Romania Day 2: Let's Make a Deal!

Today was indeed the day of many doors. I wish I could be really poetic and write a neat sentence regarding doors, but my poetic muse is apparently on vacation. So, I'm just going to do my best to make a seemingly dull day more entertaining.

Breakfast was "interesting" to say the least. We went through the cafeteria line and received our plates of 3 HOT DOGS for BREAKFAST!!! Interesting, to say the least. I was not really sure how big of a hit that truly was with us, but, nonetheless, that was breakfast. So, I had toast. It was an, well, an experience. :-)

Ok, so after breakfast we came back to our apartment and enjoyed a time of prayer with our entire team. It was a refreshing time of prayer, praise, and encouragement. At the final AMEN, there was a knock on the door. It was Doru, giving us instructions for the day and for the weekend. After a time of prayer with him, it was off to work on DOORS. We had a supervisor and detailed instructions on how to scrape, scrape, scrape and sand doors. We were to prepare them for new caulking and paint. All in all, after a long day of scraping, sanding, blisters, sore hands,etc., we completed 35 doors. Productive day.

I have to mention a special little event, well, a FUNNY event at Ivonne's expense. She knows I'm posting this, so I have cleared it with her first. We were split into two separate rooms today to work. Randy, Ed and I had one room and Kelsie, Dustin and Ivonne were in another room. They were also blessed to have two of the students with them in their room helping them work. "Mona" and Chobi. Again, I'm not sure on the spelling, but this is the way they sound in my broken Romanian English. 

Chobi and Dustin

So, both teams are working away. After lunch break, Chobi came to Ivonne and said in his best, broken English, "You not scrape, ANYMORE"!  Apparently, Ivonne had scraped too hard and was taking out too much of the wood to please our Romanian supervisors. Choby was in trouble, so he asked Ivonne to not scrape any more wood, ONLY SAND. She's a little bit OCD about things, and was just trying to scrape away the splintering wood, but it was too much, too much!!! It was funny!

The team enjoyed the day with their Romanian friends and found out much about the culture here. Daniel enjoyed playing with two Romanian boys, ages 11 and 12, while we worked all morning. He played soccer and ping pong and climbed up on dorm mattresses.  Anything else he did -well, I don't know. I don't really think I want to know!

Supper is served at 6:30, so we ended our work day around 5 for showers and clean-up. Can I just ask if there is ANYONE reading this blog today that actually PRAYED for hot water during their shower? Well, I know of at least 2 members of our team that did. Unfortunately, my water was a little too hot. It was scalding hot or freezing cold. Not a happy medium today, just uncomfortable. Kelsie, however, said she began praying at 3:30, Lord, please let me have some hot water tonight for my shower. Their rooms are on the 4th floor, so they are warmer,and tend to not have the water pressure or temperature like the lower floors. Well, long story short, Kelsie got her prayer answered and had a pleasant shower. Dustin and Daniel were blessed as well and had warm showers. What a blessing!!!

Dinner was, well, interesting again. We should have had a camera to take a picture. We decided it was the American equivalent to a "mustgo" meal. They needed to clean out the refrigerator. :) We had "pizza". It was very thick dough with a ketcup sauce and, of course, cut-up hot dogs as the topping. There was bread, a sweet bread called cozonac, leftover rice, soup, and sheep cheese. All-in-all, most of us didn't care for the Romanian pizza. Thankfully we had salami, cheese and fruit in our apartment. :)

Big highlight came at the end of the day. Randy, Kelsie and I went upstairs and found a wonderful practice room with a piano. Beautiful acoustics again, and fun to sing!!! We looked out our window and saw a pick-up soccer game going on with the university boys. Guess who joined them??? Daniel couldn't resist. It was the highlight of his day, playing soccer IN ROMANIA with the big boys. He scored 5 goals and loved bragging to us....trust me.

Pictures to come and Randy says he plans to upload a video before we retire for the night.

La revedere!

Kim

Update by Randy:


Ok, so not to brag (well, yes a little I guess), but your's truly is having a better time with the food than anyone else in the Gardner clan.  The pizza?  It was fine.  I even spread a little sheep's cheese on top.  Very nice.


We discussed Ivonne's "re-direction" over supper and she was laughing so hard at herself that she was crying - what a sweet spirit she has.


I enjoyed watching the pick-up game of soccer this evening and took a few pictures.  The university boys have some good skills.  They treated Daniel very well and Daniel had the good sense to stay away from the 50/50 balls.  One defender (Cornelius) took him out once - actually fell on top of him - and the guys harassed the defender mercilessly.  It's the same in any language.  Pictures are in the gallery and I posted a couple below.

Finally, I just posted a short video from our service at Emanuel Baptist Church of Oradea that was taken last night.  Note the blend in the second song.  My mic wasn't even working.


Here is the video.  You can also browse to it through the youtube bar on the right once it updates.


Randy