Romania A-Z

American prices. Goodbye days of 50 cent mangos from street vendors and hello world of malls, taxes, and fixed prices.

Bread. And lots of it – Eastern Europe loves their bread.

Cherries.  One day the kids came home with a HUGE bag of cherries they picked from a neighbor’s tree & we made some awesome cherry cobbler. 

    

Drawings. On the Race you get used to sitting through 2+ hr church services/other events where zero English is being spoken. Recently Heidi & I have decided to put our artistic skills to use and play the name game. Can you guess what names these are? Hint: all R Squad related

   

Electricity that hasn’t gone out ONCE all month – first time all race!  I keep expecting the power to go out and there’s still that tiny part of me that goes “yeeees” every time I turn on a lightswitch and the lights come on. 

Fruit & flowers- they grow EVERYWHERE, easily making Romania one of the most beautiful countries I’ve ever seen.

    

Gelato, right down the street from us (which on the Race means a 25 min walk there and a 25 min walk back, so it all evens out in the end).

Home sweet home. This month’s ministry was working at a children’s home. We lived in one house with 5 children, while the other house was used for day time ministry for the community.

Internet. The house we lived at had Wifi!!!! 

Jumping on the trampoline in the backyard. I forgot how much fun those things are. I fully plan on putting one on my wedding registry 🙂

   

Kids say the darnest things. “Yes Theresa, Peekee [pet dog] loves when I spit on him because it shows I love him.”  The response an 11 yr old boy told me when I asked him why he just spit on the dog.

Lei, the Romanian curriency. 2.92 lei to $1 USD.

My favorite memory of the month: taking the kids to Aqua Land! An indoor water park with pools, slides, wave pool, hot tubs & more. So much fun. And I got to teach one of the younger boys how to swim!

No more hand washing clothes! We had a washing machine!!!!!  Oh thank you Jesus. You know how funky your clothes look after 6 straight months of hand washing them? Still no dryers, but thats okay.

Oh don’t you know, we have a new team pet. Heidi won “Allen Bunny-Foo-Foo Zion” from a claw machine at the mall one night, and he’s been chillin with us ever since.

Ping Pong (or Table Tennis as it is refurred to here) is the sport all the cool kids play. There are ping pong tables in the parks, on street croners, in restaurants… you name it.

Quote of the day, “You can be Christian and be hot.”

Ron, the other name for Romanian currency. Same exchange rate though.

Sticky messes. Turns out “Mouse Gum” is the absolute worst thing to use. You put it on the floor, in 30 min the gum expands to cover an even greater surface, and the instructions on the back of the box really aren’t kidding when they say “can only be removed with petrol.” At least we cought the little sucker.

(guess what’s under the camping bowl haha)

Twlight. Hate to admit it, this was the month I caved and watched all 3 Twlight movies. The kids were watching it one night on t.v. and it good me hooked, grrr.

Vegetarian no more. My teammate Heidi has been a vegeterian for 14 years. Served her well as she was the judge for Bacon Fest 2011. 

White Paint.  Mornings this month were spent painting the children’s home and we were always covered by the end.

   

Xylophone (and not just because that’s what most people say when they have the letter “x”  🙂  We actaully saw a man playing on on the streets of Budapest, Hungary. His song of choice, Pink Panter theme song.

Young love. One of the 17 yr old boys was grounded one day and not allowed to leave the house or have visitors inside. We notice that he’s hanging out his bedroom window, talking to his girlfriend who is standing outside, and decided oh yes we totally have to go over and say hello. Did I mention it was costume day at the children’s home so we all have facepaint on?

   

Zion. We’re a pretty awesome team.