Epuizata

Exhausted. That's the only word I can find to describe me tonight. It's barely 10 o'clock and I'm fighting to keep my eyes open to post this (since I know you are all waiting with bated breath).

First, it's time for a celebration! Tonight I taught my first lesson completely in Romanian! I had intended to teach a Sunday School lesson last month in Romanian and was prepared to do so until, just before class began, a whole big group of Americans walked in; if I had taught in [bad] Romanian, someone else would have had to translate into [bad] English...and that would have been doubly frustrating for me. So, yay for having finally jumped the hurdle! Not sure that I will teach Sunday School this week in Romanian, but we'll see how tomorrow goes.

Second, a bit of an explanation. The Budapest picture from my last post wasn't completely random. I actually spent all of last week in Budapest at an ESL conference led by Michael Pasquale. In the evenings, we did a little bit of sightseeing & picture-taking. Now more than ever I would like to switch to a digital SLR camera...maybe someday! I've been looking at film SLRs on eBay since so many people are now switching to digital & getting rid of their film cameras. Until then, my Canon PowerShot does the job with a little bit of coaxing.

Oh, yeah...we were there for a conference, weren't we?





I drove back to Romania last Friday and brought a colleague from Slovakia with me. Nancy is helping us for a couple of weeks with our quarterly teacher training sessions; I'm sure the teachers are enjoying having some fresh ideas and a fresh face in front! Nancy stayed with me until our Monday night team meeting and then moved to another family's home for the week.

This week has been crazy busy with finishing a promotional brochure for the teacher training conference in September, helping teammate Jeff Broome pack up his family's belongings to ship back to the US, and being sick the last couple of days. Between all of that, I didn't have a lot of prep time for teaching tonight (probably good...no time to freak out about teaching in Romanian; just jump in and do it!).

For Kris' sake...here are a couple of pics from the container packing this morning. Sadly, I was in the container helping with the baby grand piano, so I have no pictures of the piano on the forklift. Or maybe that is for the better...

The loading crew...

Closing the doors...

And that's the short version of the saga that was this week. Maybe if I write more often I won't have quite so much to pack into one post, huh? Ok, it's off to bed for me. Have a happy Friday evening!

Budapest

Bursting At The Seams

When we started our Friday night youth meeting last October, we averaged around 15 teens each week. By December the numbers had dropped to 10-12 each week, and I was a little concerned.
When we went to the youth conference in Bucharest in December, we took the Friday night kids, the Sunday morning kids (some of whom never came on Friday nights), and a couple of teens who had been to camp with our teens before.
Over the last couple of months, these different groups have started to integrate a little bit more. We still have a sizable group that comes on Sunday morning but not Friday night (most of them orphans from either group homes or mentor apartments...they have their own "youth meeting" on Thursday evenings). But we don't really have a "Friday only" group or a "camp" group any more; they've all started coming on Sunday mornings. And another new group of boys has started to come as well. Last week we had 27 teens and 7 adults stuffed into a little basement room. Last night we had 24 teens and 8 adults. We're bursting at the seams!
Even more exciting than experiencing growth in numbers is watching spiritual curiosity and growth in the teens. It's fun for me to hear their questions and see their excitement for learning things from Scripture that they have never heard before. Two weeks ago, our pastor ended his sermon with a very direct salvation invitation, which is pretty rare here. Four of those teenagers (3 of them "camp only" kids and one a sibling of a "camp only" kid) responded and made decisions to repent of their sin and make Jesus Christ Lord of their lives! That makes giving up my Friday night "veg out" time not just a sacrifice, but a true joy and blessing to me, too!

Halfway!

Today we hit a major milestone - the halfway mark in this huge translation/publishing project that consumes most of my days.


The 6th (of 12) student manual came back from the print shop a couple of weeks ago, and today we finally finished the printing and binding of the accompanying student manual. We do the set up for both books - "we" being Gabi and I...she does the student manuals (much more complicated!) and I do the teacher manuals. The cost of "professional printing" for the teacher's manuals is prohibitive, so we do these pretty much "in-house." The student manuals are printed by MultiMedia International in Arad, a print shop started with the help of EBM personnel. Our print run for teacher's manuals, however, is only 65 - not worth firing up the big presses! So, when everything is ready for print, my trusty flash drive and I make a trip to the local copy center, get the original printed and copies made, and then head back to the office.


We use plastic comb binding for these books to help keep the costs down and make the manuals teacher-friendly at the same time. The binding machine and I have passed many hours of "bonding" time together. It's good for the arm muscles :)

We're going to have a celebration time soon with all of the translators and proofreaders who have worked on the project so far. I want them to know how much we appreciate their investment and how important this "halfway" milestone is. Now that we're halfway done, I'm starting to figure out how this whole translation/publication process works!

Revenge of the Killer Dust Bunnies

I'm not the cleanest person in the world, but I tell you...I have never seen dust bunnies like the ones that grow to amazing sizes and reproduce at an alarming rate in this apartment! The amount of dirt that collects in my apartment in a very short period of time is nothing short of incredible.

The craziness that is spring has begun (even if the weather that is spring has not yet). I leave on Sunday for Budapest for a 3-day ESL workshop and return the following Friday with a houseguest. A colleague from Slovakia will be spending a couple of weeks here, leading our March teacher training sessions around Romania and Moldova. She'll spend the first couple of days here with me, so I decided that evenings this week would be dedicated to a good spring cleaning.

Which for me means moving furniture. I get bored with the look of my apartment and feel the need to completely rearrange furniture every 3 months or so. I started with the bedroom since it really hadn't had a deep cleaning in a while. Can you say "disgusting"? I moved the bed...the first mistake, I suppose. Since my air is so hot and dry during the winter, the window is always open. And since the bed was on an angle in front of the windows (which are in the corner), I haven't cleaned behind the bed/under the windows in a really long time. Like since I moved the bed there...last summer, I think.

Apparently all of the stray dust from the street had settled on the floor behind my bed. Well, almost all of it. The rest of it was coating the plastic storage boxes under the bed. Seriously, who has to clean the tops of their storage boxes? If they were stored in a garage or basement, I would understand. But this is my house! Where does all the dirt come from?

Next step in the process (I won't bore you with too many details...suffice it to say, I conquer the record-sized dust bunnies in the bedroom and moved on) - washing curtains. I had done the ones in the bedrooms not long ago since they are white and easily show dirt. The ones in the living room and kitchen, however, are navy blue. They really don't show dirt at all. Nonetheless, I figured that a good spring cleaning meant washing curtains whether they needed it or not. Whether they needed it or not really wasn't the question...everything in this apartment needs washing. They just don't show it. Until you put them in a washing machine full of water. Which swiftly becomes mud. I probably should have washed them again, but couldn't justify the extra water/electricity.

The living room gets cleaned relatively often, so it was more a matter of dusting. And moving furniture, of course. After two years, I think I've exhausted the options in this room. But that's okay...it hasn't been like this for at least a year.

And since crazy spring is here, it can stay this way for a while. I won't be home enough to get tired of it :) Or to stop the revenge of the killer dust bunnies from recurring. Oh well, that battle can wait for another month!

On the road again

After 3 months, I'm so thankful to have my car legal and on the road again! Someone asked me where I would go first when I could drive again. I predicted it would probably be the grocery store (since grocery shopping trips have been the times when I've missed my car the most). But, once I got the plates & put them on the car, the first trip was to the office. Blessed convenience of making a quick trip rather than having to plan for a 1/2 hour walk to the office, time there, and then another 1/2 hour walk home! Next week I'll go back to walking for most of these in-town trips, but this week I'm enjoying the privilege of driving my car.

The not-so-happy news was that they can only give me plates valid until 1 month BEFORE my visa expires and I can't get new ones until I get my new visa. Since my visa expires the 31st of December and everything is closed around here until at least the 3rd of January usually, that means that we can't start the registration process (which takes at least a week) until the offices reopen after the holidays. So, theoretically, I'll have to do w/o my car for 6 weeks every Dec/Jan, unless I somehow receive a visa valid for longer than a year or register the car in a Romanian's name. Not going to worry about this for now...November is still a ways away!

On a sunny Saturday,

I decided to go walking. Here's where I went today. Missing are pictures of the first two signs, from Chendu and Balauseri, due to a technological blip (ie. the person using the camera wasn't too smart and didn't notice that one of the batteries was in upside down & then couldn't figure out why the camera wouldn't turn on). I'll have to go back to take those some other day.





And the pitstop for this leg of the race is...

What's cookin' in my kitchen...

...or rather, "who's cooking in my kitchen?" Not me! Last week was cooking week for the month, so now my kitchen just looks pretty and is the place to put dirty dishes.

The freezer's more full than it has ever been. I even had to take the shelf out since I couldn't figure out a way to make everything fit with it in. Current contents: 14 single serving lasagnas; 10 egg casseroles; 5 barbecued chicken/rice/broccoli meals; 3 roasted chicken/rosemary potatoes/green bean meals; 1 hamburger soup; 1 large container chocoloate chip cookie dough; 1 lg container peanut butter cookie dough; 1 lg container mashed potatoes; 1 small container green beans; 8 spaghetti/pizza/all-purpose-tomato-based sauce; 4 bags corn; 1 bag carrots; 1/2 bag french fries; and 1 container blueberries, currently being hoarded for a special occasion yet to be named (blueberries only appear in the market here for about a week each summer, and I've managed to miss that week both summers I've been here. A kind soul had mercy upon me and shared hers this year). So no more cooking for a while =)

Happy Birthday, Sadie!

Today my one & only niece turns 6 - happy birthday, Sadie!

A Quarter of a Century!

Today is my baby sister Sarah's 25th birthday - happy birthday, sista'!

I always make Sarah a birthday cake (and then send her pictures while we enjoy her cake over here!). This year she said she wanted a hamster-shaped cake. Not being a cake decorating genius, 2 questions immediately came to my mind: (1) how in the world do you make a hamster-shaped cake? and (2) who in the world would want a hamster-shaped cake, anyway? The answer to the second was obvious...my somewhat strange little sister. =) And the answer to the second? Well, after resorting to a Google image search, I came up with this. It is almost as random as the original request...

Yeah, I still haven't figured out the frosting thing...it doesn't seem to matter what I do, it always comes out soft. Then you put it in my overly warm apartment, and the frosting starts sliding off the side. Romanian powdered sugar has a different consistency, so it tastes okay, but isn't quite the same as a can of Duncan Hines!

The girls here thought we should have ham(ster)burgers, too, to make the meal complete. Don't you wish you were here, Sarah, so you could celebrate your birthday, too? Actually, Sarah celebrated her birthday by purchasing her plane tickets to come visit me at the end of March; maybe I'll make her another cake then (probably not shaped like a hamster's rear end, though).