Rogova, My Rural Home

Today was our first day at Rogova. I was up and moving by 8:00 and walked to the house (which I will post video of) for breakfast at 9:00. Cathy made French toast with strawberries and whipped cream. Very Romanian (J). Around 10:00, the rest of the group arrived and we had a brief morning meeting where we discussed our first impressions (especially those who had never been on a trip like this before before) and Shawn Sullivan (who is one of the European Directors who is also on the trip with us) talked some about Manna Freedom, their program to help reduce human trafficking. Around 11:00 (I think), we left for Rogova and spent the entire afternoon there. Some of the girls from 2009 were still there and I got to see them more grown up. It was amazing and my jaw dropped a couple of times! They all came right to me as if no time had passed since we had seen each other. A little later, more kids came and it was lightly organized chaos throughout. We had someone doing beads outside, the boys were doing balloon swords inside, and I had a small group of the older girls doing friendship bracelets in the shade. After doing that for a while, I realized I was the only adult outside anymore and was like “wait a minute, where is everyone?” I ran inside, realized the whole group was eating lunch and basically just asked if I could still eat later since I was busy making bracelets with the girls. It was no big deal for me to wait so we did bracelets for a little longer and then all the kids were gathered into the church area for a Bible lesson. That is when I finally slipped away to get some potatoes, cabbage, chicken, and bread. After the lesson, we passed out some of the Manna shoes to the kids and then took some pictures and just kind of wandered around. The boys all went off down the road to the school to play a game of soccer against the Romanian teens and a group of us girls followed to cheer them on. When we realized our team was not that great, the girls all joined in against the Romanians. Guess what happened then? We still sucked! We switched an American for a Romanian or two and they finally started to score for us. Then, like 4 random Romanians showed up and just jumped right into the game. We’re pretty sure that after all was said and done, we still lost. Even though some of us got bruised and battered, we still had a pretty fun time. We left around 4:30/5:00 and hit up the shopping center right in between the orphanage and the house to exchange money and buy some water. Most of us could only exchange like half our money because if any of the bills had creases or markings on them, they wouldn’t take them (we don’t know why). I grabbed a case of water and some Milka chocolate (supposed to be an awesome brand here; of course, it’s pretty melted though because I put it in my room which was prob. around like 80 degrees today!) and before we left, we got this great ice cream from a little stand. Chad, who is a college student who is staying for a few more weeks like I am, and I were joking about how we’d have to walk over there every morning to eat a breakfast of that ice cream! Jerry and I left the shopping area a little early to walk my stuff back to the orphanage (everyone else was going the other way to the house) and when we dropped it off, we were offered a “smart cookie” made by the house mother. Since you don’t really say no here to food offers, we sat down with our cookie and Pepsi and enjoyed. Of course, the “cookie” was really more of a custard cake and it was ridiculously delicious!

I’m going to try to get a translation of the recipe so I can make it back in the states (I think it’s actually pretty healthy too).

When we were done there, we walked back to the house, had dinner (chicken, pork, beef wrapped pork, salad, and mashed potatoes, followed by a desert of that same ice cream we had earlier; obviously, no one is losing weight on this trip), and then all of us younger ‘folk’ went outside in the front yard to play volleyball for a bit. We played boys versus girls and it was a mess for us girls (still hilariously fun and funny though)! Before everyone left, we had a quick meeting about tomorrow and then Cathy and I walked back to the orphanage. Then, I stayed up until like 11:15 (I know…) with the kids (specifically three of the girls; Claudita, Anna, and Adina) playing games and trying to learn some words when really, I was just trying to keep them quiet and get them tired! Claudita ended up crying as I left her room because she really wanted to sleep with me tonight. After a couple of minutes though, I think she just passed out. Tomorrow, I’ll be up around 8:30 or so helping out with breakfast here and then I can either head to the house for the morning meeting or just stay here until the rest of the group comes over since we’re spending the morning here at the orphanage. I think I’ll end up over at the house for a couple of minutes in the morning so I can help organize the supplies/materials that we’re bringing over here for these kids. After we spend some time here (which we’ve already decided includes a volleyball game on the real volleyball court outside), we’ll head back out to Rogova around 3:00 to be with the kids some more before the 5:00 service that we’ll have there tomorrow night, which is where the choir will sing (I think) and the kids will have a small mandolin performance.

On a more personal note, today I saw one of the girls (Cami) from a few years ago and she was noticeably different (personality wise). Cathy and I were talking about her on the way home because I few years ago, I bonded a lot with her older sister Daniella who is no longer around. If memory serves me correct, Daniella either witnessed her mother commit suicide or was the first to find her mother after it a few years ago. As a result of that, we think she just kind of tried to ignore or become numb to any pain and ended up kind of straying after my last visit. Apparently now, she’s in a relationship with an older guy who claims to be her husband and who we think beats her. As a result, she doesn’t come around or see Cami anymore. From all of that, Cami has become even more introverted and quiet and I can tell it’s going to take a bit of work to really connect with her like I did before. Cami now lives with her dad (who came back after her mother’s death) and her grandmother who is disabled (which is one of the reasons Daniella left, since she didn’t want to deal with that). It didn’t sound like it was that great of a situation and Cathy is doing everything she can to help Cami kind of stay on track and not end up like her sister. I can’t express how badly I wish I could just bring Cami back home with me. I’ve never wanted to bring any children back from any trips until now, and that’s mostly because a lot of the kids do have decent parents and a good support system here. With Cami, I feel like she could teeter on the edge at any moment and she just needs a supportive, loving, stable home life. Her story and who she is, is another example of why I do what I do. If I can keep in touch (which I can and have done through Cathy and Facebook) and keep coming back to Rogova (this obviously will not be anywhere near my last trip here), maybe it can give her some hope or some indication that there are other people who care about her too and want her to do well in life. Talking about her with Cathy also got me thinking about seeing if maybe they want to have like a mini-girls seminar or workshop here where I could talk to the girls about things like dating, education, pregnancy, etc. I’m going to talk to Cathy tomorrow to see if that is something they might be interested in throwing together while I’m here. I think it always helps for kids (both here and anywhere) to have positive role models share their experiences and knowledge in order to show them that they have options and choices in life even when they think they don’t.

So, that’s all for now. Another long post (sorry)! It’s already about 12:30 am here and I think I’m about to crash so I’m off to bed. I’ll leave you with a few phrases I learned today/tonight:

Fermosa – Beautiful

Neboona – Crazy (we were trying to figure out if we were being called this during the soccer game)

Um plache – I like it

Sti – Stop

Sti putseem – Wait

Dragootsa – Cute (when saying it to a female)

Fuerte bine – Good job

And I’m trying to learn my numbers and colors too…