The Long First "Day"

The Team, ready to go.

We are waiting in a long line of cars at the Hungary/Romania border as I write this, with the sky spitting a little rain on a flat landscape of corn and sunflowers.  It reminds me of Illinois, only the license plates are long and skinny, and the radio is singing Romanian worship music.

It's been a long day. Actually, we're a little fuzzy on where Friday finished and Saturday began, so it may have been two days. We left Dulles in the late afternoon, there was a six hour flight, and a two hour layover, and a two hour flight, and now this three hour bus ride... It doesn't really matter -- we are tired, but everything has gone so WELL.  I'm going to spoil the ending: we have made it to Eastern Europe without losing our sense of adventure, our people, or (most importantly) our luggage.

The longest flight was from Dulles to Brussels, on which none of us slept except maybe Pastor David.  We grabbed Starbucks on our layover (because it was morning in Belgium, whatever our bodies said), and got some especially wild guesses from the barista as to the spellings of our names.  It was like a real life edition of the "what's my Belgian name" Facebook quiz. If that exists.  Then we boarded another plane to Budapest.  

In Budapest we grabbed our checked luggage, including the physical therapy equipment for some of the kids, and met Ovi and Mimi at the doors.  Most of the time Ovi is program director for RCE in Romania, and Mimi is the lead social worker who finds families for the kids.  Important stuff!  And today Ovi said they would be our professional drivers.  I scored the front seat with Mimi, who told us about his family, of whom he is very proud.  I think that a lot of what the Bible has to say about the value of a godly spouse is imaged for me by Mimi, smacking the steering wheel emphatically and declaring his wife to be "the very best in the world." There's no room for argument.

Becca asked Mimi to teach us some Romanian on way, and he obliged with the following:


I'm Hungry
Mi-e foame

I'm Thirsty
Mi-e sete

I'm Tired
Mi-e somn

He said that's all we need to get by, but we asked for 'thank you' and 'hello' to round out our vocabulary.

I'll finish later -- we have our passports back from the Hungarian border patrol, and we are officially in Romania! Three enthusiastic cheers, and a quick swap of national anthems.

Saturday evening: We reached the RCE campus and it's beautiful.  Clean, and functional, and colorful, and warm, and deserving of  lots of photos and a better description.  We'll talk more about it later.

Dinner is sarmale, Romanian cabbage rolls, with sour cream and bread.  While we inhale our food, Ovi tells us the schedule, our room assignments, and The Rules.  The Rules include "if something is wrong, eat well and sleep well -- one of those two things should solve it", and "there is no diet here, the diet stays at home", and "please don't steal or break anything, we are a poor country."  Romanian snark is the best.

After dinner we Americans practiced our song for Romanian church tomorrow and we sounded like angels.  True story.

It was too late to hang out with the kids tonight, so instead we played three games of volley-ball, just us.  The practice was good for a few reasons.  First, the weather right now is cool and mild, and you want any excuse to stay out in it.  Second, we needed to stay awake until our proper Romanian bedtime.  Third, over the next few days we will be playing against the Romanians, and they take no prisoners.  We would like to put up a fight before they slaughter us.

The best play of the evening ended with David face-down in the grass like Sadness from Inside Out, and we finished in the rain.  It is so GOOD to be here.  Thank y'all for your prayers!

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Author:  Sarah Engel
Fact: After a long day(s), nothing can compare to a warm welcome and SLEEP.  Nothing.