I had the chance to travel to Budila, a nearby gypsy village where a lot of the kids at the hospital come from. It was very interesting to see where these kids live and the places they go home to when they leave the hospital.

Bowling

We went bowling a few weeks ago here in Romania. It was pretty much the same as bowling in America, except for the fact that the pins would fall over on their own almost everytime they reset! It was very entertaining and we're not actually sure who won since so many people got extra points from the pins going down on their own.

This is Sarah and Steffi. They manage the hospital project and I spend almost all of my time outside of the hospital at their house.










This is Bridget and Susan - they both work at the hospital. I work with Susan every morning.









This is me looking a little frustrated after yet another gutter ball being thrown down the lane! Bowling has never been my strong point. And this is Michi, and girl from Germany who works at a group home in a nearby area.

Ice Skating

We went to an ice skating rink here in town the other night. It was strange to be ice skating outside in the cold instead of inside the Galleria (my only previous experience with ice skating). The whole night was an adventure starting with us not knowing how to say ice rink in Romanian and proceeding to get lost with our cab. We got to see some new parts of town before we finally managed to communicate enough to get to the right place! We had a good time once we made it there though. I managed to only fall once, but it made me really cold!

New Address

The TAPA office has moved to a new location, which means my address has changed. Here's the new one:

Beth Bray
c/0 Teaching and Projects Abroad
Horea 54
Brasov 500045
Romania

So Much Snow!!

I got to enjoy the warm weather in Texas for a couple of weeks and even got a couple days of warmth here in Romania before the snow hit full force. This accumulation happened in one night! We went to bed with just tiny flakes falling and woke up to everything completely covered in white. It's beautiful to walk around and see snow everywhere, but a little dangerous as well. All the paths that are cleared are basically paths of ice. Luckily I've managed to only fall once so far and I'm hoping that will be the only time! Unfortunatly it was in the center of the town square, so a lot of people got to witness my clumsiness!

Hospital

I was thinking and realized that I haven't really ever described a day at the hospital on here, so I thought I'd do that in case you're interested. We get there around 9 and go and help feed the babies their bottles. They're all a little tired at this point in the day and very cuddly, so it's great fun! After their bottles, they have to go back in their beds to wait for the doctor to check them. We travel around the rooms and hold them and play with them while they wait to get checked out. Once they are cleared by the doctors, we can take them into the play room. If they are sick, we can't take them out of bed, but we try to get as many healthy ones as we can into the play room. We have walkers and toys and all kinds of fun things for them to play with in there, so it's a lot of fun! Around 10:30 or 11 they have to get their medication, so it's back to the beds. Once they have their medicine we can bring them back again until around noon when it's time for lunch. We help give them their bottles for lunch and then put them back in bed. Then it's off to change all the babies on the 4th floor and the 3rd floor of the hospital. It's a long process, but fun to get to give every baby individual attention and say goodbye before leaving for the day. It's a lot of fun and every day ends up being different from the one before, so it doesn't ever get too repetitive!

Costel's Birthday

January 1st was Costel's 2nd birthday. Costel is a Romanian baby who lives with Sarah and Steffi right now. We all got together for a party to celebrate all this little guy has gone through in the past year. He just had a big surgery on his leg in Germany in November and will hopefully be walking without his cast on Monday! It's very exciting and he's definitely ready to be up and running around with the other kids. The party was filled with good food and fun games. Twister was a big hit with the little kids and the big kids at the party!

Costel loved all the attention and all of his presents. He's the little guy in the middle of the picture getting ready to blow out the candle on his cake. It was a great day and we all had a lot of fun!

New Year's Eve

I made it back safe and sound to Brasov on New Year's Eve. The flights were good and the trip out from Bucharest was smooth the whole way! I had a friend fly in on the 30th and she said it took them forever to get to Brasov because of all the people heading there for New Year's. I guess we missed most of the traffic by the time we headed up, because there weren't too many people still on the road at that point. I got to Brasov around 5:45 and unpacked a little before heading to Sarah and Steffi's to play some games. Around 9:30 we headed up to Mark and Coreen's (the heads of Hope for the Nations) to hang out some more before the fireworks. They live up on a hill that overlooks the center so we were able to see fireworks all around us! It was a pretty good show and I'm glad I came back to Romania to celebrate. It was also just good to reconnect with everyone here and start to get settled back in to Romanian life!