It’s hard to believe that our time in Romania is coming to a close. It’s been a great month, and for the first time on the Race, I don’t feel like moving on. In Central America I was ready to go to the next country each month, but here I feel like time has whizzed by too fast. Our ministry this month was helping with construction on a home for Caminul Felix (“Happy Home”), who partners with Habitat For Humanity to build homes for foster families. We are living on a farm outside of Oradea, Romania, and the home we’ve been helping to build is here on the property.
On week days we walk down and around a road here on the farm to the row of houses that have been and are still being built. We’re instructed in what to do by Benjamin, who is an extremely likeable man with his cheerful smile, wit, and fun personality. His English cracks us all up with how he says things… like he refers to most everything as “materials.“ We gather our materials, clean our materials, and load the materials into the truck at the end of the day. He is very thankful for our help and says “Praise God” a lot, and tells us when we do a good job that we are “like specialist.”
The first construction job I had was cutting trim for windows. After that I mudded windows, then walls, then corners in several rooms. My next job, and my favorite one, was insulation. With a couple different teams on different days we really got a rhythm going, and made a ton of progress in the attic. It just goes to show that you never know what you might like doing, because at first when I heard we were going to be working with insulation I was pretty apprehensive. The thought of getting fiberglass slivers wasn‘t very enticing, and since I have claustrophobia the thought of working in an attic was a little daunting. However, our fancy marshmallow space suits protected us from getting scratched or itchy from handling the ‘material‘, and working in the attic didn’t feel as smothering as I thought it would! Now I’ve got a few skills under my belt for when my Dad decides to build his next house, too. 🙂
One of the things this month that was different was that we cooked for ourselves verses having meals provided by our contact. With three teams here, plus squad leaders, that’s 25 people to shop, cook, and clean up after as a whole. We got a system down from the beginning that has worked out really well, even though it is no small task to implement it. Each week, two people from each team plan out what meals they will cook and go shopping for that coming week’s groceries. We know our budget and what days our team is responsible for cooking. The sight at the grocery store with our three carts full to the brim is something to behold! It takes a while to check out, and then getting all the food into the back of the van is a process, especially because we don’t have the convenience of grocery bags because they charge extra for them. Once we get back to the house we make many trips to unload everything and carry it to the kitchen, then label everything by team, and the final step is trying to fit it all into our designated cabinet, and refrigerator/freezer.
On our team’s days to cook I’ve made a few of the meals along with help from my teammate, Jill. It’s been fun and successful, though one time it got a little hazardous because I had oil heating in a pan and when I poured the chicken into it the hot oil splashed up and I got about 8 burns up my left arm. The worst one looks like it’ll leave a little scar, but the rest are looking pretty good.
My family and some friends will recognize some of my oldie-but-goodie recipes that I’ve made before (but never for this many people!), including tuna pasta salad, Mexican casserole, goulash, and no-bake cookies. It’s challenging to cook/bake some recipes, though, because some of the ingredients here are different, or non-existent. An example of some things they don’t sell here is ground beef (they only have ground pork or chicken), enchilada sauce, chocolate chips, and baking powder. For my Mexican casserole an ingredient is refried beans and they don’t sell them here, so Jill and I googled how to make them from canned beans and they turned out great! (Jill is a master in the kitchen!) Our first trip to the store was the most challenging because we had to figure out the Romanian labels. For instance, we had to figure out which little white tub was sour cream in the refrigerator section because we can’t read what it says, and they make a lot of things that are sold in little white tubs! One funny thing about how they do things here is that you have to have your produce weighed and labeled in that department so they don’t have to do it at check-out. Jill and I forgot to do that our first time and didn’t realize it until we had a cart full at the register. We dug through everything in our cart to get to any produce and ran it back by armful to the produce department, lol.
When we fist arrived and saw that we’d be living on a farm with cows, I made it a goal to milk a cow by the end of our time here. I’m happy to say that last week I successfully accomplished that go! I watched a video on Youtube as research, which was really helpful in knowing the technique. The only thing I’m sad about is that I didn’t get to sit on a stool and do it the old-fashioned way. The cows we milked had been hooked up to machines, so it was a little different set-up than the classic picture of sitting in a barn with a milk pail and stool. I’m pretty excited to have had the chance to do it, and I must say that was one thing I didn’t expect to do on The World Race!
Another unexpected bonus was that last weekend we were able to travel to Budapest, Hungary! It was such a beautiful city, and one that I’d love to visit again someday. Hosanna, Jill and I hung out together and went to a really cool little coffee shop to start our day off right!
Then, just this past Friday night and Saturday I was able to visit Hungary again with Hosanna. We took a train just across the border to visit a friend she had met a couple years ago on a mission trip she took to Israel. Ahmed is from Palestine and is living in Hungary to finish med school at Debrecen University. We met one of his friends, Sonja, who came over to cook an Indian dish and have dinner with us. They are both Muslim and asked us a lot of questions about our faith. I learned some things about Islam during our conversation as well. It was nice to be able to have such a good discussion and time together like we did, especially when I think of how taboo it can be in America to talk about ‘politics & religion’.
You may have noticed by now that my team changed, and therefore we changed our team name, also. At the end of month three in Honduras is when we found out our new teams. So “God Before Us” is no longer, and I‘ve said goodbye to teammates Emily, Sammie Jo, and Missy. However, Hugh is still the leader of my new team, “Meizon,” and I’m excited to still be together with Wes and Hosanna. I have three new teammates~ Naomi, Robin, and Jill. I’ve mentioned Jill in a previous blog from El Salvador (we were roommates there)… she is a dear friend of mine so I feel extremely blessed that we will be entering into this new time of our trip together on the same team! I’m very glad that Hugh is still my leader, and that Wes and Hosanna are still my teammates, especially because Hosanna is like a sister to me in many ways, and getting to know Wes and Hugh has been really awesome. Naomi and Robin are amazing girls, and already in our first month on the same team I’ve realized how much I’m looking forward to continuing getting to know them better. I’ll be posting a blog soon about what our name, “Meizon” means, and if you want to know more about any of the people I’m doing life with you can click on their picture on the left which will direct you to their blog.
When our Squad Leaders felt led to change our teams around, they also asked me if I’d be willing to step into a different role on the squad on the Logistics team. I was honored to be asked to serve the squad in that way, and it’s been awesome to join as a co-leader beside my friend, Suzy. She has been in the position since we left in January, so it’s been great to learn from her! We’re basically the liaison between the AIM office in Georgia and our squad here ’on the field’. We help arrange international travel and accommodations, including for our De-briefs every couple months, and some other things that help our squad and Squad Leaders behind-the-scenes. We’ll be heading to Bucharest tonight to help prepare for our 4-day De-brief that starts on Monday!
Off to pack!
Blessings,
Jo Linda
