I know I haven't posted in a while, so I'm sorry about that, so I will try and fill you in on a lot in this post. I'm quite upset that one of the kids while looking at my computer managed to delete 10 of my favorite pictures :( I'm quite dissapointed, but I will try to post a lot of pictures later today.
This past weekend was very quiet. I had older girls staying at my house both Friday and Saturday night which was nice. It was a relaxing weekend, which was nice after the energy you need to keep up with all the younger kids. On Saturday we went to a free concert in this gorgeous park that was recently built on the lake in the city, fully funded by the EU, of course. Apparently one of the singers we saw was one of the most famous ones (well as famous as a Romanian pop singer could be), but really the whole event was really tasteless. I almost didn't want the girls seeing this concert. It was all this female singers and their dancers in no clothing being as raunchy as they could. I mean, it is Europe, so what do you expect, but that and the combination of me not knowing any of the songs or being able to understand them (not that they probably are all that deep), made me a little uninterested in the concert so me and Ana sat on and bench and played with balloons the whole time. That was actually kind of fun!
Sunday was very quiet. The girls and I slept late and then came to the shelter to find it quiet, so Sunday was filled with some quiet games around the house. Monday and Tuesday were busy days. I did a lot of administrative work. I'm coordinating volunteer programs here and doing a lot of PR work. I'm coming out with a newsletter about the shelter and my trip that I'm going to send out for fundraising purposes, but will be sure to send you all copies as well, since it should have some interesting information in it. I also had to help take care of the little ones because Ramona who normally is with them in the morning was helping Mihaela (one of the directors who I like a lot) with some paper work. So on Tuesday we made Omidas (caterpillars) on leaves. It was very cute, I'll put a picture of one up in a bit. Then when the younger kids came home from school they saw the caterpillars and wanted to make them to, so we made lots of caterpillars on Tuesday. I also spent some of the time with the little girls teaching them how to count to ten in English. They don't have a very long attention span, but I got them focused using candy, so it was actually somewhat successful. Candy is so helpful in this house!
Wednesday I had to give a tour of the foundation, which if I may say so myself went extremely well. Of course, I'm probably now going to hell because I had to pretend I was a good christian girl. Not that I actually ever lied and said I was christian, I just never told them otherwise, it was there fault for assuming it, though! They were EXTREMELY and I mean EXTREMELY religious people from some protestant sect that does tons of missionary work here despite the fact the Romanian people are Romanian Catholic and are fine with it, hundreds of Americans have to come here and try to tell them otherwise. Clearly I'm not a huge fan of the missionaries in Bucharest, until Wednesday my encounters with them have not been all that great. They tell me how great the work I'm doing is and that they always feel so bad for the kids begging that they see on the streets and when I ask them if their church helps at all they say oh no we've got our hands full with our missionary work. Which is more important: converting people who already have a religion they're happy with and have had for centuries or helping homeless starving kids? Take your pick...anyway, enough of my ranting about how little the missionaries do for these kids, the people I met on Wednesday were nice enough and seemed to like the kids a great deal. They didn't seem to like the idea that were not a religous affiliated organization, but I had them so impressed that they seemed to ignore that point. Of course I had them leaving saying things like "you're doing the ministry so proud" and "you are an ideal child of Christ"...extremely nice compliments, but at the same time kind of weird since in fact I'm Jewish..but hey, anything for these kids.
The past couple days I've played a lot of UNO and other card games as well as gone to the park numerous times, but the highlight of the past few days was definitely Wednesday night. I was into the front area and find to my great surprise that the kids were playing a great game of the classic....Rata (ratsa), Rata, Gusca (gooska)...Duck, Duck, Goose! How exciting, I know this game!! It was great fun and as more people joined in we changed games, I was a bit dissapointed since I was excited about knowing and liking the game we were playing, but to my surprise we changed to another familiar game, Red Rover, Red Rover! It was a great night and towards the end of Red Rover, the translation of which I'm still working on getting, all the staff had joined in and we were getting very excited about the game until all of a sudden it was 7:20 when we normally eat dinner at 7! We had all lost track of time because of the fun. It was great.
Yesterday was an interesting day as well. I went to a meeting for organizations in Romania that help children, I think all of them American based, in the American embassay. I have to go play some Rata, Rata, Gusca, but I'll right more about that meeting later. It was a good way for me to get a sense of the bigger picture. Of the lobbying to get change in the government to help solve the problem in addition to the child by child work we do on a daily basis. Ok well Ana is here to fetch me for the game, I'll finish this post later today with some pictures. Keep emailing me! Pa!
posted by Jen @ 11:39 AM
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