My Precious

I've been looking for a new perfume since the beginning of September (haven't had one I like for several years). I found one toward the end of September, but it was expensive...way more than I was willing to pay. But, it went on sale for Christmas a few weeks ago, and I snaped it up.

Here it is, "Precious" by Oriflame (a Swedish cosmetics company).



Can I tell you a secret? Although I love the perfume, the bottle makes me chuckle almost every time I see it. See the "design" on the top? It's a ring, right? So, every time I look at it, I hear (in the voice of Smeagol from the Lord of the Rings, of course): "My Precious..." And I smile and chuckle to myself. It's no wonder people think I'm losing it.

Sorry for the interruption...

...but I decided to take an unannounced break for Thanksgiving. So, now I'm home again and will catch you up.

Wednesday, Nov. 21 - The drive to Bucharest

Guess what happens when you are on a 2-lane "highway" thru the mountains and there is an accident? Traffic stops. And, since there is no where to go, everyone just sits. And sits. And sits. Until finally the accident is cleared away and traffic starts moving, ever so slowly, again. Five kilometers in 45 minutes isn't exactly what I had planned for the day. Until then, I had made good time and was looking forward to being through the mountains and almost to Bucharest before dark (5 pm, these days). Post-accident, there was no hope. Combined with unusually crazy city traffic...the 6 hour trip became 8 1/2.

But I arrived safely, and that's all that really matters. I stopped at the grocery store for the last couple of things, spent a little bit of time with the Postemas, and then baked my pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving dinner.

Thursday, Nov. 22 - Happy Thanksgiving!

I enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner, relaxing, and playing games with the Postema family, the Staab family, Terre Ritchie (Leah's mom, here visiting) and Donna Messenger (visiting on the journey from Singapore to the States). Lots of good food. Even more great fellowship with friends! Donna and I spent a long time talking tonight. Good times!

And I had my very fist Starbuck's, too! Hot chocolate of course. Cuz coffee still doesn't taste anywhere near as good as it smells.



Friday, Nov. 23 - Happy birthday, Allen!
Today was my "little" brother Allen's birthday. I tried to call to wish him a happy birthday, but he was gallivanting around Washington D.C. and didn't answer his phone. I haven't talked to him since June or July :(

I walked a lot today and played the bum for the rest of the day. It was great!

Saturday, Nov. 24 - Christmas already?

Leah cooked breakfast for us today...yum! I don't eat hot breakfast very often (and when I do, it's usually breakfast foods for dinner!) because I don't feel like cooking just for myself in the morning. So, that was a nice treat.


Postemas bought their Christmas tree and put it up today. While they were gone, I went with Donna to the pharmacy to pick up some antibiotics; she picked up some kind of respiratory infection, we think. Gotta' love the fact that I can just walk into the pharmacy and tell the pharmacist what I want, and she gives it to me without a prescription (doesn't work with everything...but with antibiotics, it's no big deal). After dinner, we all went to Staabs and played an out-of-control game of Pictionary. Rummeys were there, too, so it was a good size group. Note to self: Pictionary with this group of people is not suitable for apartment living, at least not during quiet hours. Man, were we loud! In fact, there were MANY times when I was shouting at the top of my lungs and couldn't be heard by the person drawing.

We ended the day back at Postemas' apartment where they opened Christmas gifts from Grandma Ritchie while she's here. Holidays are so much more fun with kids!


Sunday, Nov. 25 - Happy birthday, Dad!

Today my dad would have been 55. He died about 3 weeks after his 51st birthday, almost 4 years ago. In some ways, it seems like yesterday. In other ways, it seems like a lifetime ago. I know I'm not a little girl anymore, but I still miss my daddy.

Today was a beautiful day for the drive back to Targu Mures. Two of my friends from Tg.M. came to Bucharest on Friday and rode home with me. It was nice to have company, even if they slept most of the way home :). I made it back in time for the 1st choir rehearsal at 4, then the choir sang in the evening service. During the 2nd (normal) choir rehearsal after church, I had a tough time staying awake. I love to travel and had a fantastic weekend away, but I'm glad to be home!

Monday, Nov. 26 - It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas
I have about 20 bazillion things to do in the next 2 weeks, and I have no idea how I'm going to get it all done. So, what did I do with my evening? Keep working on the book I need to finish? No. File expense reports? No. Respond to e-mail? No. Nope. None of it. I decided, for one evening, to be completely irresponsible and ignore all of that.

I cleaned my living room, moved furniture (I've been wanting to do that for 2 months!), and started decorating for Christmas. I don't go all out. Few people other than me will see it, anyway. But I did put up my tree and my nativity sets. They make me smile :)





Whew...thanks for sticking with me to the end. I won't let another week go by until I post again!

Let Me Be A Woman

That's the (English) title of the book one of my Bible study groups is working through right now. It is actually a collection of letters written by Elisabeth Elliot to her daughter as a wedding present. If you keep that in mind, it's got some really good content (don't expect profound theological insights or even Scripture-searching).

Tonight was my turn to lead the group (3 of us take turns), and something caught me off guard. The book doesn't have a study guide, so I read through the 4 chapters, jotted some notes, and then developed a couple of discussion questions related to the text. Toward the end of the meeting, 3 of the ladies all made comments about the way that I was leading the group, not just talking about it the text but trying to take it a step further, figuring out how it relates to my relationship with God and, even beyond that, how it relates to how I minister to others. Honestly, my style didn't seem like something all that unusual to me ;) . But, having sat through a lot of Bible studies here (with several different groups of people), I can tell you that it is kind of unusual.

My new mission? Helping the other 2 leading our group to develop "questioning" skills. Because, as any one on our team can tell you, I am the queen of asking questions! Now if I can just get everyone else to appreciate that skill as much as our Bible study group did tonight...

What? No. 2

I've got tons of these (odd pictures to post as "What?", that is). This one is much less obvious than the last one (that was just a warm-up). If the answer to this one seems as obvious as the last one, you probably need to guess again. I promise that it is not. There are 2 parts to the correct answer for this one:

1. What is the object?
2. Where is the object?




Again, there is a prize involved for the first person with the right answer!

Missionary Appreciation Night

This evening, our church invited all of the missionaries who typically attend the church to come and share testimonies, prayer requests, blessings and struggles of working here in Romania. There are quite a few of us (about 15 last night), working with several different organizations, and with varying degrees of involvement in the church. There are so many of us coming and going that, often, I don't think many people in the church know who we are or what we do. In fact, someone just asked me last week, "Aren't you a teacher at the English school?" I've only been here for almost 3 years...and yet there are people in our church who don't know who I am or what I do (the church isn't THAT big...probably around 100 most Sundays). So, I was glad for this opportunity to share with them what I actually do do. After being pressured for several months, I also sang again last night.



I don't enjoy singing in church here. Truthfully, I was spoiled by the soundtracks I used in the States and by the really good accompanists who spent time rehearsing with me ahead of time, etc. (I miss you all!) It's much more challenging for me to find tracks here with which I can sing. Anyone who uses them gets them somehow from the States. I have a lot of tracks...but not for songs that have been translated into Romanian (and my translation skills DEFINITELY don't stretch to translating poetry with meter!). So, I have to either sing acapella (hmmm...no) or use an accompanist with whom I've only rehearsed once or twice right before the service. So, I'm more nervous here than I was even when I first started singing in the States. Which means that my breathing stinks. Making the whole thing sound not-that-great.

Good thing I'm not singing for the applause of men anyway. Cuz they (and I!) would be sorely disappointed these days.

Temptation

Tonight I taught the lesson for youth meeting, a lesson from Genesis 2-3 about the strategies Satan used to tempt Eve into sin and how we experience those same things.

Before the meeting started, I had a bowl of chocolates sitting in the front of the room with a sign next to it saying, "Do not eat!" (in Romanian, of course :) ). I didn't ask him too, but our pastor did a great job of ignoring the sign and eating some of my candy (which the kids just basically ignored for one reason or another). I'm glad he did, because the illustration wouldn't have worked as well if everyone just ignored the temptation. Because life doesn't generally work that way...we aren't very good at just ignoring temptations that are sitting there calling out to us.

When I asked the kids why they didn't eat the candy, their answers were pretty simple. "The sign said not to." "I wasn't allowed to." (Even though I basically left the stuff there unattended and even left the room for a few minutes.) "I knew I couldn't have it, so I stayed away from it." Truthfully, I wish my response to temptation were always so clear cut and easy..."I know it's wrong, so I'm not going to do it. Period."

Instead, I too often seem to be like our pastor (who really ate the candy just for the sake of the illustraton...or so he says!). "No one was watching." "What would happen if I got caught? It's not like there would be consequences." "It was sitting there, no one was watching, and I just kept looking at it, getting closer to it, until I couldn't ignore it anymore." It took a while, but eventually at least some of the kids began to understand that they use these same excuses for sin in their lives.

For example, cheating is rampant in this society. In fact, it's pretty much expected...by the teachers as much as by the students. Teachers allow (and sometimes encourage) cheating because good test scores make the teachers themselves look better. Even Christian kids rarely think of cheating as wrong. So we talked about how Satan lies to us, just as he did to Eve, making us believe that it something really isn't wrong even though God has forbidden it. And we looked at Scriptural principles regarding cheating (accurately translated as "stealing" in Romanian).

I love it when a lesson that I am asked to teach has a very strong, very practical lesson for the kids. Even though that lesson may not be easy to hear (or easy to put into practice). I love knowing that they can see how Scripture applies to their everyday life rather than just being a bunch of ideas and theories. Tonight was one of those nights!

Yummy

My options for dinner weren't quite as dire as these, but I have to tell you, it was a little disappointing to find the fast-food places closed this evening. Friday evenings are tough because we have Bible study from 4:30 until 7 or so, and I never feel like cooking dinner when I get home between 7:30 and 8 pm. Tonight I stopped at the grocery store on the way home to restock my yogurt and granola bar supplies. Then, I was going to grab something on the way home. But, apparently, "no water" also means "no fast food." Oh well. I'm probably better off without anyway.

P.S. If you come visit me, I'll take you to a restaurant where you really can order crap. Seriously. Don't believe me? Come and see! ("Crap" is the Romanian word for carp - we used to be able to buy cans of crap, but I can't find any anymore.)

The one thing I forgot...

...is that, in this land of hot-water radiators, "no water" means "no heat." There's nothing I could have done to prepare for it, but it was a rude awakening this morning. Especially since today's predicted high is only 39 degrees.

When my heat works, this apartment is VERY warm. But when it doesn't...well, it's like living in a concrete cave. There's no warming up until the heat comes back on. Whenever that might be. If you're looking for me tomorrow morning, I'll probably be the lump under the huge pile of blankets on my bed. Hopefully that lump will not be frozen solid.

You know you're in Romania when...

...you receive a notice in your mailbox saying that all of the water in the entire city will be shut off for 24 hours. Something about upgrading the system to meet European Union standards.

Not "don't drink the water for 6 hours or you might die." (I've gotten this message before.)

Not "you won't have hot water for the week of..." (I get this notice every summer; since the water is heated elsewhere and piped here, there's no hot water for a week in the summer while they clean and repair the hot water pipes.)

But "there will be absolutely, positively NO WATER for at least 24 hours" (the original notice said 48 hours). No washing dishes. No doing laundry. (Ooh, beginning to sound like vacation!) No flushing the toilet. No taking a shower. No swimming (the pool is closed). And, once the water comes back on, it will probably be cloudy and dirty for the first couple of days.

So, tonight I've been running around trying to think ahead & figure out how I can best prepare. Fill up the bathtub. Put a bucket of water in the other bathroom (for toilet-flushing purposes). Fill a pot of water to set on the stove (just in case I decide to make something for dinner tonight that demands water...I can't think that far ahead). Fill up the sink in the kitchen to put dirty dishes in, since I can't rinse them. Shower taken. Bottled water in the kitchen for drinking, teeth brushing, etc. The only left to do tonight is wash lettuce for the next couple of days' worth of salads.

I hope I'm not forgetting anything, because it won't be easy to "fix" it if I did. Since no one else in the city will have water, either.

Can't imagine what it will be like in the hospitals or restaurants here in town. I think I'll stay home for the duration :)

Wednesday, Nov. 14

Today I got to go back to the pool after the weekend away and then being sick. A couple of weeks ago I discovered the community pool here in Targu Mures and to my delight found that it is actually clean and chlorinated! I've been swimming 3 days a week & loving it. Proximity to the water is one of the things I've missed most here in Romania.

If you're expecting a picture of me at the pool, well, don't hold your breath. It's quite the sight, I assure you. Swimming caps are required. You'd be impressed with my swimming cap. And it's not even one of the disposable shower caps they sell at the entrance for those without the real thing.

Unfortunately, swimming was REALLY irritating my chronic sinus infection. I looked everywhere for ear plugs, but none were to be found anywhere in town. Mom suggested looking at the hardware store which is very logical. If you live in the US where people working with power tools think about protecting their hearing. Here, the man with the jackhammer digging up the street is more likely to wear flipflops than steel-toed boots. No ear plugs at the hardware store.

Remember my trip to Moldova last weekend? We spent a couple hours walking around Saturday evening, and guess what I found at a little hole-in-the-wall in Chisinau? Yup, ear plugs. A very practical souvenir, if I do say so myself.



That ranks right up there with the dictionary I bought during my high school senior trip to Florida. Which I still use, by the way. That's right, laugh at me. But Webster is still helping me remember how to spell in English...almost 15 years later. And I haven't had a single problem with my sinuses now that I have my ear plugs.