VIAȚA, week one.

Well readers, it's high time that Kelly wasn't the only one posting here. I've had a very full month, and I want to let you know how my work has been going.

I've been the newbie at camp. VIATA has been going since 1999, and the director, Ilie Popescu, has been involved, in various positions, since 2000. And he's really good at his job. He oversees and maintains the ropes course, figures out camp finances, extends grace to camp leaders, tells leaders to grow up, is mean when he has to be, is soft and gentle when he has to be, and is a great dad and husband. To work with him is a joy.

Valters Melderis is the other assistant director, more in charge of programming and on-the-ground fun things. He leads large group games, plays with fire, performs in most of the ridiculous skits, provides inter-personal advice, makes people laugh, and provides a small word of caution to Ilie. He's from Latvia, lives in Bucharest, and is planning on this summer being his last at VIATA.

I am the American assistant director. I am the "mom" to American interns here for the summer, "mom" for the camp storage room (I organize the place, hand things out, and demand their return), put participants into groups, and keep track of meals and accommodation for our participants during the week. Also, wonderfully, Ilie has been training me in ropes course set-up and maintenance, so I get to be high up in the trees three days a week on Romania's first ropes course.

Our first week went from June 30-July 5. I was so nervous about all my responsibilities that I didn't want to get out of bed and go up the mountain on Sunday. Fortunately, I had no say in that matter. Ilie picked me up at 10 (after eating pancakes with Kelly!), and we started our preparations for the week. When we got up to the FNO cabana, we learned that the coil on our water heater had melted, so there was no hot water for us and it was 45 and rainy on the mountain. The bus bearing the kids rolled in around 8:30pm (they usually arrive around 2 or 3), and we greeted them with cheers and smiles. They were mostly from a poor community around Cluj, and as such were used to warmer weather in June and hadn't brought a whole lot of clothes anyways. They were almost silent at dinner, and seemed to not really understand the camp rules presentation (we learned the next day that very few of them could read). Everyone went to bed early, and hoped that Monday would go well.

When we woke up and it was just as cold and cloudy, we decided that taking our poorly-clad group to the ropes course wouldn't be a good idea. The course is about 2.5 km from the cabanas (very uphill for half the way), and there's a lot of wind and little sun in the woods. The groups decided to play games and hike and do other things around the cabana. By 4pm, the kids wouldn't circle up for any more games or listen to any more order from the leaders, so we got some balls and hula hoops out and played with them until dinner at 7. A few of the leaders were disappointed that their teambuilding games hadn't been enough to capture the kids' attention, but as we watched them play with balls, we noticed other barriers. The younger kids (8-10) were happy to play together or snuggle for warmth on their leaders' laps, but the older kids (10-14) would either play with their own ball or hula hoop or go around and try to take them from those who were playing. It seemed that we never had quite enough balls to satisfy their individual desires, and the constant comment to me was, "Hey! He took my ball!" Every time I asked, "Why don't you play together?" a small back would turn to me and I would hear, "No!" How could we play teambuilding games (in many ways, the basis of what VIATA is all about) with kids who wouldn't even share a ball with each other? Ilie had said beforehand that our goal with these kids was to give them a really good week of life with good memories and a lot of love, because it seemed like they wouldn't be too receptive to ideas like social capital and societal change. We were prepared to mainly try to show them some love, but it was really hard to watch their own love for each other be so conditional and temporary.

The next two days, we went to the ropes course and had, for the most part, a really good time. The younger kids were very brave and responsible with the high elements they got to do, albeit forgetful of safety rules at times. The older kids had a hard time taking things seriously, but they had their moments when they were totally invested in getting everyone across a cable without touching the ground. At every free moment, the kids begged for balls, and we indulged them. They just had to play and it was good to spend that fun, though somewhat nerve-wracking time with them.

On Thursday, we realized that many of the fights over balls revolved around a red and a yellow ball, and who was in control of either. We decided to not bring those ones out anymore, which caused a lot of whining and pleading and standing in the corner with arms crossed. After almost non-stop asking, we decided to bring out only the yellow ball and the hula hoops, and we said they would either have to play together or do something else. Wonderfully, it worked, and the boy who usually bullied the others led them in passing the ball to each other. The hope that I had been holding for them all week had become apparent, even if just for 15 minutes before dinner.

On Friday, as everyone was leaving, no one cried, but many of the kids asked, "Are you coming back with us?" or shared how sorry they were that they had to leave. Even the ones who had said awful things about the camp leaders or had fought every decision to do something that week were obviously sad to leave. We had done our job, and loved those kids well in ways that mattered to them. Few of the carefully crafted teambuilding games worked like we thought, and I doubt anyone mentioned social capital, but something important happened to a bunch of underprivileged kids, and we had the privilege of being a big part of that week of their lives. We left that week feeling more confident as a team, knowing more of our own weaknesses, and remembering that there's hope even for the ones who seem the most twisted and lost from the goodness that we want to share with everyone that comes to VIATA.

Six months.

Today is July 9 -- and six months ago exactly, we were landing in the Bucharest airport, hesitatingly gathering our mound of luggage and searching out the face of Steve Michmerhuizen, a smiling West Michigan expat who we'd never met before.  He greeted us warmly, finding us easily in the small crowd of arrivals, and ushered us to a hotel amidst the bitter cold Romanian night.  That first 24 hours in Romania remains a blur: dinner in the heart of Bucharest, a long conversation with Diana (who has since become our supervisor and friend), and a night of deep, exhausted, dreamless sleep before a long drive across the country to Lupeni.

It seems so long ago that we were dragging our tired selves up the stairs for the first time to dear little Apartment Lucy, unpacking and arranging and cleaning and hanging things on the wall.  Our three months of study in Târgu Mureş also seem like ages ago -- the first hesitant meetings with our fabulous language teachers, the long evening walks up the city's immense hills, the many hours of flashcards and vocabulary practice in miscellaneous cafes, the Sundays full of church and friends and way too many crepes.  And now we've been in Lupeni for almost three full months, and work with FNO is starting to feel familiar, and life is slowing from the frantic excitement of everything new to the calmer rhythms of life in a place that's becoming home.

Yet at the same time, it feels like not long ago at all that we were giving tear-stained hugs to my mom and sister at the Minneapolis airport; those tears still surface now and then and remind me of the heartache of leaving.  It seems not so long ago that we were building snowmen with the Bradford girls on the retaining wall that Jack helped Nate build.  It seems not long ago at all that we were eating breakfast at Brandywine, and visiting our friends in East Hills and Alger Heights, and commuting to work via bicycle from our little apartment on Calkins.  We've been gone for six months, and life looks different for us now.  We still grow herbs and tomatoes and invite people over to eat them with us.  We still go running and hiking off the beaten path as often as we can.  We still are married, and happily so.  Six months in, I am happy here.  I feel useful here.  It is beautiful here, and the people and work and natural world around us fill me with joy and purpose, and I am glad we came.  We've missed a lot in six months -- weddings of dear friends, the growing-up of our little neighbors, the transition and healing of our church community, graduations and milestones in the lives of our siblings.  But we've gained a lot, too, as all the stories on this blog and in our journals and our memories now attest to.  

So that's that, I guess.  We've lived in Romania for six months.  That's amazing.  Please keep praying.  We love you all. 

Baptisms and dance parties.

Ordinarily I think of American infant baptisms as short, sweet, and to-the-point.  At least in my experience, the ceremony was always pretty simple: the parents carry their swaddled child to the front of the church, the biological and church family promise to raise the child in the faith, and the pastor prays and dribbles water on the infant's head, after which the startled, screaming baby is paraded through the sanctuary to the sighs and ahhs of the congregants.  Afterwards there's sometimes cake and more cooing over the little one, but in general that's about it.  It's a welcome to the family of faith, a powerful symbol of the way God chooses us before we can ever choose Him -- but it's not usually, in my experience, all that celebratory.  Perhaps I'm just not very sensitive, not having any children of my own -- but it always has seemed to me that the welcoming of a new baby into the family of God deserves a big ol' party, where everyone comes and dances and sings and eats and celebrates the promise and hope of this new life.

Well, on Sunday we did just that.  One of our coworkers at FNO, Andreea, had recently had a baby girl named Teodora (Teia for short), and on Sunday she was baptized into the Orthodox church.  It was an intricate ceremony, one I need to do some reading on to understand.  Romanian Orthodox baptisms involve the godparents heavily, while the parents simply observe -- it was the godmother who held Teodora throughout the entire service, except for when little Teia was taken by the priest around the front of the sanctuary, to bow in reverence before the icons of Jesus and the apostles.  The baby is brought in wearing frilly, fancy baptism clothes, but all the clothes (even the diaper) are removed for the moment of baptism itself, which involves the baby being totally submerged or, in this case, being held over a basin while an entire pitcher of water is dumped over her entire body.  (No little sprinkle-and-dab in this case!)  Then the baby is laid back down and dressed in new, white clothes -- symbolic of the "new creation" that he or she becomes with baptism into the family of God.  Before being dressed, the priest dabs oil on the baby's chest, forehead, ears, shoulders, and feet, symbolizing the protection and anointing of God over every part of the child.  Once re-dressed, the priest carefully snips hair from the child's head as an offering to God, also symbolizing the way that God knows and numbers every hair of our heads; this lock of hair is given to the family and kept as a remembrance for years.  And eventually, the priest takes the baby and brings her to the altar, to the front of the church which is, in Orthodox churches, the holy place, and sets her gently down to rest.  Only after the child is laid gently at the feet of Jesus, symbolically, is the baptism over.  The father swooped in to pick up Teodora, many pictures were taken, and there was much rejoicing.  (Here's a link to a liturgy if you want to read more.)

We headed straight from the baptism to a local restaurant, where Andreea had arranged a party to celebrate little Teia's baptism.  It was decorated like a wedding: white gauze draped the stairs, white cloths covered each chair, and pink bows and butterflies decorated the table.  There was an abundance of food and a DJ, who gently teased people into dancing.  We ate and ate and ate, first full plates of meats and cheeses and vegetables, then -- an hour or two later -- sarmale and mamaliga, the famous, delicious, traditional Romanian stuffed cabbage rolls and polenta, topped with a thick sour cream.  In between we sampled from big bowls of fresh cherries and apricots and nectarines, juicy and delicious, dripping down our chins, and drank homemade wine from grapes and brandy from summer cherries.  There was a beautiful cake, bedecked in pink and purple, sparklers burning merrily on top while we sang the Romanian birthday song to Teia in jubilant voices.  And we danced -- bobbing and twisting, some of us terrible, grandparents holding little Teodora adoringly as they swayed to the music, the younger crowd moving sexily to the beat, everyone joining in the circle and clasping hands for the traditional Romanian hora, little kids spinning and running through the dance floor for the sheer joy of it.  When I eventually left at around 9:30pm, the pork and potatoes and cabbage salad course was still coming, and the music was still playing.  Oh, what a Romanian party: eating and dancing, laughing and teasing, celebrating and supporting and loving.  What a baptism.  What a joyful celebration... a big ol' party.

Welcome to the family, Teodora.

The FNO women, Briana, and Teodora!

The beautiful, beautiful Orthodox church.

Accidental sunsets.

So, yesterday we missed our first train.

It was dumb, really.  My aunt Teresa had come to visit for a few days, and after spending time together in the Jiu Valley she was on her way to Sighișoara, a lovely historic city about 6 hours northeast of Lupeni, where she was intending to visit the internship program for the college where she works.  We had intended to drive her to Deva, the county seat (notorious in our lives for being the city where we have to go for our visas... but that's a story for another post), and then get her on a train heading to Copşa Mică, a tiny town just outside Sighișoara, where she would be picked up by her next host.  But... that didn't happen.

We got to Deva an hour early and decided to eat lunch at a restaurant relatively close to the train station.  The food took quite a while to come, so eventually Teresa and I left to make sure we'd catch her train, leaving Jack behind to take the food to go.  We speed-walked back to the station, rushing so as not to miss it, hoping Jack would also show up before she pulled away.  There was a train waiting on line 1, but we had been told hers would be on line 4, so we sat down to wait.  Just to be sure, I asked a few people on the train if they were heading towards Sighișoara.  They all said no.

The train left, and another train came, this one clearly marked and not heading in our direction.  Jack showed up with our sandwiches, and we sat on the platform and waited for another 45 minutes, feeding crumbs to the pigeons and chatting.  Finally I went and asked the ticket lady if the train was coming soon.  "It left," she said, looking at me askance.  "I saw you walk by and assumed you were getting on it.  It's already gone."  I was a bit astonished, and said we hadn't seen a train on track 4, and the people I'd asked on the first train had said it wasn't going to Sighișoara.  "It moved to track 1," she said.  And then I realized that the train doesn't go on to Sighișoara anyway -- it detours around it, which is why Teresa was getting picked up in a tiny village outside the city.  I felt really dumb.  I thanked the lady and walked back to Teresa and Jack, who were waiting expectantly on the platform.  "We missed it," I admitted.

It's another three hours by car from Deva to Copşa Mică, but we couldn't think of an alternative, so we decided to just drive there.  We were a bit worried about the FNO van, which is beloved but really old and clunky, but it did fine.  In fact, we arrived in Copşa Mică right on time, beating the train Teresa would have ridden, enjoying the gorgeous scenery of Transylvania along the way.  But then it was 6:30, and Jack and I still had to drive home.  We looked at the map and decided to change our route, taking what looked like the most direct path: west through Blaj and Alba Iulia, then straight south from Sebeş, turning west again into the Jiu Valley when we got close to Petroşani.  Simple, right?  Wrong.

As it turns out, the road that goes straight south from Sebeş is the Transalpina.  I've wanted to drive the Transalpina since I was first in Romania three years ago -- it's a famous, beautiful, winding road through the mountains, known throughout Europe as a "must-see" scenic drive.  But we didn't exactly mean to drive the Transalpina in the clunky old FNO van, at the end of what had become a 10-hour drive, in the dark.  Whoops.

That said, it was gorgeous.  Absolutely gorgeous.  There's a huge lake called Oașa partway through the road, and we somehow managed to get there around sunset.  It was breathtaking.  There were low, misty clouds curling their way among the pine-covered mountains; the road twisted and turned below towering stone cliffs; small waterfalls tumbled down out of thickly forested hills.  It was lovely -- a perfect picture of Transylvania.  The road itself was less lovely -- pristine, well-maintained highway for a while, then suddenly punctuated every 800 meters with a 30-meter-long stretch of unpaved, pothole-ridden gravel.  The last 25 kilometers from the Transalpina to Petroşani were a nightmare of potholes and boulders, and took us at least an hour of jolting and shifting and praying and bouncing.  But we made it.  We got home a bit before midnight and collapsed into bed, exhausted... and now we have some beautiful pictures to share. 

Enjoy.

One of the enormous dams along the Transalpina.

Sometimes, when the mountains were lower, there would be farms perched halfway up the slope.

 Lake Oașa

An accidental sunset.

Cows.

So.  The other day I wrote a brief post about the animals we live with here (I omitted the mosquitoes, by the way, but they're also here in force... more on that some other time).  But today, another post about animals, because today they rebelled.

Jack and I were walking home from work, around 6pm, when suddenly we heard the clanging of bells and the bellowing of cows.  From the area around the apartment bloc we live in came a herd of about 8 cows, walking speedily and bellowing fiercely, glowering at we pesky humans walking down the sidewalk.  They crossed onto the road next, and proceeded to strut down it like they owned the place, causing cars and maxi taxis to honk and swerve wildly to avoid them... 'cause these cows were NOT moving.

We watched and laughed until they were out of sight, their bells ringing in the distance.  I have no idea whose cows they were, but they were definitely not being herded.  I kept waiting for some old man to leap up from a nap in the shade and go racing after them, but it didn't happen.  Instead, the cows just strutted off into the sunset.

Oh, Romania.  How I love thee.

Wildlife.

The other evening, Jack and I were walking back home at about 10:30pm from meeting with some new European volunteers (and talking animatedly about Berlusconi and Italian politics, Spanish unemployment and corruption, and the American Congress and President Obama -- it was quite the evening.)  Anyway.  As we were walking back along the main street, we heard the street dogs start to bark.  We looked over at the source of the commotion and saw, to our great astonishment, about 10 unbridled horses, walking slowly out of the dark and mist along the train tracks, grazing on the grass along the city streets.  The horses seemed unfazed by the street dogs, who quickly gave up barking at this strange sight and returned to their slumber on shop stoops and under dumpsters.  But Jack and I stood there in awe, watching these ghostly horses just wander around Lupeni's main street, nibbling delicately at the grass that grows in the cracked sidewalk.  Strange.  So strange.  We have no idea where they came from, whose they are, and where they went.  We had never seen them before, and haven't seen them since.  Strange.

But that's not the only mildly-amusing wildlife we see here in Lupeni.  Our five-minute walk to work from our apartment brings us past a small pasture where there are usually at least 3 or 4 cows (this is in the middle of town, I might remind you), and about twice a week we also pass an elderly man who is tending his flock of goats, which are grazing on the grass behind the flower shop and next to the bridge.  Daily we hear the jingle-and-clap of a horse-drawn cart making its way down the main street, loaded with farmers and their products, cars and trucks weaving around it.  And when we go running, we often have to stop to make way for a flock of sheep which are trundling their way noisily down the road or path, guided by a shepherd, baaing and mewing loudly.  The other day while running we scared a pig wandering down the road, which snorted and sprinted back into its fence when it saw us.  And of course, there are the street dogs.  Enough said.

In other words... we love living here.

The view.

This weekend, to celebrate our first anniversary (!!) Jack and I went to Parâng, just outside of Petroșani, to do some hiking and spend a day away.  It was lovely.  We live in a lovely place.  So here are a few of the pictures... because Romania is absolutely, jaw-droppingly beautiful.

I think Romanian farms are just idyllic.

Like I said... idyllic.

 Farms, again.  Doesn't this make you want to live here?

 Down in the valley, off in the distance, you can see Lupeni, where we live.

You can't see it well, but that mountain has a flock of sheep grazing on it...