hey friends! so i’ve realized that i haven’t shared a lot of pictures from ministry or just the city of romania in general so i figured i would write this post to give y’all an inside look on life here in craiova!
here’s our front yard:) this is the view from the kitchen porch looking out over the driveway and alllll of our laundry hanging up outside haha
it’s interesting bc everyone here has gates. and clothes lines outside. like everyone.
we have lots of cute lil doggos staying on our street! here’s one of them. i call him rollo. 🙂
the walk through the city of craiova is stunning! they’ve already put up their christmas lights and decorations, too, which makes it even MORE magical:))
something funny about romania is the crosswalks. only a few of them have lights that change that tell you when you can walk across. other than that, when you walk on the crosswalk you have the right of way. cars will stop and wait for you to pass them then continue on their way. it’s also terrifying bc most romanian drivers are suuuper fast and stop really fast, too. but luckily no one has been hit by a car, praise Jesus!
oh yes, the KFC. this place is right down the street from our mission house! even though it’s a little more expensive, i sometimes splurge and buy myself some chicken strips. what’s funny is they charge you extra for sauces! but it’s sosososooo worth it bc your girl needs her bbq sauce.
this is 5 to go, a cute lil coffee shop off of the main street in craiova. why is it called 5 to go, you ask? everything costs 5 lei! i’m not a coffee drinker, but their hot chocolate really hits the spot especially on these cold mornings.
this is the mall that we walk by on our way to the ministry office! it has a starbucks, H&M, movie theater, gym, and other stores as well! you better believe you can always find a racer at starbucks getting coffee and soaking up the wifi.
the prices in starbucks and H&M are pretty similar to what they’d be in the US. but 1USD = 4 romanian lei, it looks more expensive compared to other romanian places.
and you can see more of the christmas lights and decorations in this picture, too! there’s a whole festival going on right now where the streets along the stores are lined with more of those little brown houses selling all kinds of things — jewelry, yummy donut ball things, authentic romanian food, hot chocolate, clothing, and more! plus there’s an ice skating rink in the square, too! a bunch of us went skating on thanksgiving under all the lights, it was a blast!
profi! this is our grocery store. there’s profis e v e r y w h e r e, even in the little town of Draganesti that my team stayed in for a few weeks. profi is basically like a food lion. it has a bunch of food, but also other random things like laundry detergent and fuzzy socks and other things like that haha.
while we’ve been in romania, our squad has cooked for ourselves. we have an amazing grocery team who plans out our meals and grocery shops for us. then each team rotates who cooks for the whole squad each day. our meals are pretty similar to what we’d have at home — we’ve eaten burrito bowls, soups, sandwhiches, pasta, and soooo much chicken.
profi also sells these hot dogs in the back. but the way they do it is they put the hot dog inside of this long, skinny, baguette-looking bread. personally, i think that the american and spicy sauces are the best with it. profi hot dogs are a whole joke on our squad bc they look really weird and are definiely not the healthiest thing for us, but they honestly don’t taste half bad and are super duper cheap, too.
this is one of the streets that peels off of the big city square where the mall is. it’s lined with tons of shops and nice restaurants and whole-in-the-wall pizza and pastry shops.
one of my favorite pizza places is called maestro’s (my-strows). it’s got some amazing pizza that comes by the slice and these other fold-over pizza things that are super good, too. and we’ve recently figured out that you can buy a whole cheese pizza for only 14 lei. that means if you split it with someone you only have to pay 7 lei. so yes, that’s what i’ve been doing for dinner on off days recently haha.
and across the street from maestro’s is a little park with a bunch of benches and christmas lights that we typically eat at when we get pizza from there.
these are a few pictures from church! we go to church on sunday mornings. it usually begins with worship, where a lot of times they sing songs in romanian that we also know in english. how cool is that? then someone shares their testimony, raul gives a teaching, and we break off into groups to fill out a worksheet of questions about a passage.
the last picture is of Adrian, a long term missionary here, who’s been selling these hand painted journals! isn’t it beautiful?
these pictures are from one of the universities here in craiova. emalani, gel and i were walking around the campus to hand out invitations to a youth event to the students. it was a maze to walk through and was kind of empty compared to the college campuses we have in the states. and look! blue skies!
this is my beautiful teammate jenay sharing her testimony at a youth group called “catalyst” that we got to visit again in draganesti. catalyst usually begins with worship, some games (these kids are crazy good at futbol), then a testimony and message. it’s so much fun to hang out with the kids and share God’s word with them.
these are pictures from the market where lise, abi, and i handed out tracts with bible verses that explained the gospel in romanian. the markets are full of people selling produce, flowers, clothes, jewelry — all sorts of stuff!
sorry, i know this blog was kind of all over the place, but i hope that these pictures helped you all get a better look into what life and ministry has looked like in craiova, romania! let me know if you have any other questions about romania so far, i’d love to answer them:)
thank you so much for reading! <3
love,
maddie
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praise of the week:
we saw the sun! it’s been so long! i needed that little bit of sunshine!
song of the week:
how to be yours by chris renzema
lol of the week:
we had our own thanksgiving in romania! it was super fun and filling. i love love looooove my squad family.
prayer request of the week:
this next week is going to be so crazy. we have a few days left in craiova, then we’ll be in bucharest for a few days for a debrief, then we’ll be in guatemala! what?!?!?
