June 12 th

June 12, 2005

The first week that we’ve been in Romania the weather was perfect, neither too warm nor too cool. There had been one day of rain, but mostly sunshine and fair skies. For the last five days it seems as if we’re in Seattle. Ploua, ploua si ploua. The temperature has been cool to go along with all the rain.

It’s interesting to watch the group dynamics. Early on the team of 62 happy volunteers functioned smoothly, but gradually individual personalities have begun to splinter the group into multiple segments and as we’ve been given community projects to complete, the splintering has amplified. I think the rain has contributed to the process. We have taken on four new folks. They come from the program in Uzbekistan. They had been four months in that country, gone through the necessary language training and been assigned to post, but the government there refused to extend their visas so they’ve been reassigned and have to again go through the language training.

We’ve had one volunteer return stateside of a medical condition. He developed a hernia toting his luggage. He hopes to return after treatment, but I remember how sore I was when I underwent similar treatment. He won’t want to lift any luggage for a month, at least.

For those of you wondering about the scenery here in Transylvania go rent the movie cold mountain. It was filmed in this area. The funny story about that is our Gazda father, Celu, who is 71 years old and has a car almost as old as he is, was the driver for Nicole Kidman’s three bodyguards. When he told us the story we asked him if he was in the movie, he indicated that he was not but that he got to meet Ms. Kidman up close and personal.

As you can tell from the lack of pictures I still haven’t been able to download to the blog. I have downloaded to the email so if I haven’t put you on the picture list, let me know via email and I’ll send you some.

This morning Nancy and I attended our first Orthodox Church service. The outside of the Basicila is non-descript, like a thousand other churches but inside the ancient and exotic (to us) surroundings were an enchantment. It was a very high ceilinged place, something that isn’t appearent from the outside. The walls are covered with pictures of the saints and in the narthex there are places to set candles. The candles are a little longer than a pencil and about as thick and are sold in the church itself. It’s proper to purchase at least one and then light and place it in an area of for either Jesus, Mary, the departed or the living.

Back inside the church it’s standing room only, unless your family has a ‘seat’ in one of the wooden chairs. There is someone canting almost continually during the service and people come and go and as they do, they place flowers in front of a painting of a favorite saint and lean down and kiss the picture.

After being in so many classrooms with terrible acoustics, it was a pleasure to hear the choir as they responded to the chanting at appropriate intervals in the high ceiling chamber. The choir did a better job with the responses to the chants than they did with the hymn – we knew the melody from the Lutheran Hymnbook but not the words. After service we went back to the church, it’s just two doors down from our Gazda’s house, to take pictures but there was a wedding going on so we left with the camera unused.