Alex's Adventures in Romania

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Day 19

We took the kids outside again this morning. It was a little breezy out; I’m surprised the aides didn’t make us put sweatshirts, socks, hats, etc. on the kids immediately. Shortly after snacktime, we were given small blankets for the kids.
There was some kind of an inspection today. I’m not entirely sure what it was all about, but the preparation by the aides involved heavy-duty cleaning and changing into identical uniforms.

Big Andreea had a giggle fit before noon-time bottles. She was lying on her belly, on the Boppy pillow, when all of a sudden, we hear squeals and snorts and giggles. It was hilarious, and I wish I had gotten it on video. I need to keep my camera with me at all times, so I can catch things like this.

Bad news: Andrei, who has a heart condition and has been wheezing a lot lately, went to the hospital today. So I had to say my first goodbye today, as I’m pretty sure Andrei won’t return to the clinic before Friday night. I gave him a kiss while he was getting a breathing treatment, and then I ran into the bathroom for a little cry. Friday is going to be rough.

This afternoon, I went into the clinic and found Andrei still there. I had hoped he would have left already, so I didn’t have to say goodbye again. I also found out that Alina was going, as well, but her visit had been planned, for her routine check-up. It was a little easier for the goodbyes this time, and I was able to get a picture with each of them.

Petre threw up on me again just before we left for the evening. One thing I can say about this trip, I’ve been desensitized to baby vomit because of it. I barely even flinched before cleaning him up (yes, him first!), then myself, then the rocking chair and the floor. Then I changed his clothes, made sure that he would be fed again later (since he had spit up his entire bottle), and went back to the clinic to change my clothes. Luckily, tomorrow is another laundry day, so I can throw my pants and tshirt in with tomorrow’s load instead of letting it stink up my luggage until I get home.

Oh, after lunch today, we went down the road to the Tiff market, where I got a strawberry ice cream bar with white chocolate coating for 1 lei or leu or whatever the singular form is. That equals about 33 cents in the States! It was yummy, too.

I sent out a batch of postcards last week, and the rest will be sent out tomorrow.

Here are a couple videos. First one is from today, second is from Monday, I believe. I'll post another entry with pictures later. Apparently, I'm going to (according to Amy J.) have a life...by playing Canasta.

Ionela...if you listen closely, towards the beginning, you can hear her say, "'ello! 'ello!" into her rock-phone.

Andrei...Susan had him giggling like crazy before I started recording, so I'm really only posting this for the sake of the big squeal in the middle.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Days 17 & 18

Monday

Alexandra gave Susan a kiss! Becca was taking a picture of Susan for the GV fundraising-related blog at http://www.changewagers.org, and just as she was snapping the photo, Alex turned her head and gave Susan a big smooch on the cheek. Major breakthrough there! Susan looks so surprised in the picture!

Maiastra happily ate her mid-morning snack, tapping the jar when she wanted another bite and very nearly reaching for the spoon.

Maria wouldn’t eat her bottles this morning. Amy J. said that it seems as though she forgot how to eat/swallow. (note: it took a bit of coaxing, but Maria DID take her afternoon bottle!)

Amy J. took Paula for a walk. Paula hated the stroller, so Amy carried her. She was content to touch trees and poles for a little while.

One of the puppies sneaked into the playground several times, as he was small enough to climb through the fence. Lea-Celine didn’t like him, nor did Ionela. Alina didn’t seem to mind.

Later, the puppy tried to get in to clinic; I took him outside and Lea-Celine was in the car w/ Mihaela. Lea-Celine reached her arm out and said “my, my, my” (“my my” is an equivalent to “be nice”) so I let her pet the puppy, and she made a new friend :-)

Delta, Trevor, Amy J. and I played Canasta this evening. It was a close game, but Delta and I beat the two youngins by about 130 points.

Tuesday

A new-ish puppy was yelping all day, wandering around and crying. I think he was looking for his mother, who may or may not be Mama Dog. Poor thing was so distraught, I went over to grab him up and cuddle him for a bit. There’s a bucket by the entrance to the clinic that some of the dogs drink out of, but there was no water in it today. I asked Ramona (the social worker at the clinic) if there was anything I could give to the puppy—water or anything—because I felt so bad, and she said no. But later on, I did sneak him some leftover mashed bananas that the kids didn’t eat.

Alexandra had a wonderful day today. When Big Andreea was crying, Alex reached over to pat her arm and comfort her. And when Sami sat on the swing, looking down at the ground like he was sad, she bent over to look at his face and to see if he was okay. What a sweetheart.

Petre threw up carrot soup on Becca (who HATES cooked carrots). Guess who didn’t feed him this afternoon? Haha I can’t blame her, of course. When he threw up on me, I was hesitant to feed him again, myself.

Alina tried to bite Amy J.’s lips this morning. And this afternoon, she (Alina) gave me real kisses, not those disgustingly slobbery, open-mouth “baby kisses.”
Marius didn’t want his bottles again this morning, but he did eat plenty of mid-morning snack (baby food and mashed bananas!). If I remember correctly, he ate maybe a little bit of his afternoon bottle, but not a whole lot.

On the way back from the clinic at lunchtime, I found a heart-shaped rock, and when I returned this afternoon, I gave it to Ionela for her rock collection. As soon as I handed it to her, she put it up to her ear and said, “’ello?”

While in Barlad this evening, Susan bought a bottle of Tiuca, a kind of plum brandy that apparently, until recently, was only homemade, not mass-produced and sold in stores. When we (well, some of us) congregated on the patio for our Tiuca-tasting party, Delta went in to ask Bogdan for six glasses. Hee asked her, “You want to have something to drink?” Delta told him yes, and he said, “You need seven glasses.” So Delta asked if he wanted some.

So he brought the tumblers out for us, he looked at our bottle and told us it was good, but then he held up a hand, telling us to wait, and went back inside. When he returned, he had a water bottle with him. But was there water in that bottle? Of course not! It was a bottle of home-brewed Tiuca, which he let us sample, to compare to the store-bought stuff. Store-bought was 34% alcohol; home-brewed was about 60%. I was done after one sip of each.

I tried to see meteors tonight, as the peak of the Perseids meteor shower is tomorrow afternoon, but there’s too much light pollution around the hotel. Trevor and I are thinking we might get a group of people (armed with a couple flashlights) to walk over towards the clinic after dark tomorrow night to try again.

Daniela who--we discovered yesterday--has/had a twin? No more info available at this time.

Cute, adorable Lea-Celine's other side--the diva. If she's not being held by the person she wants, or she has to share a lap, or someone bumps into her, she throws a fit. But well...she's still cute!

Me & Little Andreea

Becca & Maria

Big Andreea

Ema-Elena

Alina, aka Kilroy

Amy J. just got a happy birthday email from her grandfather, who apparently is following other volunteers' blogs and, in his email, referred to Amy as "Stretch" (her nickname here, which I don't really use)

Puppy taking a nap, behind the bench and under the blanket that hung from the fence.

Andrei

Me & Alina, after she got knocked over by Little Andreea

Amy J. & Maria

Ion, doing what he does best...getting into everything.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Days 14, 15, & 16

Here I go, falling behind again! Let’s see what I can remember from the past few days…

Friday:

Marius wasn’t feeling well. He didn’t eat all day, and he slept off and on most of the morning. I put him in his crib after the other kids kept waking him up, and he stayed awake but just lay there quietly. I made sure to take him out for diaper-changing time, and then as we were waiting for bottles, he fell asleep in my arms. I tried to wake him up a little to give him his bottle, but he just shoved it away, so I put him back to bed.

We ran into some new puppies on the way to the clinic.. Sooooo cute, but not as soft as they looked. We also ran into Alexandra and an aide, who visited with one of the puppies.

I spent a good bit of time in the preschool room with the older kids. When I sat down on the floor, Maiastra caught a glimpse of the tattoo on my arm and was intrigued by it. Then she sat in my lap, took my arms, and wrapped them tightly around her. It was a nice cuddle, aside from the time when she suddenly threw her head backwards and hit my jaw. I was sure it was going to bruise, it hurt so badly, but thankfully, it didn’t.

Andrei still wasn’t feeling well, either, and after he was given his medicine, he threw it up. As a result, he had to get a shot to the butt. Poor guy. :-(
Because Saturday was Amy J.’s birthday, we had a little surprise party for her after lunch on Friday. It was a surprise to me, too, as I thought we were going to do something in the evening! It was great to see the look on her face because she didn’t have a clue that anything was going on. She looked so shocked when Bogdan brought out the birthday cake (which was very yummy)!

Today was another day of goodbyes, as the second-weekers and Terri were leaving early Saturday morning. We had a little party Friday night, involving beer and a game of “Spoons,” which I observed but did not play. It got a little vicious when Amy J. tried to bite Trent in an effort to steal his spoon. I caught that round on video, and you can watch it here. After the end of the two-hour game, we said I said my goodbyes and see-you-laters to Lila, Eve, and Trent, as well as Amy J. and Stephanie (who were going to spend the weekend in Bucharest).

Saturday:

I had intended to sleep in this morning but was woken up by Delta knocking on my door. She wondered if I was going to join everyone at the clinic that morning, and she went to the dining room to order breakfast for everyone while I got dressed. So we went to the clinic and fed and played with the kids. I spent most of my time in the mobile playroom—which is a horrible setting for pictures, with the red carpet and the light shining through the window. It was nice to interact more with the older kids—Ionela, Ana-Maria, Mihaela, Sami, Alexandra, Maiastra. Lea-Celine and Gabriela hung out with us, as well.

We returned to the hotel for lunch, where we ordered off the menu! I got chicken schnitzel and mashed potatoes. Yum! Then Trevor and Delta decided they were going to take a nap, and while I was also tired and intended to have a little rest, I got sidetracked (as usual) by email and such.

Around 3:00, I left with Amy D. and Becca to take the bus to Barlad. At our stop, we weren’t sure if it was the right one, so Becca asked the girl sitting next to her, “Occident Hotel?” (Not sure if I spelled that right.) The girl nodded and said this was the right stop, and as the driver began to pull away, the girl called, “English, English!” while we walked up the aisle. Everyone just laughed and accepted the explanation, and the driver let us out, with a “Thank you very much.”

We met Ciprian, who had been their team leader last year, and spent the afternoon walking around the public gardens. We also visited the zoo, which cost about 30 cents American and was unlike any other zoo I’ve ever seen. I got about a foot away from a tiger, and if I was brave—or stupid—I could’ve reached through the bars to pet him/her! They also have dogs at this zoo—a dalmatian, a boxer, an alsatian—and I cringed when I saw them, as well as the Siamese cats. It bothered me to see animals—types that are considered to be common household pets—caged up in a zoo, but then I realized, who determines what “belongs” in a zoo? People keep pot-bellied pigs and monkeys as pets, and they’re still common zoo animals. The funniest thing about the zoo was that I could easily slip my hand through the bars on the big kitties’ cages, but if I wanted to get to the dogs or the chickens, I would have had to get past bars AND chicken wire/fencing.

After the zoo visit, we went to a park bench and just chilled for a while before heading towards a restaurant for dinner. Chip told us that his girlfriend was attending a party for her god-daughter that day, and he explained the “ritual”: When a child turns a year old, part of her (or his) celebration includes being placed among a spread of various items—books, jewelry, money, lipstick, etc. The item(s) the child chooses is what she will gravitate towards in the future. Later on, her godfather(s) bathes her in a tub/basin full of spices, milk, honey, etc. He also puts some of the aforementioned items under the tub, to bless her and grant her the virtues represented by the items—books for intelligence, money for prosperity, etc.

We stopped for ice cream on the way to dinner, and when we got to the restaurant (at the Hotel Premier, I believe), lo and behold, that’s where Chip’s girlfriend was for the baby’s party! Funny stuff. The four of us went to a table in a back corner and ordered our food. I got grilled chicken and mashed potatoes (my go-to meal in this country, it seems), and Amy D. & Becca both got some kind of chicken and vegetables on a hot plate that was still sizzling halfway through the meal!

The mealtime discussion was interesting…it ranged from why Becca sings all the time to the differences between Master’s of Social Work programs in the U.S. and in Romania. Good stuff. For dessert, I got the “Sunshine” nonalcoholic cocktail (it was similar to a smoothie) with pureed green apples, pomegranate syrup, and orange juice, and the others (Amy & Becca sharing) got the Premier Dessert, was two scoops of ice cream sandwiched between cookies, drizzled with syrup and sprinkles, and garnished with a piece of starfruit.

We took a taxi back to the hotel and arrived between 10:30 and 11:00. I put on my pajamas, called home, watched an episode of True Blood online, wrote a few postcards, and went to bed.

Sunday:

Today was a lazy day. I didn’t get up until 11:00am. We had lunch at 1:30, then decided to play Canasta. It was a fairly easy game to learn, and we ended up playing for three hours. Amy D., Trevor, and Delta (one team) beat Becca and me (the other team). :-( After the game, I came back to my room and called Chris, tried to call Scott, and then just worked on this blog and wrote some postcards until dinner.

Stan, Carol, and Susan had returned from their weekend trips (Susan finally made it to Moldova!), and they told us about their various travels. Susan shared the wine and chocolate she had bought on her trip. I had spaghetti carbonara and French fries, and there was so much food on my massive plate, I could only eat half of it.
So here I am, finishing up my blog and waiting for Amy J. and Stephanie to get back. Kinda’ miss my roomie, even after only one night. And I told Trevor that if anyone decides to do anything tonight (more games, etc) to let me know.
Tomorrow, we’re back to the kids and starting week three.