5-27 People's Palace and Baby Hospital

Breakfast was extra special Wed morning, we had some very yummy french toast. It was also surprising. I was the first to crack open a (what we thought to be) hardboiled egg. I very quickly discovered that it was not in fact hardboiled, but raw. They had put out the wrong basket of eggs, woops. haha Breakfast also began Erin's and my day of helping with kitchen clean up, which wasn't too bad.

Jen led devotionals from Max Lucado's book Give a Day a Chance. "Diary of a Dog" and "Diary of a Cat". The difference is a dog comes across everything saying "oh boy, my favorite!" and a cat finds the bad in every detail (at least in Max's analogy). The point is to try to keep a good attitude about all things and stay open to the seeing the good that God is doing in each day.

Each of the 3 days (Wed-Fri) that it was just us woodwinds, we would go do a sightseeing/cultural immersion thing in the morning, and then go to Peris in the afternoon, since the kids are in class in the morning. Wednesday we were to go to the People's Palace.

Nicolae Ceausescu (pronounced "Nee-co-lai Chow-chess-coo"), the communist dictator from 1974-1989, had the People's Palace built to house his office. The building is GINORMOUS and very extravagant. Building it drained the Romanian treasury and put the country into severe foreign debt, which was paid through the country's agricultural resources while the people starved. Present day, the building houses many government offices and has rooms that can be rented for private occasions.

It took us quite a while to get there. Bucharest traffic makes LA traffic look like a nice Sunday drive. Plus, traffic laws aren't exactly the same. Oh goodness, people seemed so polite when we got home, haha On the way there though, we passed time by sharing summer romance stories, very entertaining.

Unfortunately, due to the heavy traffic we were late for our tour time, and were told we would have to come back another day. Several of us took advantage of the gift shop anyway, and did a little exploring of the outside. Stephen (one of our saxophones and the only guy woodwind) later told us how thoroughly amused he was in watching a group of European guys check out the group of 13 American girls.

We made an equally long drive back to the team house for lunch and then split up: the flutes and saxes to Peris for the first day of lessons, and the clarinets to the baby hospital.

The impact of the baby hospital didn't come until later in the trip and now, but more of that later. The baby hospital ministry involves holding, feeding, and changing these babies. It's a section of a children's hospital in Bucharest, children that have been abandoned, many of whom will end up in the orphanages later. Romania is so economically unstable that many families just do not have the money to care for their children.

The saddest part is how uninvolved the nurses are with the children. They feed and change them, and that's about it. That's why we're there. I spent 3 hours straight holding and rocking babies. I get choked up now thinking about it, those precious little things who, if it weren't for H2H and other missions organizations, wouldn'would have barely any physical touch.

The hospital conditions were definitely a lot better than I had expected. It was clean and the babies each had plenty of space. It was cute, the door to each room had a different Bambi character on it. Amberly and I were inthe Flower room. Oh goodness those babies were so adorable. Andrei, Rafael, Domi (he didn't have a first name, his last name was "Domitreanu" so Corny, a Romanian H2H member, calls him Domi), Catalin, and Mihai. 4 of the babies were about 3 months, Rafael and Andrei were older.

Apparently Rafael has a cleft palate that will be fixed soon, he had a feeding tube for the time being. Domi is being adopted, which was very exciting to hear. And oh goodness, Catalin had the most hair I've ever seen on a baby! A sad part of the hospital trip was seeing the nurses not do much, they spent most of the time we were there sitting in the break room smoking.

Once the babies had been fed their dinner, we went back to the team house and had our dinner. Then Night Light and Hot Seat. My turn for hot seat, awkward, thanks to being asked to tell the ENTIRE story (including the details I leave out) about how Tad and I started dating. However, I'm thankful I went then and not after the brass go back, Matt Fell sure knows how to ask awkward questions.