July 5, 2008 (Saturday)
The Lord’s Hand in my Life: Being able to relax and spend time with the girls!

There is nothing better than getting to sleep in on a rainy Saturday. I love it! It felt so nice and relaxing to just lay in bed until I felt like getting up. They are a very, very rare occurrence in my life.

For the rest of the day I accomplished a lot of homework which is always good. Then in the middle of the day Annie and I traveled to a local university for a school assignment. The fact that it was pouring outside made our little adventure even more fun. We both huddled under a little umbrella and attempted to dodge puddles.

Once we go to the university we went and looked for a long corridor of paintings. The paintings were very different. I wasn’t a huge fan of any of them – they had a robotic and stifling feel to them. However, looking at the art was quite interesting because you could physically see the communistic influence on the artist’s style. All the figures looked very similar, they were often all looking the exact same way and the figures in the pictures had a alien/robot look.
We asked some local students about the background of the art. They didn’t know too much about it – but we did ask them what they thought about communism and the downfall of Ceausescu. It was interesting to hear that they felt their country’s well being had declined since he was taken out of office. They also said Romania isn’t as civilized as it was when communism reigned. When one grows up in the United States you are taught to think communism is bad. I still think it is – but I don’t think the concept of communism is bad. Communism would be great if everyone were perfect, but we aren’t. So that ends that thought.

After we chatted with them for a while they left and then all of a sudden they came back and asked if they could take a picture with us. It was so cute. I love how people always ask to take a photo with us. Then they asked if we could exchange email addresses. People here are always looking for ways to better their English…

When I got home I had a list of things I could have done, but I decided to have some “me time.” I don’t know why that is so hard for me…I decided to watch an episode of The Office which always makes me happy and then take a nap. I need to have time for myself more often. There is always a list of things to do in my mind. I have a hard time relaxing at all when I know there are things I could be doing. However, there is ALWAYS something I could do – so I have to tell myself it’s okay to take a break sometimes.

Later on our apartment ate dinner – then Whitney S. came over and spent the night. Then we made treats and decided to watch a movie together called Stranger Than Fiction. It was very interesting. I’m not quite sure how I felt about it. It was okay. After the movie we all just laid around and talked. Then somehow we started playing all these sappy, country love songs. It was really late so we were all really tired, and when girls get tired that means they get slap happy. If someone would of video taped us it would have been hilarious. We were all singing country songs as loud as we could without being too much of a disturbance to our neighbors. Then Whitney S. and MacKenzie were complaining because hearing the songs made them miss their boys. I was like “well stop complaining at least you have someone to miss!” Haha…it was fun having girl time…