They're Back

The big, stinky, loud diesel truck just drove up. The one that has spent the last 7 nights outside my bedroom window, revving its engine. Except last night. Last night I couldn't sleep because even with the fan on high, it was too quiet. Seriously. I was awake until 5:30 this morning. Guess I've gotten use to the really loud, really obnoxious truck. I can't decide whether I'm glad that he's back tonight or not. For the first hour or two, I will probably be irritated because the sound will keep me awake. Eventually, I'll fall asleep. And when the road is finally finished, maybe I'll readjust to sleeping without the sound of the truck. Now to wean myself off of the sound of the fan by the end of summer!

** I warned you not to look for anything profound here!**

Pool Party!

Tonight was the first activity of our four-week evangelistic outreach with the teens from our church. I arrived at our meeting place (the church) 20 minutes before we had told the teens to arrive - and found a dozen of them already there and waiting. Lest you think "big deal," let me remind you that this is Romania and no one comes to anything early. Fashionably late is much more the norm.

When the meeting time finally arrived, we had well over 20 teens, several of them new faces - the point of the whole activity. We walked to the pool (in the backyard of a home owned by one of the foundations in town), and the kids had a blast playing games in the pool. I personally have established a rule that I don't swim in anything I can't see the bottom of (no chlorine=nasty water!). Besides, the kids love hamming for my camera. We're praying that we'll see some of those "new faces" again in Sunday School tomorrow morning!


Afterwards, I took three of the girls (2 teens and their 8 yr. old sister) to McDonald's for dinner. I confess, I'm not above bribery to break through with some of these kids. And these two girls seem to hold one of the keys to that break-through. I'm not sure why, but God has been impressing on my heart that I need to pursue them and build relationships with them. Tonight was really the first opportunity that I had to do so. Here's to hoping that the price of 3 Happy Meals and lots of prayers will someday have a much larger payoff!

I'm Losing My Touch

Or maybe my mind. Moments after I uploaded the last post, I checked it out online to make sure it posted correctly. The first thing I noticed? In the very first paragraph, I wrote about the flours I had purchased for my balcony last summer. That's right...English-teaching, grammar-loving, spell-checking me wrote "flours" in place of "flowers."

I've never bought flours. I pretty much stick to your plain-old white flour. I'm not even sure that you can get all of those fancy-shmantzy flours here, and certainly not on my grocery budget!

Don't bother looking for it now...it's already been corrected - I'm not dead! But I am noticing more and more often that I type the wrong word or type a misspelled word...gasp! Me...never-studied-for-a-spelling-test-in-my-life me. I'd heard that learning a second language can be detrimental to your use of the 1st language. Now I know. It's true. And just in case I wasn't convinced, I actually typed half of one of these sentences in Romanian before I realized what I was doing. I am really and truly losing my mind (at least the part that had a decent grasp on the English language).

Do citronella candles really work?

Apparently not the ones I bought. Maybe they have an expiration date...I did buy them over a year ago. Bought them to use on the balcony last summer, the balcony that I decked out with tons of flowers, the requisite plastic table & chairs, and lots of citronella candles. The balcony that I never sat on because I was never home last summer (that would also be why the aforementioned flowers all shriveled up and died by the end of July).

This summer I added a grill. But I still don't sit on the balcony. My street has been under construction for, well, a really long time. And since I am on the "first" floor*, my balcony has been covered with the normal road dust multiplied by a factor of 100. I did get motivated to clean it this week (there is an end in sight to the road construction; if I clean it this week, it won't be so hard to clean again when they're done, right?), but I'm still not sitting out there until the jackhammers go away.

Doesn't matter. The mosquitoes have all decided to join me inside, anyway. I'm sitting in my dark living room and apparently they are drawn to the light of my monitor. So I decided to get some use out of those citronella candles and lit one on the table right next to me. The mosquitoes are still doing fly-bys on my monitor. I guess that's better than their normal pastime of making my ankles and feet look like I have chicken pox! Ugh...did I waste more money on candles that won't keep the bugs away? I should have saved it and actually bought flowers for the balcony this year - now that I'm home to water them. Of course that would probably just attract more bugs. Oh well, I can't complain - it's summer!

*In Romania, the "first" floor means the first floor above the ground level; in my building, that actually means the third floor, since the ground level businesses all have an internal second story that you can only get to through their private entrances. I walk up two flights of stairs to get to my first floor apartment!

This is my apartment building. See the ambulance in the middle at the bottom of the picture? Look directly above it. The first balcony (the one without windows enclosing it) is mine.

I'm thinking about Sunday School lessons...

Nope, not the ones I teach, but the ones I learn while I'm teaching.

Last week we finished our book-by-book study of the entire Bible, so we decided to play review games this last Sunday before moving on. I was assigned the Old Testament and planned a "20 Questions" type game. Each team was assigned an OT character and instructed to keep it a secret. Other teams asked questions about the character to try and figure out who it was, but the answers could only be yes, no, or I don't know. The first group was a little slow...but that was a piece of cake compared to what followed. The second group was assigned Moses, and the other teams figured it out pretty quickly - although the trail of questions really didn't seem to lead to Moses in any way.

I was starting to grow a little bit suspicious, but in the absence of any good options, I kept the game going. Until the next group got up. The very first question was "Is it Job?" Okay, Job is a pretty major character in the Old Testament. But I'm guessing that wouldn't be anyone's first guess. Maybe Abraham, Isaac or Jacob. But Job? Not likely. Besides, the kids' faces and behind-the-hand giggles kind of gave it away. Obviously, someone(s) had leaked the answers.

At this point, continuing the game was pointless, especially since the teens weren't even attempting to keep the charade going anymore. But, as a teacher, what do you do then? Sit down with your tail tucked between your legs & let the guy assigned to review the NT take over? Ummm, no...not in my class, anyway.

So, after sending up a quick "Help! I'm drowning!" prayer, I thanked them for illustrating so well much of the "plot" of the Old Testament. God gave His people instructions, and they didn't follow them - so life just didn't work out the way it was designed to. Adam and Eve broke God's law, and death resulted. Moses didn't follow God's instructions, and he never entered the Promised Land. Israel repeatedly broke God's law, and they suffered the consequences through captivity. Sure, they were still God's chosen people...but they often missed out on the benefits of being God's people because they didn't follow His instructions.

Thankfully, the teens didn't miss out anything important by not following my instructions...just a little bit of fun and some candy bars I had bought for the winning team (how do you choose a winner when they all cheat?). And, hopefully, they walked away having learned an important lesson. Not the one I had planned to teach. But the one that He had planned for me to teach!

Romanian Road Race

While driving to VBS in Bahnea last month, Jenny and I often joked that driving in Romania is often like a video game. The goal: arrive at your destination in a reasonable amount of time while avoiding potholes, livestock, pedestrians, bicyclists, horse-drawn carts - and a whole host of other obstacles. Two weeks later, on the way to VBS in the next village (even closer to the end of the earth!), we had to wait while a flock of sheep (and goats) crossed the road. Jenny, this picture is for you, since we never got a good sheep picture while you were here!

The 2nd Annual Great Cookie Bake

As predicted, I spent much of my Saturday in the kitchen - baking cookies! During this same weekend last year, I baked dozens and dozens of cookies in preparation for a big goodbye party for one of my teammates who had resigned and was headed back to the US. This year, the need is a little less focused, but just as pressing - a team coming in a couple of weeks for camp, youth activities every weekend for the next month, etc. So, after walking the 7.5 km to the grocery store in the rain and then another 7.5 km. home in the sun with my baking supplies in my backpack (note to self: do not attempt this again!), I spent the rest of the day baking cookies. Oatmeal raisin cookies, no-bake cookies, peanut butter cookies, chocolate chip cookies, snickerdoodles...I've got 'em all. Don't they look yummy? I hope they taste as good as they look...now they are all safely stored in the freezer until needed. Come and visit...and I promise to share my cookies! Sarah, be nice and I'll think about sending some snickerdoodles home with Christine (maybe I'll even make fresh ones...).

At Christmas, one of my teammates gave me some Warm Vanilla Sugar handsoap from Bath and Body Works (thanks, Kris!), and it instantly became my new favorite. Now I think I know why...it smells remarkably like freshly baked cookies. I love my fresh-cookie scented apartment - and my fresh-cookie scented bathroom!

Chicken Little

Or is that "little chicken"? Well, either way, here it is - tonight's dinner. Since I didn't have electricity or gas the last two evenings, I went into town hunting something for dinner. Both evenings, I got myself all psyched up for chicken and headed to the little shop downtown that sells rotisserie chicken. And both evenings, I was told that it would be at least an hour before any chicken would be done (why would chicken be done and ready to sell at dinner time, anyway?). So, I settled for something else far less tasty and far less healthy.

By today, I was really craving some good chicken...enough that I decided it was time to figure out the rotisserie feature in my own oven. When I bought the oven a year and a half ago, the salesman was all ga-ga about the rotisserie, but I could never figure out how to use it (yes, I did try reading the manual...I am in fact an obsessive manual reader...but this one is written in German). I finally figured it out and the beauty you see above is the result (not so pretty anymore, but oh-so-tasty!). An occasion to be celebrated! So, I broke out my last Stove Top stuffing mix to go with the chicken. No use hoarding it, anyway. Every day is a day to be celebrated, right?

As my chicken was cooking, I was thinking about all of the things that I make now without a second thought, things that I never made in the US. Before I moved to Romania, I think I made lasagna twice in my entire life; now, I make it every month and eat it almost every week (some day I'll post a picture of my freezer after the beginning-of-the-month cooking spree - I make tons of serving size dishes that I just have to thaw and bake later...my version of the TV dinner that you can't get here). Before I can make lasagna, I have to make my own pasta sauce, something else that I had never done in the US. Syrup, frosting, croutons, garlic bread - I'm so used to making my own now that I'm not sure I would even like the "store bought" versions anymore. I've baked more cookies in the last year than I had in the previous 20; to my sister's chagrin, I've even learned to make snickerdoodles (she only wishes I had learned to make them before I left the US). It's easy for me to understand how any Romanian woman could spend her entire day in the kitchen...that's where I'll be spending my Saturday this week!

A Silver Lining to Every Cloud?

I’m sure I had something unbelievably profound to write yesterday…until I arrived home to find myself without electricity or gas. I suppose if I were a really dedicated blogger, I would have hooked up my laptop to my cell phone and written anyway. But, frankly, I allowed the 2 foot wide, 6 foot deep trench dug all the way around my apartment building (and into the neighboring streets) to steal anything positive I had to say for a few hours!

Before that, the day had been productive (still one of my criteria for a good day). My colleagues and I all descended upon our office armed with dustrags, mops, and buckets. Time for spring cleaning! A little late for spring cleaning, you might say. But not in our crazy Team Romania world…this is the first chance we’ve all had to get together and tackle the job. Windows washed, furniture polished, floors mopped, clean rugs laid – I love the smell of cleaning products mingled together (not to mention the satisfaction of getting the job done!). And cleaning as a group activity is so much more fun than cleaning my apartment by myself…I’m going to try to remember that when it’s time for spring cleaning at my house next year! Maybe we’ll establish the round-robin spring cleaning team and tackle one house a day until all of our homes are finished. Cleaning accomplished, I was inspired to sort through the taking-on-a-life-its-own pile of papers on my desk. Yeah! I can at least return to my illusion of organization.

In the midst of the craziness, I discovered one of the benefits of living in a post-Communist country. For reasons that I have never been able to understand, water heaters are still rare in Eastern Europe; water is heated at a factory and then pumped to homes. So, even when there is no electricity or gas, I still have hot water. Always a silver lining…

Peace?

I've taken hundreds - well, probably thousands - of pictures in the 18 months that I've lived in Romania. This is one of my favorites, an image of the Jewish synagogue a couple of buildings away from my apartment block. What you don't see in this image is the rusted gate between the synagogue and the people, the gate secured by an old padlock. Before WWII, Romania boasted a large Jewish population, but few remained after the war. So, the building sits empty.
Even as I type this, I'm watching images flash across my television - images of bombs falling on Beirut and Haifa. Today's Sydney Morning Herald details the evacuation of Australian citizens from Lebanon, and the first flight evacuating Romanians from the region is scheduled to touch down in Bucharest in about an hour. All of this has been impressing upon me the importance of praying for the peace of Israel. This is not a political statement on my part, not a judgment that Israel is in the right and Lebanon in the wrong; it is just a reminder that I need to be praying for peace in Israel, however it may come.

A New Beginning

Well, after much encouragement and even a bit of haranguing, I'm finally giving in. Here it is, the real-time report of my life in Romania. I can't promise profundity or even consistency, but I can promise at least occasional accounts of my cross-cultural experience: often amusing, sometimes irritating, and occasionally even humiliating. I can also promise that I will not provide you with a day-to-day account of my activities - you would likely perish from boredom while perusing accounts of me sitting at my desk proofreading, editing, and typing. So, I'll stick to the less "daily" parts of life, the things about which you might actually care. Happy reading!