Written Tuesday, March 29, 2011
No two days are ever alike on the World Race. However, we have settled into somewhat of a routine here in Romania. To read more about our ministry, you can read my teammate Kristen’s blog, found HERE:
So to give you an idea of what a “typical” day looks like for us, here is a day-in-the -life account of what happens here in Pitesti, Romania.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
5:10 AM – Alarm goes off. I whack it and sort of fall back asleep.
5:15 – Alarm goes off again. If I don’t get up now, I’ll be late. I get up and go to take a shower. I realize the hot water is not working. It does this from time to time. I heat up a pot of water in the hot pot and do the ‘ole bucket shower trick. Yay clean hair. (The team made a wise investment in a water heater at the beginning of the month. Who knew of the uses it would serve?)
5:40 – I’m dressed and ready for the day. The team is up, barely. The boys come over and we have team prayer time.
5:55 – We meet Vali in the lobby and head out to the school. It’s dark and a little chilly.
6:05 – Arrive at the school and are bombarded by the smell of paint fumes. I put my stuff down, change into my paint clothes, and continue painting the radiators in the Jonah room where I left off yesterday.
6:30 – I decide I need a hot drink, so I make some hot chocolate. The lack of caffeine does little for my level of alertness.
7:00 – Time for breakfast. I make a bowl of oatmeal with raisins and a banana. I finish the second coat on the radiators.
7:30 – Anca arrives to help. Vali leaves to go steal more newspapers from the grocery store so I can put them behind the pipes before painting them. Anca and I return to painting in the Jonah room. We finish as much as we can and move to the Noah room to touch up the red radiators and pipes, which look absolutely adorable!
8:00 – Vali returns with the newspapers and we put them down in the Jonah room and finish painting the pipes green. Vali and Kelly move all the furniture from the girls’ room into the classroom, which is now a mess.
8:10 – Melanee and Suzi leave to get donuts down the street and bring back a chocolate pretzel for Anca. She gives me a piece. Mmmmm.
8:30 – Ionut and Lydia arrive and take Kristen and Kelly to get more paint for the fish and the ark.
9:00 – Cristi arrives and takes Melanee and Suzi with him to go to Ikea. They are shopping for curtains and furniture for the rooms. I’m super jealous that I will be missing out on the Romanian Ikea experience (including the hot dog. . . ).
9:20 – Kristen mixes the red and white paint for the girls’ room. I think it looks like Pepto. Anca starts painting. Everyone realizes it looks like Pepto. This could be a problem.
9:40 – A team member – who will remain unnamed 🙂 – comes into the room and asks Vali, “Do you have some really strong super glue?” Apparently, he/she broke the cheap plastic toilet chain in the bathroom, and the school director got really mad. Vali leaves to get supplies to fix the toilet.
9:30 – Ionut (pronounced Yah-nootz), my morning English student, arrives 30 minutes early. We’ve decided that the Pepto wall won’t do, which is good because I need Anca for English class. My usual translator, Vali, is working on the rainbow. in the Noah room. Anca stops painting so we can do English.
9:35 – I begin teaching English with Anca as my translator (she’s working on NOT giving Ionut all the right answers during “class.” :). On Friday, I had told Ionut that we would write a paragraph about his family in the next class. Apparently, Anca told him to do this as homework over the weekend. He had an AWESOME paragraph written about his family. So proud!! We make a few minor corrections and begin working on some new vocabulary words.
10:20 – Ionut leaves, and I return to painting pipes and radiators. These things are beasts, but the ones in the Noah room are finished.
10:35 – I decide I need coffee, so Anca walks with me to the corner coffee place. It’s now raining and colder than it was this morning. We get the coffee and continue working.
11:00 – It is decided that we need more white paint to lighten up the pink in the Pepto room. Vali calls Laurencio, another church member, to come pick Kelly up and take him to the paint store. Laurencio likes the murals.
11:30 – Anca leaves for work. She works as a dental assistant.
12:30 – Crist’s sister arrives with lunch. We don’t have any plates or silverware, so Vali runs to his house to get some. He returns, and we eat lunch.
Lunch is AMAZING. Probably one of the best meals I’ve had on the Race. A little like lasagna. I wish I knew what it was called. And homemade crepes with cherry and raspberry filling. There is also a bag of homemade donuts. If you haven’t guessed, Month 3 consisted of painting and eating.
2:00 – We finish lunch, and I decide the classroom is too much of a disaster zone to teach my 3:00 English class in. I come up with a game to review telling time and make cards and a giant clock.
2:45 – The kids start showing up and poking their heads in the window to see the paint job. Valie notices some grafitti on the window and cleans it with paint thinner.
3:00 – The kids come in for English class, which is held in the hallway. I tell them that we’re going to the zoo on Friday as a treat, and we play the time game. Five minutes into the game, I realize I made the clock wrong (don’t ask – paint fumes), but they don’t notice.
4:30 – English class has run late but is over. It’s time to clean up. I go to the sink and start washing brushes. The paint thinner and dish detergent combined burn my skin. I get most of the brushes clean before quitting.
5:20 – We wrap up the cleaning process. We have to go to the city center to buy train tickets to Moldova for Saturday. Here we are at the bus stop.
5:45 – We arrive at the city center and go to the paint store. We go there a lot. We stop by the train agency, but they tell us we have to go somewhere else for the tickets. We catch the bus again and head to the church. Cristi’s mom and sister meet us there with more food. I swear sometimes they are trying to kill us with food. It’s baked chicken and potatoes. It smells delicious.
We find out that Cristi, Suzi, Mel, and the whole gang that went to Ikea are stuck in Bucharest because the car was filled with the wrong kind of gas. Ooops. They might be a while.
6:30 – We polish off the leftovers from lunch and a few more donuts. We sit around and catch up on e-mail and Facebook. Kristen signs Vali up for Facebook. It’s about time!
9:55 – We catch the last bus of the night back to the hostel. We get a call from Mel. They haven’t left Bucharest yet.
10:10 – We arrive back at the hostel. Get another call from Mel. They still haven’t left Bucharest, so they won’t make the curfew at the hostel and are staying at one of the church lady’s house.
10:20 – Time for bed. Tomorrow will come early. And it’s my BIRTHDAY!! Goodnight!
