Greetings from Romania! We live in a castle and we are living with 2 other teams. There are 21 of us living in this conference center/camp in the middle of nowhere Romania … about 5 hours from Budapest, Hungary. We spent a few hours there on Monday after our train travels. We even walked to St.Stephen’s Basillica with all our crap and got to be tourists, though we didn’t look nearly as trendsetter as the rest of the Eastern Europeans.
Here at the camp we are doing tons of projects around the camp. We have a pretty set schedule which is nice:
8:30am — Breakfast
9am – 1pm — Work
1pm — Lunch
2 – 4:30pm — Work
5 – 7pm window — Team Meeting
7pm — Dinner
Rinse and Repeat.
So far this month our main focus has been cleaning the paint off the floors, baseboards, windows, doors, stairs … EVERYWHERE … so note to anyone who ever paints: use drop cloths and tape off the windows and doors … it will take a little extra work up front but you will save HOURS of labor later. DAYS of labor, really. We basically scrub and mop the floor with our hands in this 4 story conference center with 2 sides … I’m sure there is enough paint where it shouldn’t be to paint a whole other room. Seriously. After two days my legs are burning from all the squats and I rubbed blisters on my knuckles and popped them and I’m rubbing my fingers to the bone from scrubbing. Okay that may be a bit of an exaggeration BUT I am sore and I have been working all day every day the past two days scrubbing baseboards.
We luckily have a lady who cooks for us this month, which is one thing that we don’t have to do that we hear past teams have had to do at this site, but with so many of us our contact has arranged our meals to be provided for us. We have bread the size of our face at every meal. EVERY meal… with butter and “cheap jam” according to Mihai. We also have tea every morning. And most of our meals consist of potatos. Lots of potatos. Not much protein. Which means the carbs burn off super fast. But the food we do eat has been delicious so far.
We have the most gorgeous view from the balcony of our castle (pictures to come), and we even have swingsets that look out on the scenery here. It’s also warming up to a nice springlike feel with absolutely gorgeous weather! A bit chilly inside the concrete castle that keeps in the cool, but nice and warm outside in the sun.
To be honest, things started off a bit rough this month … I am dealing with some past early-Race stuff that I thought I was done with, but obviously, I still have some work to do when it comes to choosing to not be invisible amongst the large group because it is so easy to feel inadequate amongst so many people who I feel are so much better than I am at EVERYTHING. Confidence is a struggle for me right now and I am hoping that as the month continues I am able to learn how to receive the encouragement people share with me and I am able to grow in the understanding of my identity so I can begin stepping out on faith and including myself with everyone rather than being on the outside looking in. The fear of rejection is heavy on my heart right now and it will be something that I am going to definitely be working through before returning home, because when I’m back in NC, I don’t have a group of friends to return to in my hometown, it will be like starting from scratch – finding a church and a new community of friends… Ah, 2 months from today I will be back in the States!!!
