Back to Reality

July 12, 2008 (Saturday)
The Lord’s Hand in my Life: Some alone time.

Last night was a rough night’s sleep. Even though we were under the stars in Andreiseni the ground was still pretty hard, and we were sleeping about an inch away from the person next to us. Sometimes not even an inch. At one point during the night someone ended up spooning with me. Whitney S. confessed it was her. Haha. Besides hitting each other and tossing and turning all night it was fine. However, I did wake up in the middle of the night all of a sudden, because I felt someone pull off every blanket I had on top of me and it was pretty chilly. In the morning I discovered it had been Elyse. She wasn’t a happy camper about the night either. She was on the end of the sleeping row and apparently she ended up getting pushed off the blankets into the grass. She said she woke up in the middle of the night face down in the grass without any padding under her or any blankets over her and she saw that Mindy, Whitney S. and I had “five blankets” on top of us. So she sassily/joking/not joking admitted she pulled them off of us. We were all laughing about the night’s rest. I ended up just sharing blanket with Whit. It’s amazing how close we are all getting to each other. Ha.

Right after we woke up we noticed that some people were walking into the church. We woke up at about 8:00, and we all remembered that the priest told us that there was a service at 8:30 we were supposed to go to. All of a sudden we all started panicking. We were like “an entire congregation is going to walk up and we are all laying in blankets in front of the church with the best bed hair we’ve ever had. That will look great!” We all started laughing and as fast as we could we picked up our blankets and belongings and went upstairs to quickly get changed and ready for the day. Luckily a few minutes later we found out that the service wasn’t at the church that we slept outside. It must have been workers walking into it? Who knows…but boy did it get our blood pumping.

Immediately after we changed our clothes the priest’s wife had a horse and wagon ready for us to take us to the service. We ended up arriving at a house with a long table that stretched out for an extended period. Apparently the service was for the lady of the houses dead husband. He had died four years before. We all took a seat and they prayed, lit candles and served us food. None of us were very hungry. After all we had been fed so many times yesterday. I don’t think we could have eaten anymore, but somehow we managed to. Every time we said we couldn’t eat anymore we somehow found another way to stuff it down our throat. I’ve never thought of eating as quite the miserable experience until Andreiseni.

For the meal we were fed an entire plate of cold cuts, vegetables, cheese and bread. Then we were served soup, sarmale, chicken and cognac bread. It was a lot of food. I tried to concentrate my thoughts on anything but the food. There was the cutest old man across from me who didn’t have any teeth who was eating. I attempted to talk to him in my battered Romanian…he seemed pleased to have the conversation. Later Whitney S. and I got a picture with him, and he was so excited. So cute. So cute.

Just as all the houses we visited before they were more than enthusiastic to guide us through their house and show us their belongings. One of the girls spoke English so she attempted to translate for us when she could which was nice. Then we left them with our final song before we left to go back home.

Five of us decided to leave at 11:00 a.m. and four decided to stay for a few more hours and come back in the evening. The five of us gathered our luggage and walked to the bus stop. On the way we were stopped by the librarian whose house we had been to the day before. She greeted us with a smile and summoned us to come see the library. We all tried to tell her that we were afraid we were going to miss the bus, but she insisted we would be fine. So we quickly looked around. The library only made up about three small rooms, and each room was filled with old books, but at least they had one. She seemed very proud of her quaint sanctuary. As we were about to leave she pulled out a huge basket and started pulling out items to show us what was in it. We quickly found out that they were more gifts for us. I couldn’t believe it! We kept telling her we didn’t need anything, but as always she insisted. She had put some books, milk, wine and cakes in there for us. So sweet….

On the way home we had quite the dusty ride. Although we were in a bus the air conditioning was blowing dust on us for some reason. Whitney S. about died and when we arrived back in Iasi I could barely open my eyes. Then the bus tried driving off right as I was about to step off. We had to yell at the bus driver to get his attention so he would let the rest of us off. Oh how we love transportation here…

When I got back to my apartment I took a shower and cleaned off. Three of the four people that decided to stay for a couple more hours were my roommates – so I had the entire apartment to myself. Not that I don’t love my roommates, but having some alone time was absolutely heavenly. I don’t think I’ve had more than half an hour of alone time since I’ve been here…I took a nice long shower, did all my laundry and watched a movie and cleaned. It was so relaxing and soothing…

Later in the afternoon I got to talk to my dad and my family from Missouri. It was great to hear his voice. I told him about all my adventures and chatted with him about how amazing America was. He said it was true and agreed that the only way to understand how great America is to visit another country and see the standard of living they are subjected to. America is pretty ding dang dong great.

Later I called over to Whitney S. and asked her to run with me to get more scabies cream for our apartment. When I was getting dressed I found a bunch more in random spots on my body. I even found some spots on my toes! AHHH! I just did a treatment not too long ago. I just will have to do it again - scabies cleansing #3. So she went with me and it took five pharmacies until we found the cream we needed. After that we decided to take a random way back. We ended up going the wrong way, but we had fun chatting and enjoying the walk. The rest of the conversation was random. Whitney S. decided that the combination of the two of us would be the perfect combination of a girl. She said that I was too nice to boys and that she was too standoffish. I never thought of myself as nice to boys? That was new news to me…I’ve always thought that I was kind of mean…hmmm….

When I got back from my scabie cream excursion my roommates were home and unpacking. After I put scabie cream all over my body – in very large amounts - Mary, Kenz and I watched A Walk to Romember on my bed. Everyone knows that move is not a comedy – but somehow my roommates made it out to be. We were laughing so hard. Kenz and Mary kept making dumb comments throughout the entire thing. I don’t know why we all watched it – movies like that just make you want to have someone special. Haha…then when it was over Mary repeated one of the lines in the movie that states “We are through – we are through forever!” She ended up saying it in a weird voice, but what was awesome was that she didn’t mean to…It’s one of those moments that you have to be there to appreciate it, but it was hilarious at the time. We were all laughing so hard our stomach ached. I’ve decided that my most treasured moments are when you are with your friends and laughing so hard that you can’t breathe and your ab muscles are burning from contracting so much. They are the best…I wish life were like that all the time.

I asked my roommates how the rest of the day in Andreiseni went. They said it was awesome, but they all felt sick because they were fed several more times. I wouldn’t have been able to handle eating more food. The thought of food disgusted me. I don’t know how they did it. They were all running to the bathroom most of the night…poor things. They said it was worth staying even though they were sick. I guess a house that consisted of six sisters and their husbands waited to leave on a trip they had planned so they could meet and welcome the “American girls” to come visit their home. Once again the people of Andreiseni are amazing…