love to [pitesti]

discoveries

2012-01-29T00:06:00.004+02:00

Just discovered the mattress on the floor I've been sleeping on the last three months is actually a box spring. This explains so much.

Thankfully I have graduated to a pull-out couch (more like what we think of as a futon). All about perspective.

snow!

2012-01-27T18:18:00.004+02:00

I mentioned something a few days ago about winter maybe having come--it has. Most of the southern part of the country got lots of wind and snow including us, but we were on the northern edge so half the time it was freezing rain and not as much wind. I've learned two new words through all this: viscol and lapovita, blizzard and sleet.

It's wonderful, though. I can hear the Colombian teasing me, saying the Southern in me has converted. Never ever! Just a handful of other cultures (and climates?) mixed in these days. An observation about a place that's used to snow: first, regarding life going on as usual, nothing closes. Back home, if it flurried even, all the schools closed and there were about two gallons of milk left in the whole grocery store. Here, if you ask whether X activity will still be taking place due to the weather, they laugh. In our defense, in my beautiful Wilmington we have hurricanes and other epic weather, and our campus floods pretty often. So what do we do? We paddle to class on surfboards, in kayaks/canoes and otherwise wade and swim our way about.

This snow-as-something-commonplace is still new enough to me to wonder in it, however. I like the smell of it, can remember it from the few times it's snowed back home. Something metallic. Like the way a penny tastes. Part of me wants to use the word tangy, but it's all wrong--but think the sharpness of citrus without all the tropical imagery.

And it's still there, still outside, hardly any of it melted away. I don't expect it will in the next few days, either, as the forecast says the high sometime next week will be -14C (that's -6.8F, friends--that is polar). But I've found when you finally learn how to dress for the cold (and the wind's not blowing) it's much more enjoyable. And speaking of, two more weeks and I will be on the mountain!

It's been a good month, a good start to the year. I am thankful for this, and so going to Rasnov is no longer appealing primarily because it's not Pitesti. There are lots of reasons I love being in Rasnov and I'm looking forward to going with those reasons in mind. Speaking of, I've got a lot more responsibility this go around and it's going to put me in front a lot more than I usually like (in Romanian, of course). So if you think about it, pray for me?

Now, off to attend to other things related to the snow... like figuring out what to do with my clothes hanging in the (sort-of enclosed) balcony which are currently frozen.

color, the protests and mostly miscellany

2012-01-22T19:46:00.003+02:00

I'm grasping onto color these days. Winter may have finally decided to come--I woke up yesterday morning to light snow, walked outside in it this morning, slipping on the ice and thoroughly delighted. But for its indecision in temperature and snow, the light has been winter light from the start. White-washed and muted. There are no straight lines in this kind of light. Its edges aren't clear and hard and exacting, they're undefined, unsure. But its full of a glare that permeates everything--no clear distinction between light and shadow, either.

The other night I was washing dishes by the window in the kitchen and was surprised to find myself still standing there thirty minutes later, leaning against the radiator, watching the sky over the hill behind our bloc. Dark except for the burned line of yellow outlining houses and towers. And the other night, I started watching Slumdog Millionaire with my younger roommate. A quick aside: I had the book in Romanian, she read it, loved it, and sitting there in the dark with her I was overwhelmed with gratitude for the fact that God put us together. From my first morning here, I have been convinced that sharing a room with her (didn't move in with the other roommate, after all) specifically is why I ended up living in this apartment instead of anywhere else in Pitesti--there's so much I wish I could share on the blog. But that movie--a different sort of yellow altogether, but it's the strongest impression it left on me, the color of it. A hazy yellow, a heavy yellow. That warm language.

And then a few weeks ago I got a package from a friend for Christmas. In it was a red scarf and I remember being so surprised at how red it was, this shock of color. I wore it for a week hardly taking it off.

Minimized this and went about reading other things for a while. Not sure where to pick this up, where it was going. If we're talking about sudden shocks of color, I think about the footage I saw on the news the other night of the protests in Bucuresti. I can't remember what, but they'd turned something over and lit it on fire (correct me if I'm wrong). Here's a rather a dramatic videoclip from all of it. They've been mostly peaceful from what I'm reading, and not just in the capital but all over the country, including here in Pitesti (article in English). It's strange to watch the news and see it all happening in such a familiar place. I went to church every week pretty close--they rented out the Scala Sunday mornings. Used to sit on the benches or the steps in front of the National Theatre, reading after going to Carturesti or listening for other languages as tourists passed by.

But it's familiar in such different ways for other people. If you read about the Revolution, if you talk to people, so much happened in that square. What's the monument there? I can't remember if it has anything to do with the Revolution or no, but there's something somewhere around there I'd see.

And I'll tell you what: I miss Bucuresti. Not that there aren't plenty of things I love about Pitesti (having to choose between the two would be tough), and I know most of you Romanians will think I'm crazy, but there it is.

Not sure how to end this one, except to say that I've missed writing on here. Hoping to be back for real soon.

the list (cont.)

2012-01-22T18:41:00.001+02:00

10. Hike and camp out in this place:

Yosemite HD from Project Yosemite on Vimeo.

quote-of-the-day

2012-01-18T23:13:00.004+02:00

"Let this be written for a future generation,
that a people not yet created may praise
the LORD:
'The LORD looked down from his sanctuary
on high,
from heaven he viewed the earth,
to hear the groans of the prisoners
and released those condemned to death.'
So the name of the LORD will be declared in
Zion
and his praise in Jerusalem
when the peoples and the kingdoms
assemble to worship the LORD."
Psalm 102:18-22

quote-of-the-day

2012-01-12T00:14:00.003+02:00

“The grandest efforts of poetry are where the imagination is called forth, not to produce a distinct image but a strong working of the mind, again offering what is again repelled, and again creating what is again rejected, the result being what the poet wishes to impress, namely, the substitution of a sublime feeling of the imaginable for a mere image."
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his criticism of Paradise Lost

This is an old one I found when I was about fifteen. I only managed a few pages into Paradise Lost but I remember the introduction was amazing--this has always been a favorite quote. It's how I want to write, what he's described.

in the ongoing reports on horace

2012-01-06T21:22:00.005+02:00

My poor three-legged dinosaur Horace (whose recent dismemberment I wrote about here) has been in the hospital for about five weeks now waiting for my friend to sew his leg back on. And I logged on to facebook tonight and saw that he has been kidnapped by the boys in our small group and is being held for a ransom of 250,000 Euros.

However I am obliged to agree with this comment:

"This dragon needs to learn how to breathe fire so all the bad guys won't be after him."

Hope he makes it out of these shenanigans alive! :)

2011: not really a summary

2012-01-04T19:21:00.003+02:00

So. Another year. Such a big year, so many changes. It was good and hard and also lonelier.

I've been thinking about a post like this in the back of my mind the last week or so and I'm still not sure what to write. It ended nicely, this year. I went to Bucuresti for Christmas after much debate about staying here in Pitesti or not and I'm so glad I did. I stayed with some friends/a family and visited my old roommate, generally relaxed and got to be among other families, got to celebrate with them. Really it's the best Christmas present, and I know that sounds cheesy, but seeing other families love one another and love God--it's not something I've seen much of and it's such a wonderful thing. He's been teaching me so much about family and his love this year.

And then back to Pitesti for a few days before leaving for Timisoara for a very Romanian New Years. Revelion is their word for it. When I first learned the word two years ago I associated it with reveling and completely missed where its meaning really comes from. From the French verb to wake up, and so now, as a noun, I always think New Years and awakening in the same breath. There's room for that, I think.

We stayed up till almost seven in the morning in the ''day between years'' (as I read it described). Probably the most epic part was the rubber band battle which I am proud to say my roommate and I started. My poor thumb is still skinned but there were plenty of boys with welts to make up for it. And Timisoara is a really nice city. I think my favorite as Romanian cities go, although we didn't get to see much. It's not Ebbe's cabin in Rasnov, but nice. More Western than any city I've been in here, but still very Romanian.

What else is there? There really aren't any summaries, any overarching thing. That's something in itself. This year has been fully unlike any other. Not the best year by any means but, somehow, I don't mean that in a bad way. It's been hard, but it feels intentionally so, and I see God in it. Pure and simple. So I'm thankful for that.

Here's to another one. A full one, lots of new things.

quote-of-the-day

2012-01-03T11:02:00.000+02:00

"Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."
--Vaclav Havel

the list (cont.)

2011-12-29T16:01:00.005+02:00

8. Go to a ballet.

9. Learn to play the piano. (In theory, I should be able to play the piano already. I can read music, have a good ear and can play a lot of things with one hand a time. It's just I can't get both hands to play at the same time--figure this is the biggest hurdle. And we're not talking Brahms-level, we're talking well enough to be able to play Clint Mansell's "Together We Shall Live Forever." This is doable, friends.)

quote-of-the-day

2011-12-27T20:04:00.002+02:00

"One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one's head and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happen until the East almost makes one cry out and one's heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun--which has happened every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in some one's eyes."
--Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Secret Garden)

you're welcome

2011-12-22T16:30:00.005+02:00

We have neighbors who blast music in the mornings, often on repeat, and since I'm usually gone in the afternoon/evening, I get to freely partake in their musical adventures. Lucky me, right? Actually, the thing is, their choice of music is sometimes so bizarre--or, rather, unexpected--that it's mostly just a good source of equal parts laughter and bewilderment. Besides the manele, here's a random sampling from the last few weeks for your reading pleasure:

I Will Survive--Gloria Gaynor

War is Over--John Lennon and Yoko Ono

La Gota Fria--Carlos Vives

Danger Zone--(no idea who sings this, just know it from Top Gun)

I Believe I Can Fly--R Kelly

I Will Always Love You--Whitney Houston

I Have Nothing--Whitney Houston (they seem to have the soundtrack from The Bodyguard)

(and, I kid you not)

Every Breath You Take--Sting

(and my personal favorites from their playlist--if this sounds sarcastic, I promise I'm being completely sincere)

River of Dreams--Billy Joel

Stand By Me--Bill E. King (YES!!!!)

There are lots of others I recognize from really vague memories of the stuff my mom liked in the early 90s but wasn't able to look up in time. However there is one song that would make this list complete and that is Yakety Yak. Kind of awesome, no?

the strange and the wonderful

2011-12-20T23:23:00.006+02:00

It's been a day for new experiences.

First, the strange: I went downtown today to get something for my ingerasul (secret Santa) and while walking, a little girl came up and tried to sell me something. I wasn't really paying attention so it wasn't until I was about ten feet away that I turned around to see what she wanted, at which time I discovered she had a little piglet in her backpack. Did a double-take, realized it was actually a baby goat. Life continues to be strange.

But let's be clear here. It wasn't weird that she was selling a goat in the city center. I get that. I mean, where else are you going to go to do your selling except to the center of commerce. Fair enough. But I never expected it to be so clean and cute and hanging out in a little girl's backpack. Which was purple on the front. (**UPDATE** Apparently this is a New Years' tradition I was completely ignorant of. It's explained in the comments, but you touch the goat to have good luck in the new year.)

And tonight we went caroling, and let me tell you, having never done anything like that in my life, it was really really wonderful. We were out four or five hours and it rained (lightly) all but about ten minutes, during which it got cold enough to turn to almost-snow. The carols here are wonderful. Some of them are the same tune as ones we have but with entirely different words, others I'd never heard before. But they're beautiful. Some of the words from my favorite:

Cant Osana, cant Osana,
Cant Osana rege-al regilor
Cant Osana, cant Osana,
Cant Osana lui Isus
Parasiti turma voasta-n campie
Alergati uimiti la el
El va e singura bucurie

Which means:

(They) sing Hosanna, Hosanna
Hosanna, king of kings
Hosanna, Hosanna
Hosanna to Jesus
Leave your flock in the countryside
Run amazed to him
He's your single joy

At first the whole thing reminded me a little of Halloween because after you sing people give you fruit or candy. Or money, but we didn't take any. But people seemed so happy to hear it. We'd climb to the top floor in a bloc and then as we went back down to leave, other people would open their doors, cry sometimes even. Actually, funny thing--one old lady was so insistent we take the money and we were so insistent on not that she ended up sticking the money inside one guy's clothes. Oh, and also! It seems wherever I go in Romania, whether it's hiking or this, there's always a dog that appears out of nowhere and accompanies us the whole time. So this time as well. I baptized him Petrisor :)

So I have come to discover that caroling, even in the rain, even in the cold is just about the greatest thing I've gotten to do here yet. (The oranges they gave us aren't so bad either.) And we're going the next two days as well. So hopefully there'll be more to write about...

romanian sky

2011-12-19T00:25:00.005+02:00

This was a good week. And I'm immensely grateful for that. Today it was colder than it's been these last few weeks and the sky was the sort of blue that is dark in regard to hue but otherwise bursting with light. I didn't expect it, so waiting at the bus stop for a maxitaxi that never came and watching the sky shine out of puddles on a filthy street, my fingers turned stiff and it woke me up fully.

But if I had my way, winter would be like this every day. Let the biting cold come if it means a sky like that one, all those hard straight lines and clear bright light. It makes me miss the mountain. Thankfully, we will be on it in February, in my favorite place in all of Romania: Ebe's cabin outside of Rasnov. When I first went there, it was mostly cloudy the whole time, but one morning I stayed behind while all the students went to ski. And sitting there writing and praying, the sun coming up from behind the mountain behind the cabin, in front and who knows how many miles away, these jagged mountains I hadn't even been able to see before just lit up. I called them the morning mountains until I found out this summer that it's actually Piatra Craiului. It could have been Middle Earth.

Most days aren't like that though. It's so overcast and it amazes me how much it affects my mood. But here is something to be thankful for: I live on the 4th (5th) floor. So despite the fact that I sleep on a mattress on the floor and the only space I have here that is mine, that isn't shared with two other girls, is a space equal to the size of a small box, I can stand by the window in the kitchen and see sky. And it is a good sky. It's been surprising me with its sunsets on the days that aren't overcast since I moved here.

And the coolest thing is that being this high up, both in regard to being on the top floor and being farther north than I've ever lived before, is watching how the sun moves across the sky. It doesn't get very high these days and I can see where it comes up and goes down from my window (well, coming up it's hidden behind a building, but if not for that I'd be able to see it). And the place where it sets has moved what to me is a dramatic amount since the beginning of October. Before, it was pretty far to to the right of the building in front of us and now it's starting to come out from behind it on the left side.

So there's that. Reminding myself that there's that. And I get to watch it, if not from our living room/bedroom, if not every night, then at least from the kitchen when I'm home and it's clear. And if you'll believe it, I think it's keeping me here. Today I went to look at another room for rent, and while there are lots of other pros and cons, one of the cons is that it's on the ground floor and instead of windows there's a laundry room. No sky. Little light, even on such a bright day.

Anyway, related in no other way except for that I am especially thankful for it, there's this beautiful verse:

"With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation."
--Isaiah 12:3

fake english and other language fun

2011-12-17T22:57:00.003+02:00

A quick post to say that I just heard the Albanian language for the first time and good gracious it just confused the heck out of me. It was playing in the background and something caught my attention and for a split second I thought I was hearing Spanish with a weird accent, but then I realized I was also recognizing words I know from Romanian. And for the life I couldn't figure out what this language was and why it seemed like I should be understanding it but couldn't.

Wikipedia tells me that Latin was a big influence on the language and that in the 9th and 10th centuries, Romanian borrowed a ton of words from Albanian. Good to know!

A similar thing happened for different reasons a couple of years ago. I remember listening to a song in Greek and feeling my head was about to explode because, hey, that sounds just like Spanish but that is most definitely not Spanish. I couldn't understand at all why I couldn't understand it. Really disorienting until I figured out what was going on.

Anyway, in the same vein, was linked to this video recently, I think through Language Log, and have been meaning to post it. I love listening to the sounds of languages when they're just sounds, separated from meaning, when you're just hearing the music of it. So here's English mostly that way:

war is over

2011-12-15T21:41:00.005+02:00

A strange thing happened tonight coming back from Mioveni. We went there, five of us in a small group, to have dinner together and walk around and look at the Christmas lights. For those who don't know, Mioveni is a smaller town outside of Pitesti and, let me tell you, their Christmas lights are wonderful. They even have some sort I've never seen before that look like melting icicles.

Driving back it was thick with fog. Another thing I've never seen before, at least not before moving here--fog this thick. It's done it pretty often this last month or two in the evenings. Tonight you couldn't see more than thirty feet through the windows and maybe fifteen in front of us.

And then once we got back into Pitesti, all wrapped up in fog, Happy Xmas (War is Over) started playing on the radio. I wondered what it would have been like living in the 60s and 70s and how it was when the war in Vietnam ended. Or what the people in the streets of London were doing at the end WWII or the people in the French countryside. I thought of Sarajevo the most, though. I'm not sure why, but when I think of this sort of thing, I always think of Sarajevo and an image of that city I saw sometime in college of a sidewalk, a crack running through it and up the side of the wall of a bombed-out building.

And suddenly it occurred to me what I read this morning. War is over. Today was the official last day of the war. Finally. Ten years is a long time (I think officially, the Iraq War, I mean, it's actually eight). So I said something to everyone else in the car, chiar este adevarat... cantecul asta. Am citit astazi ca Obama a zis... and so on (it really is true... this song. Today I read Obama said...).

Anyway, I don't want to get political, but it got quiet again after a little bit and in the few minutes left before we got to the apartment, everything all wrapped around in fog and grimy orange glow, I thought about 9/11. I was home from school that day so my memory of it is so much different than most of friends'. My mom was getting ready for work and I saw the second plane crash live.

But now it's all these years later and everything is so different than I would ever have guessed it. It would be dishonest to say that I thought much about the war, that it affected me in everyday life in ways I could point to. But even being here, that weird morning I found out about bin Laden while walking to my lesson, suddenly hearing Obama's voice in the middle of a crowded Tigani market--there is a breathing out. In sfarsit, I whispered in the car tonight and leaned my head against the window. Finally.

Just thinking about how my friends back home are feeling about all this. And the people heading back now from this side of the ocean to the other.

my brother's keeper

2011-12-10T20:41:00.003+02:00

It's strange, but thinking about my brother helps me to trust God more.

I haven't written about him in a while but thanks to Skype, we've been talking a couple times a week. In all the times I've written about him on here I've called him a boy. And he isn't any longer. He hasn't been, but we were fifteen and eleven the last time we lived together, we hardly knew each other, and the image stuck. The boy with skinny legs, bent slightly, standing on a mattress with his hand reaching out. It's the image that came back some three years later when God changed me in regard to my brother through the most unlikely of people.

But things are different now. What I mean is that it's easier, in a way, to write about him as looking back on that boy, to call him a boy, because somehow it made a more poignant description. But it's less true now. I don't just mean that he's older. He is, of course--5'10 and looking thoroughly man-like while still holding on to the few boyish features you see in a nineteen-year-old. Our mom sent me some Christmas pictures about a month ago and in one of them, he looks like he could be thirty with a wife, a job to go to, bank accounts. Someone whose life would grow toward children and having to cut the grass. And I wonder. But don't misunderstand me: these things could be wonderful for him, but there are other good things too, different things.

So now we talk on Skype. Sometimes it's serious but more often we're just talking. In a way we're getting to know each other, sharing pieces of life that are mundane. Just talking. Breathing. It all revolved around such dramatic things for so long, and that's still there at the root of all of it, the main thread, but things are starting to branch out now, being allowed to grow. There are new shoots, little bursts of green, of hope. When he got out of jail, he told me how, after an entire year without seeing sunlight, the sun gave him headaches. And I thank my God for sunlight for my brother. You see? The headaches meant the beginning of some good thing.

And yet there's still so much that could go wrong, that still is so messed up. It hasn't been made right and I don't know if it will. Some days all I want to do is go back there and do what, I have no idea. But be there with him. Pray beside him and with him instead of seven timezones away. Fix things. But I'm convinced God wants me here instead of there, and even though it doesn't make any sense sometimes, there's no way of denying it. It's clear, and it's over and over again. I put my hands up and say, okay God, I don't understand this, but if you say so.

Now I look at my brother and he's so complex. He's not 'a boy who...' and he's not a symbol, a vehicle through whom I can show that there are a hundred unanswered questions or hope for what could be, what God can do. He's not anything I can put in a sentence. I will say that if I ever write a book, and I really hope I will, I'd want it to be about him somehow.

The truth is that, thinking about him, even though there are no answers and there is no sure promise regarding my brother, it is abundantly clear God is at work in his life. And there have been sure answers to prayers. But while I am certain of what God can do, I don't know what will happen. Maybe that sounds like doubt. The funny thing is that while there are a hundred other places where it is difficult not to doubt some or to live in ways that reflect that faith, in this God has made me sure of himself.

I've said already: it is fraught with questions and no certain ending. Another funny thing is that Great is Thy Faithfulness is playing right now. And I'll tell you what. It is good to be getting to know him, to laugh with him. There are lots of big and heavy things, and while I'll pray for him as long as I'm alive, I wonder if I'm not meant to just delight in the fact that I have a little brother who is awesome and gross and a completely typical boy. To be there in the ways God gives me, yes, but otherwise trust those big things with him. My God is my brother's keeper--right?

Anyway, he's a pretty cool guy. Glad I'm getting to find that out.

culture, worship and negro spirituals

2011-12-06T19:57:00.005+02:00

I just finished reading _Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry_ a few weeks ago. I'd read it once before in something like the third grade but didn't remember anything about it except that I'd really liked it. Loved it this time. Such a good book (if you haven't read it, you should). It's about the Logans, a black family that owns land in the 30s in the South, about racism and family.

The thing about this book is that while reading, I found myself really relating to it. I caught myself identifying with so much and the truth is that I have for a long time.

But wait a minute. Sara, you're a white girl. Your ancestors weren't slaves, and you certainly didn't experience much of the injustice of racism. Kinda presumptuous, no? These are the easy questions, the easy answers and I did think of them at first. And the immediate jump-to was living with the Daniels. Does living a few years with a family that came, somewhere down the line, from this sort of history mean you automatically inherit that history too? Well, I don't know about that. I mean, I think it's fair you learn lots of things you're not aware of learning when living cross-culturally, you adopt things without realizing and yes, I'd say they become a part of you. Maybe it's not as fair to say you somehow share that history, though. And maybe it is--it's such a complicated thing, so hard to say.

But I did learn to worship with them. Not really, because I worshiped God in all different sorts of ways before I moved in with them. But I started going to church regularly for the first time in my life with them and learned to worship through music in a predominately black church. All those lyrics about ''going over Jordan, I'm just going over home,'' and the Promised Land and freedom and rejoicing. It's home, in a way.

And how strongly I relate to these themes! Longing for my only real home. Freedom from sin. This is the crux of it, I think. And I think we all long for these things. That the struggles of the Logan family, of racism and injustice, while wholly their own, are not altogether foreign to us, whatever our family history looks like. Because we're all living as aliens here, and we know about a God who sets all injustice straight.

One of these days I'll learn to embed songs and not just youtube videos but until then, here's a favorite one (although yes, I am aware it's actually written by some English guy and isn't one of the Negro Spirituals but I did think it was). Jack White's version is really good too.

"I am a poor wayfaring stranger
Traveling through this world alone
There is no sickness, toil nor danger
In that fair land to which I go
I know dark clouds will hover on me,
I know my pathway is rough and steep
But golden fields lie out before me
Where weary eyes no more will weep
I'm going home to see my father
I'm going home no more to roam
I am just going over Jordan
I am just going over home"

weird answered prayers

2011-12-04T19:02:00.008+02:00

Last week sucked. Let's just be honest. There's something depressing about this place--I don't notice it all the time, but there is a real heaviness here. And plus, I miss my family, I miss my friends. It's all just sort of hit at once.

So sometime last week, feeling miserable and feeling generally sorry for myself, I prayed about playing. About the sorts of shenanigans we took part in as students and how depressing it is to never (should say not often, I suppose) be able to just delight in--in what, life? I don't know. Talking about having fun and playing and being thankful for being alive. Not that they don't do that here. Ah, it's coming out all wrong! Anyway, I prayed about all this and it probably made about this much sense. Luckily God understands me better than I do.

The first part of one of the weirdest answers to prayer here:

We were at a short student conference this weekend and the first night we were playing games. Then we played a new one and, let me tell you, it was a blast. You tie two people's legs together like a three-legged race and they have to run across the room together but only one of them can take the object they're racing toward and that person has to somehow get it back to the other side of the room without the other person getting it from them. Somebody volunteered Horace. For all who don't know, Horace is my stuffed dinosaur. Don't judge. He's a good pillow (and a good dinosaur).

Well, it took about two minutes into the first race and... Horace got his leg ripped clean off. Truth: I never thought I would be happy to see my poor dinosaur dismembered, but I laughed so hard I ended sprawled out on the floor for five minutes. And felt so much better. Currently Horace is being operated on and the hope is that he'll have four functioning legs soon. Here's a picture post-amputation:

And since we're on the topic of shenanigans (some of them part of this answered prayer in that, weird as they were, it just cheered me up; others... well, just weird):

A couple of guys stole my rings Saturday afternoon and sometime later that night I noticed one of them was wearing all three and just generally fidgeting with them. Right after I decided I was going to snatch them back from him, he dropped one on accident. Before anyone could do anything, our general secretary had his foot out of his papuci, grabbed the ring with his bare foot, picked it up and put it on the table. With his foot. Just like that. Almost died.

About an hour later I got locked in the bathroom for twenty-some minutes while the people outside tried to break me out and I hung out the window thinking about how I could get to the next window over (the boys' bathroom) without falling to my death. In the end they rescued me. About five minutes later another girl got stuck.

Then today after the retreat was over we went to the center of Sibiu to walk around and see everything. With us was a first-year student who speaks English so well that when we switch from Romanian I completely forget that I'm not talking to a Romanian. No accent at all. It's crazy. And he just learned from cartoons. Anyway, knowing we'd probably run into some foreigners in Sibiu, I told him that if we found any Americans, I bet the two of us could go talk to them and they'd have no idea he wasn't American. Right off the bat I heard a guy speaking English and went up to him and talked for about ten minutes. Turns out he was from North Carolina too! And I called it--he had no idea at all that my friend wasn't American.

And then the just plain weird. Santa Claus was hanging out downtown and as we walked by, our gensec asked him if he stomach was real and, I kid you not, he said, it doesn't matter what's in your stomach, it's what's below it! Dirty old man winked and everything. Half of us stood there gaping while the rest ducked behind kiosks stifling maybe-I-shouldn't-be-laughing-at-this-but-I-can't-help-it laughter. And then he said something I almost wish I could write just because you would not believe it at all, but it's sort of x-rated, we'll say. Santa is a seriously creepy dude. Kind of horrifying that kids were taking pictures with him.

It was a good weekend, though, in general. Still dealing with some things that are really frustrating, but God kept reminding me how much he loves us, how much he gave for us all, how much bigger that is than anything else. How he runs after us even when we're least lovable. So grateful. And put back on my heels. His love really just changes everything. Thankful for that now.

And just because, here's a picture from Sibiu today:

hope/plan

2011-12-01T12:47:00.003+02:00

I started a list back before my birthday of things I hope/plan to do one day but it just sort of fizzled out because I never remember to write down things when I think of them. So next best solution: post it as it is now, and add them as they come. Not a bucket list, mind you. Less 'one day' and more of the first outlines of a plan. Most are best done with other people--this is the hope part of the hope/plan. Open to suggestions.

1. Go to a real soccer game at a stadium in Europe.

2. Climb a mountain that's the highest one around, lie on the ground at the very top so all I can see is sky. I hear you feel like you're going to fall off the planet.

3. Learn French (fluent!) and at least one other language, haven't been able to decide on which yet (this may be amended, and probably will, to add or exchange languages).

4. Go to back to school and study linguistics or social work or history. Or all three if I also happen to have lots of money and expendable time.

5. Hike along the the whole ridge of Piatra Craiului.

6. Go way up north where it's bezna at four in the afternoon and watch the Northern Lights--this has the option of being a date, but it doesn't have to be ;)

7. Get a cat (OR TWO). Name options include: Jack (for C. S. Lewis), Greg Pratt the cat, Morris (to rhyme with Horace and Boris) and the Doctor.

pretty cool article

2011-11-28T11:22:00.002+02:00

This about a guy who was kidnapped by the FARC and almost twelve years later just got released. (It's in Spanish--I'll try to find an English version.)

It says that when he got out he just kept saying that God exists and that he was praying for the guerillas and prayer was his only hope. Pretty cool stuff.

back in romanialand

2011-11-27T17:25:00.004+02:00

So much to be thankful for.

I spent the last three days on the mountain with about twenty five other Americans and everything about it was wonderful. I don't think I've been around that many people from the States since I left, and between that, the mountains and the goodies one family brought from Texas, it was a most refreshing holiday. We went on a hike Friday, I think probably my favorite part, and let it be known that hiking with Americans is something else altogether than hiking with Romanians (meaning I could breathe and converse and didn't wake up unable to move the next morning). Nothing beats Romanian hikes, but this was probably the most pleasant one I've ever been on. And! We found a tree that looked just like an Ent! Cool thing about this place: as soon as you leave the city you feel like you're in Middle Earth. True we don't have Cheetos here, or Sun Drop and we don't get to be with our families for Christmas, but there are other blessings.

In this respect--and especially to do with family--there's been a lot. My Father: I know this, I identify so strongly with this, but there's so much I'm finding that needs to be learned, to be lived until it's real. And what a patient father my God is, gently leading me through these places, teaching me things in the small, quieter places between the things he's led me through once already. I'm missing my mom and brother more than I ever thought I would. And I'm reminded often that I'm supposed to be here, even when it's hard to not be there helping them. And the definition of family has extended in some ways, tightened in others. If you are confident in God as the father, as yours, then the question of adoptive families, people taking you in, becomes something to rejoice in and and thank God for, not to withdraw or withhold from--because you were always his.

And all this turns me toward the sixteen-year-old. The one whose company I enjoy more than I ever thought I would, through whom God is throwing wide open all kinds of things. As much as he's using her, I'm praying he'll use me in her life, all these questions of family. All these parallel lines between the two of us, two lives drawn from such different places but essentially passing through the same things. This is no accident. I want so much for her and it's amazing how God will change your heart--a month ago I was wondering how the heck this would even work.

So now. Back in our shared living room, back from Rucar to speaking all Romanian and all the things that drive me crazy and the abundance of blessings, back to Romanialand. I will say that being on the mountain with all those Americans was a much-needed reprieve for which I am super thankful. Such a good Thanksgiving.

Also, funny thing related to Thanksgiving. Sort of. When I got back last night I skyped with my best friend in the States and she overheard me talking to the sixteen-year-old, after which she told me this: you sound like a turkey when you speak Romanian. That language sounds like gobbling! So coming full circle...

quote-of-the-day

2011-11-26T22:53:00.002+02:00

"This might seem unprincipled cynicism, but in the secular fury of Ataturk's new republic, to move away from religion was to be modern and Western; it was a smugness in which there flickered from time to time the flame of idealism. But that was in public; in private life, nothing came to fill the spiritual void. Cleansed of religion, home became as empty as the cities ruined yalıhs and as gloomy as the fern-darkened gardens surrounding them."
--Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul: Memories and the City

video about the chiva

2011-11-18T16:52:00.003+02:00

Thought I'd do something different. This is one of many crazy bus stories I have (plus about a minute in Romanian at the end, just for fun). Enjoy.

round up

2011-11-16T21:06:00.005+02:00

I have been a very derelict blogger lately. Sorry about that. So the last few weeks in turns:

1. About half an hour ago I got back to my apartment with one of my roommates and an American coworker. I've said before that since I've been in Pitesti I've spoken only Romanian but since my coworker is here, as we were walking home the two of us of course spoke English. We split off from the roommate outside the bloc so she could run to the store and my coworker and I went up together, speaking English up five flights of stairs. And the strangest thing happened. As soon as I unlocked the door to the apartment and we went inside, without thinking at all I started speaking in Romanian.

A few minutes later I realized what I was doing and my coworker and I talked about it, about bilingual families who speak different languages in different rooms of their house, things of that nature, and that it made perfect sense since, aside from a sentence or two, I've never spoken English in this apartment. Of course it's much easier to speak in English and anywhere else with an American, good gracious yes please let's speak English, but somehow--especially when my roommate came back--it was way more comfortable/natural-feeling to just speak in Romanian. Strangest thing.

2. It's dark here, guys. By five, already, it's dark and we've still got something like five weeks till the solstice. Besides this week, it's been overcast on top of the sun going down early so if you're inside with the blinds all the way open, it feels like one long overcast dusk. I read a few days ago that we're at the same latitude as Minneapolis and that, not counting the Alaskan ones, there are only four big US cities at a higher latitude. Yep, I'm feeling it.

The light is really interesting though. I think light like this will always remind me of my first few months here. It's a waning light, when the sun shines, a tremulous sort of thing that feels like perpetual early morning. I can see easily from my kitchen window where the sun comes up and goes down in a space maybe a third of the circumference of what a 360 degree view might be.

3. Got robbed for the first time in Romania, sort of. Someone sent me a letter from the States and it arrived in our box without an envelope. There had been nothing in the envelope except the letter so it wasn't a big deal. Torn between being thankful they were kind enough to leave the letter and annoyed by the fact that someone would do that. We don't mail money, people!

4. An observation: there are four clocks hanging on the walls in our living room/bedroom--the woman who owns the apartment loves clocks, I guess. They all look almost exactly the same and only one works, and the other day it finally gave out. So we replaced the battery and the next day the clock in the kitchen died. I feel like there's some sort of symbolism in that, our walls covered in clocks that don't work.

5. A few more tidbits: I would just like to add that I love discipleship. It really is the best part of this job. And also--but this is for another post--that I'm having a hard time dealing with having basically no personal space here. And wondering what sort of implications this kind of thing might have on being married one day. Just thoughts.

6. Forgot one, but this is the last. Regarding the post about the significance of names, thanks to my friend Jamie who is a much better googler than I am, this is the verse I was thinking of but couldn't find:

"The nations shall see your righteousness, and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will give." Isaiah 62:2

Baller verse. Anyway, here's to returning to real blogging soon.

an addendum

2011-11-06T22:15:00.004+02:00

to the recent post about bezna and light and meaning. This, from a novel that takes place in Congo (The Poisonwood Bible):

"Nommo is the force that makes things live as what they are: man or tree or animal. Nommo means word."

Now I don't know much about the Kikongo language, only what I've learned from this book, but here we are again.

Once more from John 1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made."

In the paragraph above the quote from the book, it talks about various words with the stem -ntu, which means something like being. Actually, I'll just quote it for clarity:

"Muntu is the Congolese word for man. Or people. But it means more than that. Here in the Congo I am pleased to announce there is no special difference between living people, dead people, children not yet born, and gods--these are all muntu. So says Nelson. All other things are kintu: animals, stones, bottles. A place or a time is hintu, and a quality of being is kuntu: beautiful, hideous, or lame, for example. All these things have in common the stem word ntu. 'All that is being here, ntu,' says Nelson with a strug as if this is not so difficult to understand. And it would be simple, except that 'being here' is not the same as 'existing.' He explains the difference this way: the principles of ntu are asleep, until they are touched by nommo. Nommo is the force that makes things live as what they are: man or tree or animal. Nommo means word. The rabbit has the life it has--not a rat life or a mongoose life--because it is named rabbit, mvundla. A child is not alive, claims Nelson, until it is named."

I should should say clearly that I'm not trying to make a theology out of all this. Not trying to fit it into something else, make a sort of New Age anything. But specifically that part tying the word and being together, that part of that language having nothing to do with the writer's philosophies and beliefs--and then, without the word nothing was made that has been made.

I'm just thinking out loud here, following the rabbit trail, but I wonder what significance names really have. Of Abram being renamed Abraham, father of many nations. Simon becoming Cephas--Peter, meaning Rock.

Just thoughts.

how an entire hour disappeared from my life

2011-11-04T23:43:00.009+02:00

It's been a weird week. Although it seems that's sort of the baseline, something fantastic generally happening about once a week, in this regard it's been a quiet last month.

Last Saturday I lost an hour of my life. I'm still not sure how it happened. Friday night we realized that it was the weekend we were to switch back the clocks, but after some searching on the internet, my roommate (the one who's my age) determined that they didn't change until Saturday night/Sunday morning. Saturday morning I was planning to catch a 7:15 train to Bucuresti so in order to pack, walk to the train station and buy a ticket with a little spare time, I set my alarm for 6:00. Now, that isn't entirely true, because I don't ever set it on an even number--I set it at 6:03, decided I didn't like the idea of it being after six, preferring to hit snooze at least once, and then set it again at 5:59.

Fact: I am a master at going back to sleep for two or three minutes at a time. Sometimes I'll set my alarm an hour earlier than I plan on getting up just to hit snooze for that hour. Crazy vivid dreams. But it's a really controlled sleep, meaning I never ever oversleep when I do this. Another fact: since usually my Friday nights are designated for movie-watching and writing once I get home--and I got home late this particular Friday--I ended up staying up till about 2:30 in the morning. But I knew I could get up in time. Double checked the alarm and then went to sleep.

So, 5:59 rolls around. I grabbed the phone, looked at it, read that it said 5:59, set it for 6:02 (which killed me but I wanted three minutes, not two) and proceeded to try to fall back asleep. But it just so happened that this particular morning it half-woke up my other roommate who started thrashing around noisily in the bed. What this means is that I sat there for three minutes thinking shut. up. (I know--I'm really not very nice first thing in the morning...) And what that means is that I did not fall back asleep, I am sure of it. So I grabbed my phone again to turn the alarm off before it actually went off and got up, but suddenly it read 7:02.

Jumped out of bed, thinking somehow that the clocks in fact changed a day earlier, then thought maybe my phone just changed, checked another clock and realized it had too. Rushed through everything (and didn't forget anything!) and made it out the door and booked to the train station. It didn't occur to me until an hour later than even if the clocks had changed, I wouldn't have lost an hour--fall back. Anyway, when I got to the train station the first thing I asked was what time it was, was further confused because I always mix up the numbers six and seven in Romanian, and finally discovered that it was in fact 7-something. The end of the story is that I basically sprinted to the nearest place you can catch a minibus and took my first ride on one of those since we flipped the last one over a guard rail (and hey, still alive!). (By the way if you click that, be warned that it's pretty much an hour of introspection but there are pictures.)

I've gone over it a million times but the only thing I'm not 100% sure about (and I am 95% sure of this) is that maybe--maybe--when I changed it back from 6:03 to 5:59, I accidentally changed just the minutes, so to 6:59. But I saw 5:59. There's really no way. So, I've resolved to chalking this one up to another of the great Romanian mysteries, the other being that time it felt/sounded like a truck hit the house we were in and we never discovered its cause (not an earthquake).

There's so much more, but this is long enough already. To end, I had a most wonderful conversation with my family a few nights ago that's been making me happy thinking about. Below is a screen shot plus one of me pasted in plus I-didn't-know-what-else-to-write to fill in the empty space.

cool linguistic discovery of the day

2011-10-28T14:14:00.008+03:00

Last night I watched a (fantastic) film called No Man's Land and it's mostly in Serbo-Croatian. There are a lot of shared words between it and Romanian so as I was watching I'd catch words I'd understand, all ones with Slavic roots.

One of them was bezna, which in Romanian means complete darkness, the kind where you can't see anything, pitch black, no light at all. DEX tells me that figuratively it means something like ignorance. But of course! And I heard the word in a context where there was clearly some underlying shared sense, so I looked it up and it turns out the word means meaningless.

Once again, but of course! We see that in words like lucid. So the same kind of thing is happening not only in Latin, in languages rooted there, but also in Slavic-based languages.

I'm thinking of John 1:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world." (bolding mine)

So we see how our languages reflect this--that light represents something life-giving and darkness maybe a lack of that. Let's say the word here (Jesus) does what regular words do for us everyday: they reveal meaning. Jesus reveals God, comes down to earth as a man and we start to understand what this God is all about, Jesus as friend, as savior, defender of the poor, as the just one who will make all things right (this being very far from an exhaustive list). And life, the light of all mankind.

I wonder then if all our languages don't point to this reality: that meaning (perhaps by extension, our purpose) and life are bound in this Father of heavenly lights, that without him, there isn't any. (That reference comes from this baller verse: "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." James 1:17) I wonder if maybe on some level we know this, intrinsically.

Well then, maybe it's just common sense, but that doesn't that bring us back to the question of where that common sense comes from? And what makes it true? And by extension the whole old argument about where our sense of right and wrong comes from? Of course that opens the doors to relative morality and a whole slew of questions. Good conversation--by the way, Tim Keller's book _The Reason For God_ is great if you're interested in that. So is Mere Christianity (C. S. Lewis).

Anyway, the point I'm getting to is that I think this sort of thing is in us already, this idea of the light being related to meaning and life. And if we recognize that, I wonder if it's not worth asking where it came from.

quote-of-the-day

2011-10-27T21:24:00.004+03:00

This from rereading Perelandra this past week:

"As he stood looking down on her, what was most with him was an intense and orphaned longing that he might, if only for once, have seen the great Mother of his own race thus, in her innocence and splendor. 'Other things, other blessings, other glories,' he murmured. 'But never that. Never in all worlds, that. God can make good use of all that happens. But the loss is real."

And this (instrumental), from one of the soundtracks I love:

They both remind me of the other.

wherein i drop a little girl on her head

2011-10-26T16:17:00.004+03:00

I've been around families a lot since I've been in Romania, especially in Pitesti. It's a change, for sure, especially after four years of college where everyone was around my age or older. Not a lot of families, certainly no kids and mostly just young people. But here I get to hang out a good deal with my pastor's kids, four of them and all under ten.

Here's another change: things feel like they're falling in place. There's a settled feeling. I'm doing my job and am able to be involved way more now, am learning an enormous amount. My kitchen feels like my kitchen (I think it's because I finally own some cooking utensils, mostly a spatula that assists in making fantastic omelets) and I feel like a grown-up when I'm in it. The truth is that I've been doing this for five or six years now, living on my own and feeding myself and paying all my bills--being an adult. I don't know why it should suddenly feel more like it now. Anyway, there's another aspect to it.

It's being around all these kids, these families. My peer group is now not just college students and singles but families and little kids. And there's a maternal side that's been coming out that I was afraid for a long time I was just too awkward to have. But there it is, and the other night I was at a birthday party for the most charming, wonderful five-year-old you've ever met. And while playing with them, I started dancing with his four-year-old sister.

You should know that their floor is hardwood. Or some kind of hardwood mimicker with a very slippery surface which makes dancing quite fun if you're little and someone bigger is spinning you. Or if you're bigger and you're sliding across playing bowling for little kids. (Kidding, but that could be fun, no? I know a certain nine-year-old who'd love it, especially if you were really good at missing but almost not.) Anyway, we're dancing and I'm spinning her, and all of a sudden she slips. Didn't think this one ahead very well. My hand was around her wrist so I had to let go of it or else it would have twisted and, I don't know, very possibly could have broken. So I let go (right hand) and with my right hand (no idea what my left hand was doing, probably just hanging there forgetting it existed) grabbed the upper part of her other arm, the higher one. And I have no idea how the physics of this are even possible, but she somehow managed to pivot around her other arm and fall in a way that gravity took no part in and then land on her head.

I tried to look ha-ha surprised so she wouldn't cry (look at those dance moves!) and she didn't but mostly because her mom rushed in and saved the day. So I say to these settling down feelings, this playing mom and wondering if I'll have a handful of boys one day (just wrote that 'wonday'--ohf, my brain), to the 'logical next step': okay, but I'm watching you. Sometime, not now, but sometime. You are good preparation, and for that I appreciate you--I'd like to not drop anymore kids on their head, if I have the choice, but I guess even that's good practice.

For now, though, it's nice just to be around other people's families. And not to have to worry about the logistics of getting to the point where mine might happen. Just being now, an awesome job and friends and good community, watching that turkey of a five-year-old and his brother and sisters light up the room.

quite possibly the best thing i've read all week

2011-10-25T11:38:00.003+03:00

"I love how people who are having babies describe it as 'expecting.' Gives an air of uncertainty.
'We're expecting a baby but it could be a velociraptor.'"
--source unknown (meaning it's probably a meme floating around the internet--anyway, awesome awesome awesome)

fall in my sweet carolina

2011-10-22T23:27:00.006+03:00

About this time, I'd be on a haybed being pulled behind a tractor, all the straight lines and clear carrying voices of fall in the rural South. We'd be at Mike's Farm--with Nicole, maybe, Alicia, a few others--and there'd be teenagers in hoodies laughing loudly, kids from local high schools dressed up to jump out and scare you as part of the ride. The sudden breath in the cold, a white half-gone shock of a breath, and then empty sky above the trees.

At Mike's Farm, when we were kids and went there on field trips, we made apple cider from apples we helped gather. That one time I nearly stepped on a snake. Hayrides, a haunted theme for Halloween and the Christmas light show all through December. That's what I remember--lights in the dark and cold air that cuts, that wakes you up from the inside, a whole throng of ten-year-olds with red noses.

It feels like fall now here. It is fall, but it feels like it too. I walk home from the sediu at night and if I closed my eyes, I could almost be there. It's different in the city, though. One thing I've appreciated since coming here from Bucuresti is that it's smaller, it's slower, there's more of an open feeling. But it's still not the country. It's not the hard frosted earth, it's sidewalk.

Fall is so much more of a physical season, I think. Surely you'll think of summer as being the most physical--you're outside, you're playing volleyball, you go to the beach, but the heat blurs things. Makes you hazy. You're there and you're not there, a sort of half-awake dream under the thick blanket of humidity. Spring wakes you back up, but it's a slow thawing and you start off numb, the coming-alive part the kind you look back and realize. But fall--those edged cold nights, close enough to summer to feel like reprieve, to wake you up from its sleep, and not cold enough to close yourself inside from it.

Something about being here: I miss being able to walk at night, to go outside and walk out my thoughts. You're outside, but there's a half-inside, constantly public feeling of it when you've got blocs rising up on both sides. I miss going down to the south end of Wrightsville and walking barefoot on the cold sand, hearing the whole expanse of the ocean rushing up to the shore, a sound you can see in the darkness. Space to think and pray. Even just space.

I keep coming back to this: leaning against a dune at night, burying my feet in the sand to keep warm, a whole stretch of the world we live on. A place you know and don't know, that's yours and utterly not yours, so much bigger than you. Room for thoughts and prayers and conversations to float up. Get stuck up there above you. Or how they blaze above you at the fair--you're all at the fair these days--red and yellow and music and shouting and the wheeling of the tilt-o-whirl, somebody eating a caramel apple or a fried Snickers bar.

Hard ground, the way hay feels under your feet, the way the air makes you want to jump and run and laugh loudly, alive.

Oh my sweet Carolina
What compels me to go
Oh my sweet disposition
May you one day carry me home.
--Ryan Adams

limba romana, for lack of a better title

2011-10-18T19:36:00.005+03:00

Since we're on a language-related roll...

Last night those of us on the coordinating team for OSCPi (said something like ohs-che-pee) had a meeting on Skype, mostly to do with the budget and other related financial things. And I don't think I've ever done anything harder in Romanian. Add to the fact that you're discussing a topic which is already generally a stressful one and do it without being able to see the people and in not-your-language, and you surely have yourself a task. One in which you will become very agitated very quickly.

But this isn't to complain about the language or to bemoan the fact that I wasn't bam! fluent in two months. Rather, I've observed some surprising things happening with regard to it and its effects on my equal parts stimulated and turned-to-toast brain.

Since I've been in Pitesti it's been all Romanian all the time. Over the summer more of my work was with fund raising and conferences, most of the students being gone, so except for a few weeks at camp or at church, I spoke mostly in English. Three months of plateau. But then here, no more American family, no more English with the roommate. However, a curious thing happened in September at Formacion.

I always expected that when you finally get to the point where you can communicate only (or 90+%) in another language, after a full day or week of it, you'd have a strange relationship with your own language. By that I mean that there'd be some gap, some lack--I'm missing it completely. I thought it would feel different to be totally in another language in some way I'm failing to explain at the moment--imagine speaking yours and everything is green, but speaking theirs everything is red. But I realized it really doesn't. The thing is, for so long this language was (and barely) just in my head. It never made it to my heart. It felt removed, dry meaning filtered from significance in the deeper sense. And then suddenly it occurred to me that now that I can finally do it, being all in Romanian feels exactly the same as all in English. Which raises lots of questions to be asked and addressed later.

Anyway, since being here, it's like a switch has been flipped on--there are off days, for sure, stumbling through halty sentences, and bah! What's the word? Want to guess how many times I've said n-am inteles, ever :) ? But then there are good days, or rather, good parts of the day, and it feels like I get to participate in some dance I'd only been watching. Imagine an ensemble all dancing together, fluid and graceful, one big movement seen from above, and I get to be part of that, an arm or a leg of a body.

That said, for those who love to laugh, there's plenty cause. A few of many mistakes as of late:

--"Am scorat!" I wanted to say that I'd scored. Cat e scorul means 'what's the score,' so I figured, well if it's a cognate, borrowed, anything like that, it should go as the verb as well! Nope.
--Porumbel, porumb, porunca. Pigeon, corn and commandment and I never get them straight. You can imagine.
--When you meet somebody, the proper thing to say is imi pare bine which literally means 'it seems well to me' but is something like 'pleased to meet you.' Without thinking, Sarawr the Dinosaur said imi pare rau: 'it seems bad to me,' or basically I'm sorry.

The worst though has come from the lack of spoken English. If I'm by myself, I think out loud, and after spending a whole day only speaking Romanian, a strange thing happens to the way sentences are formed. Basically they keep their English structure for the most part. But I always substitute Romanian verbs (I would love to know why this happens). However, since we like to -ing everything (see what I did there?) (I'm doing homework, I'm eating eggs) instead and Romanians do homework and eat eggs, you get sentences like this: I'm fac-ing homework acum (I'm do-ing homework now). Except fac is pronounced something like fock, so you see the predicament.

And also, I've come to realize that if you learn these, used in abundance here, you can do practically anything: a face, a da, ma, to do, to give and something kind of like yo or man. We'll make a verb out of any noun (I'm vacuuming the living room), but here, if you just put a da in front of it, you're good (dau cu aspiratorul). And ma, well I don't know that it's quite as useful grammatically as the other two, but you do hear it every five seconds :)

Anyway, always an adventure.

more language: american dream

2011-10-13T14:51:00.008+03:00

Sort of in the same vein as the post about Turkish. This song, actually, to me is really sad. A lot of the Romanian music I like usually is. Just as an aside, for this reason I like good hiphop, I like how it's political, its observations of the state of things, its social commentary. True for this as well.

Anyway, here are some verses and their translations from the song below. (Full lyrics here.)

Acum nu te mai duci la munca, te duci la job
You don't go to work anymore, you go to the job

Nu mai avem cartiere naspa, avem ghetou
Raperii au flow, sunt underground yo
Totul este cool, nimic nu e misto
We don't have crappy neighborhoods anymore, we have the ghetto
Rappers have flow, they're underground, yo
Everything is cool, nothing's misto*

Tre' sa fii in trend, altfel nu e de gluma
"Is this the life" nu suna asa bine-n romana

You gotta be in trend, otherwise (?)
'Is this the life' doesn't sound as good in Romanian

So if you go through both you see that half the song is English (if a little bit Romanianized) and so it is with how people talk. I mean, I suppose it's exaggerated if you're talking about regular conversation with young people. But there are so many borrowed words that you really can talk like this. And is it really Romanian? Some kind of weird hybrid?

I like to watch how languages evolve, I like to think about how English is changing. It's fun, it's interesting. But I'll admit that the Romanian in this song is not pretty the way the language normally is. Whether it's really changing that much, I have no idea. The sixteen-year-old I share a room with doesn't talk like this (although she doesn't know English either). Nor do most people I know.

But then I don't think that's really the entire point of the song. And there's a ton that could be said about it. Maybe I'll write about that soon... Anyway, a large part seems to be summed up here:

I can be what I want to be
Losing my dignity**
Cause I gotta lot of life in me
Let me live my American dream

*from what I understand, misto actually comes from the language Gypsies speak?
**sounds more like they're saying vanity to me, but all the lyrics I read say dignity

multi ani inainte

2011-10-12T23:09:00.003+03:00

I had a whole twenty three things I haven't done yet but would love to do one day post planned for my birthday last month, but never really got around to finishing it. There's a list with five things hanging out somewhere in my drafts here that I'm hoping to add to, with time.

Just about thirteen months ago now, someone wished me happy birthday and they said, just think, next birthday you'll be celebrating in Romania. And I hoped, I really hoped so, but I wasn't sure. This birthday I was in the Bucegi mountains with forty students from all over this country singing La Multi Ani, celebrating it with the other four people who had birthdays that week. And in that week we ate a fish somebody caught with their hands in a river, told jokes about people from Oltenia (okay, I just listened), watched Jupiter rise above the mountain, prayed together, laughed at one skinny white Romanian do a spot-on impression of Michael Jackson ("What kind of music do you like?" "Well, Christian music... and Michael Jackson! I do impressions in my spare time!") and wondered at a whole lot of really wonderful things going on in our cities, at our faculties.

(And then I got to do it again with one baller family in Bucuresti :))

Here's a post to say: look how God answers prayers and look at how it is different than I thought it would, look how good a thing it was. We have a God who is great, my friends.

Below: three of us with birthdays. And cake, really good cake.

"later: the face of prescriptive language??"

2011-10-09T23:14:00.004+03:00

From "Turkish and Fakelish: Foreign terms and the words that replace them"

"The more enduring suspicion about the new language revolution was the accusation, voiced widely by the press in the wake of Atatürk’s death, that it had produced an “artificial and synthetic language.” The words that were suggested as substitutes, Lewis notes, were archaic words which had long fallen out of use in Turkish, or composites of ancient Turkic roots which were said to equivocate to undesirable Ottoman terms."

and

"Faruk Kadri Timurtaş, a professor at İstanbul University and one of the most vocal opponents of language purism, spoke out against a language that he believed could not be categorized as Turkish any more than German nor considered any more natural than Esperanto. He pejoratively termed the new language uydurmacılık, or “fakelish,” declaring that the aim of the association was “to degenerate and ruin the language, to bring upon anarchy in our culture.” The most persistent argument of opponents to the TDK was that every language contains foreign words. “Every language has foreign elements, the only exception to this rule are the languages of the world’s most isolated tribes,” Timurtaş, declared in 1974."

Interesting stuff. By the way, the title comes from this most excellent comic:

(more) change

2011-10-07T23:03:00.005+03:00

There are four drafts sitting in my Blogger now, each an attempt over the last three or so weeks to write about change. If I'd only guessed what was coming. But despite the unexpected, I'm finding myself settling in quickly and well, starting to love things about this small city.

And the truth is I love change--or, rather, I love big change. Every time I go to Subway (or wherever), I always get the same thing. Same-ness in the little things, creature of habit. But moving to another city, another continent? New language and weather and sky. New start, even. I wonder, now, how much that has to do with it. I moved so many times when I was little. Or maybe it's being able to look at all the same things in some new frame. The last night of Formacion, a handful of us stood in the dark below the mountain picking out the constellations and stars we knew. Vega, the double star in the Big Dipper, Andromeda, Pegasus. I don't know this sky, fall in Romania, half of it waiting to wheel from behind the mountain. But I know this piece, and this one, and standing there in the cold, so far north, I thought about the first time I saw the sky differently. Three years earlier, a balmy Colombian summer night, holding in my hand some things old, some things new.

And why not? I am a creature made new--"the old has gone, the new has come." And now everything looks different.

...

It is one of those nights. I want to run away with words. I want to get caught up in language and stay there for a few hours, but all the immediate and present are tethering me here on a bed which is not my own behind a borrowed closed door. And I'm praying now for patience and grace, mostly to not be so selfish. That's another thing about change: it pulls you apart, sprawls you, has no space for dark places. And in the end you find yourself piecing yourself back together with bits of the old and new, a patchwork of life made new again and again.

I am certain I'm in the right place--why here and not South America, not North Africa, I don't know that I'll ever know. And for how long? What of the next change? But even that changes. Now it looks like place: apartment, city, nation. But even it has its different faces. There's nothing but to see.

For now, all of this has got me firmly rooted in the moment. The trafficked girls we met with tonight. Trying to quiet the part of me that would make stolen milk into something much more bitter, the part of me that would use the word stolen. And I'm praying for change within myself toward grace and gentleness and love. But more, outside myself. Those girls tonight. And the students we've been praying for that we haven't even met yet. Bobociada on Thursday and the girls we'll be discipling. Sowing change, sewing it, having been stitched so together ourselves: something that will endure. Surely this is what you make of so many pieces from so many places.

Lord, help me to do it well.

quote-of-the-day

2011-10-06T13:37:00.002+03:00

"This," she said, "I have always--at least, ever since I can remember--had a kind of longing for death."

"Ah, Psyche," I said, "have I made you so little happy as that?"

"No, no, no," she said. "You don't understand. Not that kind of longing. It was when I was happiest that I longed most. It was on happy days when we were up there on the hills, the three of us, with the wind and the sunshine... where you couldn't see Glome or the palace. Do you remember? The colour and the smell, and looking across at the Grey Mountain in the distance? And because it was so beautiful, it set me longing, always longing. Somewhere else there must be more of it. Everything seemed to be saying, Pysche come! But I couldn't (not yet) come and I didn't know where I was to come. It almost hurt me. I felt like a bird in a cage when the other birds of its kind are flying home."

--C. S. Lewis (Till We Have Faces)

oops

2011-10-04T09:10:00.003+03:00

I realized I just posted, but I got on the computer this morning to check the magnitude of the earthquake we felt last night (5.1, article in English) and saw that I used you're instead of your in the previous title.

Mortified.

Can we blame that on Romanian? It messes with your head, speaking all the time in not-your-language. And especially if the grammar is really different, because then every once in a while the sentences in your own language come out in structured like the other language. And I find myself forgetting how to spell words sometimes.

Anyway, whoops, corrected. Can't believe that happened.

adventure or the circus, your pick

2011-10-03T21:01:00.004+03:00

Sorry for the radio silence as of late. It's been a busy last few weeks between Formacion and preparing to move to Pitesti. And as of Saturday, I'm here now, but as per usual, life is a circus.

Saturday morning I left my apartment in Bucuresti, went to the Yorks' to pack everything in the car and move. The plan was to move into a garsoniera (studio apartment) because it was pretty cheap (except I wasn't sure how I felt about living alone and turns out it was in a really sketch neighborhood--not normally a big deal being used to that, but without roommates it's more problematic). It's a long story, but about ten minutes before we packed the last of the things in the car, we got a phone call saying the apartment was no longer available. Meaning, hey, I'm moving to Pitesti today but we're not exactly sure where.

So I stayed a night with the general secretary and his family and last night I brought myself along with all my stuff to another girl's apartment. However, I'm sharing a room (and a pull-out couch) with a sixteen-year-old girl. Anyway, I don't want to say too much because it's the internet but it's interesting already how God is working things. I'll say that she and I have similar backgrounds. And that I really wanted a room to myself--fellow introverts, you understand.

There's so much about this place that's perfect. All of it, really, except for sharing a bed and room with someone. I don't say this to complain, and not because beggars can't be choosers, but because I wonder what my God is doing, at what he is doing. And I already I'm being stretched, but this is a good thing. Difficult, I'm expecting, but in addition to the good things I'm thinking will come out of it are all the other awesome things about living here.

So there's that. Pitesti is nice so far. Completely different from Bucuresti (much smaller, for one). And student work begins tomorrow. Today I met up with a girl here and we walked around a bit, something like the calm before the craziness. And this morning I was reading my Bible--I've been in 1 Kings--and came across this (17:2-6):

"Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah: 'Leave here, turn eastward and hide in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan. You will drink from the brook, and I have directed the ravens to supply you with food there.' So he did what the LORD had told him. He went to the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan, and stayed there. The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook."

Pretty fitting, no? Our God surely provides. When we got the news Saturday morning, I don't know what it is but I felt really relieved. It's a good reminder that there are bigger things at work here than I can see.

And this is how these last stressful few days ended:

pictures de la munte (bucegi mountains)

2011-09-24T20:04:00.018+03:00

Spent the last ten days at a student leadership conference called Formacion. Halfway through we took a day to go on a hike through the amazing Bugeci mountains. To be clear, by hike I mean something like thirty kilometers and thirteen hours, lots of really sweaty-stinky people and some of those beautiful things you can see in Romania. Don't believe me? Keep reading, captions below each picture. :)

About an hour into the hike!

The bear-dog who someone baptized Balu, like from the Jungle Book. That dog followed us all the way to the top and back.

Somewhere around hour four, I think. Starting to get tired.

It was really clear nearly half the hike (although once we got to the top lots of fog rolled in and it got really cold).

Such an incredible place. And hard (at least for me) to climb but completely completely worth it. If you look closely, you'll see that I'm already getting help up the mountain at this point. But I did make it to the top and all the way back down!

In the valley. If you look at the top middle, you'll see a narrow slash in the mountain that goes up to the top--we climbed up that (see below). Also, for more scale, zoom in and you'll see somebody wearing red and you'll also see that most of the boulders are bigger than the people around them.

I don't think it's in this picture, but to give you an idea of how enormous everything was, there were rock faces hundreds of meters tall and there were people climbing them that you could barely make out because of how small they looked against it.

In the valley sometime after Cabana Malaiesti.

I wish you could really get an idea of the size of this place. Just massive.

Hardest part, for sure.

Hardest part is done!

Me with some awesome OSCPi leaders. Note the altitude written behind us--that's 8,225 feet. Also, just for added fun, nothing that you can see that I'm wearing belongs to me and underneath it is another two layers (three shirts and two pairs of pants) because it was crazy cold at the peak.

Unfortunately there aren't any pictures from the hike down (for which my knees did not later thank me), but it was just as crazy looking. And we also saw a capra neagra--six of them actually, but as I do not know the plural--which are wild black mountain goats that are really more brown-colored and leap down the mountain like it's nothing at all.

Anyway, one more reason to love this place.

a vaccine against hatred

2011-09-04T20:42:00.000+03:00

Read an article tonight called "Una vacuna contra el odio," meaning a vaccine against hatred.

It's a good article, one certainly worth reading, from El Tiempo, a Colombian news site. It's about discrimination and how it's more than just a racial thing. There's a law that was passed last July (or possibly that there's another one that will be passed in addition to this one--didn't quite catch that) that they're hoping will help in curbing discrimination and helping people to understand more fully what that means.

And a very interesting quote:

"Sin embargo, no hay que llamarse a engaño. La ley por sí sola no reducirá tales fenómenos, ni transformará las condiciones estructurales y culturales que los generaron. Tampoco llenará los vacíos que han dejado otras normas..."

"But don't be fooled. The law on its own won't reduce things like this, these phenomena, nor will it transform the structural and cultural conditions that they generate. Neither will it fill the gaps left by those standards..."

(Sorry for the clunky translating, my Spanish-speaking friends. I'm kinda rusty.)

And all I could think reading that was a handful of verses through Romans. How the law reveals to us our sin but it can't save us. And the article: the law on its own isn't going to fix things, isn't going to heal the deep-rooted problems or fill the empty places left by them. The hope then is that through this law (and other things) Colombians will be able to understand more fully what discrimination is.

"El aporte más valioso del proyecto legislativo es que define estos actos como lo que son..."

"The most important contribution of the new legislation is that it defines these acts as what they are."

Sounds familiar, no? Check this out: Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.

The point is that while the law does have a role, that's not where our hope is, that's not where deep transformative work comes from.

The good news is that it's available, that the law isn't the end of the story.

snickers: a confession

2011-09-03T23:10:00.000+03:00

One of the campfire games the last night of our summer camp was called Judgment. They hide you away from the fire, bring you out and then the judge asks you some questions to decide whether you get to go to heaven or you're thrown into the flames. Yeah, sounds kind of terrifying, a little questionable, but it's actually a blast. Especially the ending, which I cannot tell you. You'll have to play for yourself. So the students and I had ourselves a bonding moment that night: when it was my turn I ended up being coerced into admitting that I stole a Snickers when I was seven.

Photographic evidence of a beautiful, hysterical night:

bidding my farewells

2011-09-01T15:54:00.006+03:00

About to leave yesterday and feeling like I was on the edge of death,

Sara: Hey, plec acum. Nu stiu cand ma intorc, dar... sper ca ne vedem. (Hey I'm leaving now. Not sure when I'm coming back, but... I hope we'll see each other again.)

Altcineva: Asta suna melodramatic! (Sounds pretty melodramatic.)

Roommie: [sidelong glance at Altcineva]

Sara: [can't breathe, and at that super high pitch Romanians start their sentences when they're excited/flustered] NUUUUuuuuu! Sper ca ne mai vedem astazi! Astazi! Not, like, vreodata! (Noooo! As in I hope we'll see each other later today. Today! Not, like, ever.)

So ne vedem is like see you later. But in this context... Anyway, despite being on the edge of death, I am still alive. However we haven't yet seen each other.

ministry, messytry

2011-08-30T23:40:00.003+03:00

When I was on the plane last week heading to the conference, I almost started crying thinking about how everything would be in English. I don't think we'd even left the runway yet. When we landed in Birmingham and I asked people in the airport for help finding the train station, I didn't actually cry like I expected, but to hear my language, to speak in it... there's a sort of ownership there--there's another word I can't think of at the moment but it conjures up the image of being 'on my turf now.' And to have polite small talk with strangers! I don't know if it was English or England, perhaps both, but it was wonderful.

It's a strange feeling. In one sense, I still wasn't in my culture. The language gave the sense of it being a sort of cousin culture, but on the other hand, there was a feeling of being home in a way I haven't felt in these last six months. It keeps coming back to this, no? Writing about feeling at home. Snatches of it in Romania, in England with the other IFES workers. You catch and lose it and run after it again, elusive as always. All this longing, and it's one thing I'll never doubt: "But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ." And, from this amazing song:

I am a pilgrim, a voyager
I wont rest until my lips touch the shore
Of the land that I've been longing for as long as I've lived
Where they'll be no pain or tears anymore

But doing this sort of work changes you. I am not Romanian, despite the things I've picked up. And while I'm American, I suspect I won't fit as well when I go back. And so in a group of people who are all living and working cross-culturally, who are learning languages, loving and teaching students, you find people who understand. It's a sort of sub-culture, even, a culture of cultures. And I didn't want to leave.

It sort of hit me the day before we left. We had some extended time to go off on our own and pray and as I sat down to read my Bible, I felt so ornery and aggravated that I was arguing in my head with everything in the passage. So I finally put it down, thought a minute and came to this conclusion: I'm really going back tomorrow. Tomorrow I will be in Romania. And oh man I did not want to.

Weird, right? Sara loves Romania so much, she loves working there and the people and the language and so on. True, but something about it wears on you in ways that are hard to pinpoint. The obvious things--being away from friends/family/more prone to loneliness, the general frustrations of cross-cultural living--all these things are bearable and certainly the life God has led me through has prepared me very well for this sort of thing. And you think, yes, I am handling this well, no? You feel like you are. But it weighs, it is heavy here and it pulls on you in subtle ways and then suddenly you find yourself on a bed telling God you're not ready to go back. Despite the assurance that 'you are in the right place,' despite loving it, even.

Well. I'm back, so there's that. I know this is normal, so there's that too. And the awareness that we have one gracious God, one who waits patiently while his petulant child throws a fit because she doesn't want to do the thing that she really wants to do. So then there's the sucking it up, the shouldering-in even when it's not flowery and easy and even now there's some thankfulness in being back. And enter grace: he works despite the ways we mess it up, despite our attitudes, despite how what we want changes as often as the weather. And there in the mess of it he's teaching us, teaching them, transforming and redeeming and so far it doesn't seem to be any easier but I am grateful. Or I'm being taught to be--a little of both.

One of the people leading at the conference, one I knew was a pastor before I found out just by the way he prayed, led a seminar on grace and he said something that seems to have stuck. He talked about the unforgiving servant, how he had no idea how huge his debt was and therefore just how much grace he had been given. I could write posts and posts on this, but for now I feel like God is showing me in small pieces the grace he's giving me. How that relates to coming back here and doing my job and his work here, well, we'll see.

No neat ending on this one. Just lots of thoughts. The messy work of it all and a God who came down here and got his hands dirty, if that makes sense. Well, if he did, guess we ought to too.

linguistics at subway

2011-08-30T00:03:00.004+03:00

I spent most of Friday hanging out with two Dutch friends killing time while waiting for our flights. We ended up at Subway--I could have cried over my six inch spicy Italian on wheat--and after eating began to teach each other language stuff. They taught me some Dutch, I taught them some Romanian.

Just for fun, I started with probably the hardest sound for native English speakers: ɨ (close central unrounded vowel). If you click the link you can listen to it. So Americans usually pronounce a word like pâine (bread) as if it p-w-i-n-e. But after I pronounced it for them I decided to write it down as well and they got really confused. Where's the l? they asked. The l, what? They were hearing an l.

Turns out the l in Dutch is this one: ɫ (velarized alveolar lateral approximant). Think that Russian-y one that sounds like swallowing. They sound much more alike to me when the Dutch one is said after a vowel as opposed to how it's initially pronounced in the link.

Anyway, I don't honestly know enough about this to say much of anything intelligent and it's been four too many years since my linguistics class (in Spanish!), but something at least feels similar in the way I make these two sounds, so even if I can't tell you in technical terms what's going on, I can hear/feel it. However! I looked it up and Wiki tells me that with lateral approximants (like this one: ɫ), the center of the tongue makes solid contact with the roof of the mouth. And of course with ɨ your tongue lifts toward the roof of your mouth (but doesn't touch).

Well of course! That makes so much sense! It made me so excited when they insisted they heard their l. I love this sort of thing, though. Example, with l and r (the tap). The first time I learned to say te extrañare in Spanish, I heard te extrañale and proceeded to say it like that for over a month until I finally heard it again and saw it written out with, to my surprise, an r. It happens in Romanian, too. A word like locurile gets my tongue a little twisted with the l and r that close and I have to slow down about half the time to get it out.

All you linguists, feel free to correct my fumbling descriptions. And language lovers, aren't these sort of things exciting? So much fun! Do any of you switch up sounds like this sometimes?

wild dogs, dancing & lots of culture

2011-08-28T20:40:00.004+03:00

Well, curled in my bed eating lemons with salt to cure a sore throat and otherwise still sort of spinning from this past week at the IFES InterAction conference. Lots of thoughts and reflections about the talks, particularly one on grace, and just how difficult it is to return to Romania after spending a week among people who do what you do, who love students and long for home too.

But that's for tomorrow. For now, the shenanigans and fun leading up to, during and after the conference.

First, I have Bucuresti to thank for being possibly the only city in which nearly getting run over by a car helps keep you from being eaten by a dog. Yeah, that happened. I was walking to the bus stop the day before I left with two big backpacks and one of the street dogs that usually hangs out in the area (and has never bothered me before) decided because I was much larger and formidable-looking than normal that it was his job to chase me out of his territory (read: the part in front of the bloc where you have to walk).

So there he was behind me, barking really loudly. Normally they don't bother me and when they I do, I talk to them. You'd be surprised but heeeei ce faci, ma? cum te cheamaaaaa? works wonders. Probably people think you're crazy and possibly the dogs do too, but it's kept me from being bitten so far and these dogs get pretty aggressive. Anyway, this dog was entirely too aggressive to converse with so I just kept walking quickly and hoped he'd stop once I got out of his territory (again, read: the street).

About a second later I noticed that there was a car coming. Split-second decision-making, pros and cons. If I stop, I will not be hit by the car but I will be eaten by a dog. If I keep walking, I might not get bit (bitten?) but I might get hit--although the dog might too. Second option: more pros. (Six months ago I would have been appalled to hear people joking about running over street dogs... turns out Bucuresti nudges you out of that sensitivity.) So! I stepped in front of the car driving toward me and all in the same second, he slams on brakes, I side-step the car (pretty spry for a kid with twenty kilos on her back), dude is laying on the horn and shouting and the dog bites my leg. Luckily it was more of a nip and I was wearing jeans. However once I was on the other side of the street I turned around and yelled:

Nu mi-e frica de tine! Which means: I'm not afraid of you. Sucker.

Just as a fun factoid, I was reading some newspaper at the conference about some people who cycled across Europe raise money to buy a minibus for a church in Romania and while in this country they reported being chased by wild dogs. Yup, sounds about right.

Second, for the fun night at the conference we got to do ceilidh dancing. Before the actual night, they called for volunteers to help demonstrate to the rest of the group and being deprived of dancing for the last six months, I decide to volunteer myself. Good fun, right? Cross-cultural jumping-in, no? Well, then. Let's just say that while, at one point in my life I could salsa like a boss, I started out less than graceful at the ceilidh dances.

Anyway, finally got the hang of it, and let me tell you, it was a blast. I love dancing anyway, and this sort involved lots of swinging around and stomping and dancing with everybody. So as not to disappoint, I even fell on my head once. Yup. Grace, too, is a gift from God.

And third, the last evening a handful of us played a pick-up game of soccer. I was barefoot and even scored one pretty baller (buh) shot. The best part about it though was that about halfway through a Ugandan guy joined us. One fast dude. When I went after him when he had the ball, I could never tell which way he was going to go. In fact, I even told him that at one point. I said, my feet get so confused when I'm in front of you, left? right? what? Without pause, in the most African way you can imagine, he says:

It is okay to do a little dance!

And one last one, one of the many gems from this weekend, our resident French girl on trying England's pork scratchins:

It is like ze food for cats!

quote-of-the-day

2011-08-27T15:52:00.002+03:00

Two especially good ones from the previous week:

"Christianity seems unique in being the only world religion that is transmitted without the language or originating culture of its founder.'
--Lamin Sanneh

"Imagine the multicultural chorus of saints from all the ages--ancient Israel's Levite psalmists, clapping African saints with joyful praises, European Reformers with their majestic hymns, monks with their Gregorian and Ethiopian Coptic chants, Latin American Pentecostals with shouts of triumph, messianic Jews dancing the horah, and a generation of North American street evangelists doing gospel rap!" (Would that not be epic?)
--Craig Keener

bucuresti surprises me again

2011-08-17T21:46:00.002+03:00

Something about Bucuresti: I haven't once seen a really beautiful sunset. It may just be that all the blocs are in the way or that I'm not looking. But this city has done me one better. The thing about blocs on top of blocs is that it means windows on top of windows. And this evening walking home, the bloc facing me looked like it had been lit on fire. Ten stories of bright, blazing orange. And so it seems that anything can reflect beauty, even the grimy side of a Communist bloc.

Above it were hundreds and hundreds of birds. It's still hot here, but I wondered if they were flying south for the winter. My best guess is that the direction they were going was north-west and I wonder now where they were headed. They just kept coming. And so I walked below them, face turned to the sky under the warm orange glow.

Swing Life Away was playing on my iPod. It's just a simple 90s song but I love it so much. A few lyrics:

I've been here so long, I think that it's time to move
The winter's so cold, summer's over too soon
Let's pack our bags and settle down where palm trees grow

But I don't want to move yet, not out of Romania, I mean. I've spent my whole life moving, picking up and starting again. Some new city where Fall is different, some new country where the language is not my own. And I love it. I hope this isn't the last place I live. But watching those birds--I didn't envy them, not exactly anyway. I love doing what they do, look forward to doing what they do, but for everything this city is, this country, its dirt and grime and life-worn people, I am content here. This is where I'm supposed to be right now. It's a good feeling.

The metaphors reach around. Most anyone who can leaves this place. They go to Spain or Italy or the States. Anywhere but here. Not like the birds. And it isn't perfect here. It's a hard, heavy place. But on the bus today God of this City started playing in my headphones and, surrounded by those same threadbare people, it meant something fuller than it ever has before, even having thought through this something like a year ago.

For greater things are yet to come
Greater things are still to be done in this city

I believe that. I see it already. And aren't we all just vessels anyway? Broken, perhaps, some of us pieced back together and filled with a God who restores and redeems. There's the capacity for so much here. Like the filthy side of a bloc, one of thousands here, but the funny thing is they serve as really good reflectors. Who knew?

quote-of-the-day

2011-08-17T11:18:00.003+03:00

"Even though the image is now contorted, people are made in the image of God. This is who people are, whether they know or acknowledge it. God is the great Creator, and part of the unique mannishness of man, as made in God's image, is creativity. Thus, man as man paints, shows creativity in science and engineering and so on. Such activity does not require a special impulse from God, and it does not mean that people are not alienated from God and do not need the work of Christ to return to God. It does mean that man as man, in contrast to non-man, is creative. A person's world view almost always shows through in his creative output, however, and thus the marks on the things he creates will be different."
--Francis Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live

an average day at the park

2011-08-15T15:09:00.005+03:00

Today, while sitting in the park listening to music, as per usual I was approached. An old man rode by me on a bike staring straight at me and then circled back around not long later and stopped in front of me. The following conversation occurred. (Note: I understood a lot more than I can reproduce so forgive any inconsistencies language-wise.)

Domnul: Sa nu va deranjez... (something that sounded like asculti) musique? C'est (something) musique? [Not to bother you, but... (I think) what kind of music are you listening to?]

Sara: ... [Trying to remember some French]

Domnul: Parlez-vous francais? [Do you speak French?]

Sara: N-- [Started to say that I didn't]

Domnul: Un peu? Un peu? [A little?]

Sara: Oui, mais... [Yes, but... (in reality that was a stall)]

Domnul: (a whole string of stuff I don't really catch) musique?

Sara: Je ne comprends pas. [I don't understand (but I finally remembered how to tell you!)]

Domnul: (something I don't remember)

Sara: Aaa... de unde sunteti? [(attempt at conversation) Where are you from?]

Domnul: Auf wiedersehen! [Goodbye!]

And then his little polyglot self rode happily away.

gua / south sudan

2011-08-11T21:06:00.003+03:00

A few weeks ago, I read the last two-thirds of a book I'd started in the States, left there and got hold of some five months later. What is the What, by Dave Eggers, and I'd recommend it to anyone. It's the fictionalized true story of Valentino Achak Deng (meaning it's written by Eggers from Achak's point of view and is true, but it parts of happened so long ago, and how do you for example remember dialogue from then?, that it's called a novel), a Sudanese Lost Boy who grew up in refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya.

While I wish he'd gone more into the theme from the title--the What represents the unknown, the what if, the could be. How it drives us or fear of it holds us, "the mysterious, unnamable, destructive and possibly unattainable What." But it was a wonderful book, worth reading, particularly if you have an interest in that part of the world.

Somewhere in the book Achak mentions that some eight years later, in 2011, from the point he's narrating, there will be a vote about whether the southern part of Sudan would separate from the north and become its own country. And I thought, reading it, huh, that's interesting, so I'll probably get to read about that sometime this year. Sure enough, I got on the internet that night, not even thinking about it, and saw a link that informed me that only two days before they had voted South Sudan into existence. I hadn't even finished the book yet.

But how exciting! I felt like I was reading the book in real-time, all these things Achak was thinking about and longing for. Would the Dinka and Nuer and all the other southern Sudanese ever return to Sudan?

There's a song I really like called Gua by two Sudanese, one Muslim and from the north, the other Christian and from the south. (It's probably not fair to generalize this much, but much of the conflict centers around the differences between the Arab Muslim part of the country, and the Christian, more 'traditionally African' part.) They put together an album in the name of peace and this song in particular, the lyrics of which are in I don't know how many languages, says (translated):

"I will be so happy
When there's peace in Sudan
When people come back to Sudan,
My heart will be filled with joy
When people can go back home...
Just hold on a minute, let's think for a minute
How Sudan will be with peace for a minute?
Our hands will be raised, our God will be praised
Oh my God I can't wait for that day
When my people
Will plant seed in their land
When my people
Will be free in their land
When my people...
I can't wait, I can't wait for that day
When I will see no more tears, no more fear, no cry,
No tribalism, nepotism and racism in my motherland
I can't wait for that day
When the wonderful people go back home
And plan their nation in this generation
I can't wait to see that day."

And it's all really happening, right now, in the brand new country of South Sudan. And then today I read an article out of IFES, the world organization I work for/am partnered with, about how to move forward with the student movements there:

"Pray that the church and political leaders embrace and promote the unity which is critical to the survival of South Sudan. Please pray for the on-going political negotiations and process of reconciliation between the north and south, that this will serve the cause of the gospel. May Christian students and graduates will be salt and light to the infant nation of South Sudan!"

I'm so glad to be working for an organization like this. And just as a matter of interest, that part of Africa is where it's at for IFES-related student movements. The Ethiopian movement has some 30,000 students. By comparison, InterVarsity USA has (I think?) 33,000 and Nigeria is the biggest with 34,000 (and something like forty staff).

Anyway, excited to see what's happening in Southern Sudan and its northern neighbor these days.

**I'm reading that gua means good in Nuer and power in Sudanese Arabic.

'nother article

2011-08-09T11:11:00.003+03:00

This one's called "The Mathematics of Changing Your Mind." A quote:

If you want to assess the strength of your hypothesis given the evidence, you must also assess the strength of the evidence given your hypothesis. In the face of uncertainty, a Bayesian asks three questions: How confident am I in the truth of my initial belief? On the assumption that my original belief is true, how confident am I that the new evidence is accurate? And whether or not my original belief is true, how confident am I that the new evidence is accurate? One proto-Bayesian, David Hume, underlined the importance of considering evidentiary probability properly when he questioned the authority of religious hearsay: one shouldn’t trust the supposed evidence for a miracle, he argued, unless it would be even more miraculous if the report were untrue.

Now this doesn't exactly follow the logic of the article, but it made me think of something else I read a few years ago in a book I can't remember the name of. It said that really it seemed more miraculous that Jesus could die than that he rose from the dead. That God, who created life, from whom all life comes, could cease to be alive, could step outside of life into death: well, that seemed much more preposterous than coming back.

As for thinking through whether it would be more miraculous that he didn't come back to life, as I suppose this specific logic would want me to do, well, maybe miraculous is the wrong word. Wouldn't it be more unthinkable if he stayed dead, if you believe he was really God?

Anyway, fun stuff to think through.

(p.s. Feel free to point out any gaping holes in logic, on my part or otherwise--I just sort of threw this together and besides, it's the conversation around this that I'm more interested in. What do you think?)

speaking romanian in front of large groups...

2011-08-06T22:47:00.004+03:00

Well, after six months of language learning and twenty three years of crazy life, I give you this:

(And I didn't even throw up.)

Let it be known that I am not a public speaker, I never will be. I'll do it, but it'll probably sound that nervous every single time. Unfortunately it seems that I get a fat UHM American accent when I have to give a talk like this, one that I don't think is always there quite so strongly, but I am hoping that by the time I'm fluent enough that I don't have to think about how to say what I want to say, it'll tone down a little.

For those who don't speak Romanian, this is two minutes from a thirty minute talk I gave, this in particular part of my testimony. And though I stumbled through it, the conversations I had afterward with some of the girls remind me that he works through all the junk we bring him. Which of course is the whole point, his work, I mean. Definitely felt honored and privileged to get asked to do this.

a tale of two feet

2011-08-05T17:14:00.003+03:00

Fact: I'm really bad at having feet in this country.

My first full day here back in February, my coworker took me on a walk around Berceni and being a) unaccustomed to Winter and therefore unaccustomed to dressing properly for it and b) a little jetlagged and therefore making questionable decisions, I wore flats. There was ice and snow and dog poop on the streets. And actually I don't think I'd ever worn these shoes before. Such was my judgment. Well, it did not take long before the back of my heel started to burn, but I figured I was getting a blister and there was nothing I could do about it anyway so best to just keep walking.

A couple hours later as I was being shown the Mega Image, I took a peek at my heel and imagine my surprise when my heel, the heel of my shoes and the back of my pants were all completely covered in blood.

And then about a month ago I was playing volleyball in the park, barefoot as I am wont to do, when my little right foot got crushed by a not so little guy. Actually, let's be clear. He wasn't much taller than I am, if at all, he was just thick. And wearing tennis shoes and coming down from a spike. And you know the veins or arteries that you can see on the tops of your feet? Well, immediately I started to bruise where those had been visible (they still aren't visible on that foot anymore). And by the end of the night the whole thing was so swollen and bruised I couldn't even wear my shoe. It's finally quit being tender and puffed up in the last week or two.

So three. This past week we were on the mountain, which is one of the best places you can be, sort-of hiking, which is one of the best things you can do. And I even bought a pair of hiking boots because six years after I quit playing soccer I'm still the fall-down girl and need every bit of traction I can get. The thing is, being one who prefers to go barefoot or in flipflops, I don't own any long socks. Just the ankle kind. But I figured even if the socks didn't quite reach the top of the ankle of the boots, it would be okay. Once more we see a gap in judgment.

Two hikes later, lots of gauze and some borrowed socks, I have blisters that aren't exactly blisters: they're more that the skin has been rubbed clean off. That's gross, right? Sorry. Anyway I've been healing them up as best as I can with help from lots of mothers, including my roommate's who put some yellow stuff and some powder on it and made me lie in bed all day Monday with my feet elevated to get the swelling down (looked like I was pregnant). Plus, poor circulation to the extremities means cold feet and slow healing. But we're working on it. We're working on it.

religion for atheists

2011-07-24T13:12:00.002+03:00

A really interesting article entitled "Religion for Atheists"--worth reading, for sure.

one foot back home

2011-07-18T20:57:00.002+03:00

Last night it stormed something serious over Bucuresti. It's been hot like you wouldn't believe--not as hot as Wilmington, but nothing but asphalt and no ocean here, and also no fan so it's been about as bad. But then the wind kicked up and the funny thing about this city when it's about to storm is that the wind starts turning everything upside down and you see just how dirty it really is. I was sitting in my room which is just above the tops of some trees, level with the tops of others and all of a sudden they start tossing around and making a bunch of noise--a) you realize that you haven't heard anything that sounded so natural, meaning not like the guys working on the side of your block or the traffic in a while, and b) man that wind is serious! So I looked out and there on the street is this cloud of dirt kicked up and spinning around and generally obscuring the cars and ground-level stores. Twenty minutes of this, twenty minutes of watching low pulled-apart clouds race above the blocs, green-tinted everything and then cold rain. Reprieve, let me tell you. And you know what else? It smells different when it rains in the city. I don't know how I hadn't noticed yet. It's not a pretty smell, not a clean smell but I stood half hanging out the window anyway, cold wind and lightning. Not a bad way to end a day.

My computer is working now. Turns out it needed to be vacuumed (my taking it apart and attempting to clean it was along the right way of thinking, just didn't do it well enough) which is mostly embarrassing but also, hey, free. Holler. And my language is working again too. Two weeks of not using it and then jumping back in made for a kind of shaky start, but it seems to have done some restructuring while I wasn't using it and it's been a good time jumping back in. This language--I say stupid stuff all the time and have a long way to go, but I think I speak it now :)

If I can follow this bunny trail for a minute or two longer, some interesting observations for the fellow language-learner: one, I keep doing this weird thing where I forget I don't speak Romanian the way I do English (meaning well--hah, okay, seriously though, I mean without effort, without lag time between brain and mouth). You get to a point where you just understand what people are saying and you're not really thinking, oh this is Romanian or this is English, you just understand it. And so when you open your mouth to respond and all of a sudden it's halting and slow-ish and the fluidity of the conversation suddenly derails, you go, oh crap! I forgot! Has this happened to you?

Anyway, to return to things working again. The computer, the language. Even camp. In terms of knowing people deeply, this place for me is still a work in progress. But you spend a week or so with Americans (who are really American, versus the Romanianized ones I hang out with here) and it comes with all sorts of realizations. One: you and they have changed. This is not a bad thing. It's not really anything, in all honesty. It's just what it is. But two, you realize that no matter this change, there is still a place of rest and reprieve in being able to speak easily, to watch Doctor Who or whatever really, to slip back into the old for a while and feel it against your skin like an old t-shirt. Maybe it doesn't fit the same way any longer, but it's still a piece of home. And it is good. I am thankful. So it was to spend a week with friends. We could have been on Mars and it wouldn't have mattered.

And here I find myself back. I almost missed the plane back to Bucuresti, the one time in history a Romanian flight left early, and running onto the bus that took us to our plane, falling back into 'aoleu...' and a little Romanian lady next to me who told me how hot it was going to be when we landed, I felt like I was going home. It was indeed hot. And the taxi drivers hounded me. People kissed each other on both cheeks and drove like maniacs.

I think there are two homes in question here. One of people, one of place. The one of people is wherever they are. If I meet my friends in Germany, it is there with them. If my best friend flies from Wilmington to here, here we are home together. And wherever in the world I'm with my brother, there it is. But then place: I realize this now, looking back on seeing that Romanian van in Germany, in flying back on a plane I wasn't sure was going to land in one piece. The chaos of it all is familiar. The heat and the mic.ro stores and the parks, the look and sound of Romanians. It's a different slipping back in, one that comes with less of the comfort of people-home, but more of something tangible and constant, like a steadied arm.

And speaking of home:

quick one

2011-07-11T23:04:00.002+03:00

Well, there was some doubt but now we know for sure: my little computer is busted. I'm hoping by the time I get it fixed and can keep it on long enough to write a proper blog, I'll remember the things I wanted to write about the trip. Especially about the day we were just over the border in France. It was lovely, and I miss my friends already.

For now, on with the camps. Clearly I'm not on the mountain because I'm writing this blog. There was a change in plans and we're having it here in Bucuresti. There's a theme here, at least for my life. God's plans, not ours, not mine. I'm confident of how he will work in both the camp here and in my life and I'm glad for it.

So. Hopefully sometime next week.

home

2011-07-02T17:44:00.002+03:00

On the long rode from Frankfurt to Berlin yesterday, I had my head leaned against the window trying not to be carsick, and all of a sudden I realized that I was understanding something I was reading (vrei o masina ca acesta?). It was some sort of van from Timisoara, and in all the order and straight lines of Germany, all of a sudden I felt at home again.

The van was driving pretty aggressively, there was a crack up the windshield and I don't know how to explain it but the driver just looked Romanian. That sprawling country with its hot-blooded Latin people, all the chaos and disorganization and even the warmth of the people--it's home. Whether this is because it's a little crazy in the dirty South or it's because even after four months, even though it can be hard living in Bucuresti, something about it feels like home now, even all the way in Germany.

shenanigans

2011-06-29T21:47:00.003+03:00

Once again the computer appears to be cooperating, so here's one more for the road.

I seem to attract crazy people and crazy situations and general shenanigans. Meaning if it's unlikely to happen except once in a blue moon and it sort of defies reality with its weirdness, it will almost certainly happen to me.

A few mild examples (the crazier ones are just too crazy to believe): the first being that two years ago I got stuck hiding under a giant blanket on a really squishy couch (so that you couldn't tell anyone was there) because I was not, shall we say, having slept on that couch, dressed for guests. Anyway I was stuck because when I woke up there was a cable repair guy in my living room (no one else home but me) and I wasn't wearing pants. The kicker is that I had to be at work at 9, it was 830, and I laid there without moving for forty minutes while he worked (and it was hot, oh man), praying the alarm wouldn't go off so he wouldn't know I was there. Such is the sketchiness of our old neighborhood. Anyway the great part is that I didn't get in trouble for being late to work because how often does something like that happen?

Well, let me tell you how often. They're doing work on the side of our bloc right now. When I got back into Bucuresti, I saw that my blinds had been closed and remembered. But I opened them the next morning, and the following night I got back really late and just kind of collapsed into bed without thinking. So come 8 the next morning, I wake up because I hear someone knocking. Most of the time, as with this time, I sleep completely under the covers, including my head, so I peeked my head out to see if my roommate was knocking on the door. But instead I saw: a man standing outside my fourth floor window knocking on it. Which took a second to register. Because we're four floors up. But then I remembered the scaffolding, somehow managed to get out of bed with every blanket on it wrapped around me and shut all the blinds. Meanwhile homeboy outside is telling me he needs our electricity. Exit room. Roommate laughs at me. She already knows about these shenanigans and their frequent occurrence.

Then today I was in my room packing when all of a sudden I heard our front door open and close really really quietly. So I went to investigate, and there in the kitchen is my eighty-some year old neighbor, half her body leaned out the window. So I said buna ziua and she told me she was looking at what all the workers had done (she has a key). She then informed me she needed an onion, where were they, and I told her I wasn't sure we had any but they'd probably be in the kitchen closet. So next thing I know she is practically crawling around rummaging through all the stuff on the bottom. And I'm thinking, is she even gonna be able to get up?? But sure enough, she found the single onion hidden who-knows-where and shuffled back to the door, and as I told her I hoped she had a good day, she saw my feet. My bare feet on the kitchen floor.

Something about Romanians for those who don't know: they like to wear papuci, which are slippers or flip flops, and anyway you don't want to get caught (especially by older people) walking around barefoot. But I've always run around without shoes and can't seem to break the habit, especially in summer. And so began a scolding of righteousness and what could I do except put flip flops on immediately and say that I won't forget again. But she kept grabbing her stomach and then I realized she was telling me I was going to get a cold in my ovaries. Another thing you should know if you don't: here it is said that if you sit on a cold surface and you have lady parts, they will catch a cold (raceala) so you should never do that. Find a chair or something or stand. But I didn't realize that it was for being barefoot too. She's a nice enough old lady though, and I'm assuming that, like the guard in the park who told me to go home because I was sitting in the sun and it was strong, she was just looking out for me and my future babies.

Anyway, shenanigous. So it goes.

''meat free'' cherries

2011-06-28T21:46:00.003+03:00

It seems my computer is working today. Let's see if it'll work long enough to write a blog about fruit.

Because let me tell you, the fruit here is amazing. So glad to live in a place where you can get it fresh and cheap. And the really cool thing about it is that it actually comes in seasons here. You know, like fruit is supposed to do. First it was the strawberries, and then the cherries and the sour cherries. And when we got back to Bucuresti yesterday, all over the place were these giant piles of watermelons. I do mean big, big enough that I'm certain a kid could scale it. I'm not sure which fruit comes next although I'm looking forward to finding out, but I'm told that you start to crave the fruits alongside the times when they're in season.

As for last week, I ate my weight in visine, which I'm pretty sure are the sour cherries. So sitting at the table in Baile Herculane, having eaten probably twenty already--you can't stop eating them, they're so good--Mike walks by me and says:

"Be careful of the worms."

To which I replied: "...Poftiiiiim?"

And then someone explained to me how they usually have little worms in then. That one time they opened each one and every single one had a worm in it. That sometimes when they're selling them there's a sign over them that says: "Fara Carne," meaning without meat. Heh. Anyway, how do they know?

Well. For as many cherries as I ate this past week, I don't want to think about how many little worms might have been in my stomach. But, as another person with us told me with a wise and knowing nod, better not to think about it. After which I helped myself to more.

out of commission

2011-06-27T13:40:00.003+03:00

Well, instead of pictures to upload of my week at Baile Herculane, I sadly am (and am very fortunate to be) typing this blog on an iPod. My computer is dead, mostly. Occasionally I can get it to work, but most of the time it won't stay on for more than ten minutes without blowing up. I'm leaving Thursday for Germany and then after that I'll be at camp, so I'm kind of out of commission for the next few weeks. Still planning on updating when I can swipe a computer and that sort of thing, but in the meantime it'll be hit and miss.

That said, when I get back and hopefully get my whacked-out computer fixed, I have some crazy stories like how my very mild-mannered coworker and I, the Romanian-as-a-second/third-language speaker had to go off on some guys on the train and also how, one night, something felt like a truck hit the house and the whole thing shook and we never did figure out what it was. And a whole ton more.

In the meantime, can't wait till that and writing about adventures in Germany...

the show goes on

2011-06-19T08:26:00.003+03:00

Gonna be gone for the next week, a glorious week without internet full of clean air and people I like. And after that, I'll come back to Bucuresti, but then it's gone again and so for about the next month I won't be around all that much but I'm planning to post when I can. In the meantime, I can't stop listening to this song (that second verse--''one in the air for...!'' thanks to a lovely friend for recommending it):

(a small sampling of) things i love about living in romania

2011-06-17T20:36:00.003+03:00

In no particular order:

--Public transportation. There are lots of reasons not to like this, like the fact that it's crowded and smelly and takes forever. But it's cheap (altogether I spend about $20 a month to get around the city with the metro and the bus) and at least in my experience it's reliable. And you actually get to experience the outside world this way--you don't pull up to the front of the building, walk ten feet and immediately you're back inside under fluorescent lighting again. You walk, you get rained on and dirt blown in your eyes and you breathe in pollution. This isn't a backwards way of saying the city sucks and so does its transit. It is worth appreciating. It seems to me if you want to live in a city, really live in it, use the public transport and walk around in it. You know it this way. You're not just in your 'convenient Lexus cages' (flashback to 2003, anyone?) or Popemobile (not hating, I don't want to see the Pope get shot either), but you are literally breathing in the city. Lots of fun metaphors come to mind, images like blood pumping through the body. Feeling like a Bucuresteana.

--The mountains. As always, it's no use at all trying to describe it. This country surprises you with how beautiful it is. I'm thinking of Piatra Craiului, those jagged rocks the color of white sand, how it was too big behold. Going back to Rasnov for a week in July and I can't wait. Clean air, cool night, all that good stuff.

--The fact that I haven't seen one single gun. Not wanting to get political here, but it's something I've appreciated. And besides, let's be honest, the fat-bellied Scorseze guards in the metro with their nightsticks? Any idiot can (and will) shoot a gun, but somehow the idea of beating the living daylights out of someone with a nightstick is way more intimidating.

--Also, Romanians, say what you want about the people here: there is common decency in this city too, and lots of it. It's a little thing but I see people helping women lift strollers into the bus all the time. Whether it's that we in the States are too afraid of being called sexist or getting sued, I didn't see much of it there. And there's generally more gallantry here--maybe it's just the circles I am in, because yes there are plenty of dirty obnoxious men who yell after you. To the gentlemen I say: you are appreciated!

--Volleyball on Saturdays! I'm not a great volleyball player--meaning I'm inconsistent and can serve like a baller but can't play the net--but it's good fun. I somehow manage to get hurt each week in a different way. A few weeks ago I got my head stepped on (when I played soccer I was the fall-down girl and it seems this has not changed) and last week a pretty solid individual stepped on my bare (dirty hippie) feet with his tennis-shoe-clad ones and by the end of the night it was so swollen and blue I couldn't put my shoe on. But again, a blast. Soon my court-side conversation will be up to par the Romanians. Heh. Anyway, afterward we usually get rained on and then play Settlers, another game I'm not great at but learning how to heckle and tease and be dura and/or smechera in Romanian is always an adventure. Wonderful group of people, wonderful way to spend a Saturday.

--OSCEB, of course. The main meetings are done for the school year, but they were so good. Missing my Tuesday nights already.

--My small group and how they love God, the interesting things we talk about and the genuine sense of community there and how loved they make you feel :)

--While we're at it, my church. Pretty baller sermons.

--Just the fact in general that I'm here and getting to do what I love, even when it's hard, even when I miss people. And on top of the students and the work, getting to immerse in this beautiful, complicated language. It's coming, it really is. I had my last lesson for the next few months with my professor this week and when I was asking her what I could work/focus on during that time, she told me I had no accent. Which of course is silly, I do have one and can hear myself slipping sometimes--and it's easy to say a few words together and sound like a native, but stringing together whole conversations is another thing altogether :) The point though is that it was encouraging, the people with whom I talk are encouraging, and despite my endless impatience, it is coming.

--The fact that I didn't have to sit for hours and try to think about things that are good about living here. And this isn't related but I realized it today and just wanted to throw it out there, but I have not seen one single squirrel since I've lived in this country (should that be something to appreciate or no?)... maybe it's a dumb question, but are there squirrels here?

(a small sampling of) things i'm missing about wilmington

2011-06-15T17:58:00.004+03:00

--The ocean, and being able to ride my bike to it. I miss the way it smells, and while every once in a while a pond in a park here will smell like the sound does at low tide or after it rains, it isn't the same. I miss the way a wave lifts your body, the sound of the ocean. And of course the south end of Wrightsville at night. There's nowhere better in the world to go to think or talk or pray than there. Such a full place.

--Our neighborhood, our beat-up, sketch neighborhood. In the last few months I've got news of scary stuff happening there, and while more than anything I'm glad everyone is okay, it makes me miss it some. There were so many reminders to persist in love in that place: how our street seemed to be segregated by speed bumps into black/hispanic/white, the scrappy little kids whose crazy life at home we heard in every word they said.

--Of course the people. And it taking under twenty minutes tops ever to get to them. And movie nights and stretching out on each other's living room floor without worrying about how late it is even if we have class or work at eight a.m....

--Going barefoot just about everywhere (I think the Romanians think I'm filthy or maybe just boyish for not ever wearing shoes at volleyball).

--The pine trees and the sand and Sun Drop whenever I please.

--HUGS! Can't emphasize this one enough.

--Carolina Beach and the whole feeling of that place, impromptu worship sessions and beach camping and the way being at the north end of the island or down toward Kure Beach at night felt like being on the margins of the world, just ocean and a stretch of stars and cold sand.

--Oh, and the river, Kilwin's, the 4th of July fireworks over the Battleship and driving downtown at two in the morning blasting epic battle music from Lord of the Rings and freaking out all the drunk people as they leave the bars.

--And last but not least, a common thread that seems to be appearing: playing. I'm all for being serious and having conversations about life and what you love, but I also like to be silly and do handstands and tease and prank and play. And we do that a little bit here, but not nearly as much and it's harder to share it.

And a whole ton more. However this list is not complete without the things that are making me happy about living in Bucuresti so keep an eye out for that one.

if our king lived in it

2011-06-13T22:54:00.007+03:00

Of all the Romanians you'd least expect, I've been having the most interesting conversations with my professor lately. Whether it's just that she's more patient, she forces me to explain really in-depth things in Romanian (which I gladly and with much frustration tackle) or, let's be honest, that I'm paying her, twice a week I find myself having something kind of like the sort of conversations I really miss. And today, we somehow got on the topic of how Christians approach the world.

Honestly, besides the fact that she does believe in God, I have no idea what she believes. She's one of the smartest, most intimidating people I've ever met. Actually, if you can imagine Edna from The Incredibles except a language and literature professor instead of a super-suit designer, that's her. It's wonderful. And we talk about culture, about linguistics, history history history, books. And to give credit where it's due: if nowhere else, at least in her living room she's got me philosophizing in Romanian about how things pass away and what remains and all kinds of other stuff.

Today, it started with a comment about how I feel like I'm generally more liberal than the nationals I work with, than the students. And it turned into a conversation--one with ideas I haven't really fleshed out yet, so bear with me as I process--about how it seems that Christians who 'grow up in the church' (in a certain context, I mean--the kind without any outside exposure) are often really different than the ones who don't. I'm making big generalizations here and even as I type I'm thinking about how that statement changes depending on where in the world you go. Maybe it's more true here than in the States? Or more true in different parts of the States than others? I don't know.

I think about friends who grew up without anything to do with the church, who love to dance, who DD for their friends (designated driver, for anyone who doesn't know, meaning they drive so their drunk friends don't try to), who've experienced a lot of different things and love the people in this very different place. It's easy to oversimplify in the other direction and say that the others who grew up in the church, who were sheltered from 'the world,' have a limited, narrowed window of the life that goes on in the other ninety-something percent of the population. It's sometimes true, but I know that it isn't always, and there are many good things to be said for when it's done right and I hope more than anything if I have a family that I can give that to them.

But of the rest? I don't want us to live in that Christian bubble with its tendencies toward legalism and fear. This is all very underdeveloped, and there's so much more to say, but thinking about this on the metro after my lesson, I thought about my brother, the two of us. We grew up in the South, so there's the moral inclination toward Christianity, but the truth is that we weren't raised in the church, exactly. We went sometimes, but there's a difference. And we experienced unyielding life as far back as I can remember. It isn't that the church is this happy, bright-shiny place where everything is easy and superficial and smiley--I honestly don't think it's much different than outside as far as what people bring in, except that it is infused with the hope of a King who is redeeming our brokenness. But for my brother and I, would I change things, if I could go back? Not for me: the answer is instant, I don't have to think about it. For Josh, I hesitate. Sometimes I want to.

I remember a brief conversation I had with someone here a few months back about free will and suffering and all that. And this person said maybe it was better to be a robot than to have had the freedom to make certain mistakes. And while I understood, while I know about wanting to take things back even if not for ourselves but for other people we've hurt, part of me thought, no no no. I thought, if God gave it to to us, if he meant for us to have it, it's good, and I think I'm paraphrasing C. S. Lewis here, but apparently he thought it was worth the risk. So I return to my brother. I want to agree with the person--better to have not been able to make any choice than the wrong one, better to save a boy from very hard things--but I find that I can't. In the end, in the midst of things I will never understand, I see a sovereign God who is not done working, who knows the end that I do not. And the beginnings: being knit together in the womb, being grown on the edges of hope with people and words and things as far removed from God as it gets. Perhaps, having been drawn into the very center of this hope, it was so that we could return again to the margins of it so that others might be caught up too, salvation a word that reaches into every corner of life, physical and spiritual.

And so I want to grab people, shake the fear from them and run into a world that is worth knowing and loving* because it is made up of people who are known and loved by God. And I get the feeling we're meant to tell them, to say, didn't you know? There's hope in a King who defeated death. Didn't you know?

(Yes, I know about this and this. It's not what I mean--if there's need to clarify more, let me know and I will, but by world I mean more people. 'Running into' in the sense of being in and not of, and loving the heck out of the people. And anyway, maybe I've made a mistake with it--I did say it was underdeveloped--what do you think?)

brother!

2011-06-12T14:29:00.003+03:00

My mom sent me these pictures yesterday, and whoa, my little greenish-eyed brother is not so little. I realize how this sounds, but let's be honest, I have never shied away from being sentimental and why start now? And just look at that hair! It's all buzzed off now, but I actually kind of like it, it suits him. We haven't looked all that much alike since we were little, except for the face shape. But I can see that more than ever now.

Anyway, I'm just a gushy big sister who can't help herself. This is my beautiful brother. Who is gonna get me when he sees I put the second picture on my blog... oh well, you'll have to come to Romania if you want to do something about it! Teehee :)

quote-of-the-day

2011-06-10T20:22:00.002+03:00

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery

o poza

2011-06-08T09:47:00.001+03:00

Me, the girl we meet with and a coworker. Had our last meeting this Monday--going to miss this, for sure.

quote-of-the-day

2011-06-07T15:13:00.000+03:00

“They were services like no others, these times in Barracks 28. A single meeting night might include a recital of the Magnificat in Latin by a group of Roman Catholics, a whispered hymn by some Lutherans, and a sotto-voce chant by Eastern Orthodox women. With each moment the crowd around us would swell, packing the nearby platforms, hanging over the edges, until the high structures groaned and swayed.

At last Betsie or I would open the Bible. Because only the Hollanders could understand the Dutch text we would translate aloud in German. And then we would hear the life-giving words passed back along the aisles in French, Polish, Russian, Czech, back into Dutch. They were little previews of heaven, these evenings beneath the light bulb. I would think of Haarlem, each substantial church set behind its wrought-iron fence and its barrier of doctrine. And I would know again that in darkness, God’s truth shines most clear.”
--Corrie ten Boom

just pieces of things

2011-06-05T15:03:00.003+03:00

Just a collection of things floating around in my head lately.

The first one has to do with knowing people and being known. It's been something difficult here from the very outset with a wall of language I'm still learning to climb. But I've been realizing lately that it's not just this. I had a conversation with a coworker the other day about how it's a lot harder to hang out casually here--it takes forever to get across the city, there don't seem to be places where you run into people all the time like you might on a college campus in the States--and so if it's not planned, and that around people's crazy schedule, it may just not happen. How do you really get to know people in this context?

I'm thinking about this because it's a large part of my job. And personally it's hard not having the sorts of relationships with friends I had in Wilmington. But then in the metro on the way to OSCEB the other night, I started to think about how we are known by God, how the desire to know and be known stems from this. Immediately Psalm 139 comes to mind. What does it mean to be known by God? How are we known? And etc. Just thinking through all that. And then this quote by Alex Kirk himself:

"We are, in the end, conflicted creatures--about all our relationships, God included. Our deepest longing is to be known and loved and yet it takes more courage than any of us has to enter in relationships of true knowing and loving."

What else? Today at church a man who works with prisoners here in Romania spoke a little. I talked with him afterward, heard about the work he's doing. It's good stuff. It's funny how God works--here these last few days especially I've been worrying about my brother, waiting on some kind of news that won't change, and God reminds me that he is being made known there too. And so we prayed for peace and encouragement, for his Spirit to be with them, certain that there is no man beyond redemption. I prayed not only for my brother but for people here in Romania, remembering the sorts of things God did when Paul was in jail, learning what he's doing here now. Something to be said for perspective, for sure.

And then last Wednesday I went to Pitesti and ended up being asked to talk a little/give a small devotional (in Romanian!) with about ten minutes time to prepare. One more reason having a blog or journal is helpful: if you are suddenly called on to do something like this, your thoughts are already organized! All you have to do is think of how to say it in Romanian and pray a whole ton, and instead of throwing up when you begin to speak, it will come easily and you won't even shake. Small miracles, people. The interesting thing was that, while I spoke out of my own experience as of late, just the first thing that really came to mind, all the songs we sang during worship were on the same theme. It's neat to see how God will orchestrate things like that.

There's more, most of it tangled, waiting to be written out so the threads and themes will suddenly appear. Looking forward to that. Until then--

God, isaiah and volleyball

2011-05-30T22:01:00.003+03:00

This is going to sound silly, but Saturday when we were setting up the net for volleyball, someone said something to me--I can't quite remember, possibly cort, the word for tent. And as I stretched out the rope to drive the stake into the ground, I couldn't help myself, and in some incoherent mix of Romanian and English I found myself attempting to exclaim: Isaiah 54! I don't think anyone was actually listening to me anyway, but suddenly this verse came to mind:

"Enlarge the place of your tent,
stretch your tent curtains wide,
do not hold back;
lengthen your cords,
strengthen your stakes."

I love this chapter, and God has brought me back again and again to it, especially to this verse. A change these last months have brought in me is that I do hold back, a lot. And so I'm praying to understand better, to live it, to not hold back. And am thankful for unexpected ways and places the Spirit is working.

Imagine: stretch your curtains wide, do not hold back. Imagine: strengthening your stakes, digging in, and perhaps this looks different than I ever expected it would. But to be certain, it is good, it is wrapped up in a God who cannot be shaken.

Anyway, volleyball? Who would have guessed :)

quote-of-the-day

2011-05-29T17:29:00.001+03:00

“And I added another resolve—to be as wide open toward people and their need, as I am toward God. Windows open outward as well as upward! Windows especially open downward where people need most.”
–Frank Laubach

tension on the autobuz, flashbacks to the dirty south

2011-05-28T21:58:00.006+03:00

Today we went back for round two of volleyball with much success, without getting rained out. It was a good day, and unexpected for a handful of reasons. There is a relief that comes with entrusting things to God, even while it is also hard, and it always surprises me, every single time. I see that I shrink his goodness to fit into my own hopes. But to walk away from even those hopes--I realize that he is my hope, my good Father in whom there is freedom. And it is sweet.

But this was hardly the most unexpected thing that happened today. On the way to volei, I took the bus. There seems to be an unwritten rule here that if you are on public transportation, you're relatively quiet, mind your own business and generally just wait to get where you're going. It's very subdued. Mostly people just seem to be in their heads, in their own worlds. Sometimes people talk on the phone, yes, and every once in a while if the bus slams on brakes, someone will yell at the driver. But on the whole, we are homogeneous, straight-faced people

And I don't know what it is, but it seems to me that people get tense quick when other people don't follow those rules. Up till now I've been writing about (ethnic) Romanians, but if there's something else that's generally true, it's that Gypsies are boisterous people and I can't imagine them at all conforming to these supposed rules of travel.

So on the way to the park, a group of Gypsies got on, a girl who couldn't have been more than seventeen or eighteen and four filthy kids, at least two of which were hers (not assuming--she said this to one of the other kids). And the whole time they were being loud and rambunctious, hitting each other, laughing across the bus and shouting. And you could see the Romanians around them getting more and more uncomfortable. The girl had a stroller and was blocking the back entrance and there was a man beside her who kept getting hit by the door because there wasn't much extra room. They got off pretty quickly, but immediately another group got on, mostly teenagers and kids. Also really loud and rowdy. At this point you could see the Romanians around them squirming. But no one said anything. They just gave them sidelong glances (or often just looked at them, as Romanians tend to do with one another in public transit), sighed loudly, adjusted their bags. It's the most uncomfortable I've ever seen a group of people here.

Sitting there, I realized two things. One, these people have never been to the dirty South. And two, I've seen this before. I remember I must have been thirteen or fourteen, I don't know. My mom and brother and I had gone to Golden Corral one Sunday afternoon. The place was surprisingly empty for that time of the day/week, except for us and a group of white middle-aged people probably just come from church. And halfway through the meal, a group of mostly kids and a few adults comes in. Important to the story: group number two is black. And the kids were all over the place, running up and down to the buffet, one little girl with mashed potatoes in her fro, yelling back and forth at each other like it was their living room. And the group of white people were getting visibly more frustrated, looking at those dirty kids running wild, the clean white ladies sighing and looking at their husbands like, do something. But again, that's the thing. No one said, hey, do you mind be a little quieter? We'd like to enjoy our meal. Meanwhile the girl with the mashed potatoes in her hair had spilled soda down her front and her brother was sprawled out on the floor laughing at her. Somebody's baby somewhere was crying and their mother was hollering from the end of the table to quit acting a fool. The white people kept huffing and puffing and eventually just left, saying I'll-let-you-guess to one another on the way out.

Now if you're from the sort of South I grew up in, you're used to chaos. And so people could do pretty much anything short of shouting through a bullhorn two feet from me without really bothering me. And besides, if you like your peace and quiet on the bus, yes it is annoying to have a smelly little kid accidentally elbow you, but he probably weighs forty pounds and your day will go on. So what do you do? It's cultural, 100%. I don't want to generalize more than where it's actually true, but ethnic Romanians and Gypsies are worlds apart culturally, and the straight-laced white people in Golden Corral lived in a different world than those unruly black kids. (Yes, these things do not apply to every Romanian/Gypsy/white American/black American everywhere. Clearly. Besides, we're talking cultures, not ethnicities, and you'll easily have fifty cultures for one ethnicity and maybe vice versa.) I'm not saying there should be barriers, but it is the simple truth that there are cultural divides and they are worth talking about, particularly if you hope to bridge them.

Now it's easy to say, hey I'm a white American who loves white Jesus who loves red and yellow black and white hey free the Gypsies! But it's more nuanced than that. I love culture, I think there is value in every culture. And I have my own cultural background that is surely different from yours, and yes, sometimes it clashes with other ones. That doesn't mean I deny mine or yours or say whose is better--it means I recognize it, try to understand it and then get to work at what it looks like to love in a way that honors God.

So what to do?

white fluffy thing season

2011-05-25T07:48:00.003+03:00

In Wilmington we have a fifth season called "Yalluh Pollen Season." In the brief month or so that resembles Spring--I have since learned what real Spring actually is, and I don't think we have it there--there are two weeks wherein the entire city is turned yellow. All the pollen from everything comes out at once so every car has a layer of it, the sidewalks, the street. And then if it rains, you get these really toxic-looking streams and puddles everywhere.

And so what a surprise for me when I learned that here in Bucuresti there is a similar fifth season, one I have been calling "White Fluffy Thing Season." It turns out the white fluffy things are actually called puf de plopi, or poplar fluff. I've never seen anything like it in my life. I wrote this to my friend a few days ago:

I wish you could see this white fluffy thing season. I was gonna tell you about it last night--it really is beautiful. Right now I'm writing at my desk and the sun is shining through my window on my legs and these little shadows kept floating across them. At first it scared me, I thought it was a bug or something and then I looked out the window and four stories up are all these white fluffy things floating around, so thick I swear it looks like snow falling. You'd like it, I think. It happens when you're out and about, one minute it's summer and the next the air is full of them.

And it is probably the prettiest thing I've seen in Bucuresti. Unfortunately it appears that I may be allergic to it. Maybe not--I've never had allergies before. But it's wonderful to watch.

saturday: weird turned wonderful turned disastrous

2011-05-22T17:01:00.004+03:00

I've written about it a ton already: this impatience with the Romanian language, this longing to be able to really engage in it. There are some days when it comes easily, when I could talk all day long without a problem. And then there are others when it won't come at all. I'm thinking of last night, when all I wanted to do was have fun with my friends, get to know them better. But I couldn't speak at all. Every time I tried, the Romanian would not come. It was enough to just listen. Someone even asked me--I just about died--if I speak. As in, Sara, do you talk? It's a melodramatic example, but ask a guy in a wheelchair watching a soccer game, do you not play soccer? How badly he wants to! (The example is ridiculous because a guy in a wheelchair clearly has at least some obstacles to playing soccer, whereas who knows, if you don't know me it's easy and totally fair to assume that maybe I just am that quiet.)

Now I think there are several things going on here in general that just so happened to sync up last night in a most inopportune way. First, being an introvert, even one who loves hanging out with people, predisposes you to getting drained really quickly in this sort of situation.

Second, it seems much easier to talk with people one-on-one. The dynamic there is completely different, and in the instance that you have maybe intermediate language skills, with a little bit of conversational know-how and leading questions, you can get the other person talking. This is a win-win because you get to know the other person and it is without the stress of having to immediately (without thinking) respond, while engaging. And people like to be listened, to be heard, I think.

Anyway, the rhythm is just different. The group dynamic is another beast altogether. It's fast, it bounces back and forth, it requires the ability to make small talk, witty banter, all that--harder than you'd expect in not-your-language. But all this back and forth, it's enough just understanding all of it. There's lag here. You're understanding things five seconds after they're said and by then it's onto something different. Imagine a lagging computer, everything bogged down by a slow system and too many programs running at once. It feels this way so often, like when the audio is a few seconds behind the video, which explains my very passive response to a creepy dude in the park yesterday when normally I might have karate-chopped him. Maybe. "I'ma slap you in yo' eye and see how you like it!"

In the end what you get is straight-up exhaustion. I hate to go back to the computer metaphor, but it locks up. Meanwhile, by the end of the night, everything I wanted to do I couldn't and ended up so withdrawn and disengaged and awkward I feel like I ought to apologize to everyone there. And these are people who are patient with me, these are my very understanding friends!

The logic balks, it says, I understand this, it is on its way to being fixed. True that I learn more every day. But the question is of now, of being tired from it. Today I had to ask a friend if I could just speak in English and nearly started crying, in fact would have had it not been for a well-timed interruption. I'm not really an emotional person (despite what the blog might lead one to believe), but I do know this is normal. The question is what to do--or will I have to wait it out?

I'm in the park writing in my notebook now, watching and thinking and praying, as has become my habit. I want to have these conversations, can't wait for it to come easily. So tomorrow, God-willing, I will jump back in.

p.s. if any of you actually read this, sorry for the rant. I hope if you'll ever be immersed cross-culturally/language...ly this will help to prepare you for some of the craziness and frustrations. Or that if you are now, it's encouraging somehow--we shall press on! And if you are/have: how did you deal with it?

p.s.s. just realized i never made it around to the context of the title. In summary, my day yesterday: some creepy dude tried to pick me up in a park (the weird), we got caught in an epic storm, complete with Wilmington-worthy flooding of the intersection at Tineretului and running across Bucuresti barefoot and up to our ankles in water (the wonderful), played Settlers with awesome people and laughed and ate olives (more wonderful). And then system crash (see: above).

God as a mountain (mighty and unending)

2011-05-21T10:47:00.008+03:00

(This is one I wrote while I was with OSCPi at Piatra Craiului.)

We're at Piatra Craiului right now, and let me tell you, there are few other places I've ever been as pretty. We're the only thing around besides trees and rocks (and maybe some bears) for miles and miles. In front of the cabana are these big mountains, snow still on them. And behind us are these huge white rock mountains that jut straight upward. It's no use trying to describe them.

During worship this morning someone read from Psalm 19: "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world." It's exactly that.

I was thinking about how when people talk about God's creation and say it's impossible to see it and not believe in God--well, I have always had a hard time relating to that, honestly. I don't really know how to say. As if the mountains or the stars were the ultimate proof of God, that if you had doubts or questions, his creation would fix it up quick. To be fair, that is certainly over-simplifying the approach I'm referring to.

All these things--the sky and enormous mountains--none of it proved to me there was a God. It did help me get there, and as C. S. Lewis says, it gave me words for things I'd otherwise have no meaning for (glory, fear of God). I remember very clearly one particular moment in really giving my life to the Lord (becoming a Christian for me was more of a process than an altar-call decision), and I was looking at the stars, praying, had just recently begun to understand about Jesus, and all of a sudden it occurred to me that it was real, all this business about God, it really is real. Not that I was actively doubting it before--that would come later--although I wondered a lot, had tons of questions, but then there was this overwhelming sense that it was real and true, and joy like you wouldn't believe.

And the stars I was looking at through a gap between furniture above me (we were moving, and I was in the bed of the truck underneath it all--not enough room in the cab)--there was suddenly so much more depth to them. I don't know how to explain it more than that. I think I saw God in his creation before I knew it was him in the sense that I experienced awe and wonder, but until I knew him I didn't know it was him I was seeing. With some people I know it is the inverse, that a mountain too big to climb led them to God. And so it is. I think he brings each of us to him differently.

But the questions remain, and I think about the students who have so many of them. And I know that I can point to these lunging mountains, to the places in my life where he has changed me, again and again to my God wherever he is made known. But I must point to him. I am reminded that if I don't, even the rocks will cry out. But the questions--it's a wrestling with them, and how do you explain to a student that the vastness of a mountain is nothing next to the vastness of God when what they see behind it is empty sky? If eternity leads to a wide emptiness and not to life, then what? How? I think at some point it is only God's work--but what a blessing it is to be a part of it now.

Yesterday when we were hiking we climbed to the base of those huge white rocks, the ones that jutted straight upward. They're crazy-looking even from here, from a place where I can behold a stretch of them at once. But there, right at the place where they came up out of the mountain against nearly dark-blue sky, well how do you describe it? I got dizzy and nearly fell down the very steep incline beside us. And I could only see this one small part at a time, no matter how much I looked. I had to keep craning and opening my eyes and still it was impossible.

You think about this massive thing that from far away you can frame all of and even miles and miles away it still looks enormous and then you come up close and it's just beyond comprehending as a whole. My mind brings this to God: the closer you get to him, the bigger he is? The more there is to know? It's easier to comprehend from a distance, more like the idea of God as opposed to knowing him, but as you get closer--well yes, you see the details better but I could walk around and climb those rocks the whole of my life, touching the crevices with my hands and still I wouldn't know it all. And even if I could, I'm still only really understanding in any given moment parts of the whole. And imagine God as a mountain--surely he would be bigger than these.

(Here I got chased inside so we could start the talks for the day--but the questions keep going. How much of our God there is to know! How unending it is!)

(Sorry for the low quality on the picture--swiped it off of facebook.)

a curious behavior in bucuresti

2011-05-17T13:16:00.003+03:00

And by that I am referring to a certain inclination toward different degrees of nakedness. So far it seems to be mostly limited to the parks. The first thing I noticed was guys who would go find somewhere to pee (sorry!) in broad daylight. In both cases of course their backs were to me, but they were definitely close enough to me to have called over their shoulder. The second guy was the craziest though. I was walking down one of the parts of Herastrau that's alongside the road, and there in the middle of the street on the median with the (really skinny still very young) trees, his back to me but his other side most definitely facing the other half of traffic was a guy who apparently either couldn't hold it or...

Anyway, no surprise that people here would be more comfortable/open with this sort of thing, if I can generalize far enough to associate Spain with Romania. Two years of Spanish professors and a semester with one especially crazy one taught me that. And no worries, I come from the great, wide south where everything is bootleg and out in the open and unpredictable. It would seem I have this to thank for the ability with which ma descurc, as the Romanians would say. To manage, or maybe more loosely, to roll with it, "I got this."

So the eight naked kids playing in the fountain at Tineretului was mostly just amusing. And it seems it must be perfectly normal as no one seemed in the least bit concerned as they chased each other up the sidewalk naked as they came.

However there is another curiosity in this park. He's an old man who has a couple of friends, all of whom like to lay out in nothing but their underwear, clothes hung in the tree nearby. I've walked past three times now in the last few weeks and every time he is there, and the most recent time, let me tell you, the man was dark. A little observation reveals that he doesn't like to sit still too long. Every so often he gets up and does what can only be described as calisthenics. I'm telling you, this sort of thing (all of it, not just the old man or the nakedness, mostly how strange and interesting people are) will keep me people-watching as long as I'm alive.

just for fun

2011-05-16T21:51:00.005+03:00

A small sample of the crazy things one says when trying to learn Romanian (these being from the last week or two):

1. E puras. What? Yes, I said the same thing. E meaning is, puras meaning--poftim? Do what? I sat there and asked the person offering me the little bunny three times what puras is. I thought she meant it was made of puras. Turns out the word is iepuras, little rabbit. Makes sense.

2. Copiii vor pizza. The children want pizza. This one was at the camp I went to with the Pitesti students. A few of us were talking and started telling jokes. Now, I can understand way more now than the last time I was with them, meaning I can follow what's happening fine even if I'm not understanding every word. But jokes are still pretty much over my head. However I kept hearing the word pizza and they want (vor) right before it. And every so often I'd hear copiii. So when the joke was over and I wasn't laughing they asked me if I understood, I told them something about kids wanting pizza and then they laughed at me for about five minutes. The joke was really about:

Vulpita. A little fox! You know how the l sometimes sounds like an r (the tap, I mean), and vice versa? Tricky sometimes. And the u is so open, easily sounds like an o if you're tired.

3. Peste (as in pesh-te) and peste. One means fish and the other means over, as in peste-ntreg pamant, which means over the entire earth. Or fish-entire earth, if you mix it up. Which I do every single time. (You'll note that I didn't say which means which.)

4. And the best for last. I have one single American friend here and she doesn't speak Romanian which means I get to have a blast attempting to translate and communicate for her when we go out. Easy enough, most times. But we went to Herastrau the other day and she wanted to go out on the lake in the little paddle boats. And I had no idea what the word for boat was--or, I had learned it at some point and couldn't remember--but when I saw the word vaporas written on a sign near the boats I figured that was it. But for smaller ones, the paddle boats--what could it be? So I applied my logic (or rather, my ear) and decided that they must be called vapori mici.

Vapori mici. Yep. It's a wonder the people I asked didn't straight out laugh at me because it means small vapors. Four days later I found out that the word I was looking for is actually hidrobicicleta and what vapori mici really means. But this is a logical mistake! Vapori sounds plural because it really is!

In other news, language learning also teaches you to laugh at yourself! And you are provided ample opportunity. My language professor tells me I learn language like children and Africans--how Africans learn language I have no idea at all, but the part about children is encouraging. And you know children sound silly. But in the end, I've had people not realize I'm not Romanca until five minutes into the conversation (in which clearly he spoke much more than I did)--this happened the other night. So, getting there. Putin cate putin.

quote-of-the-day

2011-05-14T20:24:00.002+03:00

"This does not mean we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously--no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feelings for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner--no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment."
--C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (Been thinking of this for the last several weeks. Anyway, I'd just as soon quote the whole essay. Definitely worth reading.)

following osceb's talk about love

2011-05-11T17:32:00.005+03:00

Last night was hard. I don't know why. It comes all of a sudden, one can hardly expect it. But I found myself writing an email to my best friend and it's overwhelming, this longing to be with the people I miss, my beautiful friend, my brave brother. And all the people that made that city a home to me. Here the English falls short; missing them does not hold it all. Mi-e dor de ei.

At OSCEB last night the message was about love--not really romantic love, although the person speaking talked a bit about that in the beginning, but mostly what it means to love one another well. It was a really good talk, and he gave an example about how a small thing like his roommate not washing his dishes made it hard to love him. I thought about family, about all the people throughout college it was difficult to love, how difficult I made it for them to love me as well.

I think about the lessons in all this, how much God has taught me, how it is a hard-learned thing and one that leaves the proof of its passing. From 1 Cor. 13: "[Love] always perseveres." It is no wonder that in the Romanian translations you see "sufera totul." It brings to mind English's long-suffering, and then I realize that this is actually in that same chapter: "Dragostea este indelung-rabdatoare," which in my English Bible is written "Love is patient," but also translates as long-suffering. We talked about how God's love is unconditional, that it is not merited but then it doesn't depend on us.

Afterward, as a few of us walked back to the metro, I asked them what they thought about the message and it turned into a conversation about marriage. It always surprises women here when I tell them that for a while I didn't want to get married, even after assuring that I do want to now. And so I tried to explain--loving people this way is hard, you will most certainly hurt one another, how it seemed to me easier if it were just me and God, because then I'm the only sinful one in the relationship. And I still think it's true, but it finally occurred to me that this is in no way limited to marriage and so it is with all relationships. I must risk it, and it is good to do so. I want to, and certainly by now my God has given me many occasions to persist, to forgive. Once again my friend comes to mind, how we learned to double back and love one another when we were least lovable and in the end held out skinned knees, calloused hands, but open tender hearts, full of all hope. It's work, the kind that might harden the outside the way your muscles harden, but soften the inside, if you let it work right.

It's strange to not have that challenge here--it's always been so hard for me. But I don't know anyone well enough for that yet, am not close enough and it is true that proximity charges this sort of thing. Of course, there's always something. And I find that without this thing, here there are different things that try to pull me from God, that ultimately he uses to bring me more into him. His will is good, I know this, I hope in it.

Tomorrow the women of OSCEB are getting together and talking about what it means to be a godly wife and mother. And so I except there will be more conversations like this in the future. It's good to be able to have them a little better now. I'm reminded of the comparison between committing to my students here with commitment to marriage. Anyway, interested to see how it goes tomorrow, excited. And hopeful about the conversations to come!

getting approached

2011-05-10T22:17:00.004+03:00

So much on the mind right now and I wouldn't even know where to begin, so with the hope of more to come later in the week, working it out into words, here's a totally unrelated post about this thing that happens to me all the time.

It's starting to get crazy. I get approached all the time here, and when I say all the time I am not exaggerating at all. Nearly every day now and it's been happening since I got here. Usually it's in the metro, sometimes on the street. And most of the time it's been people asking for directions with the exception of last week, wherein I was asked three different times if I had a lighter.

The thing is, I do not draw attention to myself when I'm out in public. I blend in really well--Romanians think I am Romanian all the time, and even one the other day thought I was even after hearing me speak (which to me suggests she didn't hear me well, but...), Americans think I'm Romanian. To be fair, if I'm hanging out with people I'm really smiley and in that way I think my American-ness shows, but if I'm going across the city by myself, I'm as subdued and in my head as anyone else. The point is, the reasons that might immediately come to mind to explain this fall through in this case.

As an example, just today I went to pick up my permis de sedere (basically this is the ID that says I'm legal here and I get it instead of a visa stamp in my passport) and while waiting at Unirii, a woman came up to me and asked for the directions to the metro. Since the metro is right there and my Romanian is to the point where I can give directions no problem, I told her the way. And she was really friendly, thanking me and calling me draga (dear), even touching my arm. And then five minutes later another woman approached me and asked if I spoke English. She was from Holland, asked me if I was a Christian. Turns out she was with some group doing an outreach thing and we talked for a while about the sort of things two Christians talk about when they meet each other on the street.

And then on the way home someone in the metro asked for directions like they always do. The truth is that I don't mind at all and in fact I like to be able to help, to try to speak the language. I'm excited that I can finally do it, language-wise. I just don't know what the heck it is that makes them always come up to me--I'm not even from here! Oh and also, I'm always listening to music when they do. Not earbuds, but real headphones. It's not convenient. They have to interrupt me to do it. Again, no problems, but it appears there is something written on my face that says I know how to get anywhere you might ever wish to go. And that I have a lighter to support your smoking habit (sorry, friends, I think smoking is gross). And! This doesn't include the sort of approaching one either ignores altogether or cuts one's eyes at. I'm telling you. You would not believe.

This one I'm leaving open-ended. Taking bets on what the next new question will be.

surprise package

2011-05-09T22:59:00.004+03:00

There's so much to write about from this weekend, but for now, three months to the day after moving here, and a two and a half hour trip in the rain:

I am blessed with some amazing friends back home, let me tell you. The dinosaur now sits above my head where I sleep and I am not ashamed to admit that, yes, I ate one of those bags of cheetos for lunch. It was glorious.

So if any of you ever read this, thank you for the letters and the snacks and one baller dinosaur. You all are wonderful.

may day!

2011-05-04T19:54:00.003+03:00

I always associated those words (which in this case can only be written in caps, as in MAY DAY!) with bombardment or the like, once even waking up at five in the morning to run through the house shouting it. It's no doubt I was a weird kid, but it turns out it's not just the distress signal but an old communist holiday, something like labor day. Who knew?

But this 1 May did indeed come in with a bang, kind of. Lately I've been waking up between five and six in the morning before going back to sleep a little while longer, but this Sunday as I (was) woke(n) up I realized my bed was shaking. It happened really fast, but I remember putting my hand on the mattress to feel and thinking that specifically: is my--is my bed shaking?? And I heard something rattling so I looked toward the window to see if I could see anything and jumped out of bed to better feel, but by then I think it had stopped.

Right after, I went into the hallway and it turns out my roommate was up, too. I asked her if she'd felt anything and sure enough--cutremur, an earthquake, she said. I've read several different reports, but the one linked said it was a 4,9 so we're not talking about anything big at all. In fact, almost everyone I talked to slept through it. But it was the first one I've been through. The one thing I'm surprised about is that it didn't scare me--not because it was an earthquake, but because I woke up to my bed shaking. My bed shaking. In the dark, alone at night. If that isn't something straight out of some scary movie about haunted houses and all that, then I don't know what is, and that stuff is just straight-up traumatizing to me. When I say that one of the top three reasons to get married one day is not having to sleep alone in the dark (someone to check out the scary noises), I'm being totally serious.

Anyway, the next day my Romanian professor and I talked about it. Usually a good hour of the lesson is us talking about history or some other subject of interest and she told me about the big earthquake here in '77. She was on the tram so she didn't feel it, which one the one hand is understandable because generally public transit here is bumpy, and on the other I can hardly believe it because this particular earthquake was a 7,2. But all of a sudden the tram stopped, the electricity had stopped, and in the buildings they could see the lights swinging back and forth. And then later they saw people running out of the hospital, screaming and acting crazy, and they still had no idea what had happened. Eventually someone told them and as the tram kept going (public transit was apparently still running) and they got closer to downtown, they saw all the collapsed buildings. I can't even imagine--hurricanes, yes. Earthquakes? It's so foreign to me. But then I live here now, so we'll see.

We talked about how people reacted. She kept saying that it seemed, before they realized what had happened, like people were acting like wild animals, running into the streets screaming. So different from how they reacted in Japan, and then that turned into a discussion about how people responded versus how they did in New Orleans after Katrina. How much do socio-economics factor into things like this? Those kinds of questions. A fascinating conversation.

I'll tell you, though, it's a weird feeling. Probably every day I feel more shaking on the metro, but to be four stories up where everything is always still--actually I tried to go back to sleep before church, but every time my alarm went off (my phone was in the bed with me) the vibrating would wake me up and even though it wasn't nearly as strong, I kept thinking, is it another? Crazy stuff.

spinning, rushing history

2011-04-30T22:13:00.005+03:00

I was talking to someone today and I've been hearing a lot lately about how ugly Bucuresti can be, all the blocs, compared to some other European cities. To be fair, I suppose that's true in the sense that much of the city is not aesthetically pleasing, not the way you'd see the architectural crowns of Europe. These buildings with air conditioners sticking out and colors like rust and brown. I'd like to have seen it before Ceausescu razed a quarter of it to the ground.

There is something beautiful to it to me, though. Maybe not the blocs, but the whole city. Maybe I'm just still taken in by the fact that I live in Europe. Because it isn't the pollution, it's not the dog poop or the blocs. The churches are beautiful, the National Theatre and the monuments to the Revolution or Stefan cel Mare or the one for the unknown soldier at Parcul Carol. The view from the top of those steps, the People's House off to the left. It's a sweep of it all.

That walking toward Universitate and then to Unirii, the buildings stand against stark blue sky, I think, this is Wilmington sky if I quiet everything else for a moment, and it's also a sky over Europe, one full of a vast history. I think of the wars and the farmers and the hills rolling into flat places, green Europe, gray Europe, a placid sky that reaches over so many centuries rolling into one another the way history does.

I think, south of me, not so far even, Paul walked dusty Roman roads and the world was changed. North of me, Poland invaded and bombed out, Warsaw rubble.

Recently a friend was telling me about studying in Prague, this feeling of a shared human history, a rootedness in that. My own Wilmington has its history, and is even the only city in the States to have had a coup. The racial tensions run deep, run old. But it seems to me on the margins and that here I am so close to the center, in a place that holds so much. Imagine the tree, its farthest branches stretched out to a brand new country still shooting off new branches--the US feels this way to me--and closer to the trunk is Europe. Thicker, solid branches, ones with lines reaching out and tangling all of it, so much passing through one place.

And meanwhile life goes on here, riding the bus in a city with 2 million people, "American Woman" playing over the bus speakers. The farmers are still doing what farmers do, and it's still the same sky. We have somewhere to be, and we are city-people so we go there quickly. But it's still new enough to catch me off guard--the lines of this Eastern European city, its buildings and crowdedness stand against something that will watch it all press by, in a hurry, and then will still be there. It's this, I feel that I am in the middle of a spinning, rushing history, one that is also powerful and rooted deeply, and you see it in the outline of blocs against sky. It's beautiful in this way.

more cultural observations

2011-04-29T21:54:00.008+03:00

I've realized something in the last few weeks. And it's a funny thing. I think I'm freaking the Romanians out, and in some strangely inverse way they're freaking me out. Imagine that game with the ball on a long string attached to a pole and now imagine us hot-potatoing that ball back and forth like to touch it for a second would burn your hand off.

So for me it's the money questions. No surprises here--we got those when we came the first time, so they don't catch me off guard, but I don't particularly like them. Mainly I don't like being asked how much money I make each month. Just freaks me out, makes me uncomfortable, the most vocal of my weird mixed-culture backgrounds making a face that says: slow yo roll.

But here's the thing. I'm doing it to them too. It's the vulnerability issue--it's happened with several different people recently. Someone says something to me, example, I don't know, "I don't trust Hungarians." (*No one has ever actually said this to me*) Probably the worst hypothetical example I can think of in terms of being loaded and more extreme than the everyday example, but it illustrates what I mean in that it is not just a surface-level statement but clearly has something that can be fleshed out. (I'm using words like clearly but let me note that I'm only referring to myself--that's the whole cross-cultural deal, of course, that we're thinking differently, coming at it differently.) So my first and most natural reaction to a statement like that is to follow it, find out where it goes. I ask, why? Not because I'm nosy but because a) I assume if you make a statement like that you're comfortable enough talking about it to go further with it; b) if we're having a conversation at all chances are I'm interested enough in you as a person to hear more--it's part of why I do this job: I love to know people; c) there's the cultural part in that the culture I come out of is just much more vulnerable as a baseline; and d) there's the lack of language skills right now which sometimes translates into a lack of conversation skills--the ones I have in English disappear with limited vocabulary and sometimes it's easier to word-vomit de ce? without thinking and let the other person talk than it is to think of a more appropriate response and then formulate the sentence. So it just kind of happens. And meanwhile, the Romanian with whom I am attempting to converse is saying with his or her face in a language as clear to me as if it were English: girl slow yo roll.

And then the conversation dies, boom, just like that. Clearly not the desired outcome. And until I can do conversational gymnastics in Romanian...

Now I'm certain that there is an equally long and logical explanation as to why Romanians ask the how-much-money questions. And I would love to know--time to go have this conversation with a Romanian.

In the meantime, though, I want to be aware. There's the cultural side of this, but then I also think I have spent the last five years with the same people and that's longer than I've spent anything since I was about ten. So there's a certain level of intimacy with people that I'm used to, and it's easy to forget that even in the most conducive of circumstances that takes lots of time, and even if I'm comfortable others may not be.

Certainly openness is something I value, and there is space for it here for sure, it just looks a little different than in my culture. What to do in the meantime? Something more like softening it, molding it within the culture here, I think. Being aware.

So, new goal for now: quit harassing Romanians. Sounds like a plan :)

to my favorite boy in the whole world

2011-04-28T08:28:00.000+03:00

Today you turn nineteen years old and I can hardly believe it at all. I don't remember much about the day you were born except that I was at Gann and Papaw's while Mom was at the hospital. Actually, I'm trying to remember my first memory of you--they seem to jump straight from the baby pictures of you to when you were three or four. Remember when you cut your own bangs? I remember you used to crawl under the recliner part of the couch. And then the time we put on a play of Jack and the Beanstalk. I think one of my favorites will always be when we would lay on the living room floor with our hands and feet in the air, screaming and pretending to be the two kids in Jurassic Park when the dinosaur tries to eat them. We were so weird :) It seems not much has changed.

Nineteen years, and Josh, all I can say is that I am proud to be your sister and that I love you dearly. I think about you all the time over here, how you would love riding the metro and probably hate all the walking. I think you'd like the mountains, though, and I would take you. It has been seven or eight years now since we've lived together, even in the same city, and I suspect we'd be better at it now. But whether we ever will again, I don't know.

But there is something I know. Even if it is from across the globe, I will hear good news about your life. You have survived nineteen whole years--and I think in your case this word survive really applies--and the ones coming will be full to spilling over with hope and promise. You know how much God loves you and how much I do and it seems I can't write you without talking about it, but I want to tell you a little about who you were named after.

Joshua David. Joshua led the Israelites after Moses died. God said to Joshua, "As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you... Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go." Joshua, meaning, 'to deliver/be liberated' or 'to be victorious.' You see?

And David. There's so much with him. When he was young he was anointed to be king, God said he would become king of Israel. And I don't know exactly how long it took, but he didn't actually become king until he was thirty. And in the meantime crazy King Saul tries to kill him and he ends up fleeing into the wilderness and living in caves. And oh goodness, there's so much more about when he does become king, what happens then. But you see that sometimes God's promises feel impossible, more like wishful thinking than something true, that sometimes a lot of junk has to happen first--but the promise is good, God is faithful. And he will be with you wherever you go.

It's finally Spring here in Bucuresti. It's been pretending to be and then changing its mind for a few months now, but it seems to really be here this time. I even got a little sunburned in the park today. Everyone is out and about on bikes these days, and I realized today just how many memories I have of us on bikes.

Remember in the mountains when you crashed down that gravel road? You couldn't have been more than four--your legs all tangled up in the bike. And then in Richlands when we'd ride down to that bridge and it turns out we were playing in snake nests, cotton mouths. Some metaphor. We never knew. And then Rumley Rd.--flying down the hills, to the gas station, down the path to the river. Just wild little kids running loose.

You know what I remember though? Despite everything and even in the midst of very different memories, this is the way I remember it: the two of us running barefoot across a field, night settling into the trees. Two thick-skinned kids laughing because it was good to be alive in that moment, shouting in the dark, the whole of heaven filling up above us. We made it good, Josh. And we will.

This is something I think about a lot, but if I could change how everything was for you, I would. You are teaching me in your letters, though. You look forward so easily, so much less prone than I am to holding on and thinking through things over and over again. You have taught me about letting go, forgiveness not seeing the object because perhaps it is not forever turned toward it. It's for this, among many other reasons, that I am so proud of you. And full of hope about what's already being worked in you, what's next.

Happy birthday, buddy.

empty metro, empty grave

2011-04-25T10:17:00.005+03:00

It's a national holiday here in Romania today and it's supposed to be a whopping sixty-five degrees (celsius: eighteen degrees) which means as soon as I'm done writing this blog, it's to the park.

But I've been wanting to write on here all week, just not sure where to start with it all. Life here continues to surprise me even in the most literal of senses. I spend my Thursday evenings with an American family here, and apart from one other friend, all the rest of life is Romanian. But Thursday nights when I walk to the metro after three or four hours like being in the States, I am surprised to hear Romanian. To see these dark-featured, angular people, their language one still unfamiliar enough that I can listen to the music of it without letting the meaning through.

I am still here? I really live here? This is only once a week, though. Most times I forget about being American, the main two reminders being having to think and try to pronounce and communicate, and then referring to it when my brain stops working and I can't think of anything less uninteresting things to say in conversation. I don't mean I forget that I'm American--no, it's more nuanced than that.

What I mean is that life isn't defined out of where I come from. In the largest and smallest senses it's defined out of what I believe, whose I am. The context isn't: I am from that place but I live in this place--that of course is true but the context is more just that I live in this place. Some things are different, but that's been true of the many places and situations that make up the last ten years. I'm missing it, but I don't know how better to explain it. Crossing culture is really just being graceful and aware and intentional, if you boil it down. Maybe it's not fair to simplify it like that, but I think the kind of problems that come up in a context like this are the many of same ones that come up in life anyway, only the vehicle is different. And communication has to be that much more intentional.

We'll see. Let's say that it is humbling to do this and you become aware of a lot. But it's good.

Anyway, I wanted to write about Easter. Yesterday, all day long, Hristos a inviat! Adevarat a inviat! He is risen, he is risen indeed. And all day long, especially on the way to church, the city so quiet and empty, I wanted to shout it. Our God is alive! He has defeated death, conquered the grave, set the captives free.

My brother's birthday is in a few days so I wrote him a letter two weeks ago and sent him about unbinding the prisoners, somewhere in Isaiah, but I can't find it now. While looking for it I found these (can you tell I like the book of Isaiah?): "On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will removed the disgrace of his people from all the earth. The LORD has spoken." (26:7-8)

And so you have this day, the part in the movie where the music swells and the faces of the enemies turn white and there is hope, rejoicing. The scattered disciples will come back together, those disciples who really didn't understand, who fled when Jesus was taken, hope stolen away by the sight of a king on a cross. But he is alive! Again in the movies you have the moment where everything hangs in the balance--good versus evil, all eyes turned to watch which way the scale will tip. And I think probably it felt like that, and certainly wrapping a dead Jesus in linens and spices must leave a feeling of helplessness, a million questions, a what now?

I can't imagine I would have felt differently. But how good it is to look back knowing that it was never a question, that from the moment the world was formed death would be defeated and those weeping women would run from his grave with the good news. And it is.

When I'm alone on the metro I always want to do something silly like dance just because I can and no one will see me. And especially so yesterday, the metro empty, the grave empty. Filled instead with hope and joy (and maybe even a little dancing ;)).

quote-of-the-day

2011-04-22T09:24:00.003+03:00

"That is the real explanation of the fact that Theology, far from defeating its rivals by a superior, is, in a superficial but quite real sense, less poetical than they. That is why the New Testament is, in the same sense, less poetical than the old... That is the humiliation of myth into fact, of God into Man; what is everywhere and always, imageless and ineffable, only to be glimpsed in a dream and symbol and the acted poetry of ritual becomes small, solid--no bigger than a man who can lie asleep in a rowboat on the lake of Galilee. You may say that this, after all, is a still deeper poetry. I will not contradict you. The humiliation leads to a greater glory."
--C. S. Lewis

culture shock-ing (or, how i really feel about canada)

2011-04-17T12:31:00.006+03:00

Well, two months in and it's finally starting to hit, I think. Culture shock--and hit is the wrong word entirely. It has sneaked in, is inconspicuous, is manifesting itself in ways I wouldn't have guessed (and a few ways I would have). The interesting part is that it's not directed toward the culture at all, like you might expect. I'm dealing with that fine, and while certainly there are challenges already, I'm not walking around thinking that I hate this city or I'm tired of Romanians. It's different in ways that are exciting and perplexing and sometimes frustrating, and anyway I never get tired of trying to understand it and it seems I won't run out of material anytime soon.

With recognition that I probably won't always feel this way (and certainly not consistently), here's one example of how it's happening now:

The other day I was watching Tom Brokaw explain Canada to Americans. Don't ask me why. I have no idea. And there's this part pretty close to the beginning that is talking about an inscription on the Peace Arch by the border that commemorates the treaty that ended the War of 1812, one that reads, "May these gates never be closed." And boom! All of a sudden I was tearing up, crying as Mr. Brokaw went on to describe the wonders of the Canadian wilderness. Runny nose and scrunched up face and all. May these gates never be closed!

The thing is, I don't know much about Canada other than what I was taught in school. In fact, I learned a lot from the clip I watched. I have no emotional attachment to Canada, in fact am quite indifferent. Although! Although, I will say, when I was fifteen I did write a blog about how the Canadians are really commies and Russia planned to use their border to invade the States entitled "The Sickle That Cuts the Maple Leaf." (Available to be reposted upon request.) I thought I was a pretty boss fifteen-year-old back then.

So, random little things, completely unrelated to the issue of adapting, and that's where it's manifesting itself. Next week I'll be on the metro and someone will almost fall over like they sometimes do and next thing I know I'll be weeping over how the carton of eggs they dropped broke open, and all those wasted eggs!

We'll see. How about you? Any weird (or otherwise) ways you've culture-shocked?

destul de happy

2011-04-12T12:24:00.005+03:00

Things that have been making me quite happy as of late:

1. Hugs! You don't get a lot of them here, and they don't seem to be the kind where you can really hang on a while (I suppose it's not being close enough yet to anyone for that?), but you can side-hug me at this point and send me over the moon. I think I can count on one hand the number of hugs I've gotten since I've been here, but every single one of them has made me very happy. The best one, interestingly enough, was from a random dude on the street. I was hanging out with a friend one afternoon and she pointed out some people on a corner with a 'free hugs' sign (in both English and Romanian!) and I was so excited that I ran across the street and indeed received a free hug. And it was a real one, too, all holding-tight, none of that 'patting you across the twelve inch gap between us.' The Southern side of me rejoices!

2. Yellow flowers. When we came back from the conference (in the mountains) this Sunday, Bucuresti had turned full-bloom. My roommate gave me white-yellow flowers her mom had brought back from the countryside. And then yesterday on the way to my lesson I decided I would buy flowers from one of the women selling them on the street. I ended up accidentally getting three bunches of them instead of one since I didn't know the word buchet (bouquet), but for five lei (like $1.30) for all those daffodils sounds good to me. For the record, I had to look that up--I don't know types of flowers or have a favorite, I just like when they're yellow (and/or white). And they're making my room smell so nice!

3. OSCER. As mentioned, I was at a conference all weekend. I don't write much at all on here about what I do with work, and I do wish I could write more. It's tough because discipleship and that sort of thing is personal, and while I can decide how much I want to share about my stuff, clearly I can't broadcast other people's. Still trying to figure out how or if and what I can do with that here. Anyway, we spent three days talking about the vision for the movement, a lot about discipleship and evangelism. It is exciting to me to see how much they all love God and students, to hear about the sorts of things God has been doing among students for the last twenty years. So thankful and excited to be a part of this. And looking forward to working with OSCPi (OSCER in Pitesti).

4. And uite, pot sa scriu in romana. Ma bucur ca, in sfarsit, pot sa comunic cu oameni. Stiu ca, tot timpul, spun ca 'nu pot sa spun nimic!' si 'n-am rabdare deloc!' Dar e adevarat ca, putin cate putin, mai invat. La conferinta, peste trei zile vorbeam in romana. Cand m-am intors, am fost foarte obosita. Dar si ma da energie pentru ca, hey, se poate! Toata lumea e extrem de incurajator--ma ajuta. Deci, o sa vedem... poate sa cand vine vara (daca vine, inca e atat de frig!) o sa avem conversatii si lungi si profunde. Haha, pai asa sper. Sunt optimista... o sa vedem. (Forgive the grammar mistakes.)

Basically that means, hey look, I can write in Romanian, I can actually communicate. Finally! I know I'm always going on about how I can't say anything and that I don't have any patience, but it's also true that I'm learning more and more, little by little. At the conference I spent three days speaking in Romanian and by the time I got back I was exhausted. But it gives me energy just knowing I can actually do it some. And everyone is super encouraging which of course helps. So we'll see. Maybe when summer gets here, if it ever decides to as it's about fifty degrees outside right now, I will have long deep conversations. Or... haha, at least I hope, I'm being optimistic here... We'll see.

Also, the fact that that took about five minutes to write as opposed to thirty. Yes!

5. And last but not least, Isaiah 54 and James 4. Knowing that God is listening. I'm not talking about resolution, but kind of like God saying, I know, I hear you. You just have to trust me. And being very very thankful for a response that changes nothing but reminds me of the direction in which I am to go.

"words that don't exist in english"

2011-04-10T23:49:00.001+03:00

Via my friend Chris, via here:

L’esprit de escalier: (French) The feeling you get after leaving a conversation, when you think of all the things you should have said. Translated, it means “the spirt of the staircase.”

Waldeinsamkeit: (German) The feeling of being alone in the woods.

Meraki: (Greek) Doing something with soul, creativity or love.

Forelskelt: (Norwegian) The euphoria you experience when you are first falling in love.

Gheegle: (Filipino) The urge to pinch or squeeze something that is unbearably cute.

Pochemuchka: (Russian) A person who asks a lot of questions.

Pena ajena: (Mexican Spanish) The embarrassment you feel watching someone else’s humiliation.

Cualacino: (Italian) The mark left on a table by a cold glass.

Ilunga: (Tshiluba, Congo) A person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time.

I am told that the Romanian word dor is unlike any other word, is very specifically Romanian. From what I understand, the context is a cultural one, related to Mihai Eminescu. It means something to do with missing someone, as in mi-e dor de tine, I miss you. But I’m told that doesn’t really communicate the depth of the word. I don’t know what the roots of this word are (it looks Latin but I’m not sure/haven’t checked), but it makes me think of longing, deep longing. Maybe there’s a connection between dorinta (desire) and dor? And maybe doare (it hurts), as in I ache for you. (I’d say ‘I miss you so much it hurts’ but that just sounds too cheesy to be beautiful the way ‘I ache for you’ is).

Mi-e dor de tine. I just looked it up and it turns out that dor does translate as longing. Well there you go. I long for you, I ache for you. Beautiful language, Romanian.

feeling like an israelite

2011-04-06T21:50:00.005+03:00

Thinking about 'spurring one another on.' I want to tell you about the small group I'm a part of, how wonderful it is, how every week I understand a little more. And it is something else entirely to be with a group of people who love God, half understanding in regard to language, and in regard to something else understanding more deeply than you know how to put into your own English. Brothers and sisters, indeed, with hearts all longing for the same thing.

This is glorified, I'm sure of it, in the sense that it's only one side. Let's not forget being so tired (I have been physically, although not as much emotionally, exhausted lately) and of course this crazy back-and-forth I've been having with God that basically amounts to spending half the time praying he would just take something away if it wasn't of him and then walking around scowling in the meantime because I'm so frustrated.

Without being more specific, I will say that I have realized two things. The first has to do with impatience, something I'm up to my ears in here between not being immediately fluent in Romanian and everything else. It's not so cut and dry, though. For example, I waited six months longer than I thought I would to come here (sounds so much shorter than it felt) with no idea of when I would. Had I known I'd be leaving in February, it wouldn't have been so hard, I don't think. When you have a date to focus on, it's easier to dig in, to shoulder through. Even if you are certain something will happen, not knowing when throws it into spinning. So here I realize that if I knew things like when, I would be living for those whens. Holding out for them, waiting on thing, going toward them--as opposed to living for my God. I hate not knowing when. And when I do know when, it appears as though I am trusting in the assurance of that rather than the assurance of my Father's promise to work all things according to his purposes, to never forsake me.

I am reminded that God is determined to be the God of my whole life.

And I would have him be

...except for the fear that comes from uncertainty, the thing that makes me gather more manna than I need for today, that makes a god of my own ability to provide for myself. Why is this such a difficult thing? Don't I already know--haven't I already seen?--that God is good, that he provides, that his will is perfect?

What I love about this most is that the gentle nudgings of my God turn me back toward him and every time I find a Father waiting with patience and open arms. Don't get me wrong, he is a jealous God. And he is good. My hope, my life, these things are wrapped up in his will. Thy will be done--I want that, I really do. And there is joy in it.

And then there is the reminder that I am not at this alone--last night at OSCEB I was able to understand everything (everything!) because most of it was translated from English. And it was one I needed to understand. It's easy to forget that we're all wrestling with this back and forth, this self-control. And I know we all have something that does this to some degree or another. Makes us prone to wander, has us forgetting we are free from sin's hold, that would have us hoarding manna rather than trusting the one true God.

Maybe I am like an Israelite, but I am not lost in the desert. And God is good, faithful as the morning.

From Hebrews last night:

"Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful." 10:23

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such oppression from sinful min, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart." 12:1-3

Running toward you, holding unswervingly.