Romanian Experiences

Since our trip to Sinaia we have continued to keep busy each week. It was time for us to apply for our long term visas. Thank goodness we have Costel here who is the Romanian president of H2H. He was working on our visas before we even knew it. First we had to have a doctor give us a clean bill of health so we went and had a very thorough exam. He asked us if we were sick and he listened to our breathing, then declared us officially healthy. The day we were supposed to apply there was a problem with the department's fax machine and they changed their schedule so we had to go back a couple days late. After waiting in line for two and a half hours we finally made it to the window, slightly afraid that they would hassle us for applying late. Praise God that they didn't even say anything about it, so we should be on track to get our visas on time.

On Saturday we went out to eat to an Indian Restaurant for a date night. It was a very nice place and we really enjoyed it. The food was wonderful, top notch quality and it tasted so good. This is one perk of living in the biggest city in Romania, there are lots of different restaurants here.

Mark had Lamb Vindaloo, a very rich curried lamb dish. We had Nan bread and rice with our meal also. Mark had ginger lemonade to drink which had quite a spicy bite to it, very tasty.

Rebecca had mango chicken which was amazing. She also had a mango lassi to drink, which is a yogurt smoothy drink.

The next week started out with Rebecca getting a manicure from Andrea, one of the transition house girls. The girls are doing a program to learn how so that they can earn certificates from the school. This should help them find jobs since this job is in growing demand in Romania. They need live models to practice on so Rebecca and Jen went in, and after three and a half hours and several band-aids they had beautiful nails.

We went to the orphanage twice since the baby hospital is still closed. We had fun with the kids, Rebecca got her hair styled and Mark played soccer. It is always a joy to see the kids and to see how they react when we come there.

We also helped with the class that H2H is doing with the kids, the theme is heros and the qualities they have. We are trying to teach the kids that they can have these traits in their lives also and that they can be heros too.

We continue to study the language and this fills up our time when we are not doing all these other things. It has been going well and we are able to understand a lot more of what people are saying. We still have four months of class so there is still much to learn but we are thankfull that God is blessing us so far.