Things I don't understand

There are lots of them. The one currently burning in my mind has to do with television. I'm watching American Choppers (it was either that or the A-team...really). The guys at Orange County Choppers put together some pretty amazing machines, but they also do some really incredibly stupid things.

Take this episode for example. They guys are sitting in the office bored, so someone decides to throw a chair through the window that connects the office to the shop. Apparently liking the adrenaline rush produced by that act of destruction, the guys toss another chair through another window. Then the brand-new leather couch (which doesn't fair well with the jagged glass still stuck around the window frame). Hmmm...an even bigger adrenaline rush. What else could we do to prolong this high? I know...punch holes in the wall. Tear out the ceiling tile. Total destruction, but still not good enough. Hey, I've got an idea - let me completely knock down the office by driving my truck through the walls until the office completely falls in.

Lessons I learned from the OCC tonight: (1) I don't understand guys (already knew that...but this certainly reinforced it. Meaningless destruction is fun?). (2) Some people have way too much money laying around (feel free to send some of it this way!). (3) I still have no desire to ride a chopper.

As for the rest of my day, well, it's ending the same way as it began. I started my day by washing dishes; I was too lazy to do it last night, and I couldn't leave the mess all day. Then I proceeded to spend most of the day in the kitchen (keep reading!) and just finished washing dishes again (didn't want to look at the mess tomorrow morning!).

While running dishwater this morning, I noticed again that my kitchen cupboards were looking a little dingy. When I bought the cupboards, it was winter & I hadn't yet learned that EVERYTHING here is covered with dirt. So I bought white. They look nice, but they are dirt magnets. The road construction outside my apartment has meant constant clouds of dirt in and outside my house. After over a year, today was the day. Scrubbed all of the cupboard & drawer fronts (yikes, were they dirty!). Maybe now I'll clean inside the cupboards again. Hmmm...maybe next week.

Since last week was payday, this week is cooking week. This summer has been pretty lean, so I've been eating everything out of my freezer & pantry for the last month. Both reached the point of "bare" last week. After some strategic grocery shopping over the weekend, I'm embarked on the task of restocking the freezer. After three days, I think I'm done for now. Roasted chicken & rosemary-garlic potatoes. Barbecued chicken with rice (a new recipe...yum-yum!). Chicken parmesan. Lasagna (nope, not chicken...I haven't learned how to make a good alfredo sauce yet). Egg casserole. Pasta/pizza sauce. And the random frozen whole chicken for when I decide to be social and invite some people over for dinner (have to share the miracle of the rotisserie chicken...still my favorite). Eventually I'll need to bake cookies again, but I don't think I need any for a few more weeks. Better to not have them in the house until I need them!

I may never understand some things (most of them male!), but at least I'll be eating well while confused.

Lazy Saturday

That's what today has been, a lazy Saturday. This was the first Saturday I've had at home in over a month & I've enjoyed it thoroughly. Can't say that I accomplished much of anything.

I did, however, go grocery shopping. Yeah! I've been living out of my pantry and freezer for two months, and they were stripped bare. Next week will be cooking week, refilling the freezer with meals for the next month. So, I guess I did accomplish something.

Haven't taken any good pictures all week. In fact, I'm not sure that I've taken any pictures at all since last week. Bad missionary!

The road workers just went home. Blessed quiet tonight. They worked all night last night, and there is actually one lane of blacktop on the road. They are replacing the old sidewalk with pavers, and putting in a parking lane of pavers on either side of the road. This is such a different concept here...usually, you just pull your car half-way onto the sidewalk & leave the other half in the road. Which works great until there are cars parked on both sides of the road & traffic doesn't fit down the middle. That was the problem on my street. I think it's going to look fantastic when it's done, and hopefully it will function just as well!

Okay, I'm going back to my lazy Saturday. Good night!

EDIT - I guess I did take a couple of pictures this week. They're the ones posted on Tuesday.

It's Still August, Right?

I took a trip to Medias (87 km. from here) today with two of my teammates. A short-term team from a church near my home is in Medias teaching the youth to use puppetry as a ministry tool. They did a short puppetry program for us, and then we spent the rest of the afternoon with them. I enjoyed catching up on some of the news from "home" and putting faces with names I had heard before. Just as we were getting ready to head home, the skies opened up & the deluge began. Before long, it turned into hail...and looked like a snow storm for a few minutes. I think it's still August...



Sue mentioned to one of the men working with the team that I was involved in translation and publishing, so he had to take me to the Christian bookstore & publisher in town. I love bookstores! I think I miss the bookstores even more than I miss Lake Michigan. Touring the print shop was fun, too. The pic above is an original Heidelberg offset printing press (about 50 yrs. old).

Off to bake snickerdoodles for my sister...

Conversations with Myself

I spent much of yesterday talking to myself - in my head, at least. I'm told that's a common malady of the single person (hey, at least no one else has to listen to it!). Every time I teach, the critic in my head starts a theological argument - "Did I just teach them heresy?"

The more that I've studied theology, the harder teaching has become. Topics that used to seem so simple have gained a new complexity, a complexity that I usually have to avoid while teaching. Discussing predestination or the premillenial, pretribulational second coming of Christ with 3 year olds isn't exactly an effective teaching strategy. So we simplify.

And then I find myself wondering, "Did I make that TOO simple?" Case in point - yesterday, we talked about salvation in Sunday School. I grew up thinking salvation was a lot more about what I did (said a prayer, believed in God, etc.) than about what God did. Now, when I teach, I focus on the fact that there is nothing I can do. Yet, there is an element of human responsibility - did my teaching exclude that? I also focused a lot on Romans 8:28, that Christ died for us while we were still sinners; we don't have to "clean up" our lives before we come to Christ. But did I teach that too strongly, to the exclusion of the fact that we must be willing to renounce our sin and allow God to remake us?

Sometimes, I think life was a lot easier before seminary. Not really. But at least the conversations in my mind didn't turn into theological arguments!

Volleyball Pics

Okay, so our kids aren't the best photographers in the world...or the best volleyball players in the world. But we had fun!



At least when we played "blind volleyball" there was a good excuse for how bad we were! Besides, what else am I to do with all of those clean towels in my apartment?

Sink or Swim

Today was my "sink or swim" day with the teens from church. It wasn't supposed to be that way...when we planned the event earlier in the summer, all of the "youth leaders" (our rather informal team of both Romanians and Americans) said they would be there. Last Sunday, they all said they would be there. But they weren't.

This morning I received a text message from someone (still not sure who...but I can narrow it down to 2 or 3 possibilities!) saying that the sender had to go to a wedding and couldn't make it. I'm sure the wedding was probably planned before today... As I started to think about it, I realized it was the wedding of the secretary/receptionist at one of the foundations in town. The foundation that all of the other youth leaders work for. And I began to suspect that they would probably ALL be at the wedding.

Six o'clock came, and all of the teens were at church. But no other adults. Sink or swim time! So, I asked one of the parents to help transport the teens to the place we planned to play volleyball & made two trips with my little car. Giving instructions in Romanian was a little challenging, but it went okay. Getting the teens to follow those instructions...well, that might be asking a little bit much. So I guess I swam, even if it was a sloppy doggy paddle with inflatable swimmies on my arms!

The "not listening" thing has been a difficult adjustment for me. I'm used to giving instructions and having at least part of the group try to follow them. Not so here. When I teach, I don't think anyone really tries to listen intently. When we play games, they do it their own way. Trying to change that would probably only serve to drive me crazy...so I need to learn to adjust my expectations!

I logged on to post some pictures from tonight's volleyball party, but then discovered that I had left my card reader at the office. I'll try to post some next week sometime.

Tomorrow morning I'm teaching a salvation lesson during Sunday School. Pray that the teens will listen, if not to me, at least to the Holy Spirit!

I Had Something Profound to Say...

...about three days ago. Really, I did. I distinctly remember walking home from the office and thinking of something somewhat significant to write. But, by the time I got home the headache that had been lurking for a day and a half already was in full bloom, and I couldn't see to type. Two days later, the headache was finally gone. And today...I'm feeling good - but no signs of what I was going to write a few days ago!

Yesterday, the quiet of my office was interrupted by the telephone. Not many people call the landline telephone at our office, so I answered with a little bit of trepidation (I don't like talking on the phone in English, let alone Romanian!). On the other end of the line was a telemarketer...the first telemarketer I've had call in the 20 months I've lived here. The pathetic part...he was the only person I talked to all day long.

I'm sure there will be days when I will long for the quiet I have right now. Meanwhile, I'll try not to talk back to the TV or other drivers on the road too much!

Home Again

Finally. Actually, I got home last night after the absolute worst driving experience of my life! It's taken today to recover. I don't see well after dark, so driving 4 1/2 hours home after dark in the rain and fog on a windy, mountain road that I had never driven before produced more than a few scary moments. I'm not a screamer, but at one point I actually screamed out loud; I thought I was going to die! I think I'll stick to daytime driving for now...

Earlier in the day, I had driven another 5 hours from Bucharest to the camp that we are renting for the next two weeks. The camp speaker and his daughter arrived at the airport about 12:30. I picked them up, made a quick McDonald's run to get lunch for them, and then hit the road. The first couple of hours were relatively boring (as boring as driving in Romania can be - nothing like setting the cruise and driving straight down I-75 for 3 hours!). Then we hit the mountains - despite the rain, it was absolutely breathtaking! God did some of His best work when He made this country! Tom took a lot of pictures while I was driving...if I can get some of them, I'll post them next week some time.

Earlier this week, I had fun celebrating my birthday with friends in Bucharest. Dinner at Ruby Tuesday's...yum. Being sung to in public...embarassing. Being sung to again, this time by the Ruby Tuesday's waitstaff...still embarassing, but very funny too (they sang in English, an original song that I wish I could reproduce for you here!). Not having to cook OR pay for dinner...just about as good as it gets!

Tuesday our American counselors arrived to get ready for camp. I enjoyed playing hostess for them at the apartment in Bucharest; that's become my favorite role here. After a brief city tour and a great "authentic" Romanian meal on Tuesday night, Wednesday morning we headed to the train station...the American counselors were joined by their Romanian counterparts for the 5 hour ride. I got them all situated on the train and then waved goodbye (until the next day when I drove up to camp).

Remember all of the cookies from a few weeks ago? They came out of the freezer this week, and they're gone. I pulled out the peanut butter cookies and the chocolate chip cookies when I arrived at camp yesterday...no kidding, 10 dozen cookies were gone in less than 10 minutes! I had sent the others on the train with them the day before, so they were already gone. I hope they ate dinner...



After I dropped Tom & Jessica off at camp and shared my cookies, it was time to head home. Not just for me. For the cows, too. Have you heard phrase "Til the cows come home"? Well, in the two villages closest to camp, that's sometime between 7 and 8 pm. How do I know? Because I followed them home. It's quite a sight to behold. I don't know how the cows from the first village knew it was time to come home, but there they were, wandering down the middle of the street. At every cross street, a couple of them would peal off the herd and head toward their homes, presumably down those cross streets. Somehow, they just know where to go and when it's time to go there. I'm told that you can't change the color or outward appearance of your house until your cow dies; the cow will miss the house and just keep walking.

I miss the city. I miss the people. But it's good to be home, too.

Saturday morning

It's 6:45 on a Saturday morning. Frankly, not a time that I prefer to spend with my eyes open...ever. It's been a long, hard week, I went to bed at 1 o'clock this morning, and I was looking forward to sleeping in a little bit.

But, alas, the jackhammers are back. At 6 o'clock on a Saturday morning. Tearing up a little more of the street right below my bedroom window. Really. How much more of that street can there be? I've discovered that there is no way to escape this noise. Pillows over the head accomplish absolutely nothing...the jackhammers are beating away at concrete and bedrock, and the vibrations travel straight from there into my concrete building, through my furniture, and into my body. Inescapable.

I'm really too tired to be writing this. In fact, I stared at the computer screen for a good 30 seconds, fingers posed over the keyboard, trying to remember the website that I needed to type in before I could actually start posting. But what else does one do at 6:45 on a Saturday morning when rudely awakened by jackhammers?

Did you miss me?

I'll probably never be a "blog-every-day" type of person. In fact, during weeks like this one, I may not blog at all. After staring at two-page spreads on my little laptop screen for 10-12 hours a day, I can't force myself to do anything else at the computer. I've even left the laptop on my desk at the office 2 nights this week...unheard of in my "computer-addicted" world.

I've decided that I need to find a hobby that doesn't require use of my eyes. Any suggestions? I love to read...and that takes a toll on my eyes. Any kind of computer use is obviously hard on the eyes. Watching TV...again, wearing out my eyes. Hmmm...what else to do?

After four 10-12 hour days, I finally finished typesetting one book today, the fourth teacher's manual in our 12-volume Sunday School curriculum. Tomorrow I drop in the graphics, and it will be completely done. Yeah! Tonight I've been proofreading the fifth student manual in the series. I can tell that my Romanian is growing stronger because I can work through these pages a lot faster than I could even two or three months ago. Are you bored yet...I told you I wouldn't talk much about work because it would bore you silly. Believe me now?

Time to go home (and leave my computer here at the office for another night). Just going home is a challenge right now. As in Michigan, "summer" is synonymous with "road construction" - but they are really taking it to the extreme here this summer! Every road leading to my apartment block is closed...EVERY SINGLE ONE! I can leave home via a one-way street leading right into downtown.

But in order to get home, I have to drive through a very scary, very communist-looking tunnel/parking garage that comes out about 100 m. from my apartment block. Every time I do it, I feel like I'm looking over my shoulder for the policeman waiting to stop me for driving through private property. Am I conditioned by American driving laws or what? All of the Romanians who do the same thing every day probably don't think anything of it. They have to get somewhere, this is the only way to get there, so do it.

To be fair, it probably wouldn't be so scary-looking if I weren't driving through it at 10 or 11 o'clock at night when it is completely dark and deserted. No scary movies for me until at least one of the roads is open again!