Romania 2001

Busy busy busy

30 June 2001 22:17

Sorry that you haven't heard from me for a while. We've been extremely busy here recently and a little(?) sick as well. We poured the concrete for the foundation in the last week, with Nadine's pastor Geoff from NZ being a mainstay in the effort. He and his family and mother in law have come here for two years. He was here for less than a week and we had him doing hard manual labour. His three sons are aged 11, 10, and 6, and seem happiest about being able to get Magnum type ice creams for 33 cents NZ. (Sorry Liam, maybe you could have come after all.) They're being homeschooled by their mother for the rest of the year. Geoff will be pastoring the church here that we go to and is making leaps and bounds with learning the language. He spoke at the church service last Sunday (in English) and when he said it was "exciting" to be here his translator said "ummm... very beautiful" (in Romanian) which I thought was quite funny (and very encouraging that I actually recognised it).

For the foundation Geoff mixed about 4 cubic metres of concrete (no slacking for newcomers here) before heading off yesterday to pick up his van, which he had bought earlier in the week. I think something went wrong and he's got a Dacia Nova for a month instead. The Dacia is by far the most common car here and a bit of a national joke. (Can anyone remember all those Lada jokes?) The Nova model is a bit newer, though, and has an engine made in France by Renault. We laid a row of concrete blocks on top of the concrete yesterday. The rest of the workshop will be wood, which is a bit unusual here, with most buildings being concrete. The foundation is the slowest part of the project, and we may be getting another construction worker from the States on Monday. Some of the locals help where they are able and have the time.

At the girls' house Tue, Wed, Thu evenings we had several professional clowns from the USA (and staying in Arad 30-40 min away from Timisoara) give a free seminar, with magic tricks, face painting etc taught. They gave me and a few select others lovely red foam noses at the end and red plastic noses to everyone else.

Geoff's oldest kid Luke wasn't at the evening where they showed us how to do a particular rope trick and when I demonstated it to him the next evening he called me all sorts of things like a fake and a cheat and "Ian the non-magical clown" because he couldn't figure out how I was doing it. (So I did it lots more times just to annoy him some more.) I start with three pieces of string of obviously different lengths and finish with 3 same length pieces (obviously longer than the shortest piece) after a spiel about how we're all equal in God's sight. Very cool.

I taught one of the girls to do it on Thursday afternoon just before the clowns arrived and it wasn't very long before she was doing it better than I was. My excuse was that I was tired after pouring concrete.

NB. The girls' house is a home for former street girls, for those who may have missed that email. It's amazing how just a year in a loving home has changed them.

Love to all. God bless.

Ian
8 )

Previous | 2001 Index | Next

Contact:
Return to ianman HOME | Return to top