It’s been a few days. The end of last week was hot, busy, and emotional for a lot of us. Our schedule is full – breakfast at 8am, then off to the clinic at 9, all day there at the hospital (2 hours for lunch), back to the hotel with an hour to scrub up and then dinner/meeting each day. Then over the weekend we went up further north to the painted monastaries.
At the end of last week all of our older kids were taken by foster families. I was with the immobile kids so didn’t see it first hand, but some of our group were traumatised by the event – there were foster parents, kids, nurses and even one parent present, who had her three children taken from her right there. Dan has told us that Child Protection has only been going for 6 years in Romania so they are still working out the best ways to do things. From what we could tell the foster families appeared very caring so we took some comfort in that. By the end of Thursday we were left with only the children who will never be fostered as they need too much care, although Friday a gorgeous little boy Vali arrived. I had to hold his arm while he was having intravenous fluids (hours!) and he was so good about it.
Friday afternoon we left for the drive north to the painted monastaries. The countryside was breathtakingly beautiful and the monastaries were just as amazing. It rained most of the weekend and even hailed as we were driving over the mountains (the driver had never experienced that before) – we had to shelter under a mulberry tree. After the monastaries we went to a place which makes pottery from the only place in the world that has black clay, and then drove to Iasi (pronounced Yash). We walked around the city and took in the sights and then went to a shopping mall!! Yep, I succumbed. THEN we went shopping for more stuff for the clinic and drove back to Barlad. Oh yeah and I also had the chance to try some Romanian wine – YUM.
I’d like to say we’re ready for another week but we didn’t get much chance to rest! I might take a day off this week while we’ve still got six volunteers (3 left last week) as there’ll only be three of us next week.
Here’s a photo from the blue monastary:
