On Saturday morning, we held a last minute clinic in Severin at Rica and Kathy's house/church. We only had about 50 people stop by since it was a spur of the moment thing and it was much more organized than the clinic in Rogova. Everyone waited at the door and families came in one at a time.
We had a late lunch at 2:00 (which has been pretty normal for us), had about an hour of down time at the house and then went back out to Rogova for the night. I'll come back to Rogova in a minute. When we got to the hotel last night, there was a wedding going on upstairs. When we walked into the lobby, it was literally filled with smoke from everyone. It was terrible! I had to cover my nose and basically run down the hall, even though the smell was almost down to our room as well.
Today, we had a sampling of churches. Ricca and Sammy (his son-in-law) are the pastors of the Severin, Rogova, and Lupsa churches so they have busy Sundays. Since we were in Rogova last night, we only went to Severin and Lupsa today. We started with a service in Severin at 10:00, ate lunch at 12:30, had a service to Lupsa at 2:00, then came back to Severin for the evening service at 6:00. Each service was 2 hours long, fairly boring and was almost all in Romanian which made it harder to stay awake. Needless to say, I dozed off a bit which was all due to feeling somewhat under the weather (a cough and lack of sleep). At each service we introduced ourselves and then had a receiving line basically at the end to shake EVERYONE's hand and kiss everyone. I told people I've been to more churches today than ever in my life and I think I was kissed more today also! The one highlight of the day (aside from our joke we played later that night), was a teenager who told me that I didn't look any older than 20! She was 17 and came with us to Lupsa. She is from a fairly well-off family here, spoke good English, and is hoping to study languages one day. For dinner, we had macaroni and cheese and we were all pretty excited. Jon and I both took big pieces, dug in, and then realized that they used the super salty cheese from the pastries the night before and it was interesting.... they told us to pour sugar on it like they do and it did actually make it better. After that, we loaded the bags up and then pooled all our money together to get exchanged tomorrow (I'll explain why later). About half the group made it out to the bus and the other half got held up inside (this happens a lot). Since we were tired of waiting on the bus, we told our awesome bus driver Victor to pretend to drive off and hide out across the street. He did that and when Jon came out and didn't see us, I ran across the gas station and told him to go in and tell everyone that we had left (to scare them). They all then quickly came outside and looked around for us. Once they figured out the joke, we picked everyone up and had a good laugh (one of many on the entire trip). Now Schantile and I are down in the lobby working on uploading pictures.
Now for the main event in Rogova last night. We went to a church service/dedication service around 4:00. Since we had time before everything started, we walked around the village. When the bus pulled up, we were met by a group of boys who had been there the day before and they walked around with us. We walked by a lot of old ladies sitting with children on benches and we spent some time talking with them. We also walked to one of the old orthodox churches next to the community center where the people of Rogova used to have their church services.
The boys had mentioned Michael Jackson the day before (and we had done a couple of dance moves then), so they kept saying Michael Jackson to me and looking at my pants for my paint markers (I had them hiding in there... once I drew on one of them, I'd have to do them all!). When we got back to the church, my posse of girls found me right away and were yelling my name and telling me to come sit with them. I was originally sitting with my teenage friends (I have all the names confused but will figure them out for sure before I leave) until they had to go prepare for the mandalin performance and the choir performance. Then, the teen's younger sister and one of the twins (both of who Jon and I printed some pictures of us with them and brought them to them that night) came to sit with me. During the entire service (about 2-2.5 hours), those girls never let me go. We were holding hands for awhile and then I had my arms around them both. When I crossed my legs, they crossed their legs. When I sighed, they sighed. One of them even had her hand on my heart for awhile. The other girl laid down in my lap and I rubbed her back for about 15 minutes. Afterward we had the ribbon cutting ceremony (where I gracefully stepped in a huge pile of cow poo but not too badly) and then we passed out 500 sandwhiches to everyone (some had about 10 in bags to take back to their families) and one of the girls would not let my hand go then either. She handed out cups while I poured coke. All the Americans got called into the kitchen for a break and for food and the twins came with us since their mom was the cook. After we had a few minutes of down time in there, some of or other favorite children (specifically the teenagers) came in there and it was like a paparazzi fest in there! We were all taking pictures with everyone and it was wonderful!!! A lot of us are planning on printing the pictures out in the states and fedexing them to Rica and Kathy so that they can give them to everyone (they normally don't get their pictures). When it was finally time to leave, we all hugged each other prob. 10 times and the three younger girls would not let me go. They kept saying "Julia, no... Julia no..." and held on to my waist so tightly. I basically had to pull them off of me and begrudgingly run into the bus. Because of those girls, I wish we could have spent more time in Rogova and even have stayed there to get to know those people better. I am planning on keeping in touch with the girls, especially since the older ones talked about coming to American (specifically Chicago) for some reason. I'd like to send them nail polish and jump ropes and other fun things that they were asking for as well. Those girls have made my trip so far and I haven't been able to stop thinking about them and our time together. I will be coming back here for sure, especially after that experience. It's hard to explain what I feel in words because it was just so tender and special. There were about 150 people who showed up at the service and it was hot, stuffy and crowded in there but none of that mattered.
To finish up, we have a tentative plan for the last few days here. Tomorrow is our last clinic in Lupsa and the surrounding villages. Early Tuesday morning, we leave for Brasov, to see Dracula's castle and a few other castles over the course of Tuesday and Wednesday and then we leave on Thursday :(
Check out pictures from Days 3 & 4 --> http://picasaweb.google.com/JELeventhal/Days3And4#
No comments:
Post a Comment