Renovations.

So.  There's this group of old men who sit at the bottom of our apartment bloc stairwell playing backgammon... all day, every day.  They gather at this tiny little kiosk called Te Quiero which sells all sorts of gross processed, packaged snacks, and they watch each other play endless rounds as they sip beers, shirts unbuttoned to let their bellies catch some summer sun.  They're all retired but one (he still works in the mine; I can tell by the ring of coal dust around his eyes, like a thick dark eyeliner).  And they apparently have time to spare.  Lots of it.

They're quite cordial, and I'm somewhat fond of them, really.  Jack and I occasionally stop there to buy mineral water, and they always nod to us and say hello as we head to work in the morning and come home in the evening.  Sometimes their wives sit on the front bench, basking in the sun and nodding regally as we pass by with our "buna dimineata" on the way to work.  I am never sure what they're talking about or if they're really happy or what... but this little graffiti-covered kiosk seems like their center of gravity.  Or something.

So today it really made me laugh to see that they've decided to renovate the kiosk.  I'm not sure what they're doing, but it's adorable to me -- they brought in a little cement mixer, and they're all standing around watching and helping and taking turns smoothing the pavement, widening their little backgammon area or something. 

(Yes, I took a picture from the balcony.)

Anyway, it's cute.  And it made me smile to see renovations, to see people investing in and caring  about something as small and simple as their backgammon space.

So go, old guys, go.  Maybe we'll buy another mineral water soon to help support the project.

La mulți ani, America.

It was the 4th of July yesterday, and I almost forgot -- but our colleague Andra didn't.

We walked into the office yesterday morning to be greeted by, "La mulți ani!" (the traditional Romanian birthday greeting, which literally translated means something like, "Many more years!")  I was a little taken aback by it, so I laughed and asked, "What?"  Andra looked at me like I was crazy and said, "Kelly, it's America's birthday!  La mulți ani!"

Then she handed me a small butterfly pendant and gave Jack a red rope bracelet.  In honor of America's birthday.

Uh.  

And she wasn't the only one!  Other colleagues wished us the same, and also seemed a little surprised that we weren't wearing red, white, & blue, or launching fireworks, or that we hadn't brought  chocolate chip cookies to the office to celebrate.

Oops.

At first it was just kinda funny to me, and really sweet that our Romanian friends knew that it was America's independence day and wanted to recognize it for us.  (Also funny how many stereotypes and assumptions our Romanian friends have about the 4th of July from American movies!  But I digress.)  After the third person congratulated us on our nation's birth, I started thinking about how strange it is after all that we weren't doing anything.  Granted, Jack and I are pretty careful about trying not to bring unnecessary attention to the fact that we're foreigners.  Neither of us have ever been the most patriotic, in the sense of flag-waving, stars-and-stripes-wearing, firework-shooting July 4th celebrants.  And living overseas, as an American in particular, brings with it a fair share of baggage... especially in the fact that most of the youth we know and work with here in the Jiu Valley think that America is something like heaven on earth, that this fertile mountain valley is somewhere close to the opposite, and that success in life would include moving to the United States to live, work, and party.  We spend a fair amount of energy trying to dispel that myth, telling people about the realities of racism, immigrant discrimination, poverty, unemployment, and loneliness that exist in the US too.  (We're such cheery missionaries.)  But it seems important to me that the people we live among know that we didn't sacrifice some perfect life to move into a godforsaken, poverty-stricken valley.  It is important to me to help the kids we work with here see all the beauty that exists here -- in the mountains, in the food, in the people, in the history, in the potential.  I know we'll always be Americans living here, never "locals," but I want to value the richness of this place, even with my outsider eyes.

But yesterday I was reminded that the place we come from is worth celebrating too.  Jack and I have talked about this a lot -- how at the beginning we tried to "blend in," and when that didn't work, it took us a while to settle into this skin of being outsiders in a small community, and owning our Americanness.  In the last 9 months or so, we've started to invite people over for American-style meals, delighting in introducing people to the flavors and tastes of the place we come from.  We have started to talk more about our hometowns and our families, not shying away from the fact that we miss them, ache for them sometimes.  And yesterday I was reminded, once again, that there's a lot to celebrate about the United States of America (even as the social justice-international development-foreign policy parts of me sometimes wince).  Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion.  Civic engagement and volunteerism.  Democratic elections (okay, even if they're corrupted by money) and remarkable levels of access to publicly elected officials.  Civil rights (slowly, slowly, but still) and public dialogue.  Brownies and Chicago-style pizza and Iowa corn on the cob.  I love living in Romania -- but I loved living in the US, too.

So la mulți ani, America.  To many years ahead.

Airports and paradoxes.

I have been in a lot of airports this year.  Chicago-Frankfurt-Bucureşti, on our way back to Romania after Christmas.  Bucureşti-London-Boston-Miami-Managua-Miami-Port au Prince-New York-London-Bucureşti (whew!), for IMPACT trainings this spring in Nicaragua and Haiti.  Bucureşti-Istanbul at Easter.  Bucureşti-Vienna-Tirana and back to Bucureşti again on Friday.

(Speaking of which, after that list, I would like to take a moment to thank the Vienna International Airport for having enormous couches around all the gates, for inventing a place called the "relaxing room," for decorating the terminals with World Cup-themed paintings and playing live matches on a giant projector in Terminal E, and for having a make-your-own musli bar.  I was really, really grateful.)

Anyway. Moving on from my newfound love for Vienna (and hatred for Miami, but that's another story)...

I am currently in Tirana, Albania, helping facilitate a mini-training on SKYE -- basically, a slightly more "grown up" and condensed version of IMPACT international, focused on meeting the specific learning needs of youth age 18-25, with emphasis on job skills preparation and business creation.  It is a little surreal to be part of the process of crafting a program whose target group are me and my peers, but it's also remarkably encouraging.  I am really excited and optimistic about this project, and I feel like I'm in my sweet spot in my work here.

Yet, every time I travel for IMPACT International, I feel torn, like there are two versions of myself that aren't quite sure how to coexist.  On the one hand, I love this part of my job.  I love meeting brilliant people from other countries, listening to their expertise, asking about their context, tasting the insights and wisdom and uniqueness of each country as it applies to this beautiful work of youth development.  (And the new food.  Tasting that part is pretty great too.)  I can even get myself excited for the travel bit, for the weird sterile bustle of airports and the curious fact of so many different people, with so many stories, all passing through the same bit of ground.  It makes me feel the same sort of gleeful possibility and opportunity that inspired me for so many years when, as a kid, I dreamed of traveling the world.  And I thrive in this space, in this grueling, intense, lots-of-work-and-constant-thinking-and-little-sleep world of work.  Training and teaching and discussing and planning.  Shutting off my brain and pausing to reflect, in these periods of time, takes effort.

On the other hand, there is this part of me that dreads this.  The part of me that thinks, "I moved to Romania to live in Romania.  As a missionary. What am I doing here?"  The part of me that wants to be settled and simple, that wants time to read novels and plant gardens and invite people over for dinner and go running in the mountains.  The part of me that wants time and mental space for reflection and imagination and prayer and music and exercise and peace.  The part of me that wonders what my work-loving side means for my future, as a wife and mother and sister and friend -- things that I also want oh so badly, oh so deeply.

I know it's not like the two can't coexist, and I try to live in a balance.  I really do.  But these airports, these weeks of time away from home, away from Jack, away from the places where I have established rhythms and patterns of work & rest... they make me wonder how far that balancing act can go.  Will it ever give? Will the scales ever tip?  How will I notice?

I do believe God gives us gifts, that He makes us complex and whole people, that He calls us to different things in different times and different places.  Okay, yes.  And the balancing of that is hard and beautiful, and probably just as it is supposed to be.  It means all of those things are alive in our life, and that they all matter, and that's Good stuff.  I just wonder every now and then, when it feels like a paradox.  I guess that's why we keep listening.  God seems to be a God of paradoxes anyway -- judgment & grace, love & truth, three in one, holy & personal -- so maybe this is the way it's supposed to be.

Our first IMPACT project.

Last we wrote about our IMPACT club, we were just getting started with them, and felt like we bit off more than we could handle. A whole class of fifth graders had just been recruited to a club of high-schoolers, and Kelly and I had just taken over leading the club. Twenty fifth-graders in a classroom is crazy enough I'm sure, but when they're part of a club that's empowering them to be creative and leaders in their own right, they really take that seriously. The freedom to be heard and accepted for whatever you say invites a lot of weird things to be said and done. Especially when it's 12-year-old boys doing it. Oh well.

Despite their inability to have a civilized debrief discussion for more than 5 minutes and how much they like to hit each other and call each other peasants, we actually implemented a service-learning project last weekend! The great thing about being IMPACT leaders is that we're supposed to kind of step back when it comes to these projects and empower the club members to think through the project and do most of the work. We just try to ask the right questions and point out the things they might have missed and help them get materials. Our kids decided that they wanted to put on an afternoon of various competitions in the park, pretty much just to create an option for fun in a place where kids usually have to make their own fun. It's proper IMPACT project planning to identify a problem and then to creatively plan a project that addresses that problem. When we explained that this is the normal procedure, our kids told us that they knew a lot of kids who simply stay at home and play on the computer, so this "Active Day" in the park could draw them outside and away from the computer.

We had about a month and a half to teach these fifth graders what a service-learning project is and how to implement one, so I admit we had low expectations for this first project. Thanks, however, to three excellent junior leaders, some hard working fifth graders, and a ton of patience, we were on the way to having a killer day in the park planned sometime in July. Unfortunately, we wanted to do it on June 1st since school ends pretty soon after that. Fortunately, we had to push the date back to June 7, and that week before, we all managed to step up our level of focus and helpfulness. Kelly even went with Raluca, Maria and Bumb to gather a bunch of water so we wouldn't die of heatstroke.

When it came to Saturday the 7th, I was so thankful that we live in a small-ish town in Romania, because we were able to do so much that day. Andrada, Adelina, Raluca, Maria, and Bumb came early to hand out some awesome fliers that they had made to promote the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, and Kelly and I sat at a bench on the park trying to convince all the kids who flocked to us that the event wouldn't start until 1:30, and since it was still 11:45, they needed to go away for now so that we could set things up.

Eventually, we got the obstacle course and the start and finish line for the 150-ish meter dash set up. 70 kids signed up to participate, so we split them into two groups and ran them at the same time. Apart from a few inattentive timers and some argumentative competitors, everything went surprisingly well, mainly thanks to Eliza, one of the junior leaders, who led the competitors in fun large group games in between the events. Halfway through, we switched to the egg-in-a-spoon race (70 kids only broke 5 eggs! What?!?!?) and the race where you put a bottle full of river dirt between your legs and jump over small traffic cones as fast as you can.

In the end, we added up the fastest times and gave the top four kids in each age group (8-10 and 11-14) prizes--a soccer ball, badminton rackets, you know, sporty stuff. Once the competitors left, we rolled the tires from the obstacle course back across the street to the car shop, threw the remaining eggs either in the dumpster or as hard as we could on the ground (it's ok, the dogs ate them), and breathed a large sigh of relief. Our first IMPACT project. And it went well. 

Another visa update.

Hallelujah, hallelujah.

We went to Deva today and applied for a two-year visa.

And it worked.

(I would write out the whole saga, or use a lot more explanation points to communicate my true excitement about this, if only I wasn't quite so tired.)

It's been well over a month of waiting, calling various Romanian bureaucrats in offices across the country, paying and praying and waiting some more, and crossing our fingers that documents would get shuffled quickly across desks that are notoriously slow.  But with the help of some persistent friends and some faithful prayers, yesterday we received our Aviz from the Romanian Ministry of Religious of Affairs, approving us for a two-year stay in Romania to work with our local church here in Lupeni.  So today we headed to Deva to apply with the immigration officials.  And 11 hours later, we were home again, papers filed, a load lifted off our shoulders, tired and hot and oh-so-relieved.

Yippee!

Why I blog.

A friend sent me this quote a while back, and it's resonated for a while.  It's a quote from Stephanie Paulsell writing about Marguerite d'Oingt, who was a Catholic nun, writer, and mystic, I believe.  She said, “To write in such a way as to invite both thought and love is to write on behalf of others. It is to practice writing as a spiritual discipline that has the good of others at its heart. It is to write in a way that exposes one’s hopes and motivations, that betrays one’s love.” 

I'm feeling pretty down about our life abroad right now -- well, mine specifically.  Feeling misunderstood, or not really known, is a horrible form of loneliness, and it's popped up a lot over the last year and a half that we've lived in Romania.  I always thought of myself as an open person, an honest person, and a person who was really genuinely interested in other people.  Living here has exposed me to the harsh reality that I am not as open, loving, or selfless as I liked to think -- that actually, I have a lot of growing to do in all of these things.

But when I write about our experience here in Lupeni, in our newsletter and on this blog and in the emails we share with friends in other places we've called home, I feel like I can be myself.  I can be honest.  I can share my heart, what I really mean, and hopefully -- oh, I so hope! -- betray my love.

Even if I can't always do it in person.

So here's to the growth that's happening, to having the good of others at heart.  And may it take all sorts of forms.
 

Sunday picnics and vote-buying.

The title of this post might be unnecessarily inflammatory, since we're not 100% certain that what we saw yesterday was vote-buying... but as Jack reminded me, "Let's not forget our context."  We do live in the Jiu Valley.  And for all the wonderful people we've met here and the love I have for this place, it's also got a history of corruption.  I like to forget that.  But yesterday it came rushing back.

It was the first non-rainy day in over a week, so Jack and I decided to celebrate by spending Sunday afternoon hiking in the mountains above Lupeni.  We packed some food in our backpacks and headed out, and as we passed through the neighborhood near the foot of the trail, we suddenly came around the corner to the aroma of grilling meat.  It's not an uncommon smell this time of year, as Romanians love barbeques (another reason why it's awesome to live here)... but this was an uncommon sight, as dozens of people were seated on picnic tables lined up near the side of the road, munching on mici and slurping beer as political posters fluttered overhead.

It's election season.  Next Sunday Romanians head to the polls to elect their representatives to the European Parliament.  Posters are plastered everywhere, though they contain what seems like surprisingly little information to a political junky like me -- a name, picture, and party logo, but no links to websites or position statements.  I've asked some Romanian friends where they go to actually learn about the candidates and what they stand for, and they just stared at me blankly.  "Uh, the news is pretty full of propaganda, so I've just given up," one of our friends from church said bluntly.  I wasn't sure what to ask next after that.

So civic engagement and the democratic process here in the valley remains a bit of a mystery to me.  Really, my knowledge is limited to my conversations with friends and the stories I'd heard of vote-buying happening with beer and sausages (this seems to be an especially common tactic of the current mayor, apparently)... but I never thought I would actually see it.

Until yesterday.

Like I said earlier, perhaps it was just a political rally of sorts.  Maybe people had to pay for their food, or could donate to support this guy's campaign.  Maybe it was a gathering of like-minded supporters, and the delicious aroma and blasting music was simply a way to attract curious passerby to learn more about the candidate.  But judging from the huge number of people who had gathered by the time Jack and I made our way back from our hike, plus the fact that the event was taking place in a back neighborhood, and the fact that no one was actually speaking at the event... it became hard to believe.  I had had every intention of stopping and asking around on our way back from our hike, my political science-y self curious as always, but Jack and I both had such a weird feeling about the event that we just skedaddled, unwilling to lend our presence to the possibly-shady beer & sausage fest.

I dunno.  I hesitate to pass judgment on a situation that I merely passed by and don't really understand.  But I wonder.  I do wonder. 

(For more on corruption and transparency in Romania, check out www.transparencyinternational.eu.)