous. By the time we were going home I was sooo tired and my eye was acting up again. On the tram ride home this Romanian guy came and sat down by us and started talking to us, but mostly Shannon. He said he was a sailor and had been all over and to America too. He said he lived in Podul like Holly and when we got off he tried to get us to come with him. After Dacie, Mario went home, but Prof. Nelson came with us to our apartment, just to chat. Podul came over too and we did have a good chat. He’s a pretty personable guy and he’s just in his 30’s and easy to talk to. He’s also really smart. We had a great conversation about “mean girls” and parenting because he did a study on aggression in girls. We also talked about Romania and orphan stuff too. Oh, I forgot, Mihai from Dacie 7th and Maria, Mihaela and Catalin from Dacie 3rd are all getting fostered! That’ll be so great for them and hopefully it’ll leave room for some other kids to go to the apartments! I hope that due to the EU the Romanian orphanage system just continues to get better and better. Apparently it has come a reeeeally long way just in the last 6 years. Like, the early girls had a completely different experience and it was so much harder and the conditions were so much worse. We were also talking about how bad it was in the very beginning and about the videos that different news agencies filmed and even about how our orphanage was at the beginning. Apparently, there’s a worker there now who worked there in 89 and she said she used to have to keep her eyes up because there’d be dead kids on the floor. She also said that the bathroom had just tons of pipes in it and rats used to fall down on you while you were going to the bathroom. When I heard that I just imagine dead children on the floors of our orphanage and it gave me such a chill. How do I hear these things and not go insane? We also talked a lot today on how close we are to leaving. We only have a month left and the topic is coming up increasingly frequently. It scares me and I don’t like it. Holly talks about how some of us will get pretty weird and we just need to give people extra space, which should be interesting too. I can’t believe that it’s time to close up. I don’t know what Ill do when I can’t come back and it’s just over.

Monday, November 13, 2006

2006-11-26T14:32:00.000+02:00

Well, if I leave on the 13th, it’ll only be in Romania for one more month. Weird. Well, this morning started off pretty bad. By the time I left the apartment I was just pretty frustrated. Like, one of those moods where you feel the whole world is converging against you. I told Shannon all about it and she bought me a gogoasa. She tried to cheer me up, it was only semi helpful. Dancu was no peach either. The kids weren’t aloud on the floor, AGAIN! They were “sick” again! And that stupid worker was there AGAIN! I don’t get it. I really just do not understand why. Yeah, so the problem is that I see no prospect of change. As far as I can tell, it will be this way the ENTIRE rest of the semester. So basically, our kids are unhappy and unable to roam and explore and we are unable to work with them on anything developmental, whatsoever. We didn’t get lunch either. At the hospital, Shannon and I started on the 7th floor with Ramona and Octavion. I was with Ramona. Partway through, Marina came in. When Jessica came up, Shannon and I went down to the 3rd floor and tried our best to make friends with Iliuta. We got a few smiles out of him, but most of the time he hated us and he screamed hard core when we left. We could hear him all the way on a different floor. We, unfortunately, had to leave the hospital early, so I didn’t get my full 6 hours. We walked home and together cooked fabulous egg sandwiches, then I used the computer for a little bit before we all met up with Mario and the professors to go to dinner at the Romanian restaurant. It was a really nice themed restaurant and the food was pretty good too. First we ordered, then we talked for quite a while and then we got our food after a loooong time. There were two tables and we pretty much just talked to the people at ours, which were Mario, Abbi, Melissa and Holly. The food I ordered was pork chops and mashed potatoes and it was all pretty good. I really love Romanian mashed potatoes. They also had some little sarmales for everyone and those were pretty good too. After that everyone else went to FHE, but I stayed home because my computer time was forfeited last week and today too because of the dinner. So, yeah. Since then I’ve just been computering it up!

Thursday, November 9, 2006

2006-11-26T14:23:00.000+02:00

Wow, I really don’t feel like writing this journal, but ce sa faci (what can you do?)? Well, today was Shannon’s birthday. I woke up at like 7 and started using the internet. Shannon’s family called her at 7:30 and afterward she went to go use my computer and found that it wasn’t there. Jess and Megan went to school with Mihai today and apparently they took it with them and didn’t even respect me enough to ask first. Like, if they’d asked I would’ve been fine with them bringing it, but the fact that it’s my computer and they just took it and didn’t even ask first, as if they have as much right and control over it as I do. That really bothered me. Anyway, so that wasn’t cool. Dancu was pretty good though. Petrica was sooo good today. Like, he was showing a lot of interest in me and not being in his own world. First, one time when I walked in the room he looked at me and I moved in front of him and he followed me with his gaze. So then I moved a little closer and just said something to him, still not touching him and he smiled, then I moved even closer and just put my hand out in front of him on the couch and he put his hand on top of mine! So that was good, then later, first he was just sitting on the floor and then he actually crawled to me! Like, got from the sitting position to the crawling position (which he never does) and then actually started crawling without me instigating it (never does) and also just crawled toward me and not a toy or something (definitely never does). Like, that’s three great things right there. I almost couldn’t believe it when he did it, because it’s usually hard enough to get him wanting to crawl period, even when Shannon and I are both trying, we specifically place him in the position and we’re shaking a toy! He crawled to me and I put my hands on the floor and he crawled til he reached my hands and then he just put his hands on mine and I pulled him to me and just gave him the biggest hug! Also, along the same lines, he never crawls on the couch, yet today I was sitting on the opposite side of the couch from him giving Costica some attention, when Petrica actually started crawling across the couch to me. Yeah, pretty exciting day with Petrica all around. Other than that, I spent some time with both Mihai and Costica. I’ve usually been working on reading books to Mihai lately. He’s still a little impatient to turn the pages, but he’s getting more used to just having me go through the book page by page and me reading some of the words on each page and then letting him turn each page when I’m ready for him to. I just want him to get used to the idea. Also, usually with Costica I’ll just start off with rubbing his back or something low key like that. Then when he starts whining I’ll turn him. Then each time he wines I’ll do something else til eventually I’m like holding him and swinging him in circles or something. After a while I run out of things to do that make him happy. Well, today I decided to do it differently. Instead of doing something different when he starts crying, I’d just stop doing anything til he stopped and it worked! He definitely cried less overall and I didn’t have to keep coming up with ways to make him happy. After Dancu, though, I was sooo not looking forward to having such a long day, and I feel that way pretty much every Thursday, so I’ve decided I’m just not going to go to the hospital on Thursdays. So, I came home and so did Shannon. I took a shower and then a nap. The problem was that by the time I was out of the shower Shannon had already fallen asleep and so I couldn’t ask her to wake me up and I don’t have a watch, so I went to sleep and just figured since she was going to Dacie too, she’d wake up and realize I was still asleep and wake me up. Well, I guess she didn’t mean to fall asleep because she never set her alarm and didn’t wake up til right about when we were supposed to leave to go to Tirgu Cucu. I really did not feel like doing anything but sleeping, but ce sa faci? So I quickly got ready and went over there as quickly as I could. Since Shannon slept so long she didn’t get the things done she needed to do, so she didn’t go to Dacie. So, it was just Melissa at the 3rd floor and me at the 7th. It was hard. The kids were just rowdy and wouldn’t listen to me and all over the place and sometimes I just felt like “ahhh!” because I’d have 5 kids like right up on me, all of them either holding onto my scrubs or pushing each other and I’m trying to tell them not to do it, but the only thing I know how to say is “nu!” and that doesn’t work at all. They aren’t very good at waiting or sharing or listening. Like, much worse than normal kids, so combine that with me not speaking much Romanian and there being 6 of them and you’ve got a tough situation. Plus, the worker today is one that I don’t think likes us much. I feel like she thinks I do things with them I shouldn’t do, but she has never told me the rules and she’ll tell the kids not to do stuff but won’t tell me what she wants them not to do, so I never know. That’d be fine if I spoke the language and could understand what she says to the kids, but I don’t! I still love them though, even if they drive me a little insane. I can’t help but love Viorel’s sweet little smile and the way he is so enthusiastic about everything and so innocent. I always thought it was easier for me to love the normal kids cuz I thought they were cuter, but honestly, at Dacie, I’m finding that it’s so much easier for me to love Costica and Viorel, the two most behind and the ones that are the hardest are Mihai and Marian who are the most normal. Like, I can’t explain the love I felt today when I was doing “coca nani” with Viorel. Anyway, I was supposed to meet Melissa at 6:20 at the tram stop, but I figured the worker would have me leave by then, because they usually do, so I just waited til she said to leave. Well, when the girls had been home for quite some time I finally asked her what time it was and it was already 6:30. She wanted me to stay for 10 more minutes, but I had to go and I felt bad because Melissa had started to worry because I didn’t get there til 6:35. Well, we took the tram to the Villa and went to Outreach. I talked quite a bit to Raluca and Christina. At one point when Raluca and I were watching Hackett and some other guy play ping pong we found these crazy ugly huge thick glasses and tried them on, which was fun. At the end I talked to Mihai for a while. It was a pretty good conversation, but I felt bad because it was like, I understood what he was going through but didn’t know how to help him. Anyway, he walked us home. Megan made rice crispy treats for Shannon, so when she got home we all sang to her and at them. I’m kind of frustrated because I realized that my computer hours for today really just don’t work. Like, A.) I was scheduled for some time when I’m not even home and B.) I was scheduled for both computers at the same time!

Wednesday, November 8, 2006

2006-11-26T14:20:00.000+02:00

What to say? What to say? Well, I was actually ready completely on time this morning! That was exciting! Usually I’m not ready on time, but Shannon isn’t either, so it doesn’t really matter, but it was still nice to be on time. On the way to Dancu I saw an old lady with bright blue hair out the tramvie window, which pretty much made my day. You see people with some very interesting hair colors here, because the dye really just sucks and so you never know what you’re going to get. And pretty much all the females here dye their hair – usually a reddish maroon color, so there’s just always interesting hair all around. Sometimes I just look at the people all around me and am so amazed. They really are just so typically eastern European. Like, sometimes I’ll look at a man and be like, “wow, you sure look securitate.” They pretty much all wear leather coats, the women’s are usually red, with fur (very Russian), with dramatic makeup. And the men are usually wearing soviet style fur caps – hard to explain – would have to find a picture. It’s classic though. And the old people are so quaint. Anyway, Dancu was ok. Danna was working with the other one who’s been there the last 3 days in a row. Dr. Ciobano was scheduled to come again and still didn’t. The kids were still “sick.” We got nasty soup, ok bread and this weird Romanian dish called Tocanos or something. It was basically rice and maybe potatoes with this sauce that I think was made of like tomatoes and peppers or something. At the hospital, I started off on the first floor with Constantine and Radu at the end of the hall in the room with Alin and his mom. At first, Constantine was crying nonstop and I couldn’t do anything about it. Once the nurse came in and fed him, though, he was pretty good (still a little fussy though). By that time Abbi had come in and started being with Radu and after a little while, Jess took over for her. Constantine is really really little. He’s very frail and bone thin, with very dry skin and the top of his head has clumps of dead skin mangled with his hair because he’s probably never had a bath. He’s very sweet though. After a while, this evil doctor, with some other workers in tow, came in and started yelling at us and telling us to get out and never come back because “it is intensive care! You understand!?!” Yeah, we were pretty pissed. First of all, she and this other doctor are like the only ones who don’t want us there – everyone else loves us. Second of all, moms are in there with their kids and guaranteed they’re a lot dirtier than we, who use hand sanitizer. Third of all, we’re with these kids every day and half of them are only there to die, and I’m pretty sure if somehow we killed them they’d actually be better off. Fourth of all, Jessica works with half of these kids every day at Donald Duck, so I’m pretty sure she knows how to handle them a whole lot better than the inept doctors anyway! Yeah, we were pretty pissed and we are, of course, coming back. After that, Jess and I went to the 7th floor and decided to just work our way down. On the 7th, Ramona and Octavion are in the same room. Ramona is about 1 ½, but she’s from an orphanage, so she’s really behind. She doesn’t talk and she can’t even sit up and she just does some pretty weird things, but she has this gorgeous head of curly brown hair and she’s hilaaaarious to watch. She was with Melissa and I was with Octavion. Octavion is just a couple months old and his problem is that he has a veeery enlarged testicle. Like, this thing is the size of a baseball and you can feel it through the diaper. You can hold him, but he’s connected to a catheter and you can’t go very far. Anyway, he was pretty quiet and fell asleep after a while and a lot of the time Melissa and I were just laughing our heads off at Ramona and taking pictures of all her facial expressions. After a while I realized that it was almost time to go and I should probably go see Ionella. So I went down there and her mom was there! It wasn’t awkward at all though, because her mom was super nice (though reeeally old) and seemed to be just grateful that I play with her kid. Apparently Ionella is going into surgery tomorrow morning and Ana-Maria, the 14 year old in the room is leaving around 1, so I’m going to try to go there as soon as I can. After the hospital I walked with Shannon, Melissa and Bri to Tirgu Cucu, got a gogosh, went to Hala and tried to go to the bread stand. I had really bad luck in the food department though, because Hala had like nothing that I was looking for. No milk, no yogurt, no vitalis, no animal crackers and no peanut butter! It was seriously so weird! I don’t know what’s happening to Hala! Those are kind of important things! And then I tried to go to the bread stand, but it was closed! When I got home I just got on the computer. Sometime during the day I made some naaaasty lasagna, which I threw away (note to self, stop giving Romanian TV dinners a chance!). While I was writing this journal, Shannon had a little bit of a breakdown, and for a very good reason. She lost her wallet in Paris and has had to borrow money from me for like everything ever since. She really hates being dependent on others for money and it’s this huge stress. Well, she’s been trying to find ways to get access to her money ever since, because she can’t just have the bank send new cards to her in Romania, since they’ll just never get here. So she came up with this plan to get the bank to send the cards to one of the Professors who is visiting us here in a few days and he was just going to bring it with him. Well, it takes a week to have it get there, so she gave herself two weeks and she just found out that they just plain never got the order through, so now she’s screwed and it sucks because she was so excited to finally have her cards and not having to worry about it and now she’s realizing that she’s actually going to have to borrow money for the entire rest of the semester (including Italy). Well, that’s the day.

Tuesday, November 7, 2006

2006-11-26T14:15:00.000+02:00

Ok, I have an outline for this in my journal, so I probably won't re-write it later, but I don't want to write a whole new entry just for the blog, so I'll just tell you my favorite part of the day. I went to Dacie by myself at night because Jenna was sick and I brought dress up clothes for the kids to play with. Well, they started putting them all on and then were having tons of fun and then one of the workers came in the room and saw and it made her soooo happy. She started laughing sooo hard! She'd pick up one of the kids and go hold them up for the worker in the kitchen to see and they'd laaaaugh and laaaaugh. Then she'd put one of the hats on herself and go show the worker and laugh. Then, she got an even bigger kick out of the fact that I tried on one of the dresses over my clothes and she grabbed me and dragged my over for the worker in the kitchen to laugh at. So I'm standing there in this frilly blue dress, arms clutched by on Romanian worker and another Romanian worker staring and laughing at me and i just stop and think , "wow, I love my life." Yeah, that's the story for the day.

Monday, November 6, 2006

2006-11-26T14:10:00.000+02:00

This morning I was soooo excited to get back to Dancu after not having been there for like a week and a half. Shannon apparently is having a hard time, because of a conversation she had with Megan about autism. She didn’t really tell me what they talked about but I gathered it was just one of those conversations where you realize how horrible the situation really is here and you feel like everything is depressing and you’re not helping enough and you’re like “why am I even here?” I totally understand and wish I could help. I like our relationship. It was good starting our normal schedule again and seeing all the things that either changed or stayed the same since we were last there. Like, Nicolai, the old man in the wheelchair is back and didn’t die after all and the poor little dog at Dancu is looking better and Bullet is still there, etc. When we got in the apartment it was so happy to see Mihai sitting in the chair smiling over at us. And once we actually walked in the living room my heart just skipped a beat when I saw Petrica sitting there and I just showered him with hugs and kisses and was soooo happy at how happy he was to see me and he was totally responding to me and I could just tell, like I KNEW that he knew me and loved me and was excited to see me. I mean, all day today I would catch him staring at me and he’d smile as soon as I talked to him – I didn’t even have to touch him. And he’d always lean onto me and grab me when I sat next to him, like, every time. He didn’t do that when we first came. Really. Yeah, it made my day. I love that boy. I keep thinking maybe I’m just lying to myself and I don’t really love him as much as I say I do and it’s just because I want to have a connection with him, but I keep proving myself wrong. Seriously, I really do just love him that much. I’d adopt him if I could. Then every day I’d have someone who could cheer me up. Shannon was having a hard day though. Iuliana totally regressed while we were gone and she wasn’t doing all the great stuff that we’d gotten her to do by the time we left and all that. I mean, this is how I look at it. It’s good in that I feel like at least this way we can be happy that we actually did make that much progress, and that it’s possible for us to do it again. But it still sucks that we lost it and she regressed. Maybe now that we know what we’re doing and maybe since she was juuuust there, she’ll be able to regain the progress faster. Anyway, also, she just couldn’t connect with Mihai the way she usually does, which was upsetting, especially since I was actually connecting with him quite well. Part of the problem was that they moved around the furniture, which makes it even harder to not watch the TV now. Suck. Corrina and some other lady were working at Dancu today and I don’t like either one. They, again, said the kids were sick and wouldn’t let them be on the floor. I really really really hate that and it makes me so mad. They didn’t feed us and they wouldn’t let us feed the kids either. At the hospital, I started on the 6th floor with a kid named Denisa, who is from Donald Duck. She’s a doll. She’s really cute and smiles a lot and eats well! After a little while, Shannon came in and took over, and I wandered around and looked for kids with Melissa. Eventually we discovered that right now, the hospital looks like this. Octavion on the 7th, Denisa on the 6th, no 5th, no 4th, Iulia, Daniel and some other little boy who’s like 4 and wouldn’t tell Megan his name on the 3rd, Ionella on the 2nd and Andreia, Ionut, and 3 other new babies on the 1st. Eleven kids. Anyway, so I ended up with Ionella on the 2nd floor, who I’d never met before and who was just preeeecious. She six and gorgeous. When Melissa and I first got there, we asked the nurse about the kids and she went over to her room to show us and she wasn’t there. So she asked one of the other people where she was and went to go get her. I just remember turning and seeing the nurse lead her by the hand down the hall toward me and she just had the bigger grin on her face. As soon as she got to me she just gave me the biggest hug and then she took my hand and led me to her bed and the whole time she never took her eyes off of mine and never stopped smiling. She just stared up at me the whole time and didn’t say anything. Finally, we started playing with my bubbles for a while, which she really enjoyed. Then we played for a while with my top and she would get sooo excited when it would light up (because it does so only so often) and she’d yell “lumina!” Then, after a while we started playing with my magnetic board thing that you draw on. I’d tell her something to draw and she’d try and draw it. Eventually, we started doing it with the other girls in the room too. There were two really nice teenage girls, a grandma with a little girl and a mom with a little girl. The two teenage girls would tell her to draw things and would draw things themselves too. They would also talk to me a lot and try and teach me things. I really liked them. One of the girls, Ana Maria, even wrote me a really cute note that said “Te Iubesc!” on it. At the end I got out my camera and was taking pictures of Ionella and of Ana Maria and eventually everyone in the room because I’d say “cine?” and Ionella would tell me whose picture she wanted me to take and I’d ask them if it was ok and show it to them afterward. I love getting good pictures! I left a little late, because I don’t know where my watch is and just had to keep asking. On the way home, Shannon and I stopped by the corner store, got a gogos and got some really yummy bread. I was supposed to have internet time when I got home, but unfortunately the internet wasn’t working, so I just ate and got on my computer instead. I like this whole scheduled computer time thing, because I get so much more done! FHE was pretty cool. We heart attacked the president’s door and made him cookies. I had a good long talk with Elder Hackett too. I love that kid. I hope we hang out when we’re back in Provo. Yay for Utah guys – they’re so much nicer.

Sunday, November 5, 2006

2006-11-26T14:01:00.000+02:00

Today is my half birthday. This morning I woke up at like 8:45 and found that everyone was planning on going to Choir at 9. Well, luckily I’d taken a shower the night before, so I just got ready really fast and was able to go with them because they were running a little late. I don’t really want to be a part of choir, but I guess I don’t really have a choice, so I’ll just make the best of it. It was kind of entertaining too, because Hackett was the only guy, so when it was the men only verse he did a solo. Also, I realized that it’s oh so difficult to sing well when you can’t hear out of your ear because A.) you can’t hear yourself to see if your pitch is right and if you’re singing loud enough and B.) you can’t hear anyone else to gauge it by them. Conducting wasn’t so easy either. Fast and testimony meeting was pretty good because I understood a lot of it. I always feel really guilty for not bearing my testimony and I want to because I feel like I have a lot to say, but I have a hard enough time getting across what I mean to say when I do it in English and I can’t even do that because then I feel guilty for not doing it in Romanian. Anyway, I know I need to just do it anyway and it’s a weakness of mine that I need to improve on and so I am determined to do it next fast and testimony meeting whether I’m prepared or not; especially since it’ll be my last one! Sad! Ok, so we’ve already been here for more than half the total time and I’m starting to think more and more and how little time we have left even though it feels like we just got here. I can tell already that I’m going to be soooo sad when I leave. I really don’t know how I’m going to be able to handle it. I mean, chances are I won’t see these people ever again. How do you do that? It’s not like Provo, where you leave and come back a few months later. I don’t think I’ve really ever had to deal with not ever seeing someone I love again or not ever going somewhere I love again. Like, my Grandpa died and I loved him and don’t get to see him til I die, but it wasn’t all that hard, because he gradually got sick and gradually became less and less like himself and so it was like I was able to ease out of having him. I just keep thinking about how I’ve become so comfortable here and it’s become a part of me and all of a sudden I’m just going to have to pick up and leave and probably never come back. I’ll never know what happens to my kids and I’ll probably forget what they were like and that just kills me. I don’t even know where to begin to come to terms with it and I feel the need to have this dual life where I can be a part of life here while still being a part of life in the states, but that desire is impossible. My only consolation right now is the hope that when I die I will be able to remember all and be able to see these people again and have joy it that. Ok, so coming back from the tangent, during sacrament meeting I would write in my notebook during testimonies that I couldn’t understand and I was looking at my list of Romanian names and decided this. When I have kids I want to give all of my children Romanian middle names. If I can convince my husband to give them Romanian first names I will, but I’m happy with just the middle names too. And in a world where I have all the power, I’d like to have 5 kids. The first would be a boy with the middle name of Petrica, after Petrica at Dancu. The second would be a girl with the middle name of Iulia after both Iulia at the hospital and Iuliana at Dancu. The third would be Mihai after the Mihai’s at Dancu, Dacie and the hospital and after the poet Mihai Eminescu. The fourth would have the middle name of Petru after Alin at the hospital who I always thought of as Petru and just because I like the name. The fifth would be a girl with the middle name of Catalina after both Catalin and Catalina at the Dacie apts and after Catalin in the branch. Anyway, after Sacrament meeting was Sunday school, which was good, but which was really hard to sit through and pay attention to. Then Relief Society was really good because all the sisters talked about their conversion stories and it was so good to hear about and really interesting. After church, I was in charge of making sloppy joes, but they were a little off, because I had to change some of the ingredients and also because I put too much chili pepper in. Before everyone came over for dinner, Holly came over for a Scala meeting where we talked about internet time and blocked it all out so that everyone is just assigned certain hours for each computer. I hope it’ll be a good thing. I have hope that it will be. Dinner went well and the meeting was good. We talked a lot about our schedule for the next few weeks and I realized how close the end is and that we’re getting our closure assignment in like 2 weeks. I don’t like it! Also, the professors are coming in like a week, we may take a trip to Bacau and we might go to Brasov. I’m so conflicted because I love the trips, but I cringe at taking any more time away from being at the orphanage and hospital. Partly because I’m worried about hours, but mostly because I really just worry about the kids and not being able to spend enough time with them. I wonder what kids are at the hospital. I cannot wait to go back tomorrow. It’s funny, because on one hand, I am so afraid of leaving here and I can tell that it’ll create this huge hole in my heart and I’ll be so emotional about it and it will deeply affect me. But on the other hand, there are things about going home that I am excited for too. Like, I will be so excited to eat the food that I’ve missed and just to be in the familiar culture and speak English with everyone. I’ve missed the Provo lifestyle and the classes and the resources and all that normalcy. But when I talk about California and Utah being normal, it’s funny because now Romania is normal too. Like, when we came back from Budapest to Romania I felt like I was going home where things are familiar. Sad day. K, so after the meeting, Brother and Sora Wright came over to home teach us. It was good and I love them to death, but there were soooo many awkward silences. After they left I had a big scare because my entire Romania folder had disappeared. I was really worried for a while and asked the girls about it and eventually Megan found it in my My Music folder. I have nooo idea why it was there and am kind of wondering, but I’m just glad it’s back. Also, since I’ve been writing this journal, all of us Scala girls have had quite a fun time bonding. We’ve been reminiscing and laughing our heads off. Aaaaah Romania.

Skiiiipping blogs :-)

2006-11-26T13:41:00.000+02:00

So, I'm going to be skipping some blogs right now because I don't those days written in my journal and then I will go back later and add them in as I write them. Just letting you know so you don't think you're crazy when you can't find them. Ok I love you buh bye!

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

2006-11-24T07:31:00.002+02:00

Halloween in Budapest! What a great day! In the morning, Jenna and I decided to head off together and meet up with the other girls later. We both were looking to get things at the Moldova Mall, so we headed there first. I wanted to find a coat because I’d seen a lot of really cute ones when we’d been there the other day and we both needed to find bathing suits because neither of us had brought ours to Budapest and we wanted to go to the baths. So first we wandered around looking for a coat and though I found some that looked nice, they were all way too expensive. There was another part of the mall that I’d never been to, so we decided to go try over there. On the way we found a dip ‘n dots shop, which made us way happy. I loved the mall! That sounds weird, but it was so fun and so nice and I’d been starved of that kind of thing in Romania. I felt at one point like I would be happy just spending my entire vacation right there in that mall. That may sounds funny, and yeah, I’d probably change my mind after a little while, but no judging til you’ve been to Romania! Well, next we looked for a bathing suit. We found one shop with some, but we didn’t like any of the ones that were the right size. The only other thing was, well, a lingerie store, so we were like, “well, hmm, might as well try it!” They actually had a lot of really cute stuff that wasn’t really lingerie, like different tank tops and underwear that we reasoned we could turn into a makeshift swimming suit. So we went to town! We laughed so hard at the fact that we were in this lingerie store trying stuff on and we were so excited to tell everyone about it. The greatest thing about the whole thing was that Jenna actually did buy lingerie. Like, she bought a “swimsuit,” but she actually found some lingerie she liked and bought that too! Well, after the mall, we wanted to go shopping, so we took the metro and tried to find the “Great Market Hall.” We didn’t know exactly where it was, but we knew the metro stop, so we got to the metro stop and there ended up being like 10 different exits you could take. We had no clue, so we just took one and it took us to the middle of this huge intersection. We couldn’t see any street signs, so we had to find someone and ask them. We couldn’t get to it from where we were, so we had to go back down and guess at a different exit. We were still on the wrong side of the street, but that was good enough, so we walked down that way. The building itself was just goooorgeous with all these beautiful mosaics all over it. And across the street, where we were standing was this pretty little park and these cute apartment buildings that reminded me of Paris. To make it just that much prettier, the Danube was right there. The street we had to cross to get to the Great Market Hall connected to a beautiful blue bridge. The whole scene was just breathtaking. The inside of the building was just about as pretty as the outside, however, we had a moment of concern because all we could see was food! I mean, food is great, but we wanted to get traditional Hungarian souvenirs, not food. Fortunately Jenna noticed there was more upstairs and that’s where our souvenirs ended up being. There were a lot of good souvenirs, but it was a little disappointing, because not only did all the booths have about the same stuff as all the other booths, but many of the souvenirs were the exact same ones we saw at the Sfanta Parasceva festival! Never have I felt like more of a tourist. Also, I hate salespeople. When they come and talk to me and try to pressure me, I almost always just walk away because it bothers me so much. And my biggest pet peeve is when they keep showing you things and you’re just thinking, “um, thanks but I really can look through these myself, I’m a big girl.” When we were nearing the end of the time we had left, I was looking at something and had just asked the lady how much they were, when one of the guys that works there was like, “for you, free.” Then he proceeded to tell me I was beautiful and basically propose to me. We get this a lot. But at least this guy wasn’t as bad as most of them and he was like a sicko and was actually kind of funny, so we talked to him for a few minutes, then ran off to go find Margaret Island and meet the others. We left early to give ourselves extra time because we didn’t exactly know where it was. It turned out to be a loooot harder than we thought it would be. First, we asked this really nice pretty young lady, who spoke perfect English and she told us to get on this tram that she was taking across the Danube and then once we got across she told us to take this other tram for a while and then take this bus and then walk. Well, as we were taking these trams and busses, we were overwhelmed with how beautiful Budapest is. How can I explain the feeling of standing up on a crowded tram, pressed up against the window, staring wide eyed out across the Danube onto Buda and Pest. We switched trams right on the other side of the bridge and took that tram along the river until the line completely ended. It ended directly across from the beautiful Budapest Parliament Building, which reminded me of the Florentine Duomo. There we waited from a bus and in the meantime, took pictures. At one point, I was taking a picture of Jenna and this biker zoomed by and said “sorry!” We were so impressed that not only was he nice enough to say sorry, but he had the foresight to see that we were taking pictures and in that split second was also able to determine that we were probably English speakers and was able to quickly switch languages and say “sorry.” Seriously, the Budapestians are just that cool. Anyway, so we got on the bus, but we weren’t sure how far to take it, so we just took it to just past this bridge that we thought went to Margaret Island and then walked back to the bridge and got to Margaret Island. By this time, we were like 20 minutes late J. The island was gorgeous. First we found the 3 person bicycle things because that’s where we were supposed to meet everyone. They look like the shape of a golf cart. There’s 3 seats going horizontal like a car, not vertical like a bike. The two side spots have pedals and the middle person doesn’t. Then there’s a basket along the front for purses and such with just a chain holding everything in. No one was still there, so Jenna and I rented one for a half an hour, just so we could find them. After about 15 minutes we found them all and by that time everyone wanted to go home except for Marina, Shannon and I, which I thought was craaaazy. It was only like 3:30! So, the rest of the girls took all the bikes back except ours and we explored the island together. It was sooo much fun. The island is gorgeous and the epitome of fall in all its splendor. There were gorgeous trees everywhere overlaying all the paths and lots of joggers and bicyclists, which was so refreshing to see – Romanians don’t exercise. As we were biking along we heard this music seemingly coming from this gazebo. It was like, nymph music (you know, flutes and such) and it seemed so enchanting so we decided to go over and check it out. By the time we got our bike in there, though, it had stopped, so we just took pictures at the gazebo. Then, we biked some more and found a mini waterfall and then a little Japanese garden. At the garden we took all kinds of silly pictures – in fact we took silly pictures the whole rest of the night. After that we biked back to the bike place via this gorgeous tree lined path that was beyond words. By the time we turned the bikes in (around 4:30) it was almost totally dark. Before it turned dark we found this fountain surrounded by mounds and mounds of dead leaves and had a leaf fight. Then, we walked over and found a jogging path along the river and look out at the city. After a while we turned back toward the rest of the island. And as we were crossing through to get to a real path we found this random old abandoned house. It was all boarded up and old fashioned looking and just randomly there all by itself and really creepy. Shannon said it reminded her of a poem, which she then proceeded to recite for us. It was called “The Listeners” and was waaaaay creepy. Perfect for Halloween. While she was telling the poem we were walking along this tree lined path. By this time it was totally dark and we couldn’t see very far ahead of us, especially because of the trees. There were no people and we could hear things rustling in the trees and stuff. We were walking arm in arm and just kept telling ghost stories. Shannon was all into it, Marina was all paranoid and scared and I was just content and loving it. As we walked along the path was ran across the ruins and scampered around and played and tried to scare each other, with the Halloween moon overhead. Then, we found Shannon lying on her back on the concrete of one of the abandoned rooms, looking up at the stars (none of the rooms had roofs anymore). She was “savoring the moment” as she calls it and we decided to join her too. So we all lay down side by side arm in arm and looked at the starts. At one point, we all screamed, because I kid you not, a bat flew over us. How cool is that? We’re lying on our backs, looking up at the stars in this old abandoned ruin on this island in Budapest, on Halloween and a bat just happens to fly overhead. I love my life. Well, we took that as our sign to continue on and we headed for the island’s hotel where we were going to try to use the Turkish baths. I was really hungry though, so before we went in I tried to find somewhere to eat. They had a restaurant, but it wasn’t going to open for another few minutes, so I just got a croissant from the bar instead. Unfortunately the baths were too expensive and the massages were all booked. I was SO bummed. I had been looking forward to it more than anything the last few days and had been thinking about it non stop all day. I felt I just needed something utterly relaxing like that. Plus, I’ve always wanted to get a massage and I thought I finally was going to! So, when we found out we couldn’t go I was devastated. The girls tried to cheer me up, but it was no use. You know when the thing you’d really been wanting to do doesn’t work out and you just have the wind all knocked out of your sails? That was me. I wanted to be happy because it’d been such a good day and I didn’t want to ruin it, but I just couldn’t quite get myself to cheer up. The girls pointed out that at least now we could go to the restaurant and I said ok, but I wasn’t really feeling it. They said it would be fun because it was all fancy, but I just wasn’t excited. We walked over to it and then started rethinking it. I really wanted to come up with something that would make me happy, so finally I came up with a plan! I was going to take them to the Gellert hotel, a really nice hotel that I’d seen earlier at the place where we switched trams right after crossing the river. We were going to have dessert there (as I figured they’d have a very nice restaurant), but I wasn’t going to tell them where they were going and was just going to let it be a surprise. So, first we took the bus to the bridge at the end of Margaret island, and when we got off we were exposed to one of the most spectacular views that I’ve ever seen in my life. We’re standing there on this bridge in the middle of the Danube in the dark of night and there were just lights everywhere, from one bank to another. Amongst the lights were several recognizable landmarks, including the parliament building, the citadel, Budapest castle and all the other bridges among them. I don’t know how to explain it, but it was perfect and I want to find a good panoramic picture online of it sometime. So, we walked to the end of the bridge, where we caught a bus and then a tram, back exactly the way Jenna and I had come and we arrived right in front of the Gellert hotel and I pointed to it and said “that’s where we’re going to have dessert.” It was such a fun moment and they were so incredulous and Shannon was just like, “you first.” I love being adventurous and just doing something like that because, well, I can! I mean, most people are bound by all these rules in their head that say that just because people don’t uuuusually do something, that means you can’t do it. That has never existed for me. I mean, no, I won’t do anything, there are plenty of things I choose not to do, but never if the only reason is just that…well…no one usually does! That’s a bad reason in my book. So, we walk in and the doorman looks us up and down and asks “can I help you?” in a tone that suggests that he has assumed that we are lost. I reply with “yes you can, do you have a restaurant?” He points upstairs and so we continue on. It’s all pretty deserted and we walk up to the maitre dei and have a very similar conversation – “can I help you?” “yes, I’d loooove to have some food.” “right this way.” He was very nice and you could tell just by his face that he thought it was all very amusing and that there would be no hard in humoring us. Several gypsy musicians walked by during our interchange and tipped their hats to us. The maiter dei called over a waiter, who walked us elegantly to our seats and lit our candle, all of it very proper. The restaurant was amaaazing. It reminded me of the dining room in the titanic. It was almost entirely empty, with the only other group being two women at one table chatting. Marina was looking hilarious doing her best to look proper, Shannon was just quietly appalled and looking at me like, “oh my gosh and can’t believe you got us in here!” and I was just grinning from ear to ear. We were all trying hard to keep our elbows off the table. Well, we decided on one dessert each and ordered. The desserts were actually not too expensive! More like ordering a dessert at Denny’s, because the currency conversion was in our favor. We waited a while and basically just talked about how frickin amazing it all was and then they brought us our dishes…wow. They were the kind of desserts where you just cringe to take the first bite because they’re so pretty and you’re ruining it! Mine had these three sections. They met at the middle and fanned out into 3 spokes. The first spoke had some cottage cheese mixture in it, the second had apple, and the third cranberry. In the middle there were some very thin slices of apple in a sort of a fan construction and then in between the 3 spokes was this amazingly good creamy sauce with cinnamon sprinkled on top. I don’t remember any of the other details, but sufficeth to say it took all my will power and propriety not to just whip out my camera, tourist style, and snap a photo. Here’s the hotel’s website: http://www.danubiushotels.com/en/budapest-hotels/danubius-hotel-gellert-budapest . Anyway, so while we were eating our dessert the gypsy walk walks by with their instruments, sets up and begins to serenade us. It was awesome! And, to top it all off, the second song they played was none other than the song that the hotel restaurant’s band plays in “Somewhere in Time” when he gets kicked out of the hotel restaurant for not being properly dressed! It was classic! We were like, yeah, thanks guys, we know. Anyway, as we were paying the bill and speaking with the maitre dei, we said something like, “thanks for humoring us!” And he was like, “you know you can always pay for the meal by helping in the kitchen!” It was sooo funny – I liked that guy. So, the entire time we were in the restaurant we were trying our best to respect the atmosphere (despite the fact that our backpacks and clothing had already offended the heck out of it), so we hadn’t laughed at all. You better believe that as we were walking down the stairs to leave and down the hall to leave we were about to burst and as soon as we got outside, we just walked a little and turned around and stared up at the big imposing building and laughed our heads off! Good moment. Well, I figured a good properly juxtaposing activity for directly after that would be going to Burger King (after all, we really were hungry and had only had dessert), so I directly them on another tram and we crossed the bridge and ate at the Burger King directly across from the Great Market Hall. It was perfect. As soon as we walked inside Shannon looked at the menu and exclaimed “they have chili cheeeeese nuggets!?!” in an amazingly improper voice and Marina and I looked at her and laughed and were like, “and we’re back in the real world!” So, we ate and used Mcdonald’s internet (yes, it’s true) and then hopped on the subway for Moskva Ter, utterly happy. We caught the bus and I got a little bummed because Shannon and I had both been thinking of how we wanted to tell everyone about the day and we couldn’t both tell it the way we wanted and keep the other one satisfied and it was dumb, but I wasn’t mad at all or anything, it just kind of killed the mood (you would’ve had to have been there). So, on the walk to the apartment from the bus stop, Shannon was trying to cheer me up and she saw this big mound of leaves, perfect for jumping in. At first I was hesitant, but I warmed up to it and after no time, we were all trying out all our different dives into the leaves. We also ended up having a picture fest (for your amusement) and had a great time doing it. Thus, we still ended the night completely content!

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

2006-11-24T07:31:00.001+02:00

Monday, October 30, 2006

2006-11-24T07:31:00.000+02:00

So, I didn’t really sleep on the sleeper car, but it was better than nothing. Then, after the sun came up, I got curious and decided to go look outside and see what the Hungarian countryside looks like and take some pictures. I looks kind of similar to the Romanian countryside, but there’s a definite different, both in the landscape and that affected by people. I can’t really explain how the countryside landscape is different, but it is. And as far as the rest, well, it’s much cleaner and neater. Im place! Unfortunately, possibly inspired by the fact that I was outside, the nice train man took away our blankets and bedding and made everyone get up, thus relinquishing his “nice” title. We still had a few hours left to go, so we all just ate breakfast, looked over the itinerary and talked. And I took pictures. When we got to Budapest, we wandered around to try and find where we were supposed to be and waited for a while until we figured out how to get to our accommodation. While we were waiting, these 2 really nice, but really insistent taxi drivers came up and tried to convince us to have them drive us. Finally we got them to go away, because we still didn’t know what we were doing. Well, finally we figured it out and we start walking outside, when we realize we need some kind of transportation. Right as someone asks “where can we find a taxi driver,” I look up and see those two drivers like standing RIGHT behind us. They’d just walked up and started listening to our conversation! So I’m like, “right there!” and everyone turns around and sees them. Well, they gave us a decent deal, so we went with them. The drive to our apartment was beautiful and I saw right away how gorgeous of a city Budapest is. It reminded me of a mix of Galway and Edinburgh. Our apartment was really great. It’s called Apartment Buda and it’s supposed to fit 9 people but it fit our 10 beautifully. Only one person had to share a bed and the bed was a double. Had 1 bedroom with 3 people (Shannon, Jenna and Holly), 1 with 2 (Abbi and I) and then room for 5 in the living room (Bri, Megan, Melissa, Jessica and Marina). It also had a full kitchen, a room with a toilet and a room with a shower and sink. After we got our stuff together and talked a little about the plans for the day, we walked down the street a little to the bus stop and caught a bus to Moskva Ter. When we were crossing the street to get to the bus stop some of the girls, being used to Romania, just started crossing the street in front of the cars even though the light was red! The cars had to slam on their breaks and the girls, startled, ran across the street. Then Holly, with a look of utter horror yelled “We’re NOT in Romaaania!!!!” Yeah, it was hilaaarious. So we caught the bus and walked down the street a little to Mammoth Mall, to get some lunch. It was niiiice. It looked pretty much the same as a mall in SoCal. I felt like I was in the Brea Mall! A few of us ate at this super nice restaurant where it’s like a la carte and you just pick out whatever you want from the dishes in front of you. Basically set up like Panda Express or something, but the food was a lot higher quality and there was more of it. Abbi and I shared because we didn’t know what a lot of it was and we didn’t want to get screwed. We got this Broccoli casserole that looked amazing, but was nasty, some pretty good chicken, an amaaazing, meat, spice, dunno patty thing, and a breaded chicken thing that was cold and pretty bad. I kind of wanted some dessert, so after that Marina and I shared this pudding, chocolate, raisin…thing, which was ok. After that we all went over to Moskva Ter and tried to figure out what to do and I got really frustrated because I wanted to just go out and do as much as possible, and basically, well, do the itinerary. No one else wanted to though. One group wanted to just explore the city, one group wanted to go home, and Marina just kept going back and forth which really got on my nerves, because I couldn’t make a decision myself because she kept changing her mind. Well, finally Marina and I were going to go to the grocery store with the girls who were going home, then just give them our groceries. I was really mad at her for a while, but we worked it out. Well, we went shopping and were pleasantly surprised with a lot of the things we found, like strawberry yogurt vitalis, REGULAR milk, hamburger buns, and good spaghetti sauce. Yeah, that was good. Afterward though, Marina didn’t do what she said she’d do and made things hard for me again and we ended up just going home for what she said would be only like an hour. The girls wanted to take naps, and Marina and Shannon promised they wouldn’t sleep long and we could go do stuff. Well, we all took naps and I woke up quite a while later to find that it was like 9 and everyone was still asleep. I got soooooo frustrated and was mad as ever and just sat in my bed and didn’t know what to do. Because I can’t stand it when I feel like something incredibly valuable is just passing me by and there’s nothing I can do about it because it just depends on others. And I wouldn’t have been so mad except that they told me one thing and then did another. If they’d just told me that in the first place I could have gone with the other group. Well, Abbi woke up and kind of tried to comfort me and kind of just yelled at me, which really didn’t help. Then, she went and woke up Shannon who was really sorry and apologized because she’d promised to get up earlier and go do stuff with me. Well, eventually Marina, Shannon and I got out. I was still kind of bummed and we were at Moskva Ter, walking up these steps so we could get to this street that we were going to take up to castle Hill, when, let’s just say Shannon and I got in a little argument. We both had some amazing miscommunication and it was great, because we ended up being not upset that we quarreled, but amazingly happy that we worked it out! See, the thing is, that due to the layers of miscommunication it was one of those thing that you have to be really mature to get to the bottom of. If we weren’t mature about it we would’ve just ended it in a shouting match. Well, to make a long story short, we ended up at the McDonalds right by Moskva Ter and Shannon bought me a muffin and the three of us found a spot on the 2nd floor where we could just talk. It helped so much and by the end we had all of our stories understood and were better friends than ever again. Well, we were doing all of this talking on a couch (yes, McDonalds had couches). I was in the middle and Marina was laying down with her head on my lap. While we were in this position, an Egyptian man in a brown suit, who looked to be in his 40s walked up to Marina. Apparently she’d talked to him a little downstairs while we were ordering and she’d told him she was Canadian. Well, He walks up and she’s looking up at him from the couch and he asks how long she will be here and offers to pay to change her plane ticket to have her stay longer and offers to pay for her to go to Egypt and basically, as we saw it, proposed that she come back and be the gem of his harem J. I was very impressed, because she didn’t laugh the whole time and just casually refused him. Then, he suavely handed her his business card and urged her to think about it and contact him and then he walked away. We – laughed – so – hard. Right after he walked away, my jaw just dropped and I was staring with my eyes wide at the business hard that she was just holding, watching him walk away and I just grabbed it and stared at it. Shannon said it was hilarious. We couldn’t believe that if she’d said yes she could have actually just walked away with this rich Egyptian and, as we decided, become part of his harem! Shannon thought it was all so funny that we replayed the whole situation and took pictures of it all. Oh, and ps, from his card we learned that his name was Solomon and he was a member of the board on a trade company. Well, after quite the break, we finished talking and then decided to aaaactually go out on the town. We walked back to where I broke down, had a little laugh and then continued on up the hill. We knew we’d gotten to the entrance to Castle Hill when we came to a stone archway that cars would pass through and with pedestrian gates on the sides. Right as we reached the entrance we saw the most absurd thing. There were these 5 guys and they were ALL pushing this little tiny cart that had this little baby tree on it. I was thinking “I’m pretty sure I could push that….just me.” We tried really hard to get a good picture, because we were going to entitle it “how many Hungarians does it take to push a tree?” But, unfortunately they all turned out blurry or too dark. Well, first we explored the wall that made up the entrance. You could take some steps to the top where there was a nice little lookout to the city. It was so much nicer than all the beautiful city views we’ve experienced on our travels because it was just us in the dark night on this deserted ancient wall – no other tourists. Then, Shannon made me take pictures of her as she climbed over the wall to stand on this ledge beneath. Yeah, it was slightly nerve racking. When we were done with the wall we walked down the beautiful deserted cobblestone streets with beautiful houses on all sides and romantic streetlamps. We found a big statue with some steps around it for sitting on right in front of a beautiful cathedral. Shannon and Marina danced on the steps and I took a video of them when they weren’t looking. Then we tried really hard to get a picture of the three of us on the steps by putting the camera on a bunch of different things and taking a timed picture, but they were all pretty crappy. About that time we started wondering when the busses would stop running and we figured we should probably get going. On the way back though, we stopped back at the wall again because I’d figured out a good night setting on my camera, but it still didn’t work too well. Such a good night, with so few good pictures! When we got to Moskva Ter we saw our bus, Bus 22 and since we didn’t know whether another one would come that night we ran as hard as we could and jumped on. While we still standing there breathing hard, have just flown on, we hear a voice say, “hello girls” and we look up and see Holly and Jenna just sitting there staring at us! It must have been such a surprise to see us just randomly fly into their bus. The two of them had just seen a movie at Mammoth Mall and were on their way home as well.

Sunday, October 29, 2006

2006-11-24T07:20:00.000+02:00

I don’t remember much about church, except that since we were all going to Budapest right afterward and the missionaries were going to have transfers while we were gone we were all exchanging numbers during class and saying goodbye afterward. We were especially worried that we would lose Child, Hackett, or one of the Soras. After church, we rushed home to finish getting everything all together and to catch a bite to eat before heading out the door. It was a pretty close call, and I would have been ready on time except that when I tried to turn my computer on to send my Systems Paper to Roberta it wouldn’t turn on! Yeah, that sucked. Anyway, we got out the door and took taxis to the station and waited, and waited, and waited for Podul. They’re almost always later than us because there are a few on-time Nazis in our apt. Anyway, so they finally got there and we hurried over to our platform and waited. We weren’t quite sure what the deal was because there was already a train there and it wasn’t ours and that didn’t makes sense. Luckily, we were going to meet up with Mihai to say bye before leaving and so Holly called him and he knew where we were supposed to be. He helped us on the train and we were off. To begin with I was going to be in a car with Jenna and other Romanians. But, I went in the car with everyone else for a little while and Abbi decided she wanted to trade with me. We had a lot of fun, interesting conversations (how to make fart noises, interesting fact like that you only breath out of one nostril at a time, feminine issues, and, of course, awkward questions that you almost never want to ask people but that you really want to know). Interspersed with that were small bouts of trying to sleep and trying to read. In the middle of the night we got to Cluj, where we hung out in the train station (and I peed in my first hole in the ground). Dave and Rebecca were there because they’d caught our same train, so we saw them too, although we only talked to Rebecca because Dave wasn’t talking to us. After 2 hours we got back on another train, this one Hungarian and much nicer. This was my first sleeper car experience and it was better than the other train, but not good. I mean, I don’t have much complaint about the accommodations, other than the expected fact that they were cramped and hard, but basically I just can’t sleep on trains. At least I was lying down though! And, um, I guess I passed the end of the day…

Saturday, October 28, 2006

2006-11-24T07:19:00.000+02:00

In the morning we had language lessons. Then, the rest of the day, basically, I just worked on my Systems Paper. I already had an outline, so by halfway through the day I’d done 4 pages worth. Then I took a break, did some stuff and then went to Institute. Wow, probably the most boring class I’ve ever been too. It was so hard to sit through, so awkward, and so long. Then, when we got back, Jessica and I switched off with the computer because we were both writing our papers and Shannon was on Melissa’s. While Jessica was on I cleaned the room and packed for Budapest and while I was on, she made a celebratory cake that each of us could have a little of whenever we finished our papers. I finished mine at like 11:30, but still stayed up til like 1 or 2. During that time I got more stuff done for Budapest and went over to pick up Megan from Podul. The only thing that got me through the day was the thought of relaxing in Budapest!

Friday, October 27, 2006

2006-11-24T07:07:00.001+02:00

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.

Friday, October 27, 2006

2006-11-24T07:07:00.000+02:00

Thursday, October 26, 2006

2006-11-23T08:32:00.000+02:00

Well, a few things happened on this day, but I only have an outline for it instead of a full on journal entry because I was behind and I'm too lazy to write one! Bye!

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

2006-11-23T08:28:00.000+02:00

Today was hard. But to begin with, Dancu was ok. I started working on Petrica’s leg muscles. I decided that I’m going to get him to stand as much as possible and get him to push back when I push on his legs so that his muscles grow. Every day, I’ll start with standing and get him to stand as long as I can. When he falls I’ll tickle him every time as positive reinforcement. Then I’ll let him rest and do it again 2 more times. After that I’ll let him rest for longer while I go play with someone else. Then I’ll come back and do the same thing just with pushing his legs. I’ll then repeat both activities as many time as I have the chance to in that day. Anyway, so I started doing that with Petrica. And the only other stuff I remember was that Costica was pretty fussy and that Anni was working. Also, at one point Shannon and I argued. Can’t remember what about though. Then at the hospital I started off with Baker Baby. His closed didn’t fit him, so I got out all clothes and a bunch of other things on the bed so that I’d have room to work, then this whole family came in and started telling me to get everything off the bed and I was trying my bed to do it as fast as I could, then they started telling me to pick up the baby and I couldn’t do both at the same time and everyone kept crowding me and it was really stressful and I hate it when the other moms tell me what to do. Then, I started trying to feed him his bottle and he hates eating, so he just wouldn’t eat. He’d start crying and everything too. Well, the nurse comes in to ask me if I’m done and I tried to explain to her that he would start crying and I was like “look” and tried to feed him, but then, of course, he wouldn’t cry, so I looked incompetent. Of course, after she left he definitely started crying again. By the time I got out of there I was sooo stressed and frustrated. Then, I tried going to the first floor, but either all the kids had people with them or the doctor wouldn’t let me because I ended up going to the 3rd floor with Iulia and Maria instead. Iulia was sleeping though, so at first I waited there and just read “Dracula.” After a while, though, I started feeling really useless, so I went in with Maria. She was sleeping too, though, so I just read the rest of the time. I walked to Tirgu Cucu with Melissa and Shannon and then just walked the rest of the way home myself. I stopped by the bread stand and got some good bread (being nice works reeeeally well) and then had some time at the apt before anyone came home. Unfortunately, however, yahoo pictures wasn’t working, so I just worked on other stuff on the computer. Then, I had to write my talk and systems paper still but Holly came over and everyone got really talkative and so I couldn’t concentrate and didn’t get much done. Then, I decided to take a shower because they always make me feel better and I was having a frustrating day and while I was in there, I lay down to just let the water pour on me and right as I got comfortable, the cold, smelly, brown washing machine water came flowing out and I jumped up and just broke down and started crying. When I got out of the shower I realized that all of my clothes were in the living room and so I went in there and started trying to tell the girls about my horrible experience and they just kept interrupting me to be like, “did you know you’re holding a bra” and “with how bad your day has been maybe your towel will fall” down and stuff like that and I just got really frustrated because I just wanted to say what I wanted to say and finally I was just like, “I just want to tell you my story!” and started crying. Well, they stopped and apparently I looked so pitiful that it was funny and Melissa started laughing so hard that she was crying and they like felt bad but thought it was funny and they said that I looked adorable, because, well, I do look awfully cute when I cry. Anyway, so I had a total breakdown and then went in to change and Megan walked in on me. Then the rest of the night was distracting as well, so at the end of the night I was kind of freaking out and was like, “I don’t know what to do because I didn’t get anything done and I’m tired and sick, but I have to write in my journal and do all these things and yeah.” Luckily, Holly was there and gave me some good advice on getting stuff done and I went to bed. *Sigh.*

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

2006-11-23T07:49:00.000+02:00

This morning Shannon and I were actually on time to Dancu. The day was alright, but really long. Iuliana was pretty good most of the time, Mihai was jealous and difficult to please again, Petrica was doing really well on standing again, but I’m frustrated because I don’t feel like I have a good system set up for him where it’ll be likely for him to make any progress and I’m not sure what to do about it and Costica was really good. He was crying at the very beginning, when we first got there, so I held him for a while and he laughed the whole time, so then I put him down again and he barely cried the whole rest of the day. We didn’t get to feed the kids, but Maria was working, so we definitely got nasty soup again. This time, we got soup, with soggy bread in it, liver and bread that was made into croutons. Shannon was fasting, so we poured her soup down the sink, then we threw the liver out the window to Bullet, who was really happy about it. Now, for the actually interesting part of Dancu. So, Shannon and I were at the other end of the room and I looked out the window and saw that there were like 10 people outside all staring in the same direction. I started walking over there and as I walked, more and more people came into view until I saw that it was a funeral, right outside the window! Yeah, there was a bunch of people gathered around a flatbed truck. On top of the truck there was a big setup, with funeral wreaths and the coffin and the dead woman laying on a decorated sheet outside of the coffin. Everything was kind of helter skelter and it looked as though they were still kind of setting it up as they went. I remember them carrying a big metal cross from one side of the truck to the other and just lying it down and there was a guy carrying around what looked like a big metal streetlamp without a base. Every once in a while everyone would cross themselves. We really wanted to go outside and see, but it just wasn’t possible. After leaving Dancu we went to the hospital. I started on the 6th floor with Baker Baby who was just so sweet. I even got him to smile a little bit. After a while, I went down to the first floor and spent some time with a little boy named Dennis. He’s the other kid who was in the room with Mihaela, only Mihaela isn’t there anymore. He has this glass box over his head with oxygen being pumped into it that makes him really hot, so he was sweating really bad. It made him really mad, so he was crying as hard as he could most of the time too. I tired to calm him down, but for a while everything just made him even more mad. Finally, he calmed down a little when I started rhythmically bouncing the bed. I’ve seen a lot of moms do it and I imagine it’s the next best thing to actually rocking them. He started crying again after a while though and then I switched with Shannon. Next I went in with Maria and Iulia. I’ve been pretty depressed because of Iulia lately because one of the nurses told Holly that she’ll never be off the oxygen tube. That just took away all of my hope for her and now I can’t bear to think about how she’s just going to lie there crying in that bed all day and get bed sore after bed sore and never have a boy fall in love with her good looks and get married. At this point, I can’t help but think she’d just be so much happier if she died. I know God has a plan though, so I’m going to just accept it. Shannon, Melissa and I had been planning on leaving at 3:40 to walk to Tirgu Cucu to go to Dacie, but I hadn’t found Jenna yet and I wasn’t sure how I was going to meet up with her, so I decided I’d leave Iulia at 3:30 in case that’s when Jenna tried to meet us. She wasn’t there, so I went over with Shannon for like the last 10 minutes and then started walking with Shannon, Melissa and Bri. Right as we left the hospital we met up with Holly, who told me Jenna was planning to go and who let me use her phone to call her. It was decided that she’d just meet me at Tirgu Cucu and I told her to bring Holly’s tea set to use with the kids. I was amazingly hungry though, so I grabbed a gogos, met her and we took the tram together. On the way there we talked about Podul and how they’re not getting along and about how Marina has issues and needs to figure out a lot of things but it’s such so that there’s not really any way to help her. I totally understood exactly what she meant about Marina. Dacie was pretty good. I love the kids. They’re great. I’m happy with Dacie if I’ve managed to keep them all fairly occupied and happy while I’m there and if none of them get hurt. Today they played a lot and with fairly little arguing with the tea set. I also had my hair done by Viorel and Georgiana. I also think I may have gotten Georgiana to warm up to me just a little bit more which is always good. I can’t quiiite figure her out though and really wish I knew the language, especially for her. I also got to spend some time with Costica. When the girls got home, Catalina had caught two ladybugs which she wanted me to hold. Then I asked the worker for something to put them in and I ended up just putting them in a cardboard prescription box. The ladybugs, of course, ended up perishing because they were being taken care of by 6 fairly dysfunctional 5 year olds. They got over the loss quickly. I love Down Syndrome kids. After they started eating, Jenna and I left and took the tram home, with 4 really annoying Romanian guys making fun of us and trying to talk to us the whole way. We managed to completely avoid them til the very end when they started tugging at Jenna’s bag of teacups. I also had to walk home alone because we weren’t with Melissa and Shannon, but it was ok. Once at home I worked a little on my systems paper, then Roberta called and I talked to her. Anyway, that’s it for tonight!

Monday, October 23, 2006

2006-11-23T07:46:00.000+02:00

Well, another Monday. It hasn’t been too bad actually. Dancu was definitely a mix of good and bad. Dada was working today, so that was good, because she’s nice and plays well with the kids and feeds us. Unfortunately, she thought that Mihai and Iulia were sick (even though we think it was really Petrica and Iulia), which means they weren’t allowed on the floor. That was bad, because Mihai was totally fine and really wanted to crawl and was being really motivated before we knew he was “sick” and then we just had to waste it all and put him on the couch. There were a lot of really good times though. Like, for example, Petrica was soooo sweet the whole day. All he wanted to do was cuddle and it continues to make me happy when he shows that he has affection for me. Also, he was being really good at standing today and would try to do it whenever I put him in a position to. Also, I found something that fascinated Iuliana. I brought a bowl from Scala and poured just a little bit of water in it, sat her on my lap and dipped her hand in it. When I dipped it in, she was really surprised and had a really quick intake of breath. I did it again and she did it again. Then I just held it in front of her and she started playing with it and moving her fingers all around in it and getting her face as close to it as she could and just exploring. I was really pleased with it and want to try to get her to experience new things like that more often. The only bad thing is that if you find something she likes that’s new to her she never wants to stop doing it, so it always causes a fit. Today we had to put her back in the blanket and swing her again so she wouldn’t throw a fit when we took the bowl away, then we had to very carefully ease her from doing the blanket thing to another toy before she was tantrum free. Iuliana was really tired most of the day, and unfortunately finally got animated toward the end causing her to throw a big fit when we left. And Mihai was unusually jealous and demanding. Shannon had kind of a bumbling day at Dancu too. First she pulled Iuliana’s hair on accident and she started crying. Then she dropped Mihai’s cube box on him and he bit his lip, which started bleeding and he started crying too. All of this made Shannon want to cry and she was like “I hate myself! I made them cry!” Nevertheless, still a pretty good day, just with ups and downs. At the hospital, I first went up to the 6th floor, but there were only 2 babies and Bri and Abbi had them. I checked the other wing and Mihai was gone! It’s always such a mixture of feelings when a child leaves. I mean, you’re happy that they aren’t at the hospital anymore, but that doesn’t make the fact that they were wrenched from you without warning any easier. Anyway, I came back to Bri and Abbi to see if they knew where the kids were, but Bri just switched with me instead, so it was Abbi with Marta and Me with Baker Baby (Carlos). We call him Baker Baby because he came from Donald Duck at the Orphanage and the first day we saw him he was wearing a big baker hat. Well, after a little while Melissa came in to tell us about all her mishaps today and while she was talking Baker Baby fell asleep. Then Melissa took over for Abbi and I went and showed Abbi where Iulia is on the 3rd floor. After that I headed down to see Ionut on the 1st floor. Jenna was already in there with Ionut, but Andreia, the new hydrocephaly baby didn’t have anyone with her, so I stayed with her. She wasn’t as big as Ionut and was pretty good, but she made so distressed sounding noises a few times and I just had no idea how to help her. After a little while, Bri came in and I switched with her and went in where Mihaela and Adrian are. Jess and Megan were in there, but Jess was ready to leave, so Megan stayed with Adrian who has a big plastic box covering his head while I played with Mihaela. Mihaela comes from Donald Duck too. She’s a really really petit 2 year old, who we think has Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and who we KNOW has really bad Attachment Disorder. When I first went in they warned me that she’d been bad and that she’d probably throws fits and would especially throw one when I left, but she didn’t! To begin with she wanted by backpack, but I wouldn’t let her have it and gave her some of my water instead. That occupied her for a while because she’d drink some, then try and screw the cap on, then repeat. She halfheartedly tried to take the bottle away from me to hold herself but didn’t throw a fit when I wouldn’t let her. Then I brought out this rubber ball thing that’s supposed to be blown up, but that just loses air after being blown up because I can’t find the stopper. This distracted her from the water. I wasn’t sure if she’d like it, cuz, well, it loses air, but she loved it! I’d blow it up for her, then she’d squeeze all the air out then give it back. Once she tried blowing it up herself, so when I went to blow it up myself again I had to put yucky hand sanitizer on the hole first so I wouldn’t get sick! Nasty! The things I do for these kids! Anyway, she was actually really sweet with me and would randomly kiss my arm and give me hugs and stuff (which is the attachment disorder really) and didn’t even get upset when I left! Shannon, however, didn’t have a good experience at the hospital, so she was kind of upset when I met her to leave. She explained this, I accepted it and left her to her ipod and we continued to feel much affection for each other. Our relationship is beginning to be fabulous J. After we got home I got straight on the computer and stayed on it til 5:45 when I had to shower because you just take the internet time when you can get it around here! After showering we all went to FHE. We played the “I have never” game, which was entertaining as. Melissa and I were the first to leave and we’ve been hoarding the computers til the rest get home ever since!

Sunday, October 22, 2006

2006-11-23T07:40:00.000+02:00

Well, I don’t think today was very eventful. I went to church with Megan because the other three girls had to go early to practice a song. It was nice because I was able to get some stuff done before we left in the morning and that always makes me feel sooo much better. Church was pretty uneventful. I sat next to Sora Maria (the Relief Society President one) and it was a little awkward, but also really good. Abbi was giving a talk and so she gave me an English version of it. I ended up not using it though, because Sora Maria used it to help her learn the language. She’d try to figure out where Abbi was and translate as much of it as she could and it was really good. It made me happy. About halfway through Sacrament meeting, Sora Doina and Patricia came in and sat next to me. It’s really sad because Doina and the kids are going to have to move to Constanta because Doina found a job there. It came up all of a sudden and we only found out on Friday and they’re leaving today. During Sunday School, which was taught by Sora Anton, Bri and I drew pictures of each other. They were hilarious. The picture I drew of her made her look like she’d been smoking for 40 years. Relief Society was taught by Sora Wright and was pretty good as well. Anyway, after church, we had a few hours before Sunday dinner @ 4, so I made some food and got as much done on the computers as I could. At 4 we went over to Podul and had Hawaiian haystacks for dinner. Our Sunday meeting was a little different because Holly wasn’t there. Apparently one of the nurses at the hospital wanted to be her friend, so she set up like a meeting with Holly and Abbi and the nurse and daughter and her friend. They were going to meet at Moldova Mall and then go to some park and see a family of bees. They were laughing cuz it all sounded so strange and they were like “we don’t know what that means…” Anyway, she wasn’t sure when they’d be back so she put Megan in charge of the meeting in case she couldn’t be there. All we really did was discuss next week, discuss Budapest and talk about funny things that have happened this week. It wasn’t too long. Shannon, Melissa and I were ready to go first, so we left and we’ve been getting stuff done ever since.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

2006-11-23T07:33:00.000+02:00

Yesterday was a fabulous day! It started off with Shannon and I going to the cemetery. On Friday, after we bonded and made up, she suggested we do something that would be rejuvenating and not stressful on Saturday so that I’d be able to de-stress. At first we were going to just take some tram wherever we wanted and explore the city, but then I had the idea of going to the cemetery. I love cemeteries and ever since we’d seen this cemetery I’d wanted to go to it. Shannon loves cemeteries so we decided that the perfect activity would be to just go to the cemetery and read. Well, we took a tram there and got there about 11 and just started wandering around. I love cemeteries because they’re so peaceful and beautiful. They have such mystery about them and they make you wonder about everything, especially the meaning of death and the meaning of each life. Not only does each person buried there have a story, but sometimes their death and what has happened since their death has it’s own story in and of itself. A cemetery is the kind of place where it’s so big and so packed with things to explore I always feel as if I could never exhaust what it has to offer. There are always so many pathways to go down and so much down each pathway. I also think that this particular cemetery may have been my favorite cemetery so far. To begin with, almost every person in the cemetery was one of the cute old men or old women that we always love to see, giving it a great atmosphere right off the bat. Also, I just love the Romanian way of setting up a cemetery. It wasn’t organized whatsoever, which graves facing all different directions, trees and flowers sprouting up anywhere and with more creative tombs than I have ever seen. I also love how often times the tombs would actually include pictures of the person there interred. And there’s just something about good old traditional crosses that makes it all seem so picturesque. There were quite a few fabulously unique things we saw or experienced there. One of the first was turning around to see a large grave with a big curly haired white dog just sitting peacefully on top, almost as if he was content to quietly wait with his master until he too was visited by death. It was also interesting to come upon the tombstones of an artist, and actress and a musician. Each, it its own right, were beautiful and touching and most of all absolutely striking. The artist’s, first, was constructed out of a large, seemingly randomly cut stone. On the face of the stone was carved a torch, and a painters color board with paint brushes. The actress’s, possibly the most unique one of all, was made of a large, again randomly shaped stone. On each side of the stone were torches and toward the bottom of the stone, was carved a small compartment where family and friends place flowers, etc. This was carved so as to give the impression of stalagtites and stalagmites hanging from a cave ceiling. Around the tomb was a square gate of sorts with a large looped chain and crosses for posts. The entire thing was incredibly dramatic and looked like the grave of Dracula. And lastly was the very peaceful and simple tomb of the musician, complete with an actual composition, carved in marble. We did not of course see all of these right in a row, but spread throughout the morning and throughout the cemetery. Also of interest were the many startlingly beautiful sculptures, including two peaceful angels, one, lifesized and with arms outstretch toward the sky and with sunlight coming through the trees to light her. The other, kneeling humbly on the leaves, on a cramped path in between several tombstones, seemingly not belonging to any one grave and falling apart as well. We also saw one fabulously moving sculpture done in the classical greek style with two deeply passionate males, the one ripping the fabric of the other. Lastly, there was one with a giant statue of a woman that much interested a little boy and a little girl who were exploring the cemetery on their own. They went right up to it and stood on the gate that enclosed it and just felt all around the entire thing. On a much more mysterious and partly creepy note, were the often abandoned mausoleums. The first was in complete ruins. It not longer held a ceiling, was absolutely crumbling and was bodyless. It reminded me of an ancient ruin and was serenely gorgeous with it’s ambling vines and deep steps of stone. The next, however, had more of an Indiana jones and the last crusades feel to it. The outside was beautiful, but rusting and locked. There was, however an opening, in the form of possibly a window. The window opened up to a small, 3 or 4 foot passageway. One of the wall of the passageway was the stereotypical haunted house wall type. It was crumbling brick, so decaying that I felt it might come apart simply upon my touching it. It was covered in spiderwebs from top to bottom, so much so that it seemed like just a white film over it. The floor of the passageway was just a mass of dirt, plants, crumbled stone and trash. Anyway, we walked in through the narrow opening and after 3 or 4 feet came to a drop off where we could see the entire inside of the mausoleum. It was set up in a rectangular shape. The wall we were standing in and that directly opposite it were the longer of the 4. On each side there were two rows of rectangular box shaped tombs (probably 3 long on the short sides and maybe 5 or 6 long on the longer sides). The bottom row was as low as the ground and then there was one above it and then above the second was just a flat surface and then a roof a few feet above it. The lighting was, of course, pretty dim. The floor was covered in debris, just as the floor of the passageway was. There was a lot of dirt, trash and crumbled stone. We also saw quite a few rope looking things, surrounded by what looked like pine needles, which we later decided had be funeral wreaths of the traditional type that we see being sold on the road from the hospital to Podul. Clearly then, we thought, the mausoleum had been in use fairly recently. The most curious part of it all, however was this. I’m not sure about the tombs in the side walls or the ones we were standing above, but in the wall opposite us, the tombs on the top row were completely cleaned out, while the row below it was not. As in, where there had before been a stone cover at the end of each tomb, to seal it off, now there was a partial stone seal, but each was broken and had a hole in one corner as if it had been punched through. We couldn’t entire see inside these tombs and really just weren’t sure whether there were still remains in them. Is it clear yet, why this experience was so creepy? I can see why Juliet was shivering with fright when she awoke inside a tomb, all by herself. Just after passing by a chanting group of mourners, led by a typical Romanian orthodox priest, we discovered the military section of the cemetery. This was the only ordered section in the entire place, and the only one without trash. The first section we came upon, was actual the Soviet Cemetery. That’s when you know you’re in a formerly Soviet Bloc country. It seemed to have a combination of regular, named soldiers and unknown ones for it’s inhabitants, but we still aren’t entirely sure what it all meant (as it was in Russian). The second second was for World War II veterans. Here, there was likewise and mix of known and unknown soldiers. At the back of this section there were a few other random soldiers. One of these was a young man who was only a month apart in age from Arron and who just died in April while in Iraq. It was very touching to see. The last section was for World War I and it seemed to consist almost entirely of mass graves as far as we could guess. There were simply quite a few large crosses, each with one letter of the alphabet inscribed on them and each standing atop a large mound of earth. It was very creepy as well. Another touching thing that we saw at the cemetery was a fairly new grave, with several very new funeral wreaths place atop it and atop one of the wreaths, perched atop a flower was a little butterfly. All these things we saw just by wandering through the cemetery. Well, at one point, when we were largely at the outskirts of the cemetery, we came upon a little water pump. It had a lever, which I pumped halfheartedly several times just out of curiosity, then Shannon and I began walking away when it didn’t immediately start working. Well, just as we start to walk away, this very nice older lady come walking rapidly down the incline towards us, speaking rapid fire Romanian, to which we replied simply “Da…da.” Well, apparently our “da, da” worked for she continued to speak as though we could understand all these words coming out of her mouth. She handed me this small class she’d brought with her and indicated that she wanted me to fill it up while she pumped the water. I did so and drank it up when she offered it to me, for how could I refuse even the most vile water when offered but such a well meaning lady? Then she had me fill it up again for Shannon, for several people that walked by and lastly for her. At the end we simply exchanged some very simple pleasantries and she was off back up the hill just as abruptly as she’d come. It was all so happy! Not too long after this we decided we’d wandered around enough and we headed back toward the first abandoned mausoleum we’d found and sat on it’s steps and read for a little while. And what better book to be reading while sitting on the steps of an abandoned mausoleum in a cemetery in Romania than the Transylvanian horror classic, Dracula? It was priceless. After leaving the cemetery we quickly headed over to the cultural palace to walk through one of its museums before Shannon had to practice a song with Melissa. We ended up going through the anthropology one and it was pretty cool. It was very unprofessionally done, by American standards, and it was all stuff that I’d seen lots of before, but it spawned a pretty interesting conversation about prehistoric peoples. Later that night, at around 5:15, we all met at Tirgu Cucu to take a tram to a different part of Iasi (close to the Dacie apartments) to attend a Catholic Baptism Mario invited us to. Holly was sick and didn’t come, so the 9 of us followed Jenna who’d been given the instructions. After getting of the tram we waited on a street corner in the cold for about 15 minutes and the whole time we just talked about BYU classes and about how there are way too many that we’d loved to take. Finally, a very late Mario, child in hand met up with us and directed us to a very unique Catholic Church building around the corner. By the time we walked in the service had already begun and Mario was already there and we just filed in and copied whatever everyone else did. Every once in a while Mario would turn around and nod approvingly at us. I found the service fascinating and it was fun to see Mario so happy! She was as confused as we were because she’d never been to a Catholic service, so she was just following everyone too. Also, she was the Godmother and so she was a big part of it all and you could tell she was just sooo happy about all of it. She looked fabulous too. Also, it was the first time for me to see her little girl who is sooo cute and was running around the church with Mario’s friend/sister/whoknowswhat trying to quiet her down the whole time. She actually looks exactly like the female version of this adorable little boy in Dacie named Marian. After the service, we all went over and congratulated the baby’s parents and took a peek at her. They were all sooo kind and welcoming. Mario was really happy too and you could tell she was happy to have us there as well. On the way home I had a really great conversation with Bri.

Friday, October 20, 2006

2006-11-22T21:47:00.000+02:00

Today was a good day! Starting off with Dancu, the kids were just great. We decided there’s a love triangle thing going on because Mihai loves Iuliana and Iuliana loves Petrica (and Petrica, of course, loves me). Mihai loving Iuliana has always been a known fact. Like, it was in all the writeups and the workers tell us all the times and it’s really true. Like, even though this boy really can’t move very easily, he’ll move all the way across the room just to give Iuliana a toy. And apparently they’ve always been together, like ever since before they were in the apartment too. Iuliana, however, has never shown any partiiiicular affection for Mihai. Well, today, all of a sudden she starts trying to interact with Petrica! This is a big thing because these kids just usually don’t interact with each other at all. They’ll interact with us or just play by themselves and that’s it. But all of a sudden, she starts trying to pull Petrica toward her and starts trying to tickle him and she just keeps saying “ticka ticka ticka.” It was so cute! And we could tell she was showing affection because that’s how we show affection for her and at one point she stopped and just put her arms around him and rested there cuddling with him for a little while. It was so sweet! Also, this whole time she’s just giggling uncontrollably. This went on for a good 15 minutes by the way. Petrica, however, as out of it as he is (poor innocent boy), was still kind of trying to get away, but was failing miserably because every time he’d start to crawl away she’d just pull him right back. It was great fun and I just sat my self down and watched. Also, I felt better there today because I was actively working with Petrica on standing and crawling. It wasn’t working too well, but just the fact that we were trying things and thinking of ideas really helped me feel better. I tried getting him in all these productive positions, but it was really hard because he has no desire to be bent that way and I really don’t think he gets the concept. Actually, I’m positive he doesn’t so I’m not sure how we’re going to get him to do it. I really hope we start going to physical therapy soon though, because I think they have things at the orphanage that would really help him, like a standing ladder or something. Anyway, my last Dancu highlight was swinging the kids in a blanket. At one point I just thought of how much fun it would be to swing the kids on a blanket with Shannon and I each holding one side. So we decided to wait til the end of the day and try it then so they wouldn’t keep wanting to do it the whole day. Well, we did it to all the kids in the order of Petrica, Costica, Mihai, then Iuliana and they all absolutely looooved it. Petrica had a half smile on his face the whole time and was just mesmerized. Costica just did his little laugh the whole time. Mihai started laughing hysterically and we started rolling him too, which he though was even better and yeah, it was just great. Then, Iuliana was cracking up the whole time and we had to stop it gradually and sneakily so she wouldn’t scream. We succeeded though and she didn’t scream at all! Such an accomplishment. The only bad thing was that Ani, who is normally so happy and so nice to us and so interactive with the children was really standoffish and weird today and didn’t feed us. We’re starting to wonder if we did something to offend the workers. As we walked out the door we said bye to bullet. He’s our dog friend who’s always right outside the door and who we really wish we could pet. It’s clear that he’s a really nice dog and he’s got one ear that goes up and one that goes down and he’s really cute. Also on the way to the train I saw an old lay who’d hefted herself up onto one of the trash bins and with legs swinging was digging through the trash. It was an odd and sobering sight to see, but not too surprising either. We didn’t even say anything about it. On the way to the hospital we started talking about yesterday when we’d gotten in our argument and started working it all out. It was, yet again, a really edifying conversation in which I learned a lot about myself. That’s how it always turns out with our conversations. We also figured out more about our relationship, which is very common. I like that around Shannon I feel like I can be frank about myself. It’s been hard and we’ve had to work at it, but we’ve built our relationship into something really fabulous and I love her to death. We’d decided it’s going to be weird being friends in Provo, but I hope we still are. Funnier, even still, because at the beginning I didn’t think I could stand being around her every single day. Now she’s like my saving grace. Anyway, so at the hospital Shannon and I just kind of stuck together. We started off with Mihai who was just a doll. At the beginning we were still having our deep conversation. With Mihai we played with the balloon again and then halfway through this really really nice young cute nurse came in and you could tell she had a lot of affection for him. She brought him this new car toy and played with him a little and tried to get him to smile. The nurses never play with the kids. It was amazing. We were just like, “wow! You care!” I honestly think she must’ve been fairly new and just not hardened yet like the rest of them, but I loved her for it. I love how I feel like Mihai and I have such a bond. I mean, even the very first day I was with him I felt like he was more comfortable with me than most and he shows signs of it all the time, like when he cuddled up to me when I stood him up on the floor and everyone was looking at him, and when he ran to me when we were giving him a shower. Today he would just randomly cuddle up to me and lie there for a while. He also looks straight into my eyes and gives me one of those smiles that just says “yeah, I know we’re on the same page.” I can’t explain it, but it’s fantastic. These kids are my life right now, so when you feel like you’ve made some kind of good impact on their lives it’s the best feeling in the world. I love them so much. After we left Mihai we went down to see Iulia. Marina was in there already though. She’s such a sad little child. It breaks my heart every time I see her because she never smiles, she has the most heartbreaking expression and silent cry, she seems to be in so much pain, her body is so week, she has so many skin problems and she has such horrible bedsores. It drives me insane that there’s nothing I can do for her. Sometimes I wish she’d either get better quick or die because I can’t stand that she has such a miserable existence. We also discovered another little boy in the room next door. He is tiny and somehow malformed. Like, he just has an unusual little body and I feel so bad for him. To me, all the babies are the same. They’re babies and they need the same things whether they’re normal or not and it breaks my heart when they suffer. As we were walking out of the hospital we saw this poor mother in the middle of such a cry of agony it broke my heart. She was crying and she said something and hit her fist on the wall and walked away down the hall. It was so tragic. All of this made me realize that one of the most important lessons I feel I will learn here is to see the joy in the world even while being surrounded by its tragedies. I mean, every day we see so many unbearably tragic things that we are forced to either just move on and stay happy or fall into a deep depression. After the hospital, Shannon and I, in very high spirits, walked home. On the way, we first stopped at the corner store, then the bread stand, then Hala. In between the bread stand and Hala there’s almost always this little old lady that sits on some steps and begs for money. Well, as we were walking by I made eye contact with her and she asked me for some bread. I decided I might as well, so I ripped off a chunk and handed it to her. Then, strangely enough, as I handed it to her and when she saw that she’d convinced me, she let out the evilest little cackle I’ve ever heard! Shannon and I couldn’t help but just bust out laughing because it was sooo disturbing. It reminded me of the old lady in Hansel and Gretel or something! Once we got home, I got as much done as I could before going to Andrea’s birthday party. The party was good, but really only mediocre. It was more of a chore for me, than anything else. We had a puzzle contest at the beginning and a few of us just played with the puzzles the rest of the time. We had some nasty cake and ice. Since being home we’ve just been doing the usual. Sadly though, we were informed that we will no longer be going to Brasov before going to Budapest! That’s really disappointing because A.) now I have to give a talk and B.) I really wanted to go!

Thursday, October 19, 2006

2006-11-22T21:39:00.000+02:00

So yesterday at Dancu, Maria was working again. She wasn’t in a hooorrible mood like the other day, but she just didn’t seem as warm and happy as she usually was before. The kids were fairly good. Nothing too different with them. They were just normal. We got the worst soup though. The gas was out because someone was working on it, but Maria gave us cold soup anyway. She also decided to just stick the piece of bread in there, so it was reeeeally gross and soggy and the soup was bad anyway. The good thing was she left a plate full of animal crackers, which were really good and which we were basically fighting for. We also didn’t get to feed the kids. Afterward we went to the hospital and I started off with Marta. I was with her for a good 2 hours and she slept pretty soundly the whole time. That wouldn’t be great normally, but I’d forgotten my book and was actually pretty bored. Just at the very end I went in with Iulia who already had Shannon and Holly in there. After the hospital, Shannon and I got in another argument over our creative differences, among other things and were all mad at each other, because, well, it’s Thursday. We always get mad at each other on Thursday. We stopped by the apartment real quick on the way to Tirgu Cucu to get food and my book before taking the tram with Melissa and Jenna to Dacie. Dacie was really good this time. I got some good bonding time in with all the kids and felt like I actually had fun, which makes me think they did too. They all loooove to do my hair and I loooove how Costica just loves to cuddle. It melts my heart away. After Dacie, Jenna and I left before Mel and Shannon and went straight to the Villa. We looked pretty funny because I was wearing a skirt with socks and sneakers and Jenna still had her hair in pigtails from the kids doing it. Nevertheless, we still had guys trying to hit on us on the tram. I was turned around, talking to Jenna the entire time, and the guy in front of me just kept trying to get me to talk to him even though I never even looked at him once. It’s so funny that I know like so little words/phrases here and one of them is “get away from me!” Anyway, finally we got to the red bridge, where you get off to walk to the villa. That night was going to be Catalin’s baptism, but when we got there they were still just playing games. I sat down and played phase ten with those who were there for a while and had a good time. I sat next to Elder Hackett and talked to him and really just had a fabulous time. I love that kid. The baptism was actually really fabulous. Everyone was crying and it was one of those times when I wished that I was the kind that cries easier. After the baptism ended I was really just ready to go home and was a little frustrated that it took so long to do so. After we got home, something one of the roommates did really made me upset (not gonna say what or who online!) and Shannon knew I was upset, so she came over and did a very good job of comforting me and then I just finished writing in my journal and went off to bed.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

2006-11-22T21:37:00.000+02:00

I woke up early on this morning and took a shower then used the computer for an hour. I wrote a little in my journal and then figured out what classes I’m going to take for winter. Dancu was pretty good. Dada was working and I really like her. She said the kids were sick though, so we had to keep them off the floor, which is always really annoying. I remember feeling frustrated because I still can’t exactly figure out what to work with Petrica on. Lunch’s soup wasn’t aaaas bad, but still not good and the bread was stiiiill moldy. At the hospital, first Bri and I tried to sneak onto the first floor. Unfortunately, the mean green doctor turned around just in time to see me as I slipped in and started yelling at us to leave. We decided instead to go see Mihai. We played with him and a balloon for a little while, then decided to give him a bath. We just took him into the bathroom, undressed him and stuck him in the shower. We started spraying him with the water and he didn’t like it at all and just stood there with this big lower lip, lightly crying with his huge pudgyness and the water running all down him. It was adorable. When we got to his hair though, he really just couldn’t stand it and in utter desperation ran hysterically toward me. I held him till we were done and got all wet. We also took pictures. Afterward we didn’t have a ready towel, so Bri just plopped him on the bed all sopping wet. We got a blanket from the other mom, though and dried him off. He was pretty happy after that. When we were done I went in with Marta for just the last little while before walking partway home with Melissa and Shannon who were going to Dacie. At home I had a little free time to use the internet, but then the other girls got home. I was really mad at myself, because instead of making the girls get off my computer and writing my journals, I just read and never found the right opportunity and had a very unproductive night! Suck!

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

2006-11-10T18:34:00.000+02:00

Two months since leaving the US! Well, Maria was working at Dancu, but she was having a really bad day! She usually this really happy crazy lady who never gets mad, but Petrica threw up four times, so she finally like snapped. We always tell them when they throw up, so we told her and she came in all mad and grabbed Petrica by the arm and threw him on the pad and started yelling at him. She was being REALLY rough and scary and then she dragged him in the other room to change his pants and was yelling at him in there too. It was really weird, because Petrica is ALWAYS happy, so when she brought him back in and threw him down he actually started laughing. It was the most peculiar thing and I almost just started laughing, but it was just weird and uncomfortable, like “honey, why are you laughing?” Lunch that day was really nasty. We had this gross soup that had tooons of parsley in it and the gross bread again. Since Maria was in a bad mood we didn’t get to feed the kids either. After Dancu we went to the hospital. First I went in with Mihai. When I first got there he wasn’t in the room, but the nurse told me to wait a minute. I did and pretty soon I saw them wheeling him out of the elevator in a wheelchair that was really just a chair on wheels (no straps). He looked like a little prince. He was in much better spirits and was really like a completely different kid. He was totally active and smiling and making eye contact and doing everything. Bri came in after not too long and we both played with Mihai with a ballon which he looooved. We even got him to stand up on the ground, but he’s really lazy and doesn’t like to stand for long. I really felt like he trusted me though and that we had a bond. After we were with him a long time, Marina showed me how to find Iulia who is in “recovery.” It’s in a totally different wing that we never go in and she’s in an incubator with nice, new machines attached. I was only with her for like 30/45 minutes and then spend the last 30/45 minutes with Marta. After the hospital Shannon, Melissa, Jenna and I all walked really fast to Tirgu Cucu, where we met up with Holly and then took a tram to Dacie. First we dropped off Shannon and Melissa, then Holly went with us to the 7th floor. We got there before the two girls who go to Penilla got home and it was just four boys. Costica, the three year old with Downs Syndrome, is the only one who isn’t really hyper. Mihai is 6 and has like nothing wrong with him. He’s smart and speaks well and is perfectly fine physically. He just wants to play and rough house and is just like any other boy. Marian is adooorable. He’s four and as far as I can tell the only thing wrong with him is that he has one eye that’s slightly smaller than the other. He’s really sweet and is just like a normal boy too. They both fight over toys and attention a lot. Viorel is mentally challenged, but no one knows exactly what he has. We think it might be fetal alcohol syndrome. Anyway, he’s not all there mentally, so he can copy things you do, but he can’t talk and doesn’t do much original thinking. He can walk and do stuff physically ok, but doesn’t have the best balance and isn’t very good with precision stuff. He can also get upset for seemingly no reason, but he’s mostly good natured and I think he’s a little sweetheart. My heart goes out to the kid because he tries sooo hard and all he ever wants to do is whatever the other boys are doing. I just give him lots of praise and encouragement. He also really loves to “do” my hair. Costica is three but is much better developed than Petrica. He can walk and really likes to interact with you. He can play simple games with you and will actually come seeking your attention and look at you straight in the eyes and interact with YOU. I’m going to try and have him help me figure out how to help Petrica. He’s such a bundle of joy. He loves to cuddle and will just waddle over to you and start hugging you and it just takes you by surprise and is such a sweet happy thing. He really brightens my day. The girls who go to Penilla are Catalina and Georgiana and I met them both when I went there. Catalina likes me just fine and is a total sweetheart. She has a speech impediment, so I can’t understand what she’s saying a lot of the time, but she’s always really nice. Georgiana is not as immediately accepting. I can tell she’s not quite used to the fact that we come yet and was eying me warily today. She softened a little and came and did my hair after I told her she was pretty, but she was still ready to walk me to the door when it was time to go. I like her though. After Dacie we came home and I’m pretty sure I went to bed as early as I could because I wanted to wake up early to use the computer.

2006-11-10T18:25:00.000+02:00

Well, Monday morning it was back to the orphanage. Shannon and I both felt fine. The orphanage was pretty good. Corrina was working unfortunately, so we didn’t get lunch, but we did feed the kids lunch. Mihai was a punk during feeding time and I had to try like 10 different things just to get him to eat. Toward the end, the only thing I could do was plug his nose so that he’d open his mouth, shove it in there while holding down his arms and making sure he didn’t turn his head. So, after the orphanage, I had been planning on going straight to the hospital, but I’d forgotten my scrubs, so I had to go back to the apartment first and since Shannon wanted to go see her missionary friend instead of going to the hospital I’d have no one to go with. I still wouldn’t been able to go with Megan and Jess though, except that the tram stopped at this construction place for like THIRTY MINUTES and I missed them. It was really funny though, cuz while we were waiting, there was this old lady in the tram who was crazy and was just yelling random things and carrying on a conversation with some imaginary person and apparently what she was saying was hilarious, because all the people in the tram were just cracking up. Well, when we got home I used the internet and read a little and then was just about to take a nap when Shannon was ready to go to the Villa. So we headed over there and when we got there they were still in their meeting, so we went in the RS room. It was rainy and pretty outside and I couldn’t get my window open, so I just opened the window and crawled out and took some pictures. I also drew a little picture on the white board. After a little while the meeting ended and Shannon got to see her missionary friend and I just chatted with all the missionaries. We also took pictures for them of the whole zone. At the end we talked for quite some time with Elder Jackson. While we were still talking, people started coming for FHE. At FHE we played this game CLUE game which is basically a mix of telephone and charades. After FHE I couldn’t tell ya what I did.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

2006-11-10T18:16:00.000+02:00

Sunday morning I leisurely got ready and went to church with Melissa. Church was actually really good just because I was in the right mindset and I could feel the spirit really strongly during the whole meeting. It was still hard to sit through though. Also, I hadn’t quite gotten into the “winter” habit and so I forgot to bring a coat to church. Because of it I was freezing the entire way to church. After church I went in and read a little, then took a very small nap before everyone came over. For dinner we had Nacho Libre nachos, which were pretty good and then our meeting. During the meeting we talked about the Budapest trip, the Dacie apartment and we wrote good things on little pieces of paper about everyone. It’s been decided that I’m going to now be also working at the Dacie 7th floor apartment on Tuesdays and Thursdays from roughly 4:30 to 6 with Jenna. After the meeting, I think all of us roommates were feeling a need to do all we could to be as close as we could, so we got some stuff done, then at 9:30 we had a “bonding circle” and rubbed everyone’s back. In between then I called mom and told her about all the gifts I’d bought for people and just all about whatever I could think to tell her about. It was really nice.

Saturday, October 14, 2006

2006-11-10T18:07:00.000+02:00

Since I couldn’t sleep well, I ended up getting up pretty early. When language lessons were canceled, Shannon and I decided to act upon our sudden craving for pancakes, so we looked up a recipe online and started making them. At some point, however, we realized that the “pancakes” were started to seems very suspicious like they might just become crepes instead. With alarm, I checked the recipe once again and though it did say it was for “basic pancakes” I realized that I’d made the mistake of getting the recipe from a British site. Well, this was definitely a considerable disappointment, but we made it through somehow. At this point the rest of the girls had gone to do several activities that we either couldn’t do or didn’t need to do, but they’d left us with the responsibility of getting some ingredients for Sunday dinner. I was noooot feeling well, the whole morning, but I was used to it by then. At 4ish we headed over to the Villa where the missionaries were showing a missionary video and where we were to meet up with Christina and Raluca who were going to shop with us. It turned out that pretty much everyone but Melissa, Megan and Jessica were there, so we all went shopping together. But when we were still at the Villa I got an incredible blessing from Elder Dubling. Church is true! The city, by the way, was AMAZINGLY packed. The street across from the Palat, with all the souvenir booths, though not officially closed off to cars, had nevertheless been invaded by people simply because it could not be avoided and even then it was crowded. Finding what I needed was difficult because everything had changed since the time I went before and because of the huge crowd. We often lost each other for periods of time. Unfortunately I also missed out on the great traditional Romanian souvenirs over closer to the Palace because I didn’t realize they’d close when the concert started. Well, we finished shopping and then talked for a while, then we decided to go back to the apartment (and go pee) real quick before the fireworks started. It was Shannon, Christina, Raluca, Marina, Rebecca, Dave and I at this point and we all made a chain to cut through the thick throb of people and we danced as we wove through it. After a quick stop at the apartment, the group separated and Shannon, Christina, Raluca and I went back to watch the fireworks while Marina, Rebecca and Dave tried to go to the Piazza and get food first. The fireworks were fabulous and I had, yet again, one of those “I’m in Eastern Europe” moments. It was just fun to be on this amazingly crowded street watching fireworks in front of a Palace with two Romanian girls. After the fireworks were over I was totally ready to go home, but Shannon wanted to stop and go to the piazza for the experience. I did noooot want to go and we ended up not going.

Friday, October 13, 2006

2006-11-10T18:00:00.000+02:00

Thursday night I slept horribly again. Finally around 5 or 6 I got up and went to the restroom and went to the couch. I stayed there til Shannon came to ask me how I was feeling around 8. I told her I wasn’t sure, because I wasn’t sure if I felt sick still and she wasn’t really sure about herself either. We decided to not try and risk it with Dancu again, like the day before but to try to go to the hospital instead. Sometime during the day we went to Hala and got some groceries. I waited with the groceries at the bench outside the grocery store while Shannon went and got us bread and then we went home. I was struggling the whole time and just felt really tired and weak and nauseous, especially when walking through the food stands at the piazza. I decided I probably shouldn’t try to go to the hospital if I was feeling that way, so I slept and Shannon went. After the girls got back home I went with Jessica to go get apples for the Halloween Party. We also got some pumpkins from one of the food stands. It was a definite cultural experience. First we got one price from the young man there. Then, as we were paying his old grandma came and upped the price. It was way too expensive, so we were like “No, and walked away.” She came running after us and was like “no no no.” Then she tried to convince us to get this other pumpkin and we didn’t really need it, so we were like “no.” Then she brought the price down more and we still said no and started walking away. Finally her son came running up to us with it, offering it for 5 Lei (which is like 2 bucks), so we finally took it. Very entertaining. When we got home it was immediately time to get ready for the party. The girls before left us a bag full of costumes. I found a cape and decided I’d wear a black shirt, black pants and black shoes and would have Shannon put makeup on me and a stream of blood going down from the side of my lip and I’d be a vampire. I didn’t have time to get the costume ready before going, so she’d just do it there. Jessica and I were the last to leave and she had to go get tea lights at Hala. So, I wore her awkward, pumpkin filled backpack and, with a huge tub (for apple bobbing) in my arms I walked through the Festival crowds to the Kebab stand to get a Kebab and wait. You ever have one of those moments when you can just feel all the eyes boring into you and you feel like you are a human island, floating in this sea of people, the only thing to see for miles? Yeah, that’s about how it was. Anyway, finally we got to the villa after a long, awkward and actually quite painful walk. The first part of the party was quite stressful, what with arriving late and having to simultaneously set up the apple bobbing booth while completing my contest. Luckily, I found Dave looking like a lost, but especially a bored puppy dog and instructed him to go get people to apple bob while I got my face painted. It worked like a charm. Then, in my great amazement, my costume was a hit! The makeup looked fabulous and I got a lot of “ooooh! Wooow!” comments. The rest of the party consisted mostly of just walking around and laughing with people and pretending to be a vampire. Also, lots of pictures. It was fun. Little Patricia decided to draw a heart and write “I love you” on my arms, which I thought was priceless. Even more priceless was the fact that my efforts at explaining how to spell “I love you” to this Romanian child yielded a very puzzling “A EOFE YOU.” Fun as the party was, however, by the end I was really worn out, feeling a little nauseous and not at all feeling up to walking home with a bucket. Lucky for me, Bri was feeling generous and actually walked most of the way home with the bucket. As soon as I got inside, I basically just fell onto the bed and crashed. It was a good thing the next day was Saturday too, cuz I was tiiiired. Alas, I once again had a horrible time sleeping though. It was all made worth in though, just for the moment when at 4am I awoke, and stumbled to the bathroom only to startle myself when upon peering into the mirror I found, not my usual self, but a sleepy, ratty haired vampire looking back at me. Definitely forgot about the makeup and had a good middle of the night, middle of the bathroom laugh at myself.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

2006-11-10T17:57:00.000+02:00

This day I woke up feeling almost completely better, with just a slight bit of nausea, though I think I still might’ve had trouble sleeping. Shannon, however was not feeling well. She decided she still wanted to try to go to Dancu though because we didn’t want to miss two days in a row. It was good that we went because then the kids got the attention, but also not so good. Shannon was really not feeling well and struggled pretty bad the whole time. I still wasn’t quite my regular self yet either. To make matters worse, we got the worse lunch yet. The soup was naaasty with huge chunks of the gross rice things in it. On the side, not only did we get the usual moldy bread, but we also got liver and moldy fruit. We ate the soup and bread with greeeat difficulty, but covered the fruit and liver in napkins and stuck them in Shannon’s pockets. The kids were pretty good and soooo cute because they’d been dressed up really nice. Maria was working and she’s great. She’s a little insane, in a very excentric happy way. We think she views the kids more as dolls than actual people because she always dresses them up all cute and arranges them and hands them some random toy that has nothing to do with their ability levels and then just looks at them like they’re just a happy little picture and pinches their cheeks and stuff. But the most important thing is that she’s nice to them. Anyway, so we somehow made it through the orphanage and then just headed home. Shannon had a really hard time all the way home and just about threw up. We had to stop and rest sometimes and she had me go into Hala and get her some water while she just rested outside in the piazza. When we got home I waited on her a bit and got some things done. I couldn’t go to the hospital because the girls had already left and I didn’t get to go to outreach initially, because they went straight to it from the hospital. Later though, Shannon needed a blessing, so I walked her to the Villa to get one and Outreach was still going on. We were there for quite a while and I started feeling nauseous again. Anyway, that’s about all I remember for that night.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

2006-11-10T17:51:00.000+02:00

Well, I started to feel sick around 4am this morning. My stomach hurt really bad, I felt like throwing up and I couldn’t sleep. It was really frustrating because I’d really wanted to go to the orphanage and hospital! Also, Shannon decided just to not go either and unfortunately Corrina, the evil worker was working. After everyone left, I slept off and on until like 2. When everyone left I’d been sitting on one of the chairs in the hallway and was falling asleep there, so Shannon came and very sweetly put my blankets over me. After everyone went to the hospital, I got back up and tried to eat some cereal. It just made me feel more nauseous, so I, too weak to get up off the floor, crawled over and cut myself a thin slice of bread. Then I got on the internet and was there until right before the girls got back home. By that time I was starting to feel a little bit better. Still queasy, but with my stomach not hurting as much. I then managed to eat an entire bowl of pasta! Melissa and Jessica were going to go shopping at all the sidewalk souvenir stands, and I decided I’d try going since going to Metro really helped last time I was sick. There was some cool stuff and I’ll probably go back and get a few things, but after a while it all started looking the same and I got really sick of it and I got freeeezing and my feet started hurting. I was definitely glad when we finally headed home. And that’s really about all for today!

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

2006-11-08T18:55:00.000+02:00

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.

Monday, October 9, 2006

2006-11-08T18:40:00.000+02:00

We ended up being late to Dancu this morning because Shannon didn’t wake up on time. On the walk to the apartment from the tramvite station we saw this mean little devil child who was about 7 kicking this poor little teeny tiny mangy dog who was just crying and yelping. After the kid walked away the poor little thing was just wailing. Dancu was good in that Iuliana was being really good and not stimulating herself most the time and was actually playing with Shannon. Also, Petrica was trying to crawl and sitting up on his own and being pretty responsive and Mihai actually made a few non-gurling sounds. Like vowel + consonant sounds. Before feeding time, the only bad thing about the day was that I was getting kind of bored and feeling very unproductive and we didn’t get soup. It all turned bad though, when it came feeding time. I was in Constica’s room, so Corrina had me feed him. He was doing just fine until I think he got too much at one time and started coughing. That’s not too uncommon, so I just patted his back, but he just wasn’t getting better and started making this gurgling sound and crying harder than I’ve ever seen him cry. I started to get worried and the worker came in and took him in the living room and started patting him. She was nice at first, but when he didn’t get better she got meaner and meaner and started yelling at the poor kid and treating him roughly and eventually just stuck him in a crib and left him there to cry, even though, guaranteed he was only crying in the first place because of the feeding. While she was dealing with him, Shannon informed me that she hated her because of something she’d done while I was feeding Constica. When we left, Shannon told me what it was. She explained how Iuliana had been so good today and toward the end was just feeling really vulnerable and just needed Shannon to be around. Not necessarily playing with her, just touching her somehow. Just there. Well, when Corrina came in for feeding time, Shannon asked which one she should feed and Corrina said Mihai. When Corrina took Iuliana, Iuliana started crying and looked at Shannon like, “I want you to feed me. Don’t let her take me.” Shannon was torn because there was nothing she could do about it, but seeing Iuliana, who’d been so good, getting upset for such a stupid reason made her want to cry. Well, instead of trying to comfort poor Iuliana, Corrina just got more and more mad and was like shoving the food down Iuliana’s throat and manhandling her. At one point, she even held her hand up and was about to slap her but luckily Iuliana immediately stopped crying. Yeah, basically we were pissed and felt really uncomfortable leaving them there with her and it sucks that there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it. After we left, we went straight to the hospital. Shannon and I both went up to the 6th floor and she went with Marta and I with Radu, who are in the same room. Poor Radu is sooo skinny. He throws up all of his food and he looks just as skinny as some malnourished child in Africa. Because of that, he’s really really week. Also, he has rashes all over his body. Sad sad baby. Anyway, basically I changed his diaper and put baby oil all over him and then just got him to fall asleep on my chest. I read a little bit, but it was hard, because I was really uncomfortable because Shannon was on the bed asleep with Marta too. Anyway, after a little while I went in with Madaleina and a new newborn who cries a lot. It was just me and it was really hard because it was really tough to keep both babies happy at the same time. It seems like that was all I did at the hospital. Shannon and I got home from the hospital pretty early and I tried to use the computer as much as I could before taking a shower because I rarely have the opportunity when the rest of the girls are home. At 6 we (Podul included) went to the Hala Festival barbecue, which was, once again really frustrating. There was this really jerk of a guy and then a ton of other guys who kept trying to hit on us. Also, we got stuck waiting for Melissa, Megan and Jessica, who had actually already just left us. Eventually we decided to leave and go to FHE and found them there. For FHE we just cut out shapes for the Halloween party, which wasn’t bad. Then Abbi and I scooped ice cream for all of us, which was fun.

Sunday, October 8, 2006

2006-11-08T18:36:00.001+02:00

Last night I fell asleep watching “Gallipoli,” so I woke up at about 4am with my eyes hurting because I hadn’t taken my contacts out. Well, I got up and took them out and usually when that happens, they’ll hurt for a little while, but when I wake up in the morning they’ll be fine. Well, not so this time. I woke up and my right eye was better, but my left eye was worse. I couldn’t open it for more than a couple seconds at best, it hurt, was red, and was watering. Well, I got ready for church and went to church (the whole time not opening my eye much). Then I had Shannon conduct for me at church. Sacrament meeting was really hard because it’s kind of difficult to stay awake when you have to keep your eyes closed. Then, I actually enjoyed Sunday School and Relief Society more this time than usual. Melissa taught Sunday School and I payed attention almost the entire time and had some good insights. Like, she talked about how a lot of the happy moments in our lives tend to have something spiritual to do with them. That reminded me of when I got a blessing from Nate or Steve or Jon and it was fabulous and then the whole rest of the day I was on cloud nine and felt like nothing could ever bring me down. Then, after church we went home and I got a little something to eat and took a nap. Around 4 we all went over to Podul and had some fabulous French toast for dinner. Then we had our meeting, which was actually really long and also really good and emotional as usual. I realized that sometime soon I really need to just sit down and figure out my thoughts about Romania. Also, we decided we’re going to go to Budapest on the 27th, which means I might not have a chance to give my talk, which was going to be on the 29th and was going to be on “Miracles.” That kind of bums me out because I was actually looking forward to it. Also, I’m really excited to go back to work tomorrow after this long weekend. It’s been too long since I’ve held a baby and I really don’t know what I’m going to do when I get home and don’t have the opportunity to do so. Also, now is as good of a time as any to write about this little funny thought that I keep having. Honestly, lately, every time I see a mom with her kid I can’t stop myself from thinking “Good job! You kept your kid!” It’s really a funny thought, but after being with these orphans so much, I’m just extra grateful for those that kept there kid. It almost seems like it’s something that only extraordinary people do, which is totally warped. Also, I think my subconscious mind has a hard time not thinking that ALL Romanian kids are handicapped because all the ones I see are. It’s like, when I think of Romanian kids, I think of handicapped kids, so they’re almost one and the same for me. Anyway, that’s about it for tonight.

Friday, October 6, 2006

2006-11-08T18:29:00.000+02:00

Well, I, of course, was not able to wake up real early, because for some reason I got stuck with a freak body that’ll never wake up earlier than at least 9, voluntarily if I can get by at all with sleeping later. So, I got up around 7:30 and started getting ready for volunteering at Penilla (daycare for disabled kids). Since we were going to Penilla we weren’t going to leave until 9:15, so we had more time than usual. Well, I got mostly ready and then checked my mail and had gotten a good email and all I wanted to do was lounge around. Then, Shannon and I started complaining about having to get ready, because she just wanted to lounge in bed all day and I wanted to finish reading my email and write back. Honestly, it was sooo hard to get out of the house and we wanted sooo bad to just stay at the apartment. Well, we forced ourselves to get ready anyway and went out and caught a taxi to Penilla. When we got there we went over and knocked on the door and, for some unknown reason, it was closed! Like, the door was locked, the lights were out and no one was around. You’d think we’d have been upset, but no, we just looked at each other and a smile slowly broke across both our faces. We decided to take it as a sign that we just weren’t meant to do anything that day and that the Lord had recognized that we’d been having a hard week and wanted to give us a break. That set the tone for the whole rest of the day! We just walked leisurely home, taking time to smell the roses. On the way home we decided to go get a gogos and even to try and wait around until the hot ones were ready, because….we had time! Then, we wanted to get some stuff from Hala, so we decided, eh, why not. Once we got home, I wrote my email while she took a nap, thus fulfilling our original desires. Then, we went over to Podul and picked out a movie and ended up watching “An Affair to Remember.” It was the perfect movie for our mood and Shannon, who’d never seen it, loved it. We’d also made arrangements to go see “The Devil Wears Prada” with Jenna at Moldova Mall at 6:30, so right after the movie ended we got ready to go see the next one. When we got there, though, it turned out that it wasn’t actually playing there even though it said it was online. Jenna still wanted to see “You, Me, and Dupree,” but Shannon and I weren’t feeling it. Instead we got some food at KFC (sad, sad, version of KFC) and then went window shopping around the mall. They actually had some pretty cool stuff and some of it I think I might come back later and buy, as gifts, for some of my friends. I also ended up buying “The Terminal,” “Shall We Dance?” and “Gallipoli.” When we went home we decided to watch “Shall We Dance?” and I highly enjoyed it. The only thing that I didn’t like about the day was that though it’s fun to just do nothing, I always end up feeling guilty for it. So now I wish I’d at least gotten some stuff done.

Thursday, October 5, 2006

2006-11-08T18:28:00.000+02:00

Well, we went to Dancu and nothing really interesting happened. I got to read my book (“Hole in the Flag”) along the way, which was nice. The day at Dancu was pretty good too. I spent most of my time with Petrica and Constica. I went to Petrica first thing in the morning and used his energy to try to get him to work on standing up and crawling, but he was just all over the place, so I just played with him and roughhoused instead. I felt like we had a real connection, which makes me really happy because they said in the writeups that he has a hard time getting out of being in his own world and actually interacting with people. But he was looking into my eyes, smiling at me, just in general playing with me and one time, he even started crawling (inching across the couch) over to me when I started giving Iuliana attention. Maybe it’s all in my head, but I really think he’s actually playing with me and not in his own world. Anyway, I did have to stop playing with him though, because Iuliana needed some attention. I just gave her a massage or something, but yeah. Then, at some point the workers brought Constica in and he really wanted attention. Usually he’s fine just chillin on the couch, but today he just wanted to be held. That was fine with me though – as long as he could be comforted, unlike the past few days when he’s just been upset no matter what. So I held Constica for a good hour or so while Petrica just played with some toy. The worker came in during that time and turned the tv on to VH1 and I thought it was going to be all raunchy, but it wasn’t! There were actually good music videos with good music and it wasn’t the nasty Romanian stuff that we’ve been having to watch lately. Anyway, finally Constica got sick of being in the living room, so I brought him to the back and came back and played with Mihai for a little bit. Then, the worker (Ani) fed us. It was really good bread this time but weird soup that had seeds in it for some odd, unknown reason. Anyway, after eating I had some more one on one time with Petrica and just calmed him down and layed with him on the couch, because I wanted him to be calm when he got fed. Then, it was time for them to get fed, and the worker let us feed them! First she was going to have me do Constica because she said Petrica was hard, but then she changed her mind and let me do him. He wasn’t all that hard! I mean, it was hard, but pretty much all of them are hard to feed. He was better than Mihai! Anyway, I succeeded in feeding him without getting stuff all over him. Then we put them all to bed and left! We went straight to the hospital again and we both went straight up to the 6th floor. We were planning on having me with Radu and her with Marta and then switching halfway through, but Marta’s mom was there and Radu was with Bri, so she went with Madaleine and I went with the boy at the end of the hall whose name I still don’t know. Well, I fell in love. I was with him the entire three hours and absolutely loved it. He’s so precious. I would just lie on the bed facing him and he’d stare right into my eyes while playing with his foot and sucking on his binkie and sometimes playing with my hands. We spent a while like that, and then he fell asleep in my arms while we were lying on the bed and I took a little secret nap too J. Then, this nurse who’s really nice, but really loud came in and woke him up. So we spent some more time like that, then I picked him up and sat Indian style, cradling him in my legs. He just sat there in the middle of my legs like a little sac of potatoes and put his head on my knee and sucked away on his binky. I took a bazillion pictures. After a while he started getting antsy again, so I layed him back down and he fell asleep again, so I read my book. When it was time to leave I tried to move him into his crib without waking him, but it didn’t work, and so he just watched me leave – that’s always heartbreaking. As I went downstairs to meet Shannon and leave I met up with Abbi and Bri who went down with me too. Shannon was down there with Jenna and as soon as I got there she was like “Where have you been?” in a really mad voice. I said “I was with the baby at the end of the hall on the 6th floor. I’ve been there the whole time.” She was like, “You were supposed to be here at 3:30 (it was 4 at the time).” And I was like, “no I wasn’t, I was supposed to be here at 4.” Then an argument ensued as to which time was correct, but lasted only a few seconds because she got up and stormed out of the hospital before I had a chance to say much of anything. The reason for the miscommunication was this: in the morning we’d been talking about when to leave the hospital. She brought up the subject by saying “hey, do you want to stay til just 3:30 at the hospital today?” And I, being slightly confused as to how many hours that would leave us, and thinking it would probably only leave us like 2.5 hours, and wanting to be nice, hesitatingly said, “well, I guess if you want to. I wasn’t planning on spending less than 3 hours, but I guess it’s ok if we do.” She, thinking that she’d been proposing 3 hours in the first place said, “Really? You’re ok with leaving early? I wasn’t going to suggest it, but that would be even better!” I was taken by surprise because I didn’t mean to suggest that if she hadn’t already and not actually wanting to go early said “wait, I thought that’s what you were suggesting in the first place. If you’re ok with going 3, then let’s go for three.” And that was kind of the end of it. The reason for the miscommunication was that I was thinking “ok we’ll stay for 3 hours” and she was thinking “ok, we’ll stay til 3:30.” That would’ve been fine if we’d gotten to the hospital at 12:30, because then leaving at 3:30 would have satisfied both of us, but since we got there at 1, she was still thinking “leave at 3:30” and I was thinking “stay for 3 hours and leave at 4.” What we should have done is re-discussed when we’d leave when we got there, but neither of us thought about it. Anyway, so when she stormed away, at first I was pretty mad because I thought it was really immature and I was frustrated at getting in trouble, again, for something I had never intended to do. Then, as we started to walk home – I with Bri and Abbi and she, up ahead, all by herself, I realized that I’d done the same thing lots of times before and that she was probably scathingly mad but also saying to herself “dang it. Now that I’ve walked ahead, this is going to be a really awkward walk home.” I realized it wasn’t actually that big of a deal to me and that it would be possible to let it go and that I might as well, just because she was having a bad day and I felt kind of bad for her. So I did. I stopped being mad at her and just hoped that she’d not push it any further. Well, when we got home she immediately went outside on the balcony and stayed there for a good portion of the night. I got on the internet and just started doing my thing. Later that night Mihai came over with some gifts he brought from his trip to the countryside and then Shannon and Melissa went to outreach. I tried to get some stuff done, but it was basically impossible, because Megan took over the internet and Jessica took over my computer (sooooo frustrating). So then I ended up just going to bed by like 9, thinking that way I’d be able to wake up early in the morning and get stuff done.

Monday, October 2, 2006

2006-11-04T20:50:00.000+02:00

Well, Monday morning it was back to the apartment! I woke up in a pretty good mood and told Shannon it was going to be a good day. Well, unfortunately something bad happened pretty darn quick. We both didn’t have tram tickets, and Shannon had no money, so I was going to buy us both tickets on the tram. Well, I told the driver “2 tickets.” Instead he gave me a 2 way ticket and said “2 way.” Well, I figured it wouldn’t be that big of a deal because they never check the tickets anyway, so I just grabbed it and went over to tell Shannon. Well, I got distracted with talking to her and totally forgot to stamp it. Of course, that day, of all days, someone checks! First day I’ve ever seen someone check and first time I didn’t have a good ticket. Well, he had us get off with him at the stop we get off for the hospital and he had another older couple get off too. The other couple was really mad, especially the lady, so before he dealt with us he argued with that lady for quite some time. I actually felt bad for him because he seemed like a nice enough guy and she was just one of those people that thinks that anyone who slightly inconveniences her is ridiculously out of line. I knew how he felt. When it was our turn we tried to look as innocent and clueless as possible and messed up on the language a bunch to try to convince him that we just didn’t know how it all works. We wouldv’e just explained what actually happened, but we didn’t know the right words to explain it, so we couldn’t. You could tell he felt bad for us and believed us, but he had to give us a ticket anyway, and we didn’t argue. It was 20 lei each. He also took the time to try and explain “how it all works” to us, which was very nice. He also told the driver of the next tram to let us get on with our faulty ticket. It was also nice, because when we finally got to Dancu, the tram driver was nice and told us that that was our stop and tried to tell us where to go after that too J. Anyway, it was a pretty good day at the apartment. I spent a lot of time with Iuliana for a change. She wasn’t in the best of moods and would get upset sometimes, but we also had some good times together as well. I brought out Shannon’s ipod for the first time and sat there for a little while with her listening to it. We didn’t work on Brigance at all, so we just spent the whole time playing with the kids. I know I played with Mihai a little bit, but I really can’t remember it. Part of the time I tried to make Costica happy because he was whining, but I got really frustrated because he just would not be comforted and I ran out of things to do with him and the same thing had happened on Friday too. Finally Shannon came over and tried to make him happy and then just decided to take him to the back, where he was much more happy. I know I tried to play with Petrica a little in the beginning of the morning, but he just kept throwing up all over the place. I can’t remember what happened with him like the whole rest of the day though although I like to think I did play with him some more later. I do know Shannon did though because at the beginning she was trying really hard to make him happy but had no clue how to deal with him and was just like, “what do I do with this kid?” It was the same thing I usually say with Mihai. But I was really proud of her because by the end she had him all calm and laying down while she sang to him. At the end of the day we actually convinced Maria to let us help her with the feeding. It was hard, but I think I kind of got the hang of it. I hope she was impressed. I tried feeding Mihai first and got through most of the bowl before she took him and finished herself. He’s just a hard kid to feed because he doesn’t like eating, so he’ll wave his arms all over the place, try to tip the bowl over, look behind him and close his mouth! Then I fed Iuliana and it went really well. It didn’t take me too long to get the hang of it and I was able to get her to eat the whole bowl without too much of a problem. We went straight to the hospital right afterward. I started off with Iulia, but Shannon was in there too and it wasn’t too productive having us both there. In fact, I was really tired and actually fell asleep for a while on the bed. The doctors came in and like put her to sleep, so we decided we better just leave. I ended up going with Melissa to see if there were kids on the 6th floor and there were actually a ton! There was Radu and then four other kids who I’d never seen before. One of them, Marta, was in the same room Maria used to be in, was wearing Maria’s old clothes and basically just looked like a smaller version of Maria! I’m really glad, because I missed Maria. Then, in the next room is Radu. The next two rooms down has one really chubby infant who has a mom, but whose mom isn’t usually there and also another little girl named Madaleina. Madaleina really worries me. She has a shaved head with a lot of scars on it and we have no clue how old she is. She’s really long and is big enough to be like two, but she has the muscle mass and development of a newborn. Like, she’s all floppy and can’t even hold her head up on her own. I don’t know what her story is or why she’s like that. Also, she doesn’t really cry, but never really seems that happy either. I spent the rest of the day with those two, but there was also another baby down at the end of the hallway. After the hospital, I rushed around and tried my best to get allll my stuff done before FHE, but barely dented it. FHE wasn’t real great and I’d wanted to leave early, but wasn’t able to. I had the thought also, which was kind of nerve racking, but Elder Hackett said it was good and I was really grateful for him being so nice. After FHE I just tried to get more done and got some stuff done, but though I worked as hard as I could, still had plenty more at the end of the night.

Sunday, October 1, 2006

2006-11-04T20:41:00.000+02:00

Sunday morning I didn’t need to take a shower, because I’d taken one the night before, so I just got up at like 8:30 and somehow got ready really super fast. So, since I was ready by like 9:10, I left with Jessica at 9:20 because she has to go early to practice piano. It was really good because then I got to practice conducting too. However, despite all the practice, I still did a crappy conducting job! For some reason, things just slip my mind sometimes. Don’t understand why. The Sunday meetings were actually kind of nerve racking this Sunday. It was fast and testimony meeting, and since there are so few people in the branch, I was extra nervous about there not being anyone to get up and bear their testimony. The time ended up passing, but I’m not sure how. Also, I was really hungry, so all during church I could not get my mind off of all different kinds of food. Sunday School and Relief Society weren’t quiiite as nerve racking as Sacrament, but they’re always a struggle because of the language barrier and I really have a hard time paying attention a lot of the time. After we got home I went straight for the kitchen. I’d been wanting a frozen snickers bar the whole fast and finally got one. Then I took a nice little uncomfortable nap on the lopsided couch and didn’t get up til I had to cook chicken for our Sunday dinner stir fry. The rest of the girls came over at 4 and we ate and had our meeting. Our meeting was really important this time. After it was done I’d felt like I’d just had either a really good conversation or a good cry. We started talking about habits of our group (because Holly says that now is when our group will start to form permanent habits) and got into a discussion about all the different things that have been a problem in our group lately. We were all really honest and there were so many good things said and I felt like it really helped. By the end I understood the rest more and I felt like they understood me more. Not too long after we ended the meeting, Conference started, and I was in the perfect mood for it. I took a lot of notes and got as much out of it as I think was possible for me – it was great. Also, they talked about our Iasi branch! They actually talked about this kid named Vasile who is one of the kids who are always out on the streets next to the Villa. I don’t know him, but Holly does. She said he used to come and be really active and have a testimony and was reading the Book of Mormon and everything, but then something happened and his parents didn’t like the church and he got into the wrong crowd and the person who owns the Villa wouldn’t let the street kids come to church anymore and also that he took it really hard when that group of Americans left. She says now he doesn’t want anything to do with the church and won’t even look at her when she walks by. It’s so sad. We all really want to do something to help them, but we don’t know what. After the first session, I called my parents, who were watching conference at home for the first time instead of at Grandma’s house. Sad. I was really excited to tell them that they’d talked about our branch in Conference. The second session of conference was pretty good too although part of the time I was distracted by trying to upload pictures on the computer at the same time. Bad idea. After conference I just went to bed. It was late. We watch conference live, so it’s from 7-9pm our time and 11 – 1am.

Saturday, September 30, 2006

2006-11-04T20:27:00.000+02:00

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.

Firday, September 29, 2006

2006-11-04T20:15:00.000+02:00

Well, our third day at Dancu still wasn’t very good, but it was better than the day before. We worked on Brigance pretty much the whole day. I did it for Petrica and finished pretty much the whole thing and she did it for Iuliana. It was the first day that Mihai wasn’t the largest focus of our attention. I had a little bit of frustration with Constica, because no matter what I did, he just would not get happy. Finally Shannon tried and had the same result, so she took him to the back and he was much happier. We went straight to the hospital again on this day too and I was starving because I didn’t really have any food that I was able to bring with me. On the way to the hospital our tram was stopped because of two guys fighting in the street. One of them was a cab driver and his taxi was stopped in front of our tram, so we had no choice but to just wait there. What we think happened was that the one guy had been crossing the street and he’d tried to cut off the taxi driver or something and made him mad, but we really have no clue. When I became aware of the fighting, the taxi driver had just hit the pedestrian so hard he was knocked to the ground. So I watched as he struggled to stand up. Then, just as he was getting up and before he really had much balance again, the taxi driver came back and started just punching and punching him again and then he went back and got back in his taxi and drove off. The other guy stumbled back up and with a ripped jacket and a bruised and slightly bloody face, he tried to catch the tramvite that was going the other way which had also been stopped like we were because they were actually fighting in the street right in front of it Anyway, at the hospital I don’t remember for sure who I was with, but I think that I started off with Ionella and then went to Iulia. If I remember correctly, I went in with Ionella first and it was way interesting. The room was full of people and as soon as I walked in they just all stopped talking and staaaared at me. I couldn’t really do anything about it while I was changing her diaper, except feel incredibly awkward, but as soon as I was done I picked her up and turned around and was like “buna ziua!” and asked if I could sit on the bed next to the old grandma. She said yeah, so I sat down and did my best “clueless American who’s nevertheless well meaning” impression because then they usually are a lot more compassionate. It worked like a charm and since they were fascinated with me anyway they started talking with me. Just because I had absolutely nothing to say and wanted it to not be awkward silence, I said something like “what are the names of the animals” and pointed to one of the animals on the wall. Well, the room whipped into a frenzy and I had people pointing every which direction at all the different animals exclaiming excitedly what they were all called. I, of course, got absolutely nothing from it because it was so confusing, but I acted very grateful and clueless. About this time the doctors came in and took the attention, which was good because I had no clue what to do next. Also, by this time Ionella was asleep and the nurse told me to put her back in the crib, so I went up to be with Iulia and Shannon. Since she was there and there wasn’t much for me to do I thought I’d go look at the first floor and see if I could find Constantine or Radu. Well, like the day before, the nurses were no help and just said they weren’t there, so I, frustrated decided to go try and find the new baby on the 7th floor. Well, I had no luck there either. Not only did I not find the baby, but I didn’t find Cosmina or Ionut either. So even more frustrated I went back down with Shannon and Iulia. Later, though Shannon and I found Ionut and played with him for a little while. On the way home from the hospital, we were walking down the hill and saw a car run into the one in front of it right as we were meeting up with Megan and Marina on the corner. Ah Romania. That makes 1 dead pedestrian, 1 fight and 2 car crashes that I’ve actually seen in less than a month while I’ve been in this country. Well, after the hospital we came home and rested for a little while and I took a nap and stuff and then we all went to Moldova Mall for a movie with the Podul girls and Mihai. I actually had a lot of fun. At the theaters here you actually buy specific seats, so we had to make sure we sat by each other. The movie we saw was “Click” with Adam Sandler. It was a fairly typical Adam Sandler movie as far as comedy is concerned, but it also had more of a good moral than his past ones, which is what he’s tending toward lately. Anyway, after the movie, for some reason I was laughing a lot, but I can’t remember why. Because I laughed SO hard and walked all the way up the stairs, by the time we got back up to the apartment I was really tired and ready for bed even though it was still pretty early. So I just did a few things and then went to bed.

Thursday, September 28, 2006

2006-11-04T20:06:00.000+02:00

On our second day to the apartment we tried to work a little bit on Brigance (by the way, Brigance is a developmental test we do at the beginning and the end of the internship to see what the kids need to work on and how they have improved). It was a little bit frustrating because we started on Mihai and Shannon is really really partial to Mihai. It was a problem for me because I felt like she always wanted to say he could do things and wasn’t realizing that it actually helps Mihai more if we mark down things he can’t do because then we’ll know to work on those things and otherwise we won’t. It seems like you’re being nice to him to “give it to him” and say he can do it, but it’s really not. Anyway, so we got a little frustrated with each other and by the time the day was over I wasn’t really too keen on talking to her. We went straight to the hospital from Dancu and I stopped in at a store and grabbed a banana because I figured I’d get hungry. Also, we had to figure out how to get to the hospital from the tram stop we knew we were supposed to get off on. Shannon said Holly had said you had to go down this alleyway, so we walk into this alleyway on the side of this other hospital and there was a dog in the middle of the path. Well, we didn’t think much of it because there are always dogs everywhere, but the dog started barking ferociously at us and bolted for Shannon. At first she tried to run, but then she realized that was not a good idea and didn’t want to encourage it, so she stopped, but then she didn’t know what to do, so she was standing there with the dog coming at her looking really freaked out and she was like, “now what do I do???” I remembered all the things I’ve always heard about coyotes and bobcats and all that, so I said (literally, out loud and everything) “you do this!” and I whipped around, threw my arms up and went “Ahhh!” and just yelled really loud at him and tried to be as scary as little old me could be. It worked somehow and the dog just stopped and we walked away really quickly, Awkward (because there were people pretty close by) and scary. Luckily we ended up finding the right alleyway pretty quickly. At the hospital, I think maybe I started off with Maria and then went down to Iulia. I remember when I was in with Iulia, she looked really really bad at first and it just like made my heart skip. I don’t remember for sure, but I think it was Marina that was in there to begin with, and I think Holly came in at some point as well (although this could have been another day). At any rate, I think this may have been how it happened (I could be mixing two days into one, but all of these things happened). Marina and I were singing to her and trying to get her to sleep, but she was really really sweaty. Like, I remember when I first came in she looked like she was just doing horrible to me. She was completely red and had beads of sweat all over her face. Marina said she’d just wiped the sweat of her face like a couple minutes before too and that it just kept coming back. Well, I wiped the sweat off of her again and then we started singing hymns to her. We just started from the beginning of the hymn book and she was starting to get sleepy, but would wake up whenever we paused, so we’d have the next song prepared ahead of time so we wouldn’t even skip a beat. Well, right as we thought we were kind of getting her to sleep, the doctors and nurses swarmed in and started working on her. At first I was a little frustrated because she wasn’t even close to sleep then, but by the end I was really grateful for them. It was really hard to watch because they always use a pipe to clean out her nose, mouth and throat hole, which she always hates and cries through. Also, because they turned her on the other side and I saw that she had a really huge, nasty and gross bedsore on the side of her head that they dressed with gauze and antibiotic cream. They also changed her diaper and her clothes. So by the end I just felt so much better because she was all clean and changed and her wound was dressed and because they cleaned out all her sinuses and she wasn’t hot and sweaty any more and was much much happier. Anyway, after they left I think that’s when Holly came in and she was really tired, so instead of singing Iulia to sleep, we ended up actually singing Holly to sleep. Come to think of it, I think sometime during this day I also went to try to find kids on the first floor. Actually, I think I specifically tried to find Constantine or Radu, but the nurses kept directing me to other babies, so I ended up spending some time with Octavion, who I actually thought was some other baby because he looks so different from when I saw him before. After the hospital, we had Outreach, so Shannon and I went to outreach together. On the way there she brought up how we were mad at each other earlier and we had a good, productive discussion about it and tried to figure out what to do in the future. It still took me a second to be completely over it afterward, but it made it so I could heal and get over it, so it was really good. During outreach I just played uno and talked to people, and then I went home!

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

2006-11-04T20:03:00.000+02:00

I finally was feeling mostly better, so I got up early and went with Shannon to Dancu for the first time. We have to leave the apartment at 8:15 and catch a tramvite from Tirgu Cucu. We take it all the way to the end of the line and jump out on the end of the line tracks at the station. It takes us to pretty much ghettoville Romania where the dogs that roam the area are starving and hide behind trash bins glaring at you and where there is trash strewn EVERYWHERE. I’ve already seen a few dirty diapers ripped up and littered upon the ground. I think the street dogs must get into them. Anyway, I love it, but it makes me really sad. We don’t have to walk very far at all to get to the apartment building. We just find the big blue door that signifies it and ring them to let us in. The apartment itself is surprisingly nice. As far as I can tell, there’s a living room, kitchen, two bathrooms and two bedrooms. All of the workers who I’ve met thus far have been really nice to us. A few of them are even really intent on helping us learn the language, which is great. When we get there, we change into our scrubs and then go into the living room where all the kids are, and where the kids pretty much stay all day unless they are sleeping. The workers generally just leave us to do whatever we want and only once in a while do they come into the room and play with the kids for a few minutes. There are four kids in the apartment and all of them are fairly low functioning. First, there is Constantine. Constantine is a product of incest (his mentally challenged mother was raped by her father) and was also premature, so his problems are a product of being born underdeveloped and having bad genes. He is fairly frail and bent and lays on the couch or in his bed all day. He can move his head, possibly all the way from one side to the other, but with some difficulty. Also, he can move his legs and his arms somewhat, but usually will just move his hands around. He’s also at least partially blind. He doesn’t speak, but instead shows all of his emotion through either crying (sounds more like whimpering or whining) or laughing. Most of the time while he’s on the couch he’s usually fine just sitting there, but sometimes he’ll start crying. When he does you just have to try a few things until you figure out what he wants. Generally he’ll either want a massage, want to be tickled, want to be held or want to be turned around. If none of those, the stimulation from being in that room with the other kids may just be too much for him. In that case you would just take him to the back and spend a little one on one time with him there. Petrica has down syndrome, and though we’re probably not supposed to have favorites, he’s mine. He is fairly skinny, has brown hair and brown eyes and is 6. When I first went to Dancu, I couldn’t get him to interact with me like at all. I’d sit in front of him and try to get his attention, but he’d never look at me or acknowledge my presence in any way. He can sit up on his own, but often just flops to the side or flops forward. He’s incredibly flexible, but kind of lazy and unmotivated. He’s kind of off in his own world a lot of the time, which makes it really hard to teach him anything, because, well, he just doesn’t care! He’s always happy though and it doesn’t matter if he just fell on his head or what he’ll always laugh. He’s really ticklish, especially on the sides and in the armpits, so when you put your hands on his sides to pick him up he tenses up and gets this huge smile on his face. He’s also cross-eyed and just plain adorable. We’ve bonded and he totally responds to me know, but I’ll get to that later. Mihai has cerebral palsy, so he is very physically limited but he’s pretty much all there mentally. What I mean by that is that his mind would be just as far advanced as any other kids if he hadn’t been institutionalized and had physical limitations on top of that, but he’s definitely behind. Physically, he can move a block from one side of him to the other, but he can’t do much more with his hands because he doesn’t have much control over them or much strength. He generally just lies on the ground because he can only sit up unassisted for a couple of seconds, but he can roll over fairly easily and do an army crawl with difficulty. He’s also got sandy blond curly hair and blue eyes and is 4. Lastly, Iuliana, the princess, has short straight light brown hair and brown eyes. She can’t sit up on her own or crawl or do any of that, but she can roll over and grip many things in her hand. She has sever institutionalized autism and looooves sound and vibration. She screams whenever she isn’t getting her way and is actually pretty insane in a very loveable way. She’ll be off by herself in some corner scratching something and she’ll scream several short screams, then just start laughing. Always interesting. She’s also 4. Oh, and I forgot, none of these kids can talk. Anyway, that day we just played around with the kids and did whatever. We didn’t work on Brigance and we didn’t have any kind of a plan. It was alright, but I was a little bit disappointed because Shannon had already been with the kids the day before and so she like knew all about them and was so excited and already had all these ideas and stuff and I felt like I was robbed of the chance to start off with them like she did. Like I never got the chance to just get to know them on my own and get all excited about them and have my own ideas because from the very beginning I was just already trying to catch up with Shannon and think about what she was already thinking and I felt like if we’d both started off at the same time I’d have been able to contribute and have ideas on my own too. The only other thing I can think to say about the orphanage was that the workers fed us lunch and wow, it was nasty. We had bread and soup. The soup was really oily and had these white things that we decided were some kind of meatball, but we never could decide what exactly was in them, we could only see stringy tendon looking things from some type of meat. The bread was the nastiest bread I think I’ve ever tasted, which, upon closer examination, we decided was because it was covered in a layer of white mold. Mm mm good. So after leaving the apartment we took the tramvite home. At first we were going to try to not speak English while waiting for the tram every day because it’s a bad area and we thought it would be safer to not let them know we’re American. We’ve scrapped that by now though because half the time we go straight to the hospital and leave in our scrubs, which is pretty obvious. After we got home I ate a bit then went to the hospital with Jessica and Megan. When we got to the hospital I can’t remember exactly who I worked with but I think I may have worked with Maria. All I know is that I feel like I was with Maria a lot that week. I worked with Maria and lot and Iulia a lot and other than that did a lot of trying to find stuff to do and just walking to different floors. After the hospital, some girls went to outreach, but Shannon and I were both going on Thursday, so we talked a little bit about the kids. I think we started looking at brigance, but at the very least we talked about the kids and bonded, but in general just didn’t get much done.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

2006-10-25T17:09:00.000+03:00

I was sick again on this day, so everyone went of to the orphanage, etc. and I stayed home again. I didn’t get much done the whole day because I just felt queasy and was also really really sick of the computer because I was on it so much the day before. I also got so frickin sick of the apartment that I opened up all the windows and then went to go stand on the balcony for a while. That wasn’t even enough, so I literally just went up and down the stairwell a few times. Figured out there’s a door to the roof. Plan on checking it out sometime. That night after everyone got home we took the maxi taxi to Metro. Metro is basically the Romanian version of Costo. Like, it even looks like it. It was a pretty good visit because I got a bunch of stuff that I really needed – like a winter jacket. Also, I think getting out and walking around was really good for me. That night was the first one in a few days that I slept through whatsoever.

Monday, September 25, 2006

2006-10-25T17:05:00.001+03:00

Well, last night I got a fever and wasn’t feeling too good while we watched Princess Diaries II. I couldn’t sleep all night and just kept moving around. I wanted to get up, but Shannon was sleeping in the living room, so I knew there wasn’t really anywhere in the apartment that I could go. Finally, around 6am I got up and went to the bathroom and then I started to feel really sick like I was going to throw up. I tried laying back down on the bed because I thought that might help, but I just kept feeling more and more sick. I figured it would be back to stay in bed because I didn’t want to risk throwing up in bed, so I went out to the kitchen and grabbed a pot and sat down in the hallway. I did end up throwing up, and at that point I didn’t want to go back to bed, so I cleaned myself up, grabbed my pillows, blankets and book and sat on the kitchen floor reading for a while. Well, I got pretty tired, so I just lay down on the kitchen floor. I didn’t stay there too long though because I knew the girls were supposed to get up and run and I didn’t want them to see me sleeping on the kitchen floor. Instead I moved into living room and slept there, which was more comfortable than my bed for some reason. The girls all eventually got up and left for the orphanage/apartments, but I stayed home. Most of the day I just spent on the internet updating my blog and such. I also took like a 5 hour nap too. I was really weak the whole day, so it was hard for me to do much of anything and I kept fluctuating from hot to cold. It also felt really great to take a shower in the hot water. Now all the girls are home for the night (they went to the orphanage, hospital and went bowling for FHE) and I’m just going to finish up this journal entry, read a little and go to bed. I want to go to bed kind of late so that I’m actually tired, but I don’t think that’ll happen because I’m kind of running out of things to do that I have enough energy for.

Sunday, September 24, 2006

2006-10-25T17:05:00.000+03:00

This morning I got up a little late and thought I didn’t have enough time to wash my hair, so I just did everything else. Well I ended up having a bunch of extra time and it was fabulous. I love having mornings like that. Then Megan and I walked to church together (because the others had to go way early) and we got there 15 til and I had plenty of time to practice the songs that I needed to conduct. Sacrament meeting was pretty cool. All the new elders introduced themselves and Sora Baker did a special musical number and sadly we ran out of time for poor Shannon to give the talk that she tried so hard to prepare for. Sunday school was done by Melissa and after it I talked to Rebecca’s husband, Dave, for a little while because he’d decided to come to church and see what it was all about. Relief Society was taught by this cute little sister whose name I always forget and translated by Alexandra. After church we all went home for a little while before heading over to Podul for Sunday dinner and meeting. The meeting was really great as usual and I love our group J. Also, at the meeting we finally decided what kids we’ll all be working with. I’m in Dancu with Shannon! At first I really wanted to be in Donald Duck/Tomesti, but now that I’m in Dancu I’m going to put my all into it and love it. Also, I love Shannon and we always work really well together. After the meeting, Shannon, Marina and I talked for a little while and bonded and then we convinced Marina to spend the night. On the walk home I started feeling a little sick. Like felt queasy and dizzy and just had that sick feeling that you can taste in your mouth and feel on your body. I think I may have a fever and hope that I can go to Dancu tomorrow because it’ll be our first day!

Saturday, September 23, 2006

2006-10-25T17:01:00.000+03:00

Today we went to the monasteries! We got up pretty early and met the two taxi driver friends of Mario’s outside. We filled up both taxis to the brim. My taxi has two in the front, 3 in the middle and 3 in the back and was very tight. We drove for like 3 hours before getting to the first monastery and I took tons and tons of pictures because it was really gorgeous. We went through all these cute little villages with lots and lots of horse drawn carts and farms and farmers and it was so cute and so Romanian. Also, I think Ricky Martin will always remind me of this trip because our taxi driver literally blasted the same cd of his the entire trip. We had to have heard the same songs like 5 times. Before we got to the first monastery Mario surprised us and took us to a wild life reserve. We couldn’t talk much while we were there though (or at most of the places) because in Romania they tend to charge you more if you’re foreign. So we get there and Mario’s like “shh! Don’t speak in English!” Anyway, the reserve was beautiful. It was really intimate and you could get so much closer to all the animals than you ever would be able to in the US. Like, I was literally a foot away from a bear and I got to actually pet some deer and touch their antlers and stuff. After the reserve we went to our first monastery. It was really beautiful and interesting, but sometimes pictures speak louder than words, so you’ll have to look on my yahoo photos for it. We walked around leisurely and went in the church (which had the head and bones of some saint) and then Mario told us some of the monastery’s history. After that we went to another fairly close one. Out in front there was this souvenir stand and I bought some really yucky thick sugary strawberry jam and an awesome switchblade from China for Arron (my bro) who is going to absolutely love it. Only problem is that it might be illegal in the US. I know it’s illegal to sell them in the US, but it could be like the Butterfly knife where it is in fact legal to own one, just not to sell one. There isn’t much else to say about that monastery, because it was mostly the same as the first. Then, we went to one more monastery and this one was my favorite for a few reasons. First of all it was the most beautiful, by far. Second of all it had the creepyist, belongs in a thriller movie wooden cross with misty creepy forest mountains in the background. And third of all, we got to eat with the monks there! It was soooo cool. They took us in the dining hall and had us all sit down at this table with bread, soup and eggs and they served us. I really felt it was so random and cool that I was sitting there at a monastery in Romania being served by monks. Also, the food was pretty nasty. Like, the eggs were not only cold but partially grey and Holly found a squirmy sluglike bug one hers which sicked the rest of us out. It was kind of a problem because then the monks were like “do you guys not like the eggs?” We contemplated just telling them that Mormons don’t eat eggs, but instead we said they were really good and put some of them in the soup and strategically move some around on the plates and even eat some. Other than eggs they had soup and bread. I liked the soup, but apparently everyone else thought it was unsanitary. The bread, however, was amazingly good. Also, another funny thing was that the monks gave beer to Mario and the two taxi drivers who aren’t Mormon and then randomly gave some to Jenna too! Good good monastery. After our last monastery, Mario surprised us again by taking us to this really cool mountainside fort. We’d seen it on the hillside and thought it was amazing and we were trying to catch pics of it and then the taxi drivers turn and went up the mountain toward it! We went part way up the mountain with the car, but went for a beautiful hike up the rest of it. Don’t really know what else to say about the actual fort either, because you’d just have to see it. After the fort we just drove the two hours home and were all exhausted.

Friday, September 22, 2006

2006-10-25T16:54:00.000+03:00

The day started off really early. We had to meet at Scala at 8am and I got up at 7:15. After meeting together we all walked to where we had to take a Maxitaxi to get to Tomesti. The walk was actually really pretty and along the way we saw a couple of cars get in an accident. It wasn’t bad, just a fender bender, but still interesting. Then, the ride on the maxi taxi took us too what seemed like the very edges of the city where it gets to be much more like the country. There were a lot of horse-drawn carts. The kids in the apartment were really cool. First we were all just sitting in the living room by ourselves. Then one little boy walked out and you should have seen his face when he walked out into the room with 11 girls staring only at him. He walked as suavely as he could and just kind of tried to act cool. It was very cute. Then there was another little girl who started playing with Melissa and who really liked to be thrown up and down. Then there was another cute little girl with tights and a little skirt and her hair up in a pony tail who just sat in Abbi’s lap the whole time. Next came a little autistic boy who just sat on the floor and played with Shannon and would laugh every time she peeked her head through the door on this plastic house thing. Last, but certainly not least was a veeeery autistic little girl whose favorite activity was to hit and pull hair. We were instructed that in order to curb this activity we were to keep her hands busy as best we could and keep a very good eye on her. If she were to succeed and either slap us or pull our hair we were to act without emotion and not give her the satisfaction of getting a reaction. Let me tell you, we had some practice. This girl literally did not seem to think of anything else. You could see her little mind working as she just went from person to person trying to get a shot at them. Most of us prevented her, but a few people just weren’t prepared. Like, she flat out slapped Melissa (not gonna lie, it was pretty funny). She also pulled Abbi and Holly’s hair. It was amazing the first time when she pulled Abbi’s hair because Abbi was playing with another child and her hair was up in a bun. Well, this little girl just walks up, stares straight at her hair and just gets her entire fist on the top on Abbi’s head and just pulls as hard as she can. Abbi just takes her hand off and continues playing with her hair completely messed up. It was amazing to behold. She did the same thing to Holly, except I don’t know why Holly didn’t prevent it. Holly was sitting there and this little girl came up to her and caressed holly’s cheek and kept it there. And see I had been watching this kid like she was a comedy show, so about this time I remember thinking “Oh, Holly, what’re you doing, she just about to slap you!” Then all of a sudden she just jets her hand up and yanks on Holly’s hair so hard her head goes about as far around as it can. Some girls tried to get her hand out of Holly’s hair, but it took them some time to wrestle it out of Holly big beautiful head of thick red hair. Right there I was sold on her and have wanted to work in Tomesti ever since. Well, after the apartment we went to the orphanage for a little while. I went with Melissa and Abbi to Mickey Mouse first, then Bambi, then Donald Duck. Mickey Mouse was actually a lot of fun. I played with quite a few kids and really enjoyed getting all the smiles out of them. They are pretty much all in wheelchairs but you get them out of their wheelchairs and play with them on a big mat like you would use in gymnastics. You move them, dance with them, talk to them and play with toys with them and they like to just stare at you and smile. After Mickey Mouse we went over to Bambi which is incredibly active. There are lots of kids and they are almost all out of their wheelchairs and on their feet most of the time and quite a few of them really like to have constant affection. A few of them also like to hit and kick, etc. The worst of it was when I was leaning back on the couch thing with my face facing the ceiling because one of the girls had just been inspecting my mouth (she likes to just inspect people like a doctor – she’ll have you open your mouth and then she’ll put her face like right up to it and peer inside – a bit nerve racking) when all of a sudden one of the other girl comes and stand on the couch right next to me and just takes and stomps her foot right on my face real hard. It was mean! Since we spent a lot of time in the other two rooms we didn’t have much time for Donald Duck, which was sad because that’s the one I really wanted to spend time in. Also, I only got to spend time in one of the 3 rooms in that section because the nurse yelled at me for going in one of them (not sure why) and the other two girls were in the first room holding the babies. The room was mostly kids who are a little bit older (like 8 or something) who are severely handicapped and don’t talk or move much and just lie in their cribs and whose limbs are usually very bent and such. They’re a lot of fun though because you just walk up to the crib and look at them and they laugh. You can also take them out alright and just sit with them or rock them. The only one not like the rest is Maria, the little down syndrome baby whose really young and is just like any other baby with down syndrome I suppose. So cute – I want one. After the orphanage, Jessica, Jenna and I went to the clothing fair, which was inside a discoteque building. It had quite a bit of clothes, but was kind of expensive and made me nervous because all the shops were so small and the salespeople were so pushy and yet I couldn’t even understand them and it was just really nerve racking. So I was having a hard time feeling free to just look and not feel pressured so I just followed Jessica around and had her pick stuff out for me J. I actually ended up getting a really cute green sweater too. After that we decided we didn’t have enough time to go to the hospital, so instead we went to Hala and did more clothes shopping. Jessica and I had a lot of fun and we went through the entire place – every shop. I ended up getting some black Sunday shoes and a really cute jacket that I love. At night we all went to the Philharmonic. Possibly the most interesting thing about the philharmonic was the building. It was so beat up! Like, when we walked by the building when we mapped the city I thought it was an abandoned building until they started talking about how we could attend concerts there. The inside was better with frescoes on the wall and such, but it had like wires and such coming through the walls as well (as in a whole wall with just tons of metal bars stuck through it). Other parts of it have sections of the wall that have just crumbled, etc. etc. The inside where the concert was actually performed seemed to be a lot nicer though. The concert itself was very enjoyable. It was Bela Bartok and someone else whose last name was Enescu I think. I struggled to stay awake but not because it was boring, just because it was beautiful and soothing. Afterward we just all got ready for bed. Oh wait, also, all day we were trying to decide who would work where in the orphanage and apartments. We were supposed to have figured it out and I was thinking about it all day, but we still haven’t determined it. I’ll either do Tomesti and Donald Duck (and switch off) or I’ll be in Dancu and go with them to the Orphanage to do physical therapy every other day. Honestly I think I’d rather be in Tomesti/DD, but I’ll be ok with Dancu. It sounds like that’s probably what I’ll end up doing too.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

2006-10-25T16:38:00.000+03:00

We had to wake up pretty early and go to the apartments in the morning. We all met together at Tirgu Cucu, where we took a tramvite to the Dacie apartments. I always liked riding in cars just through relatively boring California, so you can imagine that I loved riding in the tramvite through Iasi. When we got off we walked a little bit to where the actual apartment was. The only thing I really remember about the walk to the first one was there was this really weird looking church that was under construction. At the first apartment (Dacie 3rd floor) I played a lot with a little kid named Catalin. He was ADORABLE. Like, I’m pretty sure that the only things he really had wrong with him were that he had a cleft palate (which had gotten surgery on it) and then just had effects from institutionalization. So basically if his parents had taken care of him he’d be fine. We played a lot together and a lot of the time was spent with me just rocking him in my legs. He fit fabulously and it really calmed him down, which was good because he was a really active kid. After we left we went over to Dacie 7th floor which I remember being in an incredibly ghetto area. Like, the wall right next to the door we went in to get into the bloc had “no school, no job, no money” written across it. In the apartment I remember tossing a balloon around that a couple of the kids would hit – one of which was a cute little down syndrome kid. The apartment was right by a gypsy camp, so when we left the apartment we went to the top of a little slope and looked across a little sewage river thing to where there was this huuuge field with trash all over it and saw the gypsy camp in one little corner of it. It was surreal. I want to go there. Then we got back on the tramvite and rode it basically back to Tirgu Cucu before getting off at Dancu. For some reason I don’t remember the ride there or what the surrounding area of Dancu looked like. I do remember though a little boy named Constantine. I was sitting next to Megan on the couch and she was holding him so that his head was right below mine, facing up at me. I played with his hair almost the entire time and it was soft and just this pretty white blond color. Also, Megan was tickling him a lot so he just kept laughing. Sad story though – he was born because his mom was raped by her dad. What would he do with that if he had the mental faculty to comprehend it? After Dancu we came back to the apartment and got ready to go to the hospital. I was reeeeally tired – probably from waking up early. At the hospital I started off with Maria who was just so happy and sweet. I think she’d just been fed and I changed her diaper, so she was incredibly content and just could care less what I did with her and occasionally would even smile at me. Radu, in the next room, however had a horrible day. The poor guy got a urine bag and got a feeding tube with an iv in his head as well. Also, we gathered from what the nurse said to another mom that he’s really not doing well and as a result the nurse was in a really bad mood. She was yelling at Megan and Radu and I and getting mad at us for the stupidest things. For example, she got mad at Megan for turning Radu on his side, even though he has a fever and his back is way sweaty and he was trying to turn on his side on his own but she was just helping him. She almost made Megan cry. Anyway, after a little while I moved down and was with Iulia for the rest of the day. Holly was down there with me and we had a good chat. After a little while Abbi came down as well and we tried to sing Iulia to sleep but ended up singing Holly to sleep instead. Iulia breaks my heart sometimes because she is always soooo distressed and there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do to help relieve it. And the thing is, I really don’t blame her! I would hate to be a little baby who is stuck in a crib with a fever, a bunch of IVs and a big ol tube, pumping oxygen stuck into my throat leaving me unable to emit sound! Poor girl – she’d better get better. After the hospital I think I went with Melissa to the grocery store to get a whole bunch of stuff and then instead of going to Outreach I stayed home because Mario’s husband was supposed to come to fix stuff. He didn’t end up coming though. But it was good because apparently outreach was nothing special and one of the new missionaries offended some of the girls and that way I also got a lot done. After they all came home, a few of them were upset and we talked about outreach for a while, then it turned into a funnier conversation and by the end of the night we had soooo many one liners that shouldv’e gone on the quote board. My favorite was when Melissa was trying to show us how to make a nose flute and to do so she had to blow out Jessica’s nose. Oh my gosh, it was one of those things that’s just so awkward you can’t help but laugh your head off. We all laughed soooo hard. Eventually I got to bed, but much later than I should have as usual.

New Pictures Setup

2006-10-23T07:42:00.000+03:00

Ok, so Yahoo Photos made me update my photos and it's all set up differently now. If you just want to see what new photos I've added, it gives you that option, or you can go into the different very self explanatory albums that I've set up like "The Hospital." Ok, that's all!

Wedesday, September 20, 2006

2006-10-23T07:14:00.000+03:00

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.

September 19, 2006

2006-10-22T08:33:00.000+03:00

This morning we woke up early again and went to the hospital by 9. I started off on the first floor with Ionut. This was my first time with him and usually it’s Ionut and George, but George wasn’t there. I didn’t think about it a whole lot while I was in the room, but later on when someone asked about it and I said he wasn’t there we started wondering whether he’d died. We found out later that he did. It’s funny, because normally when someone dies it’s a horribly sad thing. But with these kids, a lot of the time I have to say I’m almost happy that they’ve passed away. I mean, especially for kids like George where there’s no hope of him getting any better and where he’s just in pain all day and can’t even move. I’m so sure that he’s much happier right now that why in the world would I be sad. To explain a little more about Ionut and George, they’re babies with Hydrocephaly. That means they have water on the brain and basically their heads just get bigger and bigger until they die. It’s quite shocking when you first walk in and see them because their heads really are huge, but you get used to it and just love them the same as any child. After a little while Ionut fell asleep so I went up to the 7th floor to see if I could be with Octavian. When I got there there were a few nurses in the room, so I hung outside the room until there was only one left. Then I came in and sat down. She started talking to me and I pretended I knew what she was saying and I was just like “Da, da.” Well, eventually she finished feeding him and I could see that she wanted me to sit down next to him on the crib and hold one hand under his head and use the other hand to pat his back. She said a TON more though and I was a little worried because I was afraid maybe there was something important I was supposed to know. Especially since he had an oxygen mask attached to his face which was not, when she left, attached to the tube that the oxygen comes out of and the whole time I was wondering if he should be attached to it. So I just kept watching him to make sure he looked all right! After a little while he fell asleep too, so I told the nurse I was leaving (to make sure she knew no one was in there so maybe she’d check on him and attach it if it needed to be attached) and then went down to where Iulia was. Melissa was with her and she’d just gotten the pressure increased on the machine she’s attached to so she was “crying” again. It was so sad because we just couldn’t get her to stop crying no matter what we did and we knew she was hurting. This went on for maybe an hour until finally we made a discovery. We started singing “Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree” to her and she stopped crying! She just stared at us!!! So the whole rest of the time we sang to her. At the beginning we just sang those types of song ooover and oooover before branching out into some camp songs, some Disney song and then even just some regular old popular music. Sometimes we’d use hand motions and sometimes we were just too tired to think of random hand motions for songs that didn’t always include them. But I do think it helped when there were hand motions. Toward the end she did start falling asleep though, so that was fabulous. By the time we left we’d successfully gotten her to sleep!!! After leaving the orphanage the gypsy kids came and mauled us again. Then we had some time in the apartment before going over to Podul to work a little more on the “Mapping the City” project. Basically we talked a bunch and then worked on marking some maps of Iasi that Bri scanned for us. The rest of my apartment left while I waited for Holly who is spending the week at our apartment. Before we left, Marina asked if we could take some of her wet clothes over to our apartment to rewash them because their washer broke when her clothes were in it. Well, let me just say, that was a toooough walk home. Not only did Holly have like ALL her stuff with her, and not only was I carrying two VERY heavy bags of wet clothes, but we were carrying 3 scrub tops with wet “Y”s painted on them, and a very awkward map. Then, on top of it all, right as we’re leaving Podul, one of the stray dogs started following us because he was attracted to Marina’s wet clothes. We joked a little about throwing some of them to him and just being like “sorry Marina, we threw some of your clothes to the street dogs.” It was funny because the dog followed us all the way from Podul to Scala and at the beginning we were kind of scared of him and like “go away doggy” but by the end we were like “aww, I’m sorry, bye bye little doggy, I love you!” It was cute too because whenever we’d rest from carrying all the stuff (which was a lot) he’d just lay down on the ground next to us and wait. I almost hoped he’d be outside our door this morning, but he was gone.

Monday, September 18, 2006

2006-10-21T21:16:00.000+03:00

I decided to skip a couple days because they weren't that interesting. The only thing that I think was remotely interesting was that I had my first week of conducting for Sacrament meeting. I didn't have any time to practice and it was really hard to figure out when to go up since I couldn't understand anything Pres. Popovich said. I didn't make tooo many mistakes though, except that during one of the song I almost sat down after the 3rd verse because I didn't realize there were actually 4 verses! Anyway, here's the entry for Monday, September 18th:

We went to the Hospital first thing in the morning at like 9 o clock so that we can start to get ready for waking up early to go to the orphanage. First I was with Iulia. She looks like a completely normal really cute baby except that she has a tube in her next which is connected to a machine which pumps air in her at regular intervals so she gets help breaking. It’s really sad though because they come in and change the pressure on the machine and you can tell it hurts afterward because for the next few hours she never stops crying. Of course, she can’t actually make much in the way of sound, so by crying I mean that she scrunches her face so as to look like she’s crying and tears will come out, just no sound. I think that’s even sadder than if she were actually crying. It’s also sad because you can’t hold her and she doesn’t get moved much so her arm skin was sticking to her stomach skin. Anyway, so Holly, Megan and I were in there to begin with we would do a mix of singing to her and just talking while holding her hand and rubbing her back. Ionella is in the room right next to her and after a while there were so many girls that pooled into the two rooms (because we weren’t aloud on certain floors and some kids weren’t there) that I decided to leave and go somewhere else. So after that I went up and saw Maria again and Radu for the first time (also in rooms right across from each other). Radu is adorable. He’s a few months old and has down syndrome and is just soooo sweet. There were also lots of people there though, so I tried to go down and see Octavian, but I met Abbi who was just coming from him and said the nurses told her to leave, so after that I pretty much gave up and realized there were too many of us there. So then Shannon, Abbi and I went home. We were all excited to be able to have a bunch of time to get stuff done, but alas Holly called and wanted us to meet Brother Wright and go over to his apartment because this girl named Alexandra wanted to meet us. Turns out Alexandra is this 19 year old girl who got baptized in April but can’t come to anything because her brothers and sisters (who she lives with because her parents are divorced and her mom is working in Italy) hate the church and won’t let her do anything remotely connected to it. They took away her scriptures and everything. She really wants to come though, so every once in a while she’ll sneak out and spend some time with Bro. and Sis. Wright. Actually, they keep a BOM at their apartment for her and some other things too so she can always have them to look at any time she comes over. It’s really sad. She’s still in like an extended high school program thing (don’t understand) for another two years, but after that she’ll be able to get a good job and move out on her own and do whatever she wants to do. Anyway, she apparently really likes the American girls, so she wanted to meet us, so we went over there and chatted for a couple of hours. After we came back it was pretty much time to leave, so we got ready and left. As a group we went to the Metropolitan Cathedral thing. I wrote a TON about it in my little notebook while we were there, but basically I found it really fascinating and came out of it with a lot of questions. It’s a good thing too because I’m supposed to use it for a cultural proofs and it’s supposed to take me a few hours and otherwise I’d have been done really quickly. But it was nice we got to just take our time and walk around and observe and write down everything we wanted to. After that we went and got a gogosh (or actually a Langosh) and then went straight to the church for FHE. We were really early though, so us and a few of the Romanians who were early as well played hangman. One of the Romanian guys, Adrian, was amazing at hangman when we’d do countries. Like, I think he may have gotten every single one. Even Burkina Faso. For FHE though we played the sign game which was really funny. The funniest part by far though was with Megan. Megan’s sign was a “how you doin?” type of head nod and kiss thing and every time she tried to do it she’d laugh. Well, it was bad enough when one of us girls did it to her, but one time Adrian did it to her and was totally all “I want you” about it and she just couldn’t take it. She started laughing so hard that she ran out of the room!

Friday, September 15, 2006

2006-10-21T20:59:00.000+03:00

Jessica and I woke up earlier than the rest because we were the two who were going to go to the Penilla Day Care Center and we wanted to get there by 9:30. The night before Holly had told us what to tell the taxi driver and had said they’d know where it was. Well, they didn’t. We asked about four driver’s before finally finding one who didn’t know where the actual school was, but did know where “Little Texas” was, which Holly said was close. So we took it! Well, we didn’t really know exactly where it was either, so when he dropped us off at “Little Texas” we thought we’d just wander around a little and find it pretty fast. We had no idea where to go though, so we asked this lady how to get there. She tried to tell us, but apparently it was hard to explain, so she told us to go down to a certain point and ask someone else from there. We did so, but once we got there no one really knew where it was but just gave us bogus directions anyway. Well, we ended up walking down this random little street that had construction being done on it and we had to laugh at how we looked – two young American girls walking down this random little street that’s all torn up with all kinds of construction people on it, almost all of which we asked for directions. Well, after about 10 of them directed us to this other day care place that was on that same street, we decided to just ask the day care if they knew. The lady at the day care finally knew, but the only way she could think to tell us how to get there was to have us walk through this construction zone. So we pulled back the little makeshift gate they had set up and walked through the construction, over mounds of dirt and makeshift wooden pathways, being careful to avoid the ditches while all the confused construction people just, kind of, watched. The next problem we came across was how to get out of the construction area and to the street she told us to go to. One of the construction guys came to the rescue when he saw us wandering back and forth looking really confused, and just pointed to the fence. We took that as “Go under the fence” and so we did J. I pulled it up for Jessica as she slid on the dirt under the fence and she did the same for me. We were both wearing white shirts. After we reached the street it wasn’t too hard to find the preschool. We were a little late, but it was alright. She led us to the group of kids who were just finishing up playing with puzzles. So we helped them for a minute, not really knowing what we were supposed to being doing since we couldn’t really communicate with the workers, before we went outside with all the kids. It was really fun because Jessica and I were both pushing kids in wheelchairs at the beginning and, though I hate to be partial, those two guys had to be the sweetest in the whole bunch. I’d say “unde?” (where?) and he’d go “acolo” (there) and weakly point his finger and off I’d go. He had the softest, cutest little voice and was so earnest in it like going that direction was the most important thing in the world. The other kid, Adrean, was so spunky. He’d like try and trick me and be like “acolo! Nu acolo! Nu drepte!” and just constantly change which direction he wanted. It was fabulous. We were having so much fun that some of the other kids would join me and hold onto the wheelchair with me. This also really helped when either they were saying something to me and clearly wanted me to play with them, but I didn’t understand or when they were upset about something. I’d just distract them and be like “Hai! Uitete la mine! Unde? Acolo? Cu mine! Hai sa mergem!” (Hey! Look at me! Where? There? With me! Let’s go!) and thus with my broken Romanian would get them distracted by getting them interested in my little “where should the wheelchair go” game. Some of the kids I got to know were AD, Adrean, Iuliana (or something similar), Catalina, Georgiana and Mihaela. Iuliana is very unstable. As in, she gets upset very easily and doesn’t get along well with the other kids. Catalina has a speech impediment, so if it was hard to understand before, it’s impossible with her. Also, she’s very sweet and loving and very easily attached to people. Georgiana is the kind of child that doesn’t really know how to do her own thing and just kind of follows everyone else, but at the same time is amazingly stubborn. Mihaela is much smarter than the rest, I think, but has club feet. She’s very kind though and would often be the peacemaker who would help me get the kids happy. Also, there’s a really nice worker there who tried to talk to me for a while. She reminds me of a mix between a grandma and a nun. When the workers are nice to you here, you really really appreciate it. Anyway, we only stayed til about 11:30, then walked all the way home. After a little break, we went to the hospital and we were there til like 4. I spent almost the entire time with little Maria who got moved to the 6th floor. At the beginning she was sleeping and so I just changed her diaper, set her on my legs and looked through my Romanian dictionary. The other mom that was in there was a gypsy with huge bosoms that she just had hanging out freely. Later Maria woke up and I spent the rest of the time rocking her head rapidly because that seemed to be the only thing to calm her down. Also, another mom came in at one point with just about the cutest little girl I’ve ever seen, but who was also probably the fussiest little girl I’ve ever seen too. I talked to both moms a little, but not as much as I usually do. Toward the end I put Maria back in her crib and went down to hold Constantine for just a few minutes. It was really hard because he’s so stiff and it takes a while to loosen him up and I was only there for like 15 minutes. Sad day. I feel so bad for Constantine. After the hospital we went home real quick before meeting the relief society sisters at Tirgu Cucu for a picnic. We took the tram all the way to this park and then laid out some blankets and had a yummy little picnic. I love the relief society sisters – especially the older ones – because they’re soooo cute. They’re like in their 60’s and they’re these cute little Romanian ladies, but when you put them all together they act like teenagers. It was a very enjoyable picnic. Afterward Marina and I played a little badminton and then we had a lesson by the soras. When the picnic was over, us Americans and some of the younger girls separated from the rest and walked up these steps and down this path through the gardens and to a different exit. It was beeeautiful. At one moment we were at the top of the steps and I looked back down the hill and saw the beautiful sunset in the background and all the greenery and just loved it. After that we just caught the tram home and that was that. After we got home we just watched a Gattica. Well, they watched it. I fell asleep and just went to bed.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

2006-10-21T09:56:00.000+03:00

Well, we got back from the black sea late last night and I didn’t get to bed until about 2. Also, last night Holly informed us that we were going to be going to the orphanage in the morning, which was really surprising because we weren’t expecting to go for like another week. But since I didn’t get to bed til like 2:30 and we had to try to be at the orphanage by like 8:10, I clearly didn’t get much sleep. But off we all went to the orphanage for the first time. So, we get there and we go into this one room to wait for Mario and it was so sad because when she came she was like “why did you bring all the girls? I told you just you and me.” I felt so bad for Holly because I know how it is when sometimes communication between you and a Romanian is very tough and you can try really hard to make sure you understand, but sometimes it just doesn’t work. I knew she was embarrassed and I just felt so bad for her. Anyway, so we didn’t actually get to see the orphanage, but instead just talked in the little room until they came back. We were able to go to the Panella Day Care Center afterwards, however. We all took taxis there and met with the lady in charge in some kind of a conference type room. After that she showed us around a little. I love the day care. I think it’s such a good place and wish that the hospital and the orphanage could be like that too. It might be hard to be always seeing the two totally opposite facilities because I think I might then always be dying over the travesty that the orphanage kids can’t have the same care. One of the first interesting things at the orphanage that I noticed was the way that the woman talked about Romania and about Romania versus Sweden (the Center was founded by the Swedish and employs Swedish techniques). As she was explaining how the place works she would constantly note that “it is a very Swedish way of doing things” or “this is not the Romanian way” or “the Swedish are very….” or “the Romanians are very…” Like for example, how she talked about how the Swedish make decisions for the kids by involving lots of different people in the decision: many different kinds of doctors, family and sometimes even the child while the Romanians like to make their decision independent of any other input and they just say “here, this is my diagnosis” and don’t care what anyone else thinks. Also, she showed us the outside play area and said something about how the Swedish use techniques involving the child getting sunlight and being able to explore and things like that while in Romania it’s much more focused on academics, math, science, etc. I don’t know, I thought it was really really interesting. I mean, I see this in a lot of people in Romania. What I mean is, not only do I see a lot of the Romanian traits that she mentioned, but at the same time, I see people like her who you can tell really admire other more Western modes of thought and who really try to imitate them. It’s almost like a child who tries to copy their older brother or sister. It really kind of touched me actually. And on one hand it made me sad to see that she felt her own country’s way was inferior. That’s such a heartbreaking position to be put in. But on the other hand, I mean, I agree. From what I see, the Romanian way of doing things can be, well, less healthy and functional. I agreed with most of the Day Care’s “Swedish” ways of doing things and thought it was an amazing preschool. I’d send my own kids there. I don’t know, I hope somehow Romania can manage to allow joining the European Union to help them to improve, while at the same time not force them to lose their identity. I don’t know that that’s possible though. Sad. It should be interesting to see how Romania changes in the next few years. On another note, I’m excited because they wanted two girls to go back to the preschool tomorrow and actually help out and Jessica and I are going to go! I think I’ll really enjoy going there. And moving on. So after a little down time, we went to the hospital. At the hospital I was back with Constantine on the 1st floor (intensive care). The mean doctor was there today, so we had to wait til he went in a room and sneak in and then hope he didn’t come in our room over the next few hours. And he didn’t! Today, Constantine was in with two other babies and their moms. I talked to both of them quite a bit even though one only spoke very little English and the other spoke like absolutely none. But it was refreshing to be able to still manage to communicate some. Constantine was a little more fussy today and it was tiring because I had to hold him for 3 hours straight and constantly make sure I was holding him/rocking him the way he wanted to be held/rocked or else he’d start to cry. I couldn’t just stick him on my legs and play with his arms or something. Also, when I first came in, some of the nurses followed me in and tried to tell me he couldn’t be held today and stuck his hands in his pants so he was like bound. Well, right after they walked out, one of the orderlies looked and me and said something and basically I could tell she was saying “screw them, do it anyway,” and I did. After they left I picked him up and started to comfort him. Then, a little while later I took his arms out too because I know he’s stiff from being in that crib all day and his limbs need to be moved. I like to move around and bend them as much as I gently can because I feel that helps him be less stiff. A little makeshift physical therapy. Also, I was trying to teach him to put his fingers in his mouth because he’s constantly sucking the air, and often will gladly suck my fingers, but it’d be much better if he’d just suck his own. I wasn’t the only one who was breaking the rules today either. The mom’s apparently aren’t allowed to put binkies in the babies mouths, so first they’ll try to get the baby to stop crying, but if it doesn’t work, they’ll have one mom at the door while the other mom gives the baby the binky. If a doctor comes they’ll slip it back into their pocket. I loved it. I also told them about the mean doctor and about how I didn’t want him to see me. After a while, I got in a pretty comfy position with Constantine with me sitting on the bed, leaning against the wall and just rocking him gently. His eyelids started to get heavy and luckily he fell asleep just right in time because just after the nurse came in and made me put him back in the crib. I’d much rather have him fall asleep happy and content in my arms and just leave with him happy, then have to wrench myself away from him and put him in his crib and hear his immediate cry as I walk away. I only had like a half hour left at that point so I went up and found Shannon on the 7th floor who was with Iuliana. She was in the same room as a gypsy mother and her child who we talked to a little bit, which was very very satisfying. I really want to be liked by the gypsies, so I played with her baby a little and gave her a toy. It was a good thing. After the orphanage we went to the mall. On the way to the mall there are always some gypsy kids who run up to us and ask for gum and stuff and hug us and kiss us and grab our hands, etc. So on the way there just one of them, a little girl came and did it and Jessica gave her some pretzels. Then afterwards 3 kids and a baby (which one girl was holding) accosted us again. This time they wouldn’t leave for quite some time and actually Shannon and I separated from the other three and went a different way home, at which time the other 3 were still being followed by the gypsy kids. It really worries me because, well, they’re not homeless, their gypsies and half of me wonders if they only do it to have a good laugh, which is basically what all my reading indicates. I don’t think they actually need our food. The baby was really fat. I’m ok with hugging and kissing them but I don’t think we should give them anything else. It is good though that they don’t seem to have taken anything from us or even tried. Well, after we got home we had to rush to get ready and go to Outreach. Outreach was really wonderful. There was a really good turnout and it was very boisterous. We all felt more part of the group and I felt more like I could talk to the people in the branch. We’re starting to form bonds, which is good. Also, Jessica and one of the Sis. Missionaries were playing the guitar which always helps. The fabulous bean dip helped too. We also got our callings today. I am a Conductor. It’s interesting because that calling really isn’t scary to me whatsoever. I was expecting some fabulously scary call that was going to push me really hard and that I’d have to work super hard to do, but no. In fact, when he called me I was almost like “what? That’s it?” But I know that’s a crappy attitude and I’m doing really well at being happy with it. At least I don’t have to worry much about it! Also, it’s really confusing because I’m not the only conductor and we’re all just like, “So when do we each conduct!?!” and also “who picks the music!?!” I left outreach late with Shannon and we walked home together. On the way home we both got gogoasa. It was my second of the day and wow I love them!

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

2006-10-18T18:15:00.000+03:00

Well we were supposed to be out of the room by 9, but no one even woke up til right around then, so we ended up not getting out til probably around 10. We all hopped in taxis and went straight back to Mamaia beach, just laid down our towels a little farther over because the sand was a lot nicer there. This time it was seven of us all laid out in a row. You can imagine how many guys casually set down their towels around us. There was one in particular, however, who stood out the most. It was this guy right behind us who was trying sooo hard to get our attention the entire time. He’d repeat things we said, yell out random things to make us look and even at one point went for a “dip” in the water. By went for a dip, I mean that he pull his speedo up to a thong so that his incredibly hairy nasty but was fully visible, then stroll past us to the water. He was careful to stand directly in front of us as he posed while occasionally sprinkling himself with some water. Not obvious at all. At one point he even took a picture of us – but then again, so did like half the other people next to us. We really did have a lot of fun on the beach though. We left around 1:30 and took a taxi (very difficult to find for some reason) to the station so we could catch our train which left at like 2:30 or something. This time once we got on the train we split up so it ended up being Jenna, Marina, Jessica and I in one car with Melissa, Shannon, Megan and a really nice Romanian lady in another. Most the time I just read my book, but there were also some other highlights of the train. First of all, Jessica, Megan, Marina and I had a “chasmic secrets” telling session where we all had to go around and tell secrets that were as monumental as a chasm (or something like that). It was hilarious. Also, I went outside the car to take pictures of this goooorgeous sunset and ended up talking to Shannon for a while. It was a really great, deep conversation about loads of thing. Shannon and I have a lot of those I’ve decided. Afterward, as I was walking to my train, this old man that I’d previously thought was really cute (like old man cute of course) stepped in my way, blocked my path and started hitting on me. He took me in his arms and kissed me on the cheek a few times (tried to kiss me on the mouth I’m pretty sure, but I made sure to turn each time) and then whispered sweet nothings to me in Romanian in his version of a low romantic voice. It was….interesting. I couldn’t wait to get away and I could see Shannon laughing in the background out of the corner of my eye. I wish you could describe sunsets, because if you could I’d go off for another page or so on the one I saw. I guess the notgoodenough pictures I took will have to do. We didn’t get home til like midnight and I can’t really remember what we did then. Probably just got ready for bed and went to bed I’m sure.