The Donkey Adventure

Hello from beautiful Santorini! (filmplace of The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants for those of you who are pumped about that). It's been lovely being here on this volcano island but I'm so ready to go home. I thought I should share our little adventure from yesterday however, as a little enjoyment for you as this will probably be my last post until I am home!

We are staying at a room on Perissa beach so the actually city (fira) is a while away. We took a bus there and after shopping and getting discouraged, we decided, what the heck, we have to ride the donkeys down the cliffs. So we hop on these donkeys. However, we are both in dresses (not thinking about this when we got dressed in the morning) and Stef is carrying a bottle of wine she got for her parents. I'm doing just fine, having a sweet ride down the stairs of this cliff, when i hear a couple of explatives coming from Stef behind me. Now she is not likely to swear so i'm wondering what the heck is going on. Turns out her saddle is falling off and she's trying to stay up while holding this bottle of wine and not having her dress come up around her waist. It was a funny sight let me tell you. We tried to get the attention of the donkey guy who didn't speak any english except madam! you ride! and ok!. he finally got the idea and let her get on a different donkey but then he's like you want to go up? and we said yes, we wanted to go back up. so he slaps the butt of stef's donkey and she goes up but i'm still tied to the line of other donkeys and definitely still going down. we're yelling hey hey! i want to go up too!!! and finally he gets the idea. The ride up was a lot more pleasant but our donkeys were definitely competative and did not want to let the other get ahead. we returned back safe and sound but later I found this MASSIVE bruise on my thigh that I didn't even notice i had gotten during the ride. It's seriously so huge, it looks like someone beat me. My story if anyone asks is that a greek guy tried to attack me but i fought him off using my sweet muscles i have gained from carrying around my backpack and i got away with only a thigh bruise. he looks much worse.

So that is the advenuture from Santorini! We are heading back to Athens this afternoon and then on to the airport where we'll hang out until our flight on wednesday evening. Pray that everything goes smoothly and safely as we are travelling late at night to the airport and not sure exactly how it all works.
I love you all and I'll see a lot of you in only 3 days!! see you soon,
Deanne

Dirty Cities and Seaside Paradises

Well hello all from Greece!
So yes, I have continued on my journeys to our next destination, it's true. It was good to get out of the rain of Romania and into the scorching hot sun of Greece (it's been over 35 here everyday so far). My tan is definitely coming along nicely.
We spent 2 days in Athens which was 2 days too long. It's a gross disgusting city and I never want to go back there again. We had a couple of harrowing adventures and I am glad to be out of there safely. We took a fery over to Paros 2 days ago and its absolutely beautiful. Our hostel is run by this family whose little boy came and was our tour guide from the ferry. The room is very cute and charming and we have a little balcony we can sit and watch the sea in the evenings. It's so safe here, we were shopping last night until midnight and the streets were still full of people. It's nice to have something to do in the evenings. I think today we are going to rent mopeds and go explore the island. They are only 5 euros for the whole day! sweet deal.
Our plan is to head over to Santorini tomorrow and spend a couple days on the beach there. Then we'll take a ferry back to Athens and go to the airport and then head off to London for a ltitle bit before we come home! As much as I'm loving traveling right now, I'm so ready to be home and not have to lug my life around in a bag. I have been taking lots and lots of pictures though so i'll be able to show all of you everything.
Well I need to head off before my internet time runs up here. I cant wait to see you all soon!
Deanne

A little baby died today.

I'm still not sure how I'm feeling about that.

Navodari!

wow so I'm visiting in Navodari for the weekend and I feel like I'm really experiencing the true Romania being here. Brasov is a very tourist city so this is more of the real country that i'm getting. Let me try and paint a bit of a picture for you:
- mangy, skinny stray dogs all over the place
- apartment buildings that look abandoned but are completely full of families
- water is turned off without warning and with no idea when it will come back on (such as when we arrived)
- all resaurants are outside and are so cheap to eat at (a full meal would cost about $6)
- people are outside walkiing around until all hours of the night. and when I say people, i don't mean a couple, it's like crowds
- cars called Dachias that are very reminiscent of Mr. Bean's car are all over the place and drive like maniacs. it is offensive to the driver to put on your seatbelt so sometimes, i'm a little afraid for my life

so that's a little of my experience here so far! I'm really enjoying it though. I love the people we are staying with and i'm picking up more and more Romanian so that's always neat. I'm learning the whole culture of the people which is something I love. I hate feeling like i'm visiting somewhere but not actually interacting with the people that live there on a day to day basis. This is the real trip for me.

Thank you to all of you who are praying for me! I've done and eaten so many things that should have made me sick already but I'm perfectly healthy and safe! I know your prayers are to thank for that. Tomorrow we head back to Brasov and then monday is our last day in the hospital so I know that's going to be hard to handle. I'm praying that I will come away from this feeling like I made a difference rather then feeling like I'm leaving something unfinished. At this point in time, that is how I'm feeling but I'm trying hard to realize that i was here for a purpose and that God is going to use these 2 short weeks for something in his greater plan. Thank you again for your prayers for me. They are truly needed and appreciated. I love you all!
Deanne

p.s. I finally figured out how to put pictures on here so here are a couple from the hospital.


Christina, Janos, and Valentina

Stef and ElliChristina and I (no she's not crying, she has a constant mouth open smile)beautiful baby girl

A Sad Day...

Another morning at the hospital has come to an end and this time I can't help but feeling very sad. My little Christina's mom showed up today to pick her up so she went home and that will probably be the last time I see her before I leave as well. As much as I'm glad that she's not having to sit in the hospital anymore, I don't know what her home situation is like so I don't know if it's a good thing or not. Most likely she is very poor because she's definitely from a gypsy village and her mom did not look healthy at all. I have grown so attatched to her over the past week that it's very hard for me to see her go. I can't believe how you can fall in love with this little person in such a short amount of time. It will be hard going back tomorrow and not seeing her face.

But on to less depressing subjects! Our time is flying by and we are almost done at the hospital! Tomorrow we'll be there for the morning, then we're off to Dracula's castle in the afternoon and then we're taking a weekend trip to Navadar, where Stef lived before, to visit some old friends. Brasov is a very rich and touristy city compared to the rest of Romania so to see the real authentic Romania will be very interesting to experience. Then Monday we'll work a full day as our last day in the hospital and then tuesday morning we're off! I'm remembering my 2 weeks on other missions trips and how they felt so long. This has gone by so quickly, 2 weeks is such a short amount of time. It would be quite different if I was here for a longer period of time. As much as I'd love to, I don't know if I could handle it...

I would love to post some pictures on here of the babies but the page is all in Romanian so I have no idea how to do that. I'll have to wait until I get home I guess.
Well I'll talk to you all very soon! Hope life in your part of the world is going well. I love you all,
Deanne

Buna Ziwa!

or Good day for those of you who don't speak Romanian!

Well my week at the hospital has come to an end and I'm still loving every moment of it. These kids have stolen my heart already and I can't imagine leaving them! I'll explain a little what our days are like so you can get an idea of what we are doing.
We work about 4 hours each day in the morning. We start out with just playing with the kids for a couple hours. They are all in metal cribs by themselves in hospital rooms, about 4 or 5 to a room. They don't get much attention from the nurses since they are kind of the leftover babies that aren't that sick so they get forgotten about. We go in there and try to hold everyone for a small amount of time. You should see the smiles on their faces as soon as we get in the room. It breaks your heart to know that they rest of the day they are just sitting there with nothing. They seem so content with so little yet they sob as soon as you get near their beds again because they know then you have to leave.

After playing, a lot of them get taken to do "ears". This is the hardest part of my day. The doctors here believe that if they have ear infections, they will clear up if you puncture the ear drum and drain out all the fluids. So every day they are taken to do this procedure and they come back crying with bloody ears. It's so heartbreaking. Normally if this procedure would be done, it would be a last resort with anesthetic but they don't get any of that. It's so very sad.
After this, we feed them their bottles and then change all the diapers. If we didn't buy and change the diapers, they would still be sitting there with rags all day. It sounds pretty pitiful doesn't it? Yet surprisingly, a lot of these kids are so happy, such wonderful kids. I would gladly adopt any one of them in a moment.

Some things I'm thinking of that you can pray for right now:
- that the international adoption laws would change so that people other than Romanians could adopt these children
- medical education would be able to be advanced so procedures such as the ears thing would be gotten rid of
- what we are doing would be able to make a difference in these children's lives

Well I think that's all I have for now! Send me an email if you want, I have internet here at the apartment while we are here so I can check anytime. I love you all!!
Deanne

Feeling odd...

Hello from Romania!!
At the moment, I'm writing this from a computer where everything is all in Romanian so I'm trying to figure out if I should press "publicare postare" or "salveaza acum" to publish this. Oh well, it's one of the two! But this is not the only place where I'm feeling lost. Being in a country where you don't hear any english around you is hard to get used to. Having Stef around who remembers bits of the language is very helpful. But I should start at the beginning!
We flew out of Vancouver 8:30 Sunday evening to London. I thought I would sleep on the plane but unforutnatey that did not happen so by the time we got to London, we were exhausted. We had to wait 4 hours for our next plane to Bucharest which was delayed in this area where they only put the gate number up 5 min. before your flight so you have to be ready to run when they post it. We did managed to make our flight and after that plus a long car ride with a relatively tame driver compared to a lot of Romanians, we made it to Romania at 2 am on Tuesday morning. Stef and I figured by this time we had not slept for over 32 hours so we crashed at our apartment and ended up sleeping for the next 12 hours without realizing it. It's a very odd feeling this jet lag. This afternoon we walked around Brasov with Steffi (one of the project managers here), her foster daughter Becca and her sister. She showed us where to get groceries as well as the tourist places and restaurants to go to. The architecture of the buildings here is amazing. They look so old and beautiful. The street where everything is has no cars on it, it's just a cobblestone road with shops on either side so it's really fun to walk down. And the food here is really cheap as long as you don't buy American brand name. We found this out the hard way when we bought a tub of butter for .75 while our Honey Nut Cheerios cost over 6 bucks. It's hard to get used to the money here as well as 20 000 lei only equals 1 doller but on the bill it only says "2" instead of 20000. I'm still trying to figure it all out.
Tomorrow we'll start our work in the orphanage in the morning which I'm really looking forward to. We found out it's illegal to take cameras into the hospital though so I won't be able to bring back any pictures of what I'm doing! kind of unfortunate but it's understandable. I got a little taste of what the kids are going to be like when we saw Becca this afternoon. She's already 2 and a half but Steffi said when she was 1 and a half she was still wearing 3-6 month size clothing. She's very very tiny.
Speaking of tiny, the Romanian people are very short and very small so I'm feeling like quite the oddity being here. Some of them look at me funny sometimes but oh well. It would be worse if I was blond. You look down the street and there are absolutely no blond heads unless they are dyed. there is definitely a Romanian look.
Well, I'm going to go try and get some sleep if possible. We've been forcing ourselves to stay awake even though we are exhausted so we can actually sleep through a night. I'll give you all an update soon! love you all,
Deanne