May 21, 2008 (Wednesday)

It’s starting to get hot in the land of Romania…which is not fun especially when there is no air conditioning. I can’t wait until it’s really summer with a hundred degree weather and no air conditioning. Ha ha… My day started off with the regular routine at the orphanage. I played with Constantine for a while and Whitney and I started doing the Brigance Test on the kids we work with. The Brigance Test is a developmental test which helps judge where the kids are mentally and physically. I tested Constantine first. His body is completely mangled and he just lies there, but he smiles when you talk to him and it’s adorable. Apparently his mother was raped by her father and he was the result…

Then I went outside and played with some of my other kids. One of the other workers was watching Andrei on the playground which bought me some time with the other kids. However he did run over and give me a hug and sit on my lap to say hi…he’s so cute! I really mean it when I say that my goal this semester is to get him adopted. I’m going to see what I can do. Hopefully there is something…I will keep little Andrei in my thoughts and in my prayers.

While I was on the playground Sera (the physical therapist) found me outside and came and talked to me again today. I thought he would quickly move on to another girl. Apparently not, the girls have decided that he’s stuck on me. Whitney Scott was sitting outside when he came out, introduced one of his friends to me and started his flirting routine. She told me later that she moved closer to us so she could purposely hear some of the cheesy things he had to say to me. Haha. Each time he comes to say hi he brings another friend to meet me. Boys are so funny. He jokingly told his friend that I was his girlfriend and he kept asking him if we looked good together. I repeatedly said that I wasn’t his girlfriend, but he didn’t seem to get it. I didn’t really know how to respond except to laugh awkwardly. Like I said he’s harmless, but he is a little charmer.When we left the orphanage he gave me a prolonged hug in front of all the girls…it was the most awkward hug ever. He does this weird hug where he pulls your head into his chest. He’s done it to the other girls too...he wants to talk tomorrow. Little does he know that I’m going to try and get him to go to church…

After the orphanage it was hospital time. We only got to see Alex for a few minutes today. We played the game “Slap Jack.” Alex is such a little cheater he kept looking at his card before he put them down…then I would call him out on his cheater ways and he would just laugh. His mom was there today, and I met her. She wasn’t at all what I expected – she was extremely old and wrinkly. I’m so confused about the story behind his life…I was told that his mom left him…maybe not? All I know is that he definitely isn’t visited often by family… and he said his dad has never visited him. No matters – I still love visiting him and he gets so excited when I come.

We went and held our babies today. The poor things are always drenched in sweat when we go to pick them up. Then Annie had promised some little boy that she would come visit him, and we went to go see him and the nurse yelled at us from the other end of the hall and told us there were “no children without moms on that floor.” We knew she was lying, but she kept shhing us out the door. So we left so she didn’t continue to make a scene. So rude – we were both like “what’s her problem?” People around here get cranky for no reason a lot. Annie was way sad she didn’t get to see him – she kept saying that he probably thought she had forgotten about him. She kept saying that she broke her promise…but there was nothing else we could do. I told her to just explain the situation to him…but wait we can’t because we don’t speak Romanian very well.

Tonight was my night to cook dinner and boy was that the task. I decided to make quesadillas. You would think that would be a simple meal to make, and it would if they had tortillas that you could buy in the store. But they don’t. So I made tortillas from scratch…my family and friends who know me would be amazed to hear that! It was quite interesting…it didn’t go as smoothly as I would have liked, but they ended up turning out okay. I started off mixing the ingredients for the tortillas; and I was about to put the last ingredient needed which was baking powder; and I noticed the package said “baking soda” instead. I asked Annie our little cook if you could put baking soda in place of the baking powder. She said that probably wasn’t a good idea. Earlier some of the girls had gone shopping with me to get the ingredients and they grabbed the wrong thing for me. I should have checked. So right in mid making dinner mode Annie and I had to run to the grocery store. Then we couldn’t find baking powder there so we had to run to the girls’ apartment and borrow some. Talk about a pain. Then I got back and started rolling the dough into balls so I could flatten it with a rolling pin, and somehow I knocked over the ceramic plate that was holding the dough. The plate shattered everywhere, and so I spent the next couple of minutes throwing away dough that we couldn’t use…I finally got to the last step which was frying them in the pan. If I haven’t already complained about this – our pans are terrible - certain ones burn everything you cook. I got one of those pans so it burned some of the edges of some of the tortillas. Then I had to pick burnt edges off… but at least I’m trying. In the end they tasted good…it was rough though. Thank goodness for my roommate Annie’s help…I keep telling my roommates I’m excited that I’m learning how to cook things…by the time I get back home I will be much better!

After dinner we spent some time on the internet at the other girls’ apartment. Poor Elyse had been running to the bathroom and throwing up all day today and yesterday. Apparently she got sick from Sister Geneviva’s food. Then some of the girls went to drop off a thank you note and flowers to Sister Geneviva for making us dinner the other night (P.S. she had no idea her dinner had made some of us sick) and she ended up insisting that they eat more. She made them eat some mixture of goat cheese and old sour cream. The girls said it was way worse than what we had the other night. That’s hard to believe. Elyse was one of the ones that went to drop off the note, and she had to eat more food from the hands of the lady that had made her sick for the past couple of days. I felt bad for her. However, Elyse did play a joke on me the other day. I’ll have to tease her and tell her she got sick because of her little prank. I forgot to sign off of the Facebook on her computer, and she changed my status from “single” to “engaged.” I had several comments that said “Congratulations!” and “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me! Who is the lucky guy?!” Crazy girls…

The end of the day ended up with a laugh. I went to take a shower and I was about to get in when I noticed there was something stuck to my chest. Apparently I had stuck my key in my bra and forgotten it was in there. It looked like someone had glued it onto my body. I started laughing hysterically…when I got out of the shower the girls were like “why were you laughing?” I told them the story, and they started cracking up. For some reason it was really funny to all of us. Who knows…

Before I got into bed MacKenzie and Mary were freaking out because they think they have fleas…they have a bunch of bites on their legs. They haven’t washed their sheets since they’ve been here which is probably why. Annie and I have washed our sheets once a week since we’ve been there…I’ve been way paranoid about getting bugs. It pays off to be a little bit of a clean freak sometimes….