Re-entering Eastern Europe.

I had a long layover in the Rome airport today, on my way home from an IMPACT international meeting in Armenia, and I noticed something interesting there that I thought was worth writing about.  I’m not usually prone to writing in dramatic generalizations about the “air of oppression” or “sadness” of Eastern Europe, though I’ve read plenty of books that speak rather poetically into that image -- the plaintive scenes of Balkan Ghosts, for instance, or other dramatic tomes that paint a melancholy picture of an Eastern Europe where the people are morose, the restaurants bleak and empty, and the air wreathed with cigarette smoke.  The Romania I live in is not like that -- although occasionally on gray winter days, looking out at crumbling cement apartment buildings, I sense the probable truth of those words at some point in history… and yes, every time we arrive at the Bucuresti airport I find my eyes tearing up and my nose itching as the ever-present haze of cigarette smoke starts up again, surprising me.

But today in the Rome airport I noticed something interesting.  And I’ll give it a thorough disclaimer – I really doubt that the Italian officials are trying to discriminate against the Eastern European travelers, or that there’s any deep meaning behind this phenomenon other than the convenience of geographically-grouped flights.  But still.

The Rome airport is laid out in two main buildings.  The international building has terminal G, where all the big overseas flights depart from (to North America, mostly, but also Russia and Armenia and the “far” East).  It’s nicely arranged, with lots of shops and restaurants and bathrooms, and large waiting areas with plenty of chairs in front of each gate. 

The European building is much larger, connected to the international building by a tram car.  There’s a long hallway full of restaurants and upscale shops and Italian souvenir stands lining the way to terminals B, C, and D – all the EU Schengen member-country flights depart from those gates.  Again, spacious and modern, with lots of restaurants and plenty of seating.

And then there’s terminal H: the Eastern Europe (and northern Africa) terminal.  There are eight different gates smooshed into one cavernous room, with hardly enough chairs in the entire space to cover two full flights of passengers – much less the eight flights who are all waiting there at once.  You descend a set of stairs to enter the terminal, and there is the throng below you – hundreds of people, almost all on their feet, standing in snaking lines all over this room, waiting to board flights to Kiev and Split and Bucuresti and Algiers.  The air conditioning isn’t strong enough in this room to keep it as cool as the rest of the airport, and it’s sticky and faintly smelly, like any train compartment or bus station… except that it’s an airport, the rest of which is cool and climate-controlled and light.  There is one kiosk selling sandwiches, and a few vending machines, but no tables for sitting at to eat.  It’s definitely a marked difference from the rest of the lovely Rome airport.

Who knows why it’s like this… maybe it’s just the last wing of the airport to be renovated, or flights tend to be smaller and have fewer passengers, or maybe nobody’s really noticed.  But it just struck me as interesting, this dichotomy.  I often forget about the “second class citizens” sensation that many Eastern European writers have written about (Slavenka Drakulic, for one notable example) – but if this is an example of that, it’s a pretty stark one.

Corn for the doves (or, our neighbor's big secret).

Many of you who have read this blog before have heard mention of our rather-unfriendly neighbors across the hall.  It's a man and a woman and 1.5 children (I say 1.5 because I am only sure about one of them, a slightly-awkward teenage boy who parks his bike in front of our door.  Jack says there's also a little girl, but I've never seen her, so for now we'll count her as half).  I have griped many a time about the trash they leave all over the landing, the mysterious corn kernels scattered across the landing and on our doorstep, their enormous pile of wood that smells like pickles, and the general standoffish-ness I'd felt from them -- probably making many of you crazy with my complaints.

But in the last few months, we've been making progress!  After a particularly exasperating series of rotting watermelon rinds dripping down the stairs and boxes stacked next to our door, I finally worked up the courage to ask the man if he could store his, ahem, junk, somewhere else.  He was really nice about it, and moved it a few days later!  (He even asked me why I hadn't asked earlier... same thing Jack had been asking me for months...)  But anyway, it was a really nice step in the right direction, and I felt respected, even if things weren't particularly friendly.

Then they had a huge flood.  Our water gets turned off periodically, and apparently one day they had left a faucet open while the water was off, and then left the house.  By the time the neighbor on the ground floor saw the dripping, the water had been running for a LONG TIME -- we live on the fifth floor, and when I got home from work that evening, water was still running out the entrance to our building, and cascading down the stairs.  Our neighbors had dragged their enormous, sodden rug out to the landing between our apartments and left it hanging there for a few days, dripping steadily down to the floors below and making the entire stairway smell strongly of wet dog.  It was gross, but when he knocked on the door and asked if we minded, we said no -- what else could he do?  And at least he had the courtesy to ask.

So these steps had been taken, and I had been feeling optimistic, when suddenly a few days ago, we had a huge surprise.

We were coming home from work when we saw our neighbor on the landing with a giant sack full of corn and wheat.  Curious, Jack asked him what it was for.  "For the doves and pigeons," he replied, as he pulled out the ladder leading to the roof.  "I feed them. There are probably about 30 of them up there.  Some of them are all white; it's rare!"  It was the most I'd ever heard him say, and Jack and I looked at each other, astonished, as he climbed the ladder and disappeared above.  We waited until we got into our apartment to laugh at this astonishing turn of events, and then two minutes later we heard a knock on the door.  There stood our neighbor, a white dove clutched in both hands.  "Look, here are some of the white ones," he explained, holding the flapping birds out to us.  "I'm just about to go let them go from my window.  Or wait, do you want to let them go?"  He thrust the birds in our direction, and we hesitatingly grabbed them.  "Just go let them fly off your balcony," he said, and so we did -- rushing through the bedroom to the balcony as the doves squirmed in our hands, a blur of feathers and a gush of air as they flapped to freedom, leaving white feathers on the balcony and bedroom floor as proof they were there.  By the time we returned to the door, laughing and astonished, our neighbor was gone.

Running. On a mountain. In a storm. At night.

For sure one of the less responsible decisions we've made in the past few years, but it all ended well, thank God.

Back in May, Kelly and I signed up to run our first race in Romania. If it had just been a 5k on the road, I for sure wouldn't be writing about it on the blog, but it was a 15k in the mountains that starts at 10pm. The "Iorgovanu Night Run." The only rule for the race is that you bring a headlamp. A bit more exciting than usual.

As soon as we signed up we knew we needed to really begin training RIGHT THEN because we'd been on part of the race's course before and it's rough terrain. I got the chance to hike the route with some kids from our church a few weeks before the race. You begin with 3k going slightly downhill on a road, after which you take a left into the woods and the uphill begins. It gradually gets steeper and steeper for the next 3k until you reach a shepherd's hut with a very friendly water spigot. There's still 1.5k of uphill after the hut (in which you climb about 1000 ft), until you finally arrive at Drăgșanu Plateau and it's flat for a kilometer. The 2k after that is where it begins to get really tricky--it's an uneven, rocky area of unclearly marked trail that goes over around 2 small peaks, the higher one being 1988m tall (you start at 1100m above sea level). After these peaks, you arrive at Piatra Iorgovanului (Iorgovanu's Rock), the race's namesake. As the legend goes, Iovan Iorgovanu was a Robin Hood sort of character in this area who slashed the rock into jagged valleys to create a better setting in which to fight a monster that had been terrorizing the shepherds. After the rock, it's 4k down to the finish line in which you have to descend all 3000ft you climbed at the beginning, the first half being through sharp rocks and the second half on a delightfully soft forest trail.

Atop Piatra Iorgovanului during our test hike...

 The 15k hike took us about 7 1/2 hours to complete with the kids and a thunderstorm got pretty close to us while we were in the open space around the peaks. Like, there was lightning striking the other side of the mountains from where we were. Kelly had said that she was okay with me not sticking with her the whole time, but when we were descending, I got scared that something bad would happen while we were running down a mountain over sharp, possibly wet and slippery rocks at night. I told the kids later that day that I had been feeling good about this race until this hike when I remembered that I need to respect the mountain and be a little afraid of it.

Two weeks before the race, Kelly and I did a test hike, and we had a GREAT time. When it's not pouring and thundering, the trail is comfortably challenging and the area is beautiful. Sometimes you can see mountain goats running around on the rocks, and there's usually a herd of horses running around somewhere. We did the route in 4 1/2 hours walking, which made us feel better about the race's 5 hour time limit. Kelly told me I could run as fast as I wanted, though there's a part on the descent that takes you about 10ft away from a 100ft drop down. She told me to slow down there. I said yes.

The day of the race, we made sure to take naps, and headed to the park at 7. We would camp by a lodge in Câmpușel (the little field) that night after running. We set up the tent and then went to the technical meeting at 9. The race director, Laurențiu, went through the course with us on a map and showed us where all the food and other control points would be. The course was marked by reflective tape placed every 20m along the trail and by big, pulsing lights from runways at all the peaks and control points. He told us to be careful, use common sense, and have a great time. 

At 9:50, we were at the start line, marked by a row of torches. And then the music got really loud. And then we were counting down from zece to unu. And then we ran.

The start and finish are flanked by torches...

Now, I don't want to brag, but Kelly and I ran really smart. I remember from high school cross country races everyone running the first few hundred meters with extra bravado and me passing lots of them in the next hundred meters. At the Iorgovanu Night Run, apparently the thing is to run fast while you're on the road. I'm pretty sure that when I looked behind me after 10 minutes I saw the last people in the race and almost everyone else was ahead of us. We were confused and wondering if we'd gotten ourselves into really tough competition, but we knew that if we had to do that whole route, we weren't going to run any faster for the moment.

Once we turned into the woods, Kelly let me go as fast as I wanted. I gave her a kiss and ran. And passed most of the people in the race somehow. It got to the point where it was impossible to run the whole time, so we'd go back and forth from walking up the steep parts and then running the flat parts. And then there were no more flat parts. And then it kept getting steeper. I was behind a guy with hiking poles wearing a red long sleeve and black tights (that's how I identified people since if you try to look someone in the face you blind them).

We arrived to the shepherd's hut 46 minutes in. I was starting to feel my shoes rubbing on my heels, but I was quickly distracted by the water, chocolate, peaches, and mountain blueberries. And then it started to rain. The guy I was running with said something akin to "Screw it" and we both started going again. Definitely not running. When the trail was gentle enough to run on, we would, but it was mostly steep and rocky. Fortunately, it stopped raining. Our friend and college, Ile, was at the checkpoint at the Drăgșanu Plateau, so I yelled to her as I neared the flatness. Everyone yelled back. I got to them and pulled out my band-aids to put on my blisters. Ile gave me more band-aids and asked what I'd done with Kelly. She was pretty sure Kelly was going to be first out of the women.

I left Ile and began to tackle the plateau. It's a wide, grassy area between a few gentle peaks with a shepherd's hut to the right. During daytime the donkeys usually bray at you. They must have been sleeping this time. We were going along great until we entered the cloud that was covering the next 5k of the course. By this point, another guy with hiking sticks, a red long sleeve and black tights had joined us, so we worked together to find the trail. Whenever one of us saw the next strip of reflective tape, we'd call out and run on. There were a few times that we had to split up and look for it, and then hurry to catch up to the guy who'd found it. We were so willing to not lose each other in the fog, but we weren't really waiting around for each other either. Sometimes we could see the painted trail markers, but the trail wasn't obvious in this section at all, and there were plenty of rocks to be careful around. I was tense, but it all went by quickly since my attention was on not falling over or getting lost.

Once we got onto the trail that leads up to Piatra Iorgovanului, I felt great, and awful. I finally knew where I was and was sure that I wouldn't get lost, but I began to realize how tired my body actually was. Every step I had to take up made the insides of my thighs start to cramp up and it made my shoes rub on my blistered heels even more. They guys at the checkpoint were yelling pretty loudly for us to keep going, so I only had a little bit of water and blueberries before I began the descent.

There were two guys in front of me (my red-shirted friends had pulled away and fallen back) who were going a little slower than I wanted, but I figured I shouldn't rush. It had begun to rain again, and there are so many rocks to go over on the way down. I remembered Kelly's request about the edge. I was grabbing on to the scrub bushes to stay upright as we scrambled down. At one point I heard someone or something behind me, so I stopped to look, and there was a big sheep dog patiently following us down. Welcome to Retezat National Park. I passed the guys and tried to be even more careful. I was getting worried because it seemed like the rain was part of a thunderstorm that was getting closer to me from behind, which meant that it had probably already hit the people who were on the flat part. The lightning was bright enough to light up the area like daytime and the rain was making me worry that my headlamp would go out.

Every time that I had to lift my leg to run over a rock, it was in serious danger of cramping. I've never been in a situation where my body hurt so much but my breathing was so steady. Also, I've never been in a situation where running faster would actually help me escape a real danger. The lightening didn't make me instinctively duck anymore once I entered the woods, but it was steadily raining harder and harder. The last bit of the trail down to the field across from the finish line might actually be the steepest part of the whole course, but finally, I was running flat again. All I had to do was cross a creek and the road, and I was done. The torches had all been doused by the rain, but there were plenty of people cheering me on as I finished. This is me giving five to Laurențiu while he's asking me if I'm alright. I was.

Done done done.

The only thing I knew after I got my MEDAL (!) was that I needed to eat. Bananas. Blueberries. Apples. Peaches. Purple juice that probably had extra electrolytes or something useful to make up for the weird taste. Then all I knew was that I needed to take off my shoes. I got back to our tent and it started pouring. I got into rain gear and flip flops and limped back to the finish line to wait for Kelly.

So now it's my turn... this is Kelly writing now.  At the risk of this becoming the Longest Blog Post Ever, we figured we might as well both tell our stories of Iorgovanu in one fell swoop.  As Jack said, he finished the run in spectacular fashion, crossing the finish line in 8th place in only a little over two hours.  I, on the other hand, was still somewhere up the mountain... and the rain was beginning to fall harder.

Jack and I had started the race together, and when we entered the woods and began climbing, he pulled away.  Within the first few miles of the climb I had also passed many of the participants, and when we reached the shepherd's hut someone saw me and announced, "Prima domnișoara!"  (First girl!)  I was a little astonished, and knew that I hadn't left the other women far behind, so with a small group of other runners (a middle-aged guy from Lupeni and a guy my age with a reflective stripe on the back of both ankles... that was the only way I had of identifying him), we entered the last -- and hardest -- stage of the uphill.  When we got to the checkpoint where Jack had needed bandaids, our friend Ile threw some to me too.  Again the cry of "priiiiimaaa domnișooooara!" came from the group of Salvamont, which made me smile and laugh in surprise -- like, all I wanted was to finish this race without falling off a cliff or breaking an ankle.  (Those of you who know me well may know that I have the tendency to trip while running...)  By this time it had started to rain, and with the victory of finishing the hardest half of the race behind me, I couldn't help but grin.  "I'm doing it!" I thought, as lightning lit up the sky above me.  "I'm a mountain runner!  (What a surprise!)  This is so sweet!" 

The trail levels out, sort-of, and winds its way confusingly around and across a series of peaks and rocky terrain before you begin the steep descent of the last 3-4 kilometers, and that's where the fog rolled in.  Though the trail had been marked with reflective tape every 20 meters or so, there came a point where I was running alone and couldn't see far enough for my headlamp to catch the next flag.  At one point I got so disoriented that I spent a good 10 minutes searching for the next flag, moving back and forth from the last known point in various directions, searching, eventually giving up and waiting for other runners to catch up so I wouldn't be alone.  I don't know a whole lot about mountain survival situations (I know now that it's next on my to-do list of things to learn), but I did know that I needed to not panic, not waste too much energy or get too cold, and not leave the trail.  Eventually a group came by and picked me up, but they weren't very good at sticking together... so it helped a little bit to be with other people, but not much, as they were all yelling in Romanian which was muffled by the wind, and none of us knew where the trail had disappeared to.  As the wind and rain picked up, and the lightning and thunder got closer and closer, I started to realize that this competition was quickly progressing into something more dangerous than I had hoped for.  With the race going so well and being the "prima domnișoara" well past the halfway point, I had started to get competitive, feeling excited about my chance to run well, even win for the women!  But after 30 minutes passed of stop-start running and pausing, shivering and stumbling, blind wandering in sodden clothes across a wind-swept mountain peak, I decided that the competition phase of this event was over for me.  It was just time to get down the mountain.

Eventually a ponytailed guy from Lupeni named Ionut offered me one of his hiking poles to keep me from blowing over in the wind (it had happened... plus, my loose shoelace had caught on a root and tripped me flat on my face... so I think he took pity on me).  Then finally, the group we were with found the trail (and figured out which way we needed to take it, after heading the wrong direction for at least 5 minutes).  That group splintered as we reached Iorgovanu itself, some of us stopping for much-needed energy-replacing snacks and others booking it off to the descent.  (In a moment of wifely panic, I paused to ask the organizer if Jack's bib number had come through yet -- and as I looked over his shoulder at the rain-soaked list, I saw he'd come through in eighth!)  Energized, Ionut and I took off in our sopping wet shoes, squelching our way down the mountain, wincing as hail hit our necks.  The lightning was so bright that it would illuminate the entire mountain, suddenly exposing exactly where we were on the trail -- a part I was more familiar with after Jack and my day hike a few weeks earlier.  Although we couldn't help but duck at the lightning, and could hardly hear each other for the pounding of the wind and the rain, I did hear Ionut offer a joke as he waited for me to climb over a downed tree -- "Well, at least if we die out here, we won't die alone!"  Somehow it was comforting, maybe since it didn't seem like such an impossibility anymore.

The last half mile of the race was like a dream.  The trail through the woods was so slick with mud that we were half-running, half-sliding down the steep incline, and when it finally emptied us out into the field at Campusel, I tripped and fell flat in my face in the grass (yes, again), unable to stop my momentum and adjust to the sudden no-more-downhill.  But I bounced back up and sprinted off, through the Jiu River which was now a gushing torrent from the heavy rain, and crossed the road to finish, grinning.  The rain hadn't stopped, and it was windy and cold, so most of the spectators were huddled in cars or tents rather than cheering at the finish line -- but I heard Jack's shout of "yeah, Kelly!" and then it was over.

In the end, I finished in a little over three hours.  In the confusion of the fog and storm atop the mountain, I got passed by many groups (my lesson learned is to find a race buddy who knows the trail, and stick with them no matter what!), so I didn't place or finish in the time I could have.  But as we slept that night in our tent in Campusel, listening to the wind howl and the rain pour, I couldn't help but smile, even as my sore muscles made me wince.  And in the morning after, when we drove back to Lupeni and saw the many trees down across the road, I couldn't help but feel anything but grateful -- grateful for the fun experience, grateful that we made it, and grateful for the story.

And already excited for next year.

The girls.

A few weeks ago, my friends Janelle and Alina and I started meeting with a group of teenage girls from our church.  I knew many of them pretty well already, as they were some of our first friends in the congregation, and over the last year and a half we've slowly gotten to know more of each other's stories.  But not very deeply, really -- conversations and hugs once a week on Sunday evenings hardly constitute a real, living relationship.  So I was excited when we finally got our act together and began meeting a month ago.

It works like this: on Monday, Janelle and I head to Alina's house, a small cozy place on the far edge of Lupeni.  She serves us cake and coffee, even though it's usually after 7pm, and we talk together about what we liked from the book's current chapter, and plan out what questions we want to ask the girls.  At least, that's what we talk about for 15 minutes or so.  The rest of the time we spend just talking about our lives -- sick family members, new recipes we love, worries about money, what our husbands are doing, things we have been pondering from church.  I am coming to really cherish these times, particularly as I get to know Alina better.  It's a strange thing, really -- we're so incredibly different -- she born and raised in Lupeni, married at 17, a stay-at-home-mom who came to take her faith seriously in adulthood and spends many nights fasting and praying... and I an educated, traveled, young American, raised in the church, full of ideas and opinions, and hardly able stay awake to pray past 10pm, much less all night.  We're still in the awkward learning-to-dance phase of our relationship, trying to figure each other out, pretty sure we like what we're finding, but careful not to step on toes.  It makes things move slowly, but I am learning Itrying, anyway) to be okay with that.

After we spend a while planning (ahem, chatting), I head home and scrounge around my kitchen to find something to bake.  On Tuesday night, they troop in to our apartment at 6:30 on the nose, bringing with them laughter and questions and enthusiasm and angst and a huge heap of shoes.  We settle into the living room, passing around cookies and tea (or whatever other goodies I could find), and eventually dive into the book.

It's been eye-opening, really.  The first week my jaw dropped when one of the girls asked us about how to deal with gay people as a Christian -- dropped because I was so thankful she was willing to talk about it, in the conservative Pentecostal micro-culture she has grown up in.  The second week my jaw dropped when the girls said, almost unanimously, that none of them had what they considered a "true friend" -- they weren't even sure what it would look like.  And this past week, my jaw dropped again when, upon being asked to make a list of 10 things they like about themselves, they looked at me astonished and said, "No way.  I can't even think of a single thing."

We were talking about how God has made each of them unique, and how part of His purpose for their lives is to discover the unique ways in which He has gifted them and inclined them, and how they can use those things to serve Him.  They nodded vaguely at that, but when I told them I wanted to write down 10 things they like about themselves -- 10 things that they think are valuable to God, no matter how simple or silly -- they balked.  I was a bit startled, but I didn't back down.  "Come on," I pleaded.  "Don't you think that God looks at you and says, 'Hey, I see lots of great things in you.  I'm a little offended that you refuse to see any of them!'"  That seemed to get their attention, I guess, because slowly they began writing.  And after a few hesitating minutes, they were ready to share their lists:

I'm friendly.
I am a loyal friend.
I can make beautiful music.
I have a pretty smile.
I'm strong.
I am not afraid of challenges.
I look good in skirts, and feel good in them too.
...and on and on.

It was beautiful, really, that half hour of transformation.  The lists these girls wrote were honest and self-aware and lovely.  And as they read them, you could see the other girls nodding.  After we all finished sharing our lists, I asked the girls how they felt.  Did it feel vain to write things you like about yourself? I asked.  Did it feel arrogant to recognize your strengths and gifts?  What about when you listened to the other girls' lists?  Did you think they sounded arrogant?  It was interesting to hear their responses -- how although they delighted in hearing their friends claim these beautiful truths, it was hard for them to accept similar things about themselves.  I think that indicates humility on their parts, and I'm proud of them for that.  But at the same time, I also think that some of it comes from low self-esteem, which I didn't see before.  And now I'm even more eager to encourage them, to build them up, to say, "Wow, I see something beautiful in you," and then to seek God together on what He wants them to use it for.  But not to let them deny it.  Not to let them pretend it doesn't exist.  That would be a disservice to God, and to all of these beautiful, talented girls that He has made, and who I am lucky enough to have in my living room every Tuesday night.