Wordless: Sketches of Romania

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! 

Adventura: the Romanian Trip Pt 3

So I've covered the basic schedule of the trip, and I've covered the churches and some of the people we met there. But I haven't told you anything about the places we visited that were, for lack of a better term, "tourist attractions."

During the first week, we went to the Bear's Caves in Bihor and wandered around there for a bit. I loved getting to drive around in the mountains...not sure who has the picture from the caves in their possession, but it looked so much like a snippet from The Sound of Music that we started singing the music on the way home, and got Cristi laughing over our attempts to yodel in "The Lonely Goatherd" song. :D Inside the caverns, Cristi scared the piddiddle outta me by snorting right behind my ear in the darkest part of the cave. I would not have been scared if it was a bear-noise he made, having expected that. But to hear something like a wild-boar right in my ear was definitely startling enough to make me scream. The Bear Caves reminded me a whole lot of Luray Caverns. I have no idea where the pictures are from that day though...you had to pay 15 leu to bring a camera in (like 5 bucks) so only one or two of our group did so, and I forget who it was. :D Beautiful stalactites and stalagmites...I touched even though it said no touching. *oopsie*

Friday night of the first week we were able to go with the youth from Bethel and stand in the Town Square of Arad. We sang "Ma-ncred in El" ("Muncrayed un yell", more or less...we don't really have phonetic spelling for their letters) in English and Romanian were twenty years ago, 100,000 Christians were flat on their faces with Communist guns pointed at them. Really powerful stuff.

Justin had to ride in the trunk because we were packing way too many people into Adventura. (Christi's car). At the stoplights he kept popping the lid and waving at people.

The buildings in The Square were beautiful...

An excerpt from my journal:

Standing there in the quiet, brilliantly lit Square, a chill traveled down my spine. I listened while Alex read the inscription on the plaque, and the tune of "Red and Black" began to spin through my mind. The names on the monument had ages beside them...most were 18,19,20, 21...our ages. The appropriateness of this group of Christians standing in the Square where 20 years ago many were killed settled upon my heart...As Christi and Pastor John told us, the Government may press the Church, but they cannot steal Jesus' bride. "Amin".

We also went to Timisoara's Town Square where the whole Revolution actually started. That was really neat as well, though I was focused less on the history, and more on Italian shoes and catching pigeons...and buying the world's most amazing softserve.

I tried so desperately hard to catch a pigeon, even pilfering some of Matthew's Romanian Chicken Nuggets...they were cannibalistic enough to eat the nuggets, but I never did get my hands on one.

Sometimes we stayed closer to home and visited more...common places like the Mall! My only complaint about the new, three-story mall in Arad is that you can still smoke inside. And that gives me a headache. Especially when we walked past the hookah-bar. O.o Christi took us bowling at the mall on e day after a funeral. :D He and Justin were the best bowlers.

We were able to go a really neat basilica (and old cathedral) made in 1520! It was absolutely breathtaking...

Here is my initial take on it from The Journal:

We drove out first to an immense cathedral that, at first glance, appears to be entirely crumbling. Crumbling, yes, but entirely powerful and intimidating. We walked up at our leisure--it seems a boorish thing to rush a cathedral--and made it up the 3 immense flights of stairs to the castle-style front doors...so much pomp and circumstance, but little heart. The building made me dizzy. Literally so much splendour and the soaring arches were so high I couldn't look up without tipping over. :) The name of the church was Maria Radna, and I know there are so many stories behind that church...

These are a few of the amazing places we were privileged to see. Of course I enjoyed going to all the random little villages--so special. 

Next up: Home and Eatables! ;D

Adventura: The Romanian Trip Pt. 2

I'm going to start categorizing so we can get through this in some semblance of order! Today will be the churches! :)

One of the first churches we went to was a Gyspy church. This was the church with the kids that stole my heart. :) 

I loved the kids at the other churches too, but there was something about this group of kids that got at me; maybe because I had more time with them than some of the other groups... I'm afraid I caused a rumpus and taught them wild hand-games and made them far too loud....but it was all in good fun, and they loved it as much as I did. Besides--hand-games like thumb-wars, and the slapping game and Down-By-The-Banks--don't require much translation, which was a boon as I didn't want to bother Cristi and they didn't speak much English. :) 

This was also the church where Matthew earned the nickname "Justin Bieber". Every tween-aged girl in that church wanted their picture taken with him...and only him. Cristi and I came up with the nickname almost simultaneously, and it stuck for the rest of the trip! Here is the evidence of that night:

Hahahahaha. Oh m'gooooodness. We had so much fun teasing Bieber about that night!

The churches we were working with (and staying with) are Baptist churches, and I found the depth of passion for Christ in these places extremely inspiring/challenging. It isn't easy not being Orthodox, as the Orthodox church is the one that the government supports, yet the believers in these churches are so joyful and faithful...some of the most courageous people I have ever met. 

We were staying in apartments in Pastor John's own church, which was really neat. It's a huge echoing building all built of tile and cement and glass (they don't believe in wood construction because they don't last long enough) so we would go stand at the very top floor and sing down the stairwell. Our favorites were "The Misty Mountain Song" and "Pentatonix: Somebody that I Used to Know". Such fun. We even got some of the songs on recording, which is pretty neat. The guys loved to play around with photography on the various levels of the church building in the evenings! They are really good with the cameras and effects if I do say so myself. (Credit for all these photos is going to Daphne Edmonston, Daniel Tate, Matthew, and Justin Wright.)

Arad was a beautiful city in it's quiet, patient, turbulent, long-suffering way. :)

Each night we would visit a village church. (if we weren't at Bethel) Some were near to Arad, others we had to drive a distance. I think we visited 7 different churches, all told, some more than once. We made lots of friends this way, and I loved going around to all the different towns! That is one thing you don't usually get to do. The people were so hospitable, and always prepared a meal for us and served us: they wouldn't let us help them do a thing. So sweet. At one village we even got to eat in the mayor's office...Christi enjoyed his momentary prestige. ;)

          

I enjoyed every village for a different reason...some for their natural beauty, like Cladova, others for the people we met. :) The last several churches we visited were overseen by the same deacon, so we got to know he and his family a bit. His daughter is an Audrey Hepburn lookalike, I think! :)

Her name is Bianca, and she speaks far better English than she gives herself credit for, and she's an excellent translator! Actually, her voice is so nice and clear that I found myself often thinking she'd be perfect for a How to Learn Romanian computer program. :D Wow...me and my mind. 

Christi or Pastor John would start off the services with a prayer and a bit of speaking, then they would pass the torch off to us, and we'd do songs and testimonies for the next hour or so. :) It became a daily challenge to try to remember which songs we'd done at which churches, trying not to repeat ourselves too often. At the churches where we did two services, we sometimes had to rearrange so the same group of people wouldn't have to hear the same songs twice. :D It was definitely a mind-game, and toward the end we stopped caring. ;) After all, poor Christi had to translate many of the same testimonies/ mini-sermons over and over. Actually, it was a funny sensation, having the opportunity to retell the same stories of God's faithfulness in my life over and over...I tried to word things differently each time, and ended up gathering several testimonies to rotate so the whole team wouldn't die of boredom. :D 

Christi liked to make us laugh in the middle of services (or would accidentally do so) so we all learned when it was safe or perilous to look at him up there at the pulpit. Once or twice he would be listening to us and translating, and we'd give a spin to our story that he wasn't expecting, and he'd bust into laughter... like the time I used the same opening I had been using for my usual testimony, but launched into a story of God healing my terrible temper as a kid...he gave me this brief, hilarious, befuddled look and then busted out laughing. :D Thankfully it was just a children's service in a tiny church so no one minded. :D

Ahhh....good times. Good times.

All right, then. There you have a post about the various churches. Stay tuned for tomorrow's post about Touristy-Things! :)