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
So I know I'm so bad at remember to write on this. I left the shelter last night with the feeling that I had forgotten to do something and then I remembered that I forgot to write on here! At least I'm remembering now....some of the pictures I had hoped to put up are on Mihaela's camera (the director of the shelter) and it's out of batteries, so I'll add those when I can. I have some really cute ones to add though, so those should be fun to look at. What I was meaning to add about the meeting I went to in the American embassay which is in a cute old building is that it showed me how uncooperative the Romanian government is about helping out these kids. The meeting was for about a hundred non profits working with kids around the country and discussion what we would lobby for next, but unfortunately the government has this idea that if they promote families and make laws that prevent families even under the worst circumstances from losing rights then families will magically get better again. So parents in this country no matter what they're doing to or with their kids have all the rights. Even Romanians never mind foreigners have an impossible time trying to adopt kids and if they succeed the natural parents can claim the right to their child at any point and take him or her back so they barely do adopt. The parents of these kids are having their kids raised and set on track for a good life and obviously we do it for the kids and aren't going to stop and although you'd like to see these kids be able to have families and a normal life with them, it's not going to happen with these parents, so it's so incredibly frustrating when they come sometimes and cause such emotional rollercoasters for these kids and sit on the front steps smoking cigarettes. I just want to scream at them that here we are raising your kids for you because you weren't capable of it, we've helped you get a room to rent and helped you find a job and you have the nerve to come and visit your kids and sit on the steps and smoke cigarettes. Instead of spending your money on cigarettes which are expensive here, you should be trying to organize your life so you can take care of your kids again, not that I want any of these kids to leave. It's just such a frustrating thing to see and I know that some of these kids are going to feel like when they are set up and living a normal life they are going to feel like they should help their parents when their parents owe them, not the other way around. Oh, I could clearly talk about the situation forever and I know it's not 100 percent the parents fault because at one point they were street children and it's a old cycle, but the fact that the government won't take away their rights to the kids unless they straighten up or wouldn't even take away their rights as a parent when their kids were living in the sewers with them sniffing shoe glue makes me so angry. We had to get the parents to agree to let us take their kids out of the sewers which is harder than you may think because the parents want the kids to beg because children make more money begger. Unbelievable, when will this government figure out that they have a serious problem that they need to pass laws to help fix...anyway, on to some cute kids now that I've bored you with the political problems in this country...
So this week I've had tons of administrative paperwork to do. I'm setting up a sponsorship program for these kids, I have a few volunteers starting next week that I'm in charge of and I'm trying to get a newsletter out and I'm still doing arts and crafts with the kids and teaching English lessons, so that would be why I have been to busy and haven't been able to write as much as I wanted to. Yesterday I felt like I celebrated passover, it was great. I had chicken soup with matzah balls! haha, I loved it. And there was lots of parsley in it so I felt like I was having my own little sedar. Well, not exactly, but matzah ball soup was definitely a nice comfort food to come across over here, it's that eastern european influence!Today the kids finish school and so they get diplomas for it, so that's exciting for them, but somewhat frightening for us since they starting tomorrow are home all day everyday!! We're busy coming up with projects and activities to keep them busy!
This is Cornelia smiling for the camera. She is 13 and thinks she's 20. Although she's so sweet looking and she is nice and sweet, she is the most difficult kid in the house. She has an older sister who she gets jealous because she gets to do more since she's older and has a hard time dealing with that. She's the typical teenager, sassy and at times a real pain! But she can be lots of fun and has a really fun sense of fashion and is incredibly good at drawing.
This is Elena, Ionut and Ana's older sister, she just turned 9. She's so pretty and the whole family is really smart, in fact she just came in here with her diploma that said she did very well this year! I remember the first time I was in Romania 5 years ago I visited her on the street when she was 4 and Ana was a few months old and Ionut was a baby. I remember the trip vividly and somewhere at home I have pictures from the visit. She was living with her mom then in a "house" I think I describe the living situation in a previous blog, it's so nice to see them doing so well.
You all already know and I'm sure love Ana by now...so who doesn't want to see more pictures of this cutie!
Ronaldo playing some Skip-Bo, I LOVED this game when I was little, so it was definitely exciting to be able to teach it to them and have them like it!
This is Catalin reading, he's also reading Harry Potter and loves it. Everyday he shows me what page he's on, so cute.
This is Dana...I'm never quite sure what she's drawing, but I bet it's pretty cute. One time she drew something and she said it was an apple and then a couple minutes later she said no that's you...trust me, that wasn't a translation problem, I understood exactly what she said...first este mur....it's an apple...then a couple minutes later I asked her what something else was and she goes este mine "it's me" and then points right the supposed apple and goes si asta este tine "and that's you". I don't think I look much like an apple, but maybe it was her artistic interpretation! Or maybe she's just 5...haha, but yeah as you can see she's adorable. Especially since a lot of the time she has a cute little pony tail sticking straight up on top of her head!
So I was in the middle of writing this blog this morning and now it's 5:00!! I got interrupted so many times, I taught English lessons for 3 hours to some of the kids, so that took a lot of time and then do some other work so I kept getting so distracted! Finally I'm back at it, so hopefully I'll be able to finish this without getting interrupted again.
This is Ionut, the oldest kid in the house, Dorin whose 17 (I'll explain sometime what will happen with him over the next few years), and Elena with one of the staff members, Demarius, hanging out in the classroom.
This is Cassie (Cassandra, Cassie for short). She's ten and one of the sweetest and most fun kids in the house. She's always giggling, laughing and smiling.
This is kind of a goofy picture of Kinder, her actually name is Florina, but she's never called that, she's always called Kinder after the candy! I wanted to post a picture of her because she's one of the main kids that I work on English with daily. She's trying so hard to learn and has this adorable high pitch squeaky voice (not the really annoying kind), so working with her is so much fun!
This is Alex one of the older boys. His English is one of the best in the house, I can actually have a pretty good conversation with him and Dorin in English, so that can definitely be nice at times when I'm frustrated with my Romanian.
This is Nico Mic (Little Nicoletta) coloring in a beautiful drawing that one of the staff members did of the little mermaid to hang on the wall!
This is one of the posters we made to hang on the wall. I'm not sure how well you can see it, but there are two dinnosaurs and a monkey on a tree that are made of foam. My mom and I brought these really cute kits where they give you all the shapes and materials you need to make cute little foam animals, it was definitely a big hit. A bunch of us worked hard on this poster, isn't the sun pretty?? I did that part :)
And for now, last, but not least, this is a picture of Ana holding up a really cute genie poster that one of the staff members drew and the kids colored in. There are two more really really cute posters using more foam anmials, but the pictures of them are on the camera that's out of batteries so I'll add those later, our walls look so much prettier now! Well I have lots of paperwork to go and do, but I'll try to not forget about writing on the blog!! I hope everyone's doing well and enjoying American food, I'm very jealous!
I added two posts today and the other one needs to be read first, so if you haven't already scroll down and read the first post!
This is Ana's caterpillar that she made...it's quite cute...I didn't think you got the full picture of how cute it is with just the overhead view so I thought I'd add this picture of the caterpillar
's face...all in all it was a very successful art project! Also if anyone has any ideas what else we can make with limited materials, but with pom poms and googly eyes please send the suggestions my way!
I told you rata, rata, guska is an intense game! This was in the beginning before most of the house joined in. I have to admit I was a little too caught up in Red Rover to take a picture of it! Next time... Below is Alex, Ionut, and Dana. Dana is the other little one in the house who follows me around all day. I took the picture yesterday when we went to the park and had lots of fun running around and playing with that ball!
These two pictures are of Ronaldo, the one who I have the English/Romanian contest with and Catalin another little boy. Ronaldo is 11 and Catalin is 10 and they're always trying to get me to play football...after all it is how Ronaldo got his name. Ronaldo is the best in his class and is always reading, well when he's not playing soccer. And although Catalin has way too much energy he's incredibly sweet. Both of these pictures were taken in the house, Ronaldo is in the staff office where I am right now and actually is currently reading in the same place as in the picture. And Catalin is in the all purpose/classroom. I'll have take post some pictures of the house too so you can get a better sese of what it looks like!
I know I said I'd write more, but for now I have to do some office work to try to raise some money so this place runs. It's still pretty early here so maybe I'll have time later today to write more about my meeting yesterday, but if not I'll be sure to do it when I get to the house tomorrow. Hope everyone's doing well!
Buna Dimineata (Deemeeneatsa is the best I can come up with), Good Morning!
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!
I haven't written in a couple days because I'm not really sure how to put my experiences on the street into words, so I thought I'd start with an adorable picture of one of the kids in the house, I figured start with a success story before I get to the streets. This is Ionut who I think I spoke about in a previous blog. He's such a cutie. He has two sisters in the house Elena who is the girl whose birthday we celebrated and Ana who I will put a picture of up in a second who is one of the youngest girls in the house. Thursday I went on the street for a lot of the day which I will talk about in a second. Yesterday, we tried to go to the park and play football...but as soon as we got there it started down pouring and we had to turn around and come home in the rain. It was quite the adventure. So we ended up playing games inside. And last night a few of the older girls stayed with me at my apartment and tonight a couple more are going to come stay with me. It's a good chance for me to get closer to them and for them to get out of the chaos that comes with a house full of so many kids. They also like getting that much one on one time with me since a lot of times I'm with a lot of them at one time as well, I like it too, it's more personal.
This is Ana with my sunglasses on and holding my purse. She's so cute and also won't leave my side easily, so I end up spending a lot of time with her. Speaking of Ana, she just ran in here to say hi and tell me that Mommy Mihaela (the director of the shelter who I 'm quite close with) just gave her candy! She also has no problems with my lack of skills in Romanian! I am definitely getting better at the language, but that's not saying much. It's a pretty difficult language, but I'm trying my hardest to learn as much as I can everyday.
The shelter is for the most part a really happy place and it's easy here to forget these kids backgrounds and the other kids on the street and simply focus on how successful they currently are. On Thursday when I spent my day out on the street I was quickly reminded of the horrors I had seen in years past. After five years of coming here and spending at least a couple days out on the street each day, I still can't put into words what it's like. I don't think I'll ever be able to describe what it's like to climb down a tiny ladder or sometimes climb down with no ladder into the sewers of Bucharest nor will I ever accept the fact that kids live down there. I know they do and I've seen it, but it just seems to terrible to fully comprehend. Unfortunately I didn't get any still pictures because my camera died while down in the sewers, I did however get video of it which I will have to share with you when I return home, but I'm sure I'll be back before I leave and will put pictures up then. I did take a couple pictures however of some kids who live on the street. The kids on the street often find abandoned buildings to stay in and I'm not even sure if building is an appropriate word for the situation. They often are falling apart and are nothing but concrete, no water, no electricity, no heat, absolutely nothing. Sometimes these buildings are so poor structurally that they collapse making them dangerous. The sewers are no safer though as many kids have died from pipes exploding. Often in these concrete rooms live 5-10 kids. Sometimes there is a mother with them, but she's rarely older than 25. In fact Elena, Ionut and Ana's mother was 15 when she had Elena. Fortunately since her kids have come here she's been able to get a job and rent a room in a nicer apartment building. Here are a couple of pictures that I took while on the street of some kids.
Below are a couple of kids after I gave them some candy, they live in a small room and all sleep on this one bed. They were so cute and sweet. They also had a mother living with them, which was nice to see. The kids in the sewers were all sniffing shoe glue, this gross silvery powder like liquid that they inhale, and they were therefore a little unpredictable and a little scary unlike these kids. I'm never in danger as I go with great workers from the shelter who would never let anything happen to me, but when you're around kids who are really high, it's a little scary.
Below is another picture on the street. A mother with her two babies. Also a really cute picture and like the other kids they were very nice and sweet, but the place where they live makes it quite sad. I give them candy and at times when the foundation has enough money we bring food to these families as well, but you wonder how often these growing kids are getting meals, its sad to think about.
Anything in these rooms is stolen, so they end up filled with junk and trash. The street also makes the kids look a lot older. Often the mothers look 10 or 15 years older than they really are because of the streets. They are dirty and warn out and look old and run down. I'll have to take more still pictures to upload next time I go out on the street so that I can better describe the streets. It's not an easy task. It's time to take a couple of the girls back to my place and then tomorrow I think we're going to try and go to the pool since last week was unsuccessful. Hopefully I'll have time to add more tomorrow. Please send me emails! Pa!
