Romania, Summer 06

It's been quite an interesting week and later today I'm hoping to add another post with pictures, but it's going to be busy, so we'll see if I have time. I'll be working all weekend, however, so hopefully if not today I'll be able to post a long one with pictures tomorrow. This past weekend was rough, there's no other way about it. I went to Mihaela's (the director of the shelter) parent's house about 30 minutes outside Bucharest in the countryside, a farming area of Romania. I expected it to be small, but I was completely shocked with what I found. They had minimal running water, no bathroom just an out house in the backyard, and on their tiny little piece of property, they had a horse, a pig, five dogs, a cat, 10 turkeys and about 80 chickens. It was pretty crazy, I'm definitely hoping to put up pictures later to give you the full idea. They also had a decent sized garden that was really nice and grew vegetables for a really good salad every night giving me something that I at least recognized and liked to eat. I honestly get a little sick even thinking about the food I had last weekend, so I'm not going to describe most of it right now, but I will tell you one quick story. On Saturday we're sitting around a table outside talking and trying to stay cool when all of a sudden Mihaela's father brings three adorable little clucking chickens to the little spot of land in front of me. Then before I know what's happening he takes a sharp nice and slices their heads off!!!!! EWWWWWWWWWW!!! There is blood spattering everywhere, the little chicken bodies are running around with their heads cut off and their little heads and flopping around on the ground...I was in shock. I could not believe what just took place in front of me. I also thought it was interesting that when I asked Mihaela if she had ever killed a chicken the entire table of Romanians immediately cut me off and said "NO NO NO, only boys kill the chickens and the women pluck the feathers off and cook them!". Now I understand killing chickens for your dinner isn't exactly a 21st century task, but we're still restricting the task to men? Not that I have any desire to kill a chicken anytime soon, but the whole experience slightly annoyed me. And to my horror a couple hours later as I was taking pictures of the adorable pig, I got invited to christmas dinner when they eat it!! AHHH!!!! What?? No! Surely they were kidding, this adorable pig isn't actually their christmas dinner....but no it is...and what's worse is Mihaela described to me about how it's so much worse than the chickens because there's more blood, it takes longer AND THE PIG SCREAMS AND SCREECHES during the whole thing!!!!!!! That was too much for me! Then I had to eat chicken for dinner....with their cooked little heads on the platters (apparently the brain is delicious, I, however, couldn't tell you) staring at me. Chicken just isn't appealing right now. So in addition to the heat, the bugs, and the general feeling of being dirty, and the food, I had to deal with chickens being killed right in front of me! It was a tough weekend.

I got back to the shelter really excited to be back and had a great week, but a really busy one. I did a lot of paper work, while fitting in time to hang out with the kids. We played some games and went to the park. I've also been able to fit in a daily fun with a couple of the kids and as always I've been doing English lessons for a few hours a day. It's been fun, but busy. I have a Romanian woman who speaks English volunteering here for a week, so I'm in charge of her, which may take me away from my work or help me get it done faster, we'll have to see, I hope its the latter. There are also a few Americans coming to visit the shelter during the next week so a lot of my time will be spent with them, but I'm definitely excited about this because that means I'll be on the street for a couple days, probably Sunday and Monday which I really want to do since I haven't gone out in a while. Tomorrow we're also going to the zoo!!!!! I'm so excited, I'll definitely take pictures to show you all, it's supposed to be sad, so we'll have to see, I hope it's not too sad!! As I said before I'm really busy, but I'll try and put up pictures later today....that also means finding the cord for my camera, so it may end up being tomorrow. I hope everyone's doing well and staying cool....I miss air conditioning for sure!! I'll post again soon, bye! papa

posted by Jen @ 9:59 AM