Ping-pong and thunderstorms.

Sometimes life is just poetic and laughable and beautiful, and last night was one of those times.

Our friends the Trifan family have the most beautiful homestead I've ever seen.  They live in a neighborhood perched on the side of a hill, overlooking the Lidl grocery store and the far end of Lupeni.  Their home is slightly ramshackle, covered in colorful painted handprints and a wild mix of lime and white paint.  The Trifans have nine kids, eight of them boys, who range in age from 29 to 16.  Their small plot of land boasts an amazing garden, fertile and green, vines crawling everywhere and trees heavy-laden with fruit.  Every time we visit, it seems, Papa Trifan fills our arms with something else: a bag of cherries, perfectly red and ripe, just-plucked from the tree; a towering bouquet of lilacs in purple and pink and white; a handful of summer apples, green and tart and crisp; a whole pizza topped with egg and sheep cheese and corn, baked in their wooden outdoor oven. 

It's what I've always imagined the Secret Garden to be like, actually -- a wild, glorious place that keeps surprising you with new spots to explore.  Plums and pears falling with a thud onto the unmown grass, beans creeping heavenward along spiraling vines, tomatoes glistening blood-red in the sunshine.  It's beautiful.

Tucked in the middle of this lovely place is a cement slab with an improvised light fixture dangling precariously from wires overhead.  This is where the Trifan boys play ping-pong, often inviting all their neighbors or friends from church to join them as they play late into the night.  The ball often ends up in the garden, and we have to scramble after it, careful not to trample plants, but it's fun.  We sit on home-hewn wooden benches and make commentary, oohing and ahhing at the antics of the players.  Everyone is welcome, even those without any skill, and the game is often interrupted by 2-year-old Daria climbing onto the table or sending her toy truck under the feet of the players.

Last night, Jack and I went to play at about 9pm.  We could see lightning in the distance, and it had rained for most of the day, but we were eager to spend some time outdoors and went anyway.  As we started playing, we heard thunder, and the lightning got closer -- but we played on.  Thunderstorms in the mountains are astonishing, by the way, and I missed plenty of shots because I was too busy watching the storm.  It was dark by that time, but lightning would flash out of clouds behind the nearest peaks, throwing their outline into sharp relief.  Thunder echoes when you're in a valley, and it seems a lot closer when you live in the mountains.  But suddenly, it really was right on top of us -- thunder and lightning only seconds apart, loud and ominous, with dark purple sky.  "Should we keep playing?" Jack asked.  "Yeah!" I replied.  "Maybe just to 11?"  The score was 6-8.

But before we served the next point, the clouds ripped open and the deluge began.  The few spectators had already left, more sensibly attuned to the imminent cloudburst than we were, so the four of us playing shrieked and quickly folded up the table, carrying it inside a shed.  We were soaked in seconds -- the rain fell in hard sheets, thunder and lightning pounding the sky.  We stood in the shed and watched, munching on apples Papa Trifan had handed us earlier.  Eventually the downpour slackened to a hard, steady rain, and we decided to make a run for it.  Ten minutes later it had slowed to a drizzle, and Jack and I headed home, hand-in-hand, sopping wet, and happy.

20 kids in the wilderness.

A week ago, I returned from a backpacking trip with 20 IMPACT kids from the Jiu Valley.  We had taken them to Retezat National Park, one of Romania's amazing natural treasures which happens to be just 30 minutes further down the valley from Lupeni, for a week "off the grid" -- without facebook or cell phones, beds or showers, cars or maxi taxis.  We took them into the wilderness to learn about ecology and develop an appreciation for nature, and to simply have fun.  And it was great.

 Picking wild blueberries at Buta!

Teambuilding games...

Stories about Retezat from Pex, our trail guide.

 Sheep and donkeys and shepherds... a common sight.

The first few days of the trip were lovely, though it took a bit of time for our group to settle in to life together.  But eventually, with lots of intentional conversations and fun games and time together, the two "cliques" which had developed among the kids seemed to settle down and the group united.  When we weren't hiking we played a lot of teambuilding games, listened to stories about the national park from our trail guide Pex, discussed Leave No Trace principles and learned orienteering with a compass and map, and had a lot of fun with charades, story-telling, and a squeaky plastic pig toy named Porky.  One day we spent the morning picking up trash from the camping area where we were staying.  Because the outhouses have been so poorly maintained, visitors generally go to the bathroom in the woods, behind every tree and rock they can find.  Almost all of them leave their toilet paper behind, as well as various other nasty things: sanitary wipes, tampons, kleenex, plastic bags, candy wrappers.  The kids were appalled, and spent a few hours picking up these unfortunate reminders of humans' impact on the natural world.  Some of them were angry and pessimistic that the situation will look just as bad in a few weeks, but others thought maybe their efforts to clean the area would discourage others from dirtying it.  Either way, I was so proud of them and the selfless, dirty work they did that day.  And that night, as I sat amongst some of the girls in their tent before bedtime, they were talking and dreaming of ways they could help educate people so that this won't keep happening.  And that made me smile.

 The whole woods was like this...

 

 After the cleanup: so proud of these kids!

On Wednesday we did the long summit hike from Poiana Pelegii to Lake Bucura to Peleaga Peak, the highest point in Retezat National Park (2509 meters, or 8232 feet).  The summit hike is fascinating.  From Lake Bucura to the top of Peleaga, the landscape is what I've always imagined the moon to be like.  There is little vegetation, and most of the time you're picking your way gradually through fields of large granite rocks.  It's steep and dangerous, and unlike parks I'm used to in the States, there are no guardrails or warning signs to dissuade unprepared hikers.  I guess the landscape is imposing enough to do that itself.  But we made it safe and sound, victorious and happy at the top, and slowly headed down the other side to settle down for some well-deserved lunch before heading back to camp.

the beautiful Lake Bucura

We made it to the top!

And then it started to rain.

We had planned to spend Thursday at camp, learning about first aid and playing various games, having a talent show that night, and then hiking all the way out of the park on Friday.  But Wednesday, as it poured and poured and poured, we started to re-think our plans.  By the time we got back to camp from the summit, everyone was soaked, even though we'd brought rain jackets with us.  At camp we made the unfortunate realization that about half of our kids' sleeping bags had gotten wet in the rain, and that some of them didn't have warm, dry clothes left either.  Thankfully there was a mountain rescue lodge at the camping area, and they offered to let ten of our shivering kids spend the night inside.  The rest of us changed our socks, wrung out our clothes as best we could, and settled down for another night in the tents.  Wednesday night there was a huge storm, with thunder and lightning roaring and rattling through the mountains right above us, trees swaying ominously in the illumination of the lightning flashes.  By Thursday morning the rain had slowed to a drizzle, but it was still falling, and by now even the kids whose tents had stayed dry were feeling cold and damp.  We decided to hike out a day early, rather than try to endure another day with so many of our participants being inadequately prepared -- and so Thursday morning we packed up our still-wet tents, shaking the raindrops off as best we could, and put our packs back on.  We made the hike out in about 7 hours, with rain following us for about half the time.  Thankfully, the kids were troopers, and most of them didn't complain at all.

In fact, my favorite moment of the whole trip happened as we were approaching the end of that long hike out.  One of the girls, Carina, had been really struggling under the weight of her backpack.  She was tiny, short and petite, and for most of the hike our guide Pex had actually been carrying her pack as well as his own.  But in the last hour, Pex had to turn around to head back up to the mountain rescue station, leaving Carina with her own pack.  Various kids from the group had taken turns carrying it in addition to their own, passing luggage around every fifteen minutes as they got tired -- but in the very last thirty minutes, the path becomes narrow and steep, and Carina was stuck carrying her own pack.  And she was exhausted.  So then, as I'm watching, the other smallest kid on the trip, 13-year-old Cosmin, who's also skinny as a stick and whose voice has yet to deepen, reaches out and takes her hand.  "Come on," he tells her.  "You can do it."  And so the two of them labor together down the steep, muddy hill, while rain pummels them and their backpacks practically push them over with the weight.  At one point, Cosmin slips and falls, cartoon-style, flat on his back in the mud, but gets right back up again with help from Carina.  And then -- miracle of miracles! -- another girl, who had been whiney and complaining the whole trip, whose own pack was light and yet still kept stopping and begging for a break -- she saw Cosmin fall, and she decided to help too.  And for the last fifteen minutes, the three of them worked together, hand in hand, slowly making their way down the last hill, out of the mountains, in the rain.

It was beautiful.  So, so beautiful.

We got home Thursday night around dinner time.  Everything was wet and needed to be aired out, and after setting up ten tents to dry and sending off twenty jubilant, exhausted, soggy teenagers, I was glad to be home and take a warm shower.  But it was all worth it, and lovely.  We're having a reunion and thank-you party for Pex tomorrow afternoon, and I'm excited to see the kids again, this time in cute jeans and flip-flops, cell phones in hand.  It will be different, and I'll probably lament some of the distractions.  But after taking them into the wilderness, I think something did change.  I guess tomorrow we'll see.

At Lake Bucura

 At the summit of Peleaga

All this from one Sunday morning.

I want to tell you about Lupeni.

Now that we've lived here for four months I feel like I can give a better answer to the question, "How is life where you live?" We're still very new here, babies almost. But we're learning.

When I woke up this morning, the mountains across the valley from us were covered in a cloud bank all the way down to the river. The sun was shining on the cloud, making it golden in the light at top and blue in the shadow at the bottom. There was a cold wind coming through our windows then, but the air soon warmed up as the sun rose more and more.

I walked along the street and had to step around garbage lying at the base of many of the garbage cans. Often when garbage goes into the bins, it comes out again either from dogs or the poorest folks in town looking for something to eat or discarded treasures. I remember dumpster diving in Grand Rapids being a fun and fruitful activity, but in Lupeni, it holds sadness and guilt for me. I wonder, when I bring a bag of what Kelly and I deem trash to the dumpster, who will find something useful or nourishing in it. Can I just give it to you without discarding it first?

I saw our friend Ilda sitting where she usually does with her tiny son, Cristi. We met her there, on the steps in front of the building by the meat market, when she asked us for food or money, whatever we could give her. We bought some bread, and continued to for a while. Now when I see her, we wave, ask each other how/what the other is doing (When you ask, "Ce faci?" it can mean either). She always tells me, "Pe aici." ("Around here.") I wonder what else she does in a day. We usually have a nice little conversation and I don't even know how to end them other than simply saying, "Okay, bye..." She never asks for food or money anymore, and I never know if I should give her anything or not. I'll ask next time.

At Mamma Mia, the Italian/Romanian restaurant, even at noon on Sunday, the TVs are on to KISS TV with the latest and greatest hits. At this point, cigarette smoke and beer smell don't bother me much, but I don't think I'll ever get used to loud club music in my ear while I'm just trying to have coffee with some friends. I always wonder if anyone actually likes the music, or if that's just how things are and that's that. Perhaps next time I'll ask that too.

When I walk back along the river, I see all the fire pits on the banks from yesterday's barbeques. There's a lot of beer bottles and paper left behind, a kind of revolting match to all the trash that washes down the river anyways. Again, does anyone like that the trash is there? Some of it would take a large effort on Lupeni's part to truly solve, but I think that if everyone who had a barbeque by the river cleaned up after they were done, even the trash from upstream would disappear.

My hope in societal change for the good of the people in this world and the world itself is in constant need of being renewed and sustained. I thank God for IMPACT kids who get annoyed by the trash and pick it up and make some trash cans on site to try to contain the debris in the future. I hope that those searching through our discarded rubbish in order to survive care about the ground around the trash can just as much as its contents, but to judge them as petty or uncaring of the earth is, I think, more damnable than throwing the trash on the ground in the first place. How much trash on the ground could we avoid by sharing even a little bit of our wealth with those folks who have to search for their next meal? How many more little friendships, something that Kelly and I are always looking for here, could spring up from giving a loaf of bread? Our friendship with Ilda is not based on us giving her material things, a type of relationship that I avoid heavily at this point in my life. Sadly, I often avoid it out of fear of someone depending too much on us more than respect for that person's dignity. I know that not every loaf of bread will lead us into a relationship of mutual giving, but I don't want to be too afraid to try.

It's interesting how life is so complicated at noon on Sunday morning. It tires me out to face the complexity, and worshiping God with our friends reminds me that it's okay that things don't make sense or are too much for me to think about solutions right then. Not that I forget the things that make me sad. It's just that it's so much better to see them with His help, knowing His power is made perfect in weakness and that He leads us from despair to hope.

Almost everywhere I look now, I see things together that I never used to think go together: the beauty of the river and barbeques and the ugly of the trash on the banks. The anger at messy city streets and the desire to somehow help those who put the mess there. The discontent at the way things are and the peace that they are being made new again. This is what it's like for me to live in Lupeni for now.

Tongues.

It's amazing to me what effect the tongue has on our lives. Many times the tongue is mentioned as a danger in the Bible, difficult to control and liable to hurt folks around us. It also allows us to swallow food, pronounce words, and taste wonderful flavors.

Lately, my tongue has been a stumbling block for me in that it's used to pronouncing words in American English, and it's a bit of a stretch to get it to do the acrobatics that Romanian requires of it. Normally, it's not too much of a problem, but there are certain words and letters that give me grief. Mainly, it's the letter "r."

When I say an "r" in English, I barely use my tongue. It's at the bottom of my mouth, and I pull it back just a little bit. No heavy work. In Romanian, I press it against the back of the roof of my mouth and hold it fairly stiff, or trill it a bit. Not a sound I'm used to making very often. I thank God and my teachers that I started speaking Spanish early and was at least made aware that "r" can sound like that, but I'm still not used to it. Especially when it's shoved in between "t" and "u" like in "pentru" (for), "patru" (four), "centru" (center), and various other words. When I pronounce "t," my tongue is pressing hard at the front of the roof of my mouth and my lips are pretty open. Then, it has to move backwards quickly and either push or trill on the back of the roof of my mouth. Finally, I push my lips into a circle and bring my tongue back even further and down. It feels like my tongue has to do a long sprint to say simple things like "grupa patru" (group number four) or "pentru tine" (for you).

Perhaps I'll get better with more and more practice. I hope so, because when I speak a lot of Romanian, I find that my tongue actually gets tired by the end of the day and I really can't pronounce words correctly without taking a lot of time to slow my poor tongue down and give it the time it needs to complete its fancy tricks. I wonder if speaking in tongues ever includes the Holy Spirit making our tongues do things that we thought were physically, rather than liguistically, impossible.  

Bats in the belfry.

I was sitting at the dinner table in the hotel restaurant after a long day of meetings in Romanian, lost in thought, when Anda plopped down next to me and said hello.  Anda is an IMPACT leader from Cluj-Napoca, a high school biology teacher who is passionate about the subject she teaches, the kids she works with, and the potential for these youth to change the broken systems she sees all around Romania.  She’s amazing and inspiring and delightful to talk to.

She’s also into bats.

So we talked about bats for most of dinner.  Being a biologist’s daughter myself, I find science an interesting topic for dinner discussion regardless of its grossn factor, though my interest in bats is admittedly tainted by an experience as a 13-year-old of having a bat fly into my room at night and dive-bomb my head… an experience which ended in me racing, shrieking, out of my room while my dad caught the bat in a butterfly net and put it overnight in the freezer.  But that’s another story.

Apparently Romania has over 30 species of bats, many of which are endangered.   Part of the problem is that many of these bats spend the summer in inhabited buildings, especially churches.  Anda said it’s mostly pregnant mother bats who then raise their “adorable babies” (her words, not mine) in the belfries and attics and steeples, migrating to caves or other locales to hibernate when the weather turns colder.  The presence of these bats should make us grateful, she reminded me – after all, they eat all sorts of pests, helping protect our crops and save us all from more mosquito bites.  But because they eat so much, they also poop a lot – and their guano accumulates in the attics of beautiful old Orthodox churches, slowly seeping through and ruining the intricate icons painted on the ceilings.  It smells, it ruins that which humans are trying to preserve, and bats simply scare people – and thus, many times, they are just gassed.  Entire colonies are killed at once, Anda said, and because bats reproduce very slowly (apparently they only have one baby per year), a colony which is gassed will never, ever recover.

So Anda and her team of fellow Romanian bat-loving biologists have made this their summer project.  The work is three-fold.  First, they do on-site assessments of the churches and other buildings with bat infestations, figuring out what remodeling work will need to be done to protect the building’s treasures and inhabitants without removing or harming the colony of bats.  This often involves laying new layers of insulation in attics, changing ventilation systems, and so on.  They do the assessments themselves but hire local workers to actually do the work, thus putting money into local economies and giving local residents expertise in this domain.  Second, they do the science – that is, they monitor the bat population all summer: counting how many bats fly in and out of the belfry, timing their arrival in the spring, tracking births and population changes and all sorts of other data.  It’s an important part of saving these endangered populations.  Third, the biologists do public education.  They bring school kids into the attic and let them touch a bat and see how cute it is; they talk to priests and explain the importance of the situation; they hold meetings with congregations to discuss misconceptions about bats and the necessity of their work.  And before they finish, they empower a team of locals to continue the work: to keep learning, to be a support, and to watch the bats with sympathetic eyes as they swoop into town each year with the arrival of summer.

Cool.