Tuesday, April 13, 2010

I Love Driving in Romania


Ciao, ciao. Well, it's been pretty interesting since I got back from Motru last Tuesday. I met up some people from Buena Vista, Colorado and tagged along with them a little bit (but only in the afternoon so I could sleep in a bit). They joked that I only wanted to do the "fun" things with them, and they were right. It was good to hang out with some more Americans, though. We've started having a meeting with teenagers from surrounding villages in Susani on Friday and it went really well. Danny, Ruben, and I are leading that, so we're really looking forward to see what happens with it.

However, the main news is that I've been given a promotion here so I can drive around. Once I got behind the wheel of our 2002 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter colossal van, I realized how much I missed the view from behind the steering wheel. Taking trains is great and walking places has its perks, but after three months of no driving I realized something's missing in my life without it. Not anymore, though. Maybe it was the autobahn a couple weeks ago that's made me all nostalgic for driving, I don't know, but I'm grateful that I get to drive to pick up kids from a couple villages outside Susani on roads that are covered with chickens, roosters, flocks of sheep, and even some horses. I feel like a rebel behind the wheel.

Also, we've officially started work on the House of Joy property in preparation for the Pioneer group. The picture above is from the site the day before we started work with a lot of the children from the meeting. We've bought a boat-load of iron that will be cut and will be used in the foundation. We're planning on getting the hole dug and concrete poured for the foundation within a couple weeks, which will be great because it will allow the Pioneer group to start working on the first floor in June. Also, Ovidiu has rented out an old bar/club in Lugoj to have Sunday night meetings to reach out to the city of Lugoj. My roommates and I have been working there the past couple of days cutting dry-wall, removing insulation, and consequently getting black lung. I'm meeting a couple of college roommates of mine in Munich later this week so I'll be gone for a while, but I wanted to put a post up before I left letting everyone know that things are going great in Romania not just with me, but with the House of Joy as well.

And a couple funny stories involving little kids: Ruben and I were sitting in a park yesterday eating some shaworma (don't worry, it's delicious), when a little kid riding a bike pulls out a wooden stick while riding a bike and "pretends" to shoot me twice. He then rides off like nothing happened. Twenty minutes later while we're waiting for the owner of the building to come and let us in, a four year old gypsy girl came around the corner with her mom and said something extremely Rated-R to me in Romanian and then giggled. I asked Ruben what she said but he ignored me,so I repeated what she said and he completely lost it. He told me what she said and let's just say when I saw her today again, it was really awkward. Little kids here are nuts.

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