Adventura: The Romania Trip Pt 4!

The food.

Jehosophat, the food.

It's incredible how well our hosts fed us! The portions were absolutely monumental, and certain members of the team **AHEM (Amy) AHEM** found it difficult to even make a dent in the huge plates of schnitzel, golden mashed potatoes, pickled vegetables, and other delightful things. Our chef was a brilliant cook who used to cook for Romania's last Dictator whenever he came to Arad, so obviously it was good! :D

 Each meal was a feat to consume because there was no end to the food! It was amazing. :D And the women who served us were so sweet.



I wished I could say something besides "multumesc" to let them know how much I appreciated their time and effort. It was truly a blessing. :)

whole grapefruits? Uh...yes please.

My journal reflects many instances of food-related things...

"All the food has been amazing. But oh-my-chocolate-pudding they would stuff a GIANT! How are Americans so fat when we eat a third of the portions they serve here? We are flopped on the bed with stomachs full to bursting. The first course of was soup--a really good one--with a hint of fennel and chopped parsley. Alaina said to be sure we didn't eat too much soup and bread cuz there is usually another course. I was somewhat full but took her advice, then oh my goodness: they brought out plates heaping with creamy rice and pork, then bowls of salad...Daniel would love it. I barely managed half of that before dessert came out. Ooomph. I will be so huge after two weeks here! How do they manage? :D"

"Lunch at the Zaharia's was absolutely amazing. Marianna made schnitzel, mashed potatoes, pork, and bread with plum cake and coffee for dessert. The food was served with pickled peppers and cauliflower from her garden...."

"...Christi said that on Sunday we will come again for lunch and he will make us his garlic sauce which is better than anyone's. He says he loves to cook and lectured us poetically on the best way to marinate venison and how to make schnitzel."

"I forgot! We also had sarmali, which are rolls of meat and rice wrapped in cabbage leaves--so good. Marianna made a perfectly divine soup with kohlrabi in it. Yummo! Vegetable soup here is called soupa de legume. Soup is only ever the first course so don't eat too much. Marianna smiled at us all. 'Eat slowly and eat lots', she said. She told us we must eat all the piles of schnitzel and mashed potatoes. We ate as much as we could."

"...afterward we ate pizza. Their pizza is so funny but delicious. They put ham, cheese, no sauce, mushrooms, corn, and olives with the pits still in it on top..."

"...there was bean soup with sausage from Christi's pig. (he had made it) and slabs of homemade bread. Some of the best ever! There were pickles and schnitzel with sesame seeds, and pork. When we were stuffed they brought out gogosi (which are the doughnuts) stuffed with plum or prune jam. Yum!"

"On the way back up the Square we stopped at an icecream cart and bought soft-serve for 2.5 lei. It was amazing! And I'm not just saying that because it was a novelty. Best soft-serve ever! Foarte bun!"

"We went into many stores, and got lemon and sour-cherry gelato from a storefront shop. It was so pure and good. As I walked down the street with our group and Oana and Stefana, eating gelato, and watching life go by I thought to myself, 'is there any felicity in the world superior to this?' Honestly, I thought that perhaps I would be forever happy to walk in that moment." 

"We piled into the cars and drove into downton Arad onto a decidedly sketch street lined  with shaorma and kebab joints. Christi wanted us to try shaorma before we left, and since I've long wanted to taste it, I was game. Seriously now. Standing at midnight on a street in Arad eating shaorma and laughing over nothing and everything..."

Haha! Obviously food was a major thing for us there! I didn't even share lots of the other times I mentioned food. Wow. I didn't realize how much I wrote about it! :D Of course I realize that the Romanian people don't eat like this all the time--it was special just for us, and that made it twice as much of a blessing. They put so much work into hosting us!

Dinner at the gipsie house was spectacular!

"Home" was the church, and most of the time there, it seems like we were either eating or singing. :D

We spent much of our "free time" wandering around Arad, but if we were home, we would practice music for the next night, study for our testimonies, play ping-pong, or stand at the top of the five-story stairwell and sing down the flights of stairs, listening for the chill echoes. :)

Haha. We also liked to take strange photos at night...

This is only one of the really neat series we took of airborne-Justin.

I think one of my absolutely favorite things about life at the church was the fact that there were absolutely no screens in the windows, and the windowsills were beautifully wide, and the windows cranked open. That meant that I was able to spend half the day hanging out the window-sill, or sitting on the ledge in peril of falling out backwards. It was delightful. :D

We spent a deal of time in the little courtyard, and had lots of laughs, including an incident with snails, described below:

"So. The snails. I mentioned that Sarah and I went snail-hunting a few days ago. We squeezed into the back garden and found hundreds of big, meaty ones just peppering the grass. For a space of five minutes Sarah and I collected the snails and put them into an old, discarded paint cloth. We brought the snails out front and since we wanted to tease Christi that we loved escargot, we wrapped the snails up well and deposited them into a flowerpot beneath the hose, meaning to release them later.
We forgot.
The next day I exited the church to follow Christi to the car, and the kitchen lady was standing with a broom, a dustpan, and a horrified and bemused expression at forty or fifty fat snails decorating the church wall. She consulted Christi with confusion as to why the dickens so many snails ended up in that particular spot. I suppose it would have remained a mystery had I not come outside, seen the commotion, and completely lost it. I was laugh SO hard. I fled back into the church and collapsed with Sarah against the glass doors. Christi crept up and shoved a snail over my shoulder and into my face, but I was laughing already. I explained between bouts of gasping for air that we had gathered the snails and put them there.
"Have you?" and his smile was that 'these-are-American-crazies-but-I-still-like-them' smile that sometimes comes over these Romanian faces."

The people at Bethel certainly made us feel beautifully welcome. :)

With Lavi, one of our favorite translators. :)

 I hope someday we might have the opportunity to give someone as good of a time as they gave us. That church became home to us, and I loved spending time there....

Next up: a whole post about Christi, and how Adventura was born!