Day to Day things

Thought you might want to know some random day to day things as of May 10.


It is spring in Galaţi. The trees are blooming and filling out with green, the flowers are up (the tulips have bloomed), and it is getting warmer. The grape vines have leaves and all the trees have a fresh coat of whitewash at the base of their trunks. There are some bushes right infront of my apartment building that smell like summer in Hueytown, Alabama. I walk by them and am reminded of sitting in the back of my grandparent's house in the A-frame porch swing. The city is really pretty when green.


Robin, Rachel, and Vali have begun working in the garden. I have helped Robin plant and transplant flowers and helped Vali plant tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. I like gardening, just need someone to tell me what to do. (Last year I planted pots of tomato plants...at least 3 pots with at least 3 plants each...um, they didn't fare too well under my sole supervision...I got a few small tomatoes and then the plants pretty much died.)


Kids have been spending a lot more time outside. That's been really fun. May 1st is a holiday in Romania. So we took the kids to a woods/park and cooked out and played games. It was awesome! We played soccer (which we don't do at the center because of space) with them, as well as a few organized games/relays. It was fun to have all the kids there at the same time. They loved it. Also, a few of our boys (as in kids) took on some older boys (that happened to be in the same park) in a game of soccer. The random older kids won--but only in a shoot-out that went through like 5 people from each side. Anyway, our boys represented really well. Please. It was awesome.


Valentin (one of the kids) and I cleaned out the shed that houses all the garden tools. I told him I was afraid of spiders and he did most of the "reaching into dark crevices that may house scary creatures". Vali approved of our work, but Valentin gets most of the credit, as he made sure we took EVERYTHING out and swept the area really good. I was just moving stuff around, but he was like, "No! Not beautiful!" and made me move a whole stack of these thin strips of wood in order to clean. Valentin also knows quite a bit of english.

ST girls organized a "Girls Night" for the staff one Friday. It consisted of doing a Latin Dance workout video...and then eating pizza right afterwards. Then board games and more dancing. It was fun.

Recard, one of the 1st graders, has invented a new game using rollerblades and a random servant team member. He puts on these much-too-big pair of rollerblades, takes a hand, and then we pull him around (he would prefer using a jumprope, but I deem that a bit unsafe, so we hold hands). He and I start about 25 yards away from the gate (the cement slopes down infront of the gate to the center) and then after saying "uno, doi, tre, si!" we bolt towards the gate. I run like crazy, thinking that I need to stay ahead of him in order to not pull him over backwards by the hand. As soon as we hit the slope, he tries to spin around, using my hand to balance, and then throws his hand out to finish with a flourish. My role in this escapade is to keep him from falling and breaking himself. Recard doesn't know this. Our goal together is to get him to spin around (as in 180 degrees) only using one of my hands to balance. Most of the time it is me grabbing an appendige (sp) so that he will not hit his head on the ground. But he loves it. Once we tried it with two servant team members (myself and Mary Margaret). Halfway to the gate he slipped and we dragged him for about a foot on his knees before I realized he was down. So, we went back to one ST member at a time. Once he and Mary Margaret didn't quite make it 180 degrees, and as she was catching him I saw his little hand turn out as though to say "Ta-Da!". It was so cute.

My host mom is so cute, please. I think Doamna Dabija thinks I know more Romanian than I do, but oh well. I took Caitlin and Laura to meet her seperately within the last couple of weeks. They think she is cute, too. And funny. I think she is hilarious, but unfortunately can't really understand any of the stories. She seems to have great timing when it comes to telling stories.