Orthodox Cemetery

It’s been much colder here in Brasov than we anticipated and none of us brought warm clothes. We didn’t really take into consideration that the altitude is higher. I have been freezing since we got here. The hostel doesn’t have heat, so whenever we’re there, I stay all bundled up in blankets.

We didn’t do as much touring around today, but we did go look around an old Greek Orthodox chapel. When we got there, a funeral that was being held there was just getting out, so we had to wait out on the street for a little bit. When we finally went inside, no one was there. I started walking around to look at all the beautiful paintings on the ceiling and an alter at the very front of the chapel. As I was looking, a priest came back in from outside and yelled at me. Apparently, only women are allowed in the back half of the chapel and are not allowed past a certain point. Then only the high priests are allowed in a little sacred room behind the alter. Luckily, none of us had made it that far yet.

After looking around, we browsed the souvenirs that the priest was selling at the very back of the chapel on a little table. I bought a little metal bracelet for 3 lei. As we were all paying for our things, an elderly man walked in the chapel and began talking with us and asking us where we were from. He didn’t seem to be completely all there, but was so adorable and friendly. All of a sudden, from behind the table, the priest grabbed his straw broom and smacked the old man really hard on the butt, almost knocking him down. I’m guessing he didn’t want a crazy man in his chapel. Luckily, the old man just started laughing, so we started laughing too. It’s not every day, you see a priest smack an old man with a broom.

Outside the chapel, the old man told us that we were all really beautiful and to be careful everywhere we go. One girl asked to take a picture with him, and pretty soon, the old man was posing for tons of pictures and making the funniest faces I have ever seen. For some reason, he kept opening his mouth really big, so we had to show him how to smile.

We told the old man goodbye then decided to go walk around in the cemetery right next to the chapel. We started walking that direction and the old man got really excited and motioned for us to follow him. He walked us through the cemetery and stopped at one particular grave. It had a few different names of members of his family on it. He set a candle he had alongside the grave. In the Orthodox Church, they believe that lighting a candle will carry your prayers up to heaven. He couldn’t light it, because he forgot a match and got frustrated and tears welled up in his eyes. We could tell this was really important to him. A couple girls ran back to see if there were any matches inside the chapel. The rest of us sat with the old man as he explained that his brother was buried there and had been killed by gunshot. As he was telling us, he put his head in his hands and began to sob. We didn’t really know what to do and there was little we knew how to say to him, but he seemed so lonely. I noticed there were flowers laid on many of the surrounding graves but that his brother’s was bare, so I picked a big, yellow dandelion and asked the man if I could lay it on the grave. He smiled really big and whispered ‘thank you’ through his tears.


The other girls came back with a lighter the priest had given them, and we helped the man light his candle. He cheered up a ton. We asked him if he wanted to pray, but he didn’t seem to understand, so we just sat with him a little while longer and listened as he told us more about his family. Again he started to sob. I will never forget the look in his eyes. They were filled with so much sorrow. We couldn’t really understand what he said had happened to his family, but we could tell the man had experienced a tragedy. He kept pointing to the grave over and over when he knew we didn’t understand and was trying so hard to tell us something. I wanted so bad just to be able to bear my testimony to this man and tell him that he would see his family again. We all just gave him hugs. It was all we could do. As I hugged him, I felt a lot of sympathy for him, and gained a small sense for what it is like to mourn with those that mourn.

We told the man goodbye and began to leave. I stayed a couple of steps behind the rest of the girls and shook his hand. Before I let go, I looked him in the eye and asked him in the little Romanian I could remember, “Do you know that Jesus Christ lives and that he loves us?” Tears streamed down his face as he smiled and nodded then thanked me over and over.

Later tonight, we played cards and went out for gogosi. As we were leaving the hostel, I discovered that my flipflops were missing. Everyone has to leave their shoes at the front door of the hostel. I was a little worried since they were the only pair of shoes I had brought to Brasov with me. I had to borrow someone’s bright pink crocks until I could look for mine, and when we went out on the streets, people were laughing and pointing at my feet. Later and literally only minutes before leaving to catch our train back to Iasi, I saw a girl walking around the hostel in my flip flops, and asked for them back. I wasn’t exactly willing to walk around the train station barefoot.

Dracula & Pelis Castles

We finally got in to Brasov late last night and walked to our hostel. We are staying at Hostel Rolling Stone. I’ve always had this image in my head of what a hostel looks like, and although it’s not a place I would call home, it is much less intimidating than the name lets on. We are in a small room with about six metal bunk beds and a few lockers for our backpacks. There is a living room with a small television and a computer with Internet, and a kitchen where they serve “breakfast” every morning. The bathrooms are kind of gross, because the floor is always flooded with about a half inch of water from the showers, and you can’t flush your toilet paper. The septic tanks here and everywhere else, including my apartment in Iasi, are not sophisticated enough to handle it.

Last night, we went out to dinner at a restaurant called Casa Romaneasca. The service here was pretty bad, but the atmosphere was fun and we weren’t in any kind of hurry. We all ordered Fanta to drink, which I have quickly discovered is pretty popular thing here. It’s on every menu. I ordered Snitel and sautéed mushrooms for dinner, which I enjoyed very much. Snitel is basically just breaded chicken. While we ate, we were entertained by live music. There was a keyboarder, a saxophone player, and a female singer.

Today we took a tour around Brasov and got to see the Bran Castle (Dracula’s Castle) and the Pelis Castle (pronounced pay-lish). We paid Greg, the owner of the hostel, and he drove us around to all the places we wanted to see. Bran Castle is very pretty and not anything like the depiction of it in the movies. In fact, we learned as we were walking through it that the man who the Dracula fable was made up about, never even lived in the castle. It was occupied by various kings and queens. To be honest, all the other girls and I were a bit disappointed upon hearing this, and found the history of the royalty who lived there to be pretty dull. As we wandered throughout the castle, we focused on the fable and imagined that Dracula had really lived there to make things a little more interesting. My favorite part of the castle was the secret stairs, which were dark and narrow and hidden inside one of the walls. After going through the entire castle, we walked around outside and looked at all the little souvenirs the gypsies were selling at their stands. We also got to taste sheep cheese.
The next stop was the Pelis Castle, which was way up in the mountains and quite a lengthy drive to get to. I learned that sheep cheese, windy roads, and a brake-happy driver don’t mix. I felt pretty nasty by the time we got out of the van, but luckily didn’t throw up. As we were walking to the castle, Elyse fainted, which gave me a few minutes to sit down and let my stomach settle while they were helping her. Between sites on the tour, it was go, go, go, so Elyse and I joked later that she had fainted to buy the group some time to relax.

The Pelis Castle was so immaculate, down to every last detail. Outside, there were beautiful gardens with giant statues and a huge terrace. Inside was a guided tour in English by a man with an accent so thick, it sounded like he was speaking a different language. We had to put special slippers on so our shoes wouldn’t scuff the marble floor, and we weren’t allowed to take any pictures. We learned that the castle was built for Romania’s king Carol, who was obvisouly ridiculously wealthy. We walked through a lot of rooms, and they only made up a small fraction of the castle. Everything was made of wood and carved with the most intricate detail; the floors, the walls, the furniture, everything. There were dining rooms, sitting rooms, a music room, a library, a theater where the first Romanian film was made, and dozens of other kinds of rooms. There were beautiful rugs, paintings, and statues everywhere. One of my favorite things was the giant metal knight in one of the hallways.

Driving back to the hostel, I felt a lot of anxiety in the car. All the people here drive kind of crazy, but until today, it hadn’t really gotten to me. Sometimes there are lines to mark lanes and sometimes there are not. Everyone ignores the speed limit, weaves in and out of each other, no one signals…ever, and no one stops until the very last second. I also noticed living in Iasi that drivers frequently run red lights, so we never immediately start crossing the street after the light turns red. Watching people drive here, you would think they have no road rules. They also park on the sidewalks, but they have to. When the city was built, none of the people had cars, and so they didn’t leave room for parking lots. Today, it’s a big problem and everyone just parks in random places.

Tonight, we relaxed and walked to the main square back in town. There was some kind of music festival going on, and there were folk dancers and performances by a young singing group. Tons of people were dancing to the music and there were kids playing in a fountain. While we were there, we ran into a big group of senior missionary couples who were ecstatic when we told them we were students from BYU. We talked to them for about an hour, and one of the couples said they were transferring to Iasi in a few weeks and promised to come visit us.

We went to dinner at Bella Muzica and I basically ordered the same thing that I did at the other restaurant last night, but it was even better. We had flan and crepes for dessert that were so amazing. When I went to the bathroom at the restaurant, I was shocked to see motion censored faucets and paper towel dispensers. You would never find them in Iasi. As weird as it sounds, a few of us girls didn’t want to leave the bathroom and just talked in there for a few minutes. We’re all starting to experience culture shock to some degree and are missing all the everyday comforts and luxuries from home. That bathroom was the closest thing we could find I guess.

Later tonight, after hanging out at the hostel for a while, we went to a small grocery store and bought snacks. On the walk back, we saw two huge rainbows stretching over the mountain with the Brasov sign on it. We all stopped and just stared, and a guy passing by, taught us the word for ‘rainbow’.

Train to Brasov

Right now we are on a train to Brasov (pronounced brashov) , which is nine hours south of Iasi. We can’t get into the orphanage or hospital yet, so we decided to go on a three-day trip. We have four more hours to go, but the ride is going quickly. I have been staring out the window for hours; there is so much to see. The countryside is so different from the city where I am living. In the city, it’s just apartment bloc after apartment bloc, but out here, it’s so open and green.

Every few minutes we pass another village. The people out here live on small plots of farmland and have shack-like homes with bright, shingled roofs and picket fences. Many homes look as if they can scarcely stand on their own. In almost every yard, there is loads of bright colored laundry strung up to dry. Throughout the village are small dirt roads on which farmers are driving horse and buggies stacked with hay and wood. In the fields, are whole families, including grandmothers, working in the garden or driving herds of cows and goats. Small groups of children are playing soccer in the streets.

We made a new friend on the train named Nicolae and one of the friendliest Romanians we have talked to so far. He’s an older man and doesn’t speak any English, but has made it his personal duty to visit our train compartment every half hour and make sure we are seeing this hillside or that mountaintop, while giving us a thorough rundown of his personal history again and again. We are having a difficult time understanding him, but have probably heard the word ‘frumos’, meaning ‘beautiful’, come out of his mouth about a million times. We are debating whether or not he is slightly intoxicated, but either way, he is quite the character. He told us that his sister works in the hospital where we will be volunteering and gave us her name. This could be a huge blessing to us, because connections with workers at the hospital are everything. The more they trust you and have a relationship with you, the more they will allow you to do with the children.

Soccor & Street Kids

Since we couldn’t get train tickets to Transylvania until tomorrow, we didn’t really have anything to do today, we kind of just had the whole day to kick back and relax. We walked to the internet café in the midmorning to email and update our blogs. The café is not my favorite place in the world. It’s dark and smoky in there and they play really loud and repetitive techno music, so I’m usually in a hurry to get in and get out. The computers are kind of slow though, and today we had a really difficult time uploading pictures and getting the computer to do what we wanted. I wish so bad that we just had internet in our apartment, but I guess it’s a blessing in disguise, because I can’t allow myself to sit and waste half my day on the computer when I can be out interacting with the people.

After going to the café, my roommates and I decided to go for a long walk around the city. It was so nice and sunny out today, and after all the rain the past couple of days, we had to be outside. We walked up past the Hala and decided to go try another pastry, a covrig, which we had heard so many good things about. It is similar to a giant pretzel. Unfortunately, we were a bit disappointed and they were all soggy on the bottoms from sitting too long, so we threw them away.

Continuing our walk, we went past a broken fence and could see two young boys playing soccer on the other side. We stopped for a quick second to watch before continuing on. Moments later, however, one of the boys popped his head through the split in the fence and squealed with delight, “Blondes!” Then he and the other boy climbed through the fence and came over to where we were. They started talking and talking and we told them we spoke very little Romanian. We still managed to make conversation with them though. We couldn’t understand most of what they said, but they kept saying to one another, “Frumoasa!” which means ‘beautiful’. They were so intrigued by us.

They showed off their soccer skills for us and were eager to let us in on their passing game. They would kick it up in the air as many times as they could without letting it hit the ground. Within a matter of seconds, about ten other street children appeared out of nowhere, and pretty soon, we were completely bombarded with little street kids all trying to win our attention. They all watched as I kick the ball as many times as I could, and laughed when I mess up after just a couple of times.
After a few minutes of playing, I saw one of their mothers watching us and smiling. She came over and talked to us a little too. She seemed surprised when I told her we were from the U.S. I asked her if it would be ok if we took a picture and she nodded, but then when I tried to get her to be in it, she shyly backed away and pointed to the kids.

Taking a picture sparked a whole new level of excitement in all the kids. Before we knew it, they were all posing and smiling so we’d take their picture. The little leader of the group, Roberto, began flexing his muscles and started a trend that caught on quickly with all the boys. My favorite moment though, was when one of the smallest boys had been having trouble getting in any of the group pictures with the older boys. When I glanced over, he was standing frozen in a pose, frantically grabbing at another boy to join him, all without breaking his pose, so we would know to take his picture.

Church at the Villa

It started pouring rain and we got drenched!

Church is held at 10:00 am on the second floor of the Villa, a beautiful three story building that functions as a factory, a church meetinghouse, and an apartment all in one. It only took us about ten minutes to walk to church, and needless to say, we somehow managed to get a little muddy in that short of a time. On the way over, we were greeted by three adorable and friendly street dogs who decided to follow us the entire way to church.

Sacrament meeting was a whole new experience. The branch is very small; only about ten members plus three sets of missionaries. I am curious to find out why they have so many missionaries in such a small branch. During fast and testimony meeting, a couple of the missionaries sat by us and translated the meeting so we could understand. I wanted to bear my testimony really bad, and the missionaries said they would translate for us if we wanted, but I really wanted to bear it in Romanian. I almost built up the courage, but decided to wait until next month when I’ve practiced and can remember how to say a little more.

I was so touched when President Popovich stood and bore testimony of his gratitude for us girls who traveled so far to serve his people. This man has so much faith! He has been branch president for ten years now, and although the numbers aren’t growing and retention is nearly zero, he has so much faith in the branch. I was so impressed when he said, “Someday, we will be like the U.S. and there will be so many people here, there won’t be enough time for everyone to bear their testimonies. That will be amazing!”

The relief society women are so strong! During the lesson, most of them expressed how their husbands are not members or are not active in the church. In Romania, men are dominant and the women are much more submissive to the men than you would ever see in the U.S. One sister explained how she never bears her testimony to her husband with her words, but she reads scripture stories to her family and sometimes he listens. She also expressed her love for her children and how her husband looks down on her for playing with her boys. Here, they believe that parents should play the role of a discipliner and a teacher, and not a friend. Her husband told her, “They can feel love when they sleep.” As difficult as it is for the sisters to raise their families in such a society, they seem so faithful.

There are only two active youth in the branch, a brother and sister. I was so sad when their mother told us, “My children have no friends. They live a very isolated life. Maybe someday they will, but not for now. All the kids smoke and drink. I always tell them that they must live one life or the other; that they cannot be on both sides.”

I am in such awe of the members here. After seeing the faith of these members, I realize I had it so easy growing up as a member of the church. Even when I thought I had it so hard, the challenges I faced now seem so insignificant compared to what these youth deal with every single day. They have willingly sacrificed so much for this Gospel, and it is so evident by the different light they have in their eyes.

As we started walking back home, it began pouring rain! We tried to stay dry, but our efforts were worthless. We got soaked from head to toe! Without a clothes dryer, getting wet is a huge pain, but we decided it was just another adventure to add to our Romania experience. Slipping in puddles and covered in mud, we laughed hysterically the whole way home.

Open Market

Today we got to see a lot more of the city. I had been wondering ever since we got here, why things didn’t seem quite as bad as they had let on in prep class. We found today though, that outside the few blocks radius from where we have been, the conditions are dramatically different. Where I am living, there are tons of apartment buildings, small businesses, a few restaurants, and two malls- the Moldova Mall and the Hola Centrala. Just a couple blocks further behind the Hala, is where things change. We walked over there to go try Gogosi. It’s like a giant scone filled with chocolate, cheese, jelly, or some other filling. They are even better than they told us they would be.

Behind the Hala, people live in shack-like homes rather than apartments. Many of their homes are falling apart. There have laundry hanging everywhere and laid out across fences. In one yard, I saw two very expensive looking winter coats hung on a chain link fence. This is where most of the gypsies are seen. They hang out in groups on the streets during the day. They don’t do anything but look as we walk past. For the first time, a young street boy approached us to beg for money. I had already decided before I came that I wouldn’t hand out money to street children since it usually does more harm than good. It was still really hard not to though.

We also saw a boy sitting and playing a recorder for change. We noticed he had a very dead look in his eyes. When we walked up to listen, he didn’t even seem to acknowledge that we were there. He had a little cardboard mat next to him with a miniature black dog sitting on it. The dog was so adorable and dressed in a tiny pink bonnet, and smiling with it’s little white teeth. It just sat there with a frozen look on its face while the little boy played his flute inches from the dog’s ears. We all agreed that it looked as if the dog was thinking, “This is the eighth time you’ve played this song and why do I have to wear this gay little pink bonnet?”

Later in front of the Hala, a small gypsy girl about six years old, begged us for money too. She was very dirty and her sandals were on the wrong feet. She started pretending to cry so we would have sympathy for her. We told her we didn’t have any money, then tried to make conversation by telling her that her shoes needed to be switched, but she didn’t seem to care.

This afternoon, we finally got to go to the Piata (pronounced pee-aht-zuh). This is by far my favorite place in Iasi! It’s an open market where people bring fresh produce to sell that day. There are tables and tables full of fruits and vegetables picked that morning. There are also tables of fresh flowers. The majority of the vendors are gypsy, but if you go inside some doors right next to the open market outside, there are Romanians selling produce and cheese on tables as well. They let us taste some of the cheeses. There aren’t any yellow cheeses or parmesan, but there are dozens of soft, white cheeses to chose from. Most of them look like giant blocks of cream cheese and they all look the same, but they taste very different. Most taste either salty or bitter.

Today we bought oranges, bananas, apples, pears, onions, a pepper, a few potatoes, and a bundle of flowers. They weighed everything on a little scale, and we had to watch carefully so they couldn’t try and rip us off. Annie got ripped off buying the pears and apples. Whitney and I thought we were getting ripped off with our oranges, until we realized that when the scale says 34. lei, it really means 3.4 lei. That took us a while to figure out. We were embarrassed, because we had been telling the lady that she was charging us too much. The thing that stinks is that we cannot buy any of the produce that we can’t bleach or peel, which eliminates things like strawberries and lettuce. They would absorb the bleach.

When we left the Piata, we were sitting with our bags, waiting for the other group of girls to meet up with us. Another small gypsy girl walked up to us, holding her baby brother, and asked politely if she could have one banana. I had bought the bananas and had a whole bundle, so I decided to give her one. She smiled and told me thank you. She walked only a few steps before she peeled it and started sharing it with her brother. As I sat and watched them devour this banana, my heart went out to these children.

Spring Cleaning

I am really glad that I was able to get up so easily when my alarm went off this morning. When I started up the water for my first shower, I was sprayed in the face with cold water and the shower curtain fell on top of me. There’s no showerhead, just a hand held sprayer. Later in the morning, we heard a few more loud crashes. One of my roommates had slipped and fallen, because our tub is so slippery.

After our adventurous morning, we walked a few blocks to the other girls’ apartment and met with Mario to go over some important business and to pay our rent. We showed up with lei, but are apparently supposed to pay our rent in euro for some reason. We couldn’t run to the bank and exchange our money, because today is Worker’s Day and all government institutions are closed. They will be closed tomorrow as well. Mario said that Worker’s Day is a communist holiday that the current government has continued to implement.

I got to meet Mario’s 4 year-old daughter. Her name is Joanna, but in Romanian, it is pronounced yoo-wahn-ah. She can speak English fairly well, but won’t respond unless you talk in Romanian. We were all a little intimidated to try, so we didn’t say much to her. She kept telling her mom, “I am frustrated. I don’t want to speak English.” When we all walked over to a pet shop with Mario to get flea spray, a few of us waited outside with Joanna since we couldn’t all fit in the store. I finally got the guts to speak to her, but couldn’t think of what I could say. Finally, I just told her she had a beautiful name. She opened up a little and started picking up piles of gravel and putting it in our hands. We made a game of it, and she’d laugh when we’d drop it. I realized that you really don’t have to speak much to be able to interact with the people here. As long as you just try your best, they’ll usually open up to you.

It rained a bunch today, so it was a good motivator to stay inside and do some spring-cleaning. There’s a lot of stuff that has accumulated from previous groups of interns, and so we sorted through everything and decided to throw a lot of it out. We bagged up tons of clothes and shoes, and hauled a spare mattress that was infested with fleas to the dumpster in the back of the building. Besides trash, we sat everything in front of the dumpsters rather than putting it inside. Just as we expected, everything had been taken within a short while. People out here will make use of just about anything that is thrown out. We always see people going through the dumpsters. After hauling the first load, we saw a man who was waiting close by, so he could have first dibs on everything. He was already pulling stuff out before we were very far away.

We went back to the grocery store at the Hala for a few more things. It’s so close that we’ll probably go at least every couple of days. We had a much easier time today. We noticed that some items are discounted if you have a grocery card, so we asked a cashier for one. It took us a little while for us to try and explain what we wanted and she laughed at us, but we finally got one.

Tonight, we watched Miss Congeniality while we ate dinner. We don’t have a T.V. but we brought some DVDs to watch on a laptop. I won’t have a hard time adjusting to having no television, because I don’t watch it very often back home anyway. I thought for sure that I would have a hard time leaving my cell phone, but I’m already forgetting all about it.

We Finally Made It!

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

It is 11:00 PM in Iasi, Romania. I am sitting here looking out the window in sheer disbelief that I am finally here! A year and a half of preparation and this is finally it. I was on the phone with mom a short while ago, sorting out a problem with my debit card. While I am getting ready for bed, she is just beginning the most hectic part of her afternoon. There is a nine hour time difference. I should sleep fine considering the three exhausting flights it took to get here.

We actually left yesterday, and just got in this afternoon. I had a difficult time sleeping on the plane, because it never got completely dark before the sun started rising again and I was a little anxious. I felt completely fine until I arrived at the airport and began to feel pretty nervous. I just had no idea what to expect.

The first flight from Denver to Chicago was nice and roomy. They assigned me one of the premium seats with extra leg room even though I hadn’t paid extra for it when I checked in. I talked a lot with the elderly couple next to me. They were so thrilled about what I was coming to do and promised that if I ever wrote a book about it, they would read it. The woman said just to make sure to include my picture on the back, so she can recognize me.

Once I made it to the Chicago airport, I had a difficult time finding my gate, because the airport is so huge! After walking across the entire airport, I found I needed to get on a tram that would take me to another building totally separate from the main airport. While I was still wandering through the main terminal, I saw a Hispanic woman fighting tears and looking around in confusion. She approached me and I couldn’t understand her, but she pointed to the gate number on her ticket and mumbled something about her son. I hardly know any Spanish, but I was able to walk her to her gate and make a little conversation on the way. I think she felt a little better when I pointed to my ticket and told her I was struggling myself. She was a sweet lady and seemed very grateful for my help. Soon after, I met up with the eight other interns at our gate, and traveled together the remainder of the way.

The second flight from Chicago to Vienna took about ten hours. We flew on Austrian Air and everything was in German, which we found quite amusing. There were about 80 other BYU students on our same flight who were on their way to Jerusalem for a semester. The food was surprisingly pretty good. We ate dinner and breakfast, and were offered lots of drinks and cigars in between. I was thankful for so many non-smokers on the flight. To pass the time, I watched a couple of free movies, talked a bit with a man next to me from Israel, and spent a lot of time staring out the window even though it was almost impossible to see anything with the cloud-cover. There was something so exciting about seeing even the tiniest patches of green here and there and just knowing that I was flying over entirely new places. Once we began descending, I could finally see clearly the gorgeous, green hills of Austria. I already can’t wait to go back and stay a few days at the end of my trip.

We finally made it to Iasi, exhausted and slightly nauseous from yet another landing. It was raining a little when we got in. Like Vienna, everything is so green here! The airport is tiny. There is only one landing strip and besides about four airport personnel, the nine of us were the only ones there. We gathered up our luggage and discovered that two girls were missing some of theirs, but the airport manager seemed very considerate and provided them with some overnight kits until the luggage arrives. We finally got to meet Marionella (Mario), a local who speaks fluent English and who has agreed to help us with whatever we need during the next four months. She already had taxis waiting for us outside. As we loaded everything into the little compact cabs, the drivers were laughing at the size of our luggage. It took three cabs to fit all of our things. Mary, Whitney, and I had a very friendly driver and it was fun trying to put our Romanian to use for the very first time. We struggled quite a bit, but found roundabout ways to tell him what we wanted to say. We passed a big lake and I was curious to know the word for it. All I managed to ask was, “How do you say big water?” He knew what I meant and told me how to say it. When he turned on the radio, we were all shocked to hear a popular American song. Many stations here play music by American artists, even though most people do not speak English. I guess there just aren’t too many popular Romanian artists out there, so they have to borrow music from elsewhere.

I live at Strada A. Panu Numerul 21, Blocul 7, Etaj 6, Apartamentul 29. Everyone in the city lives in a high-rise apartment building called a bloc. My bloc is called “Scala” for short. The floor at ground level is used for small businesses. We have a bank right under us. My apartment is on the sixth floor, but there are far more than six staircases to get up to it. Lucky for us, we have an “elevator” which is really just a small metal door in the wall that opens to two more wooden saloon-like doors; all having to be opened and closed by hand. Only about four people can fit inside at a time, and not comfortably. We learned that lesson right away when the four of us crammed inside and found we couldn’t even shut the doors unless we stood literally shoulder to shoulder. Personal space is a luxury I will soon miss.

Every hallway and stairwell in every apartment bloc has it’s own smell, although the majority contain some variation of a sewage or outhouse odor. Ours smells like a giant sewage pipe while the other girls’ apartment smells just like Casa Bonita to me. I think that its due to all the millions of plants they have in their stairwell.

I can easily say that I will come out of this experience being so much more grateful for the living conditions in the U.S. The tap water comes out brown every once in a while, one of our toilets doesn’t flush at all, and the other can’t flush any paper. The washing machine water is also brown and empties into our bath, and there are flea and roach problems. Luckily, we have only come across two roaches so far and they sell very potent flea spray here. There are four of us in our apartment and we each share a bed with one other person, although Mary and I lost the coin toss and got the couch pullout rather than the bed. The other apartment has five girls, who share two or three to a bed, so I can’t complain. Everything in the kitchen is miniature sized. We have a tiny stove that has to be lit with a match, and is difficult to regulate the temperature. It’s gets extremely hot and it’s hard to avoid burning food. The counters are not connected to the walls, and the drawers in them are broken and falling apart. We have no kitchen table or chairs, so we eat in the living room. The fridge is now working fine, but it took us a little while to figure out how to make it cold.

The one (and only) element of the apartment that I absolutely love is our balcony that overlooks the city. It’s the length of the whole apartment. It’s fun to watch the people coming and going below and there are tons of pigeons that come and perch on it. We have a clothesline that stretches across it to hang out our clothes and towels since there are no dryers. Just below our balcony is a little rooftop with a small shed on top of it. We frequently hear an elderly man clinking and hammering in there.

We went to the Hola Centrala earlier, which is an old mall with a small grocery store inside. We felt a bit lost and did a lot of wandering before we found foods we are familiar with. Many things are similar to what we have in the U.S., but it’s hard to tell what things are by the packaging. We were hungry and exhausted, so we didn’t have a lot of patience. I think the only thing that kept us sane was the American music playing in the background that helped us to feel more at ease. They played songs by Nickelback, Norah Jones, Fergie, and Chris Brown. When we were finally done, we argued over who would pay at the register first, since none of us had ever paid with Romanian lei before. Once we figured out how it was done, it was very easy though. On our way out, with our hands full of groceries, we experienced our first pickpocket attempt. A man passing us on our way out felt Whitney’s back pocket. Luckily she didn’t have anything in there. We’ve been keeping all our cash in our bras and it seems to work very nicely.
After going to our apartment to finish unpacking, we went to get some dinner at the Moldova Mall, which is a bigger and much newer mall. It’s still small compared to ones in the U.S., but just about as nice. We ordered Schworma, which is actually not all that bad. It’s basically a wrap filled with chicken, sauer krout, pickles, whole French fries, and some other things. It took them about thirty minutes to make our food, so we had to sit in the food court and wait. We were all talking and didn’t notice that Mary had dosed off until a mall security guard came over and started yelling at her to wake up. He was speaking so quickly and we told him we couldn’t understand, but he didn’t seem to care. He finally left, but kept close watch on us from a distance. After that we helped each other to stay awake, although it was hard. We aren’t used to the huge time difference, and our bodies are trying to sleep against our will. At least now we know not to fall asleep in public places.

My Research

In Romania, I will be conducting research to study the effects that institutional care has on young children and their development. I will be comparing quality of care between an orphanage and a small, children's group home which offers more of a home-type atmosphere. Here is my research paper:

Abstract

Environment has been shown to play a strong, contributing role in the development of young children. The quality of the environment can greatly benefit or hinder cognitive and social learning processes. For institutionalized children, many negative effects have been shown to take influence over this process, due to the lack of nurturing qualities most commonly attributed to the home. Studies show that among the factors that determine the overall success of child development within childcare, quality of care-type has been shown to be most significant.

Introduction

The educator and communications theorist, Marshall McLuhan stated, “Environments are not just containers, but are processes that change the content entirely.” Numerous studies have been done that show a strong positive correlation between the environment in which one is surrounded and the influences on the individual. This is markedly true for young children, whose developmental tracks are exceptionally fluid, and whose surroundings largely govern their learning processes. Not only is environment fundamental, but particularly that of the home and family. No other environment shows a greater magnitude of effects, whether positive or negative, than the incalculable influence of the home environment and the inexchangeable parental bond. With this being said, children under institutional care face some of the biggest challenges. Not only have they come from difficult circumstances that brought them to the state, but they also face additional challenges that exist within the institutional setting. The challenge then, is for institutions to come up with meaningful methods that will rear infants and toddlers in settings of security, consistency, and learning opportunities. It is important to recognize that while child care amenities have the ability to facilitate children in a positive manner, it is difficult to establish characteristics as influential as those provided by the home environment. In the past two decades, one of the most consistent findings to emerge in child development research is the link between quality of care and a child’s developmental progress. Little attention, however, has been directed toward quality of care within different types of child care settings (NICHD,1998). In order to fill in this gap, different types of care should be analyzed to determine the differences, if any, that exist in environmental settings and how each contributes to a child’s cognitive and social growth.

Literature Review

Vast amounts of studies and research have been conducted to evaluate cognitive and social development in institutionalized children. In sync with the afore mentioned link between higher quality care and improvement in development, the National Institute Of Child Health And Human Development (NICHD) performed a longitudinal study in 2003 to determine the strength of this correlation. More than 1,000 children from various care centers were followed from birth to 4 ½ yrs of age, and by means of interviews and observations, cognitive skills and social behaviors were assessed for each child. Findings showed that there was indeed a strong correlation between child-care quality and children’s linguistic, cognitive, and social functioning. Those in child-care homes experienced significantly lower levels of behavioral problems and a higher level of social competence than children at a center.

In another study conducted by Fyvie and Ager (1997), 119 institutionalized orphans in Iasi, Romania between the ages of 16 and 24 were surveyed. Each orphan came from one of three groups; those raised in a state-run institution, non-state orphans attending a center for learning disabilities, and non-state orphans attending a mainstream school. The survey used in the study was split up into two parts, questioning these young adults about family-related variables and their academic achievement. After conducting the survey, Fyvie and Ager made two major conclusions. First, they emphasized the importance of cultivating “family links” while children are growing up in an institution and the associated feelings of security. Second, the survey showed that the type of institutional care received contributed immensely to each individual’s academic standing and overall success. It was hypothesized that the children who grew up in the state orphanages were at a much greater disadvantage than those who had attended either a center for the handicapped or a public school.

One method developed and practiced by the Pikler Institute in Budapest (2003), greatly contributed to the utilizing of methods to improve the development of children living within an institution setting. By placing high concentration on the roles of the caregiver and by simulating home-type qualities, they were able to render higher-levels of development as they eliminated many institutional characteristics. Nurses at the institution focused on having close, one-on-one interactions with individual children and bathed them in rich verbal exchange. Caregivers would always ask children for permission before performing tasks, so that “nothing was ever done in silence”. In addition, nurses offered consistency and predictability through highly structured schedules to give children higher feelings of security. During playtime, emphasis was placed on learning rather than teaching, and children were encouraged to develop skills naturally and in their own time. In allowing kids to explore without adult intervention, they developed “faith in their own skills” and independence. Finally, while nurses worked to build bonds with the children, they maintained enough distance so that when the time arrived for separation, it wouldn’t devastate child or caretaker. The outcomes of the Pikler methods were remarkable. Researchers studied 30 children who had spent their years of infancy in the Pikler Institute and found that none of the children showed any signs of institutionalization, emotional disturbance, or impaired development.

Not only have findings regarding the quality of child-care types been significant towards understanding child development in institutions, but also the numbers of children within a facility. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey Of Youth (NLSY), Blau (1999) discovered a positive correlation between child development outcomes and characteristics of low ratios between adults and children. The sample consisted of 12, 652 individuals between the ages of 14 and 21. Subjects were assessed using standard development tests at the age of 4 or 5, and then reassessed every two years. Variables included in the analysis were staff:child ratios, group sizes, and level of staff training. Training was classified by whether or not formal training or schooling had been received in childhood or special education. The outcome of the tests revealed that children scored better on the tests whose childcare experience was characterized by low ratios and more highly trained staff. They also found that these measures had lesser impact on children in their first three years of life, and increased significantly at 3 to 6 years. From this study, researchers were able to draw the conclusion that the factors of group size, staff:child ratio, and training render children, especially those between 3 and 6, in higher developmental success.

Methodology

For a four-month duration, the environmental settings surrounding two distinct, non-maternal state facilities in Iasi, Romania were analyzed. Dissimilarities between a children’s placement center and a small group home were observed on a regular basis to determine the effects of a standard institutional setting versus a more home-like atmosphere. The method for analysis used was observational study and no factors within each setting were simulated or altered. Child-care measures were based solely off of the following variables: type of child-care, quality of care within the facility, and the staff to child ratio and interactive group sizes. The two samples of children observed in the study came from a variety of family circumstances and were of various ages, although the majority was made up of infants and toddlers. The samples used were significant to the qualitative research, because the majority were at the age where environment is critical to their developmental processes.

Type Of Care-
For this observational study, the two types of care-giving arrangements were simply classified as either center or group home.

Quality of Child Care-
Assessment of quality of care was obtained through observation of the fulfillment of care-giving roles and qualifications of the staff. During the observational intervals at each location, fulfillment of care-giving roles was determined by a few different factors. Notes were taken on the interactions between caregivers and children, including responses to behavior, amount of one-on-one communication, and consistency in methods. The verification of staff qualifications was based on interviews with full-time staff members to find what amount of schooling, if any, was completed beforehand and what other child care experience they had.

Staff:Child Ratio-
The quantitative ratio of staff members to children was measured by taking the total number of staff supposed to be working at any given time versus the number of children enrolled in the facility. In addition to this measurement, group sizes for activities during playtime, feeding, etc. were noted to determine how much close interaction was offered to each child.

Why There Are So Many Orphans

One of the most outrageous policies that was put into place under Nicolae Ceausescu, was created in an attempt to double the entire poulation of Romania in just ten short years. In efforts to accomplish this, contraceptives and abortions were made illegal and all women were forced to have monthly examinations to ensure abortion attempts hadn't been made. After 1983, all women were expected to birth a minimum of five children. Failure to do so would result in being taxed infeasible amounts of money, making it even more difficult for families to survive off of their already meager incomes. Barren and unmarried women were also subjected to higher taxes. Women who were submissive to the policy were glorified by propaganda calling them "Heroine Mothers". Because families were so impoverished, many could not afford to support their children and had to give them up to state orphanages. Sadly, others simply abandoned them. By the time Ceausescu was executed in 1989, there were over 200,000 children under state care. With so many children and such a small number of caretakers within each orphanage (roughly 2 workers per 100 children), the children spent their most critical years of development laying in cribs with little or no human interaction. As a result, the majority developed severe physical and mental disorders from lack of stimulation, interaction, and nurturing. For some, the lack of being nurtured was enough to stop their bodies' growth entirely. This meant that even a decade later, a child could still appear and have the same mental capacity as an infant. In addition to the disorders, children fought malnutrition, disease from the unsanitary conditions, and mistreatment. Those that managed to learn to crawl were tied by the ankle to their cribs to keep them from climbing out.

Since 1989, conditions have improved, but change is still slow. There are about 50,000 children in orphanages and other facilities today. While this is only a fourth of the original number, there are still far too few resources to give adequate care to these children. In addition to those under state care, there are thousands more children living on the streets who have either run away from a facility or were released due to their age.