Chelsea is Crazy

While we were in the grocery store here, Kaufland, Kelsey decided to take a picture of some weird cheese. Some random guy was a few feet away from us in normal clothes talking on a cell phone. As soon as the picture was taken, he flipped a lid! He ran over to us and started speaking really quickly in Romanian. Kelsey just spoke in English and said: "Sorry, I didn't know. I'll delete it right now." He didn't speak English, but he pointedly looked over her shoulder as she deleted the picture. We have dubbed him the Kaufland Gestapo.

"Sometimes I think I have a brain tumor because the wrong things come out of my mouth." -Kelsey F.


All Chelsea:

"Are you going to show us those one things? The ones you said we were going to get on the way to that one place?"

Perfectly serious: "Guys, I'm just book smart."

"I have a really bad problem with speaking. I need to get that fixed."

About an American kid's weird name: "What? Do they want their kid thrown in a trashcan afterschool?? If you hate your kids, don't have them."

After a panicked look as we were about to go in the apartment for the evening: "GUYS! for a second there, I thought my bra was on the outside of my shirt!...I was going to say, 'you guys didn't even tell me!'"

"When I'm in an old folks home, I will be running around with my pants off."

"And my butt's name is Sheila...but I never named my stomach before this."

Not funny:
Today we attempted to play a combination between soccer and volleyball with some random guys outside of the church building. After about 2 minutes, they told us to stand to the side and watch (clearly because we were terrible and didn't really know the rules. It was rather humorous.

We finally went to the orphanage today. For the next week we're going to work in all of the rooms so that we can figure out which room we want to work in for the rest of the summer. We also went to the hospital for the first time today.
I was placed with a little orphan boy who had had surgery on his heart. His skin was all rashy and his breath was extremely raspy. I picked him up for a little bit, but I was so hot and sweaty, I was afraid I was making him uncomfortable. So I set him back in his crib and played with him. Then one of the nurses came in (who was super nice and understanding about me not knowing Romanian). She let me feed him (with a bottle obviously) but then she communicated to me that I shouldn't pick him up because then he would start crying when I set him back down to leave...okay...

We had an exciting FHE today. We played pictionary in Romanian, which was exciting since 90% of us were American. But we had a native speaker investigator on our side, so we were the best, obviously. Though I called out quite a few on my own. Props to myself.

It Has Been Concluded

I've decided that my posts are too long and boring for anyone else to read. I shall be writing them down still in my journal, so I can e-mail them to you if you really beg me. Instead I'll just be writing the humorous occurrences.

The first night we were here we were talking about sleeping arrangements since there are only four beds for the five of us. One of us would have to take the couch. Aislynn said "Well, I personally would prefer a bed." We kindly informed her that any human being would prefer a bed.

We had church today, which was exciting. One of the elders got confused while passing the sacrament and one of the men chastised the elder for it in Romanian and told him where to go. Then the branch president told the Missionary to turn on the AC while the first speaker was speaking. The elder didn't really know how to do it at first and had to be instructed. Then the branch president asked the same missionary to translate for all of us American girls. He went to stand at the front, and then the branch president scolded him again and told him to go sit down and translate for us in the audience. the poor boy was so flustered. Then, during combined RS and Elder's quorum, he directed us to the back so we could have translators. I said "well, are you sure? We could see from sacrament meeting that you're sometimes confused..." I immediately felt guilty since he was really embarrassed. I apologized to him.

We decided that one of the men in the ward should be best friends with Liam Neeson. He looks like he should be kickin butt and taking names. We decided that if we were ever in a Taken situation, we would want him on our side. I also think he's super cute even though he's twice my age.
Aislynn asked us who wanted to be in the ward choir. I immediately said no, but then one of the girls said that he might join it. So I turned my RSVP to a conditional response based on if he joined or not.

The branch president met with each of us individually. When it was my turn he said "I want to make sure that you have the police phone number in case anything happens, you can call this number and they speak English...but the police aren't reliable, so don't call them." I'm still not sure what to do.

Sfanta Parascheva

Today we woke up a little bit late. I heard a lot of laughter in our living room and found a couple of my roommates (Camille and Chelsea) and a random Romanian woman. She was there to see Aislynn, but Ais wasn’t there. We tried to entertain her for about an hour while waiting for Ais (who still missed her). Her name was Alexandra, and she’s great. She somehow met some Mormons about 5 years ago and had hung out with Mormons since. She has learned a lot of English from the internship girls and the missionaries, despite being a devout Orthodox. Nicole was telling her that many people in the United States are Catholic but don’t go to church more than twice a year and a lot of people are atheist and don’t believe in God. She said: “well that’s just stupid!” It was great. She's great and really fits in with us since she's loud for a Romanian.

We went to the piata today. It’s like the farmer’s market. We all held on to our purses the whole time. It was really fun, though. I bought a couple hand towels since we don’t have any in the apartment (they were 30 cents each!), some apples, a reusable shopping bag, and a loaf of bread. While we were getting the bread, some Romanian men were clearly making fun of us, but we didn’t know what they were saying anyway.

We went to some beautiful Catholic cathedrals, including the church dedicated to Sfanta Parascheva, a catholic saint. If you want to know more about her, you’ll have to read about it, but her only remaining body part is her hand, so people go kiss it so she will help their prayers be fulfilled. We got in line to kiss the hand like the rest (it’s wrapped in cloth and stuff!) We saw a lot of old ladies walking around the church and in line in front of us, so I was surprised when it was my turn and I had to stand on my tiptoes to barely be able to reach the hand with my mouth. But I thought it might be a little blasphemous to haul myself up on top of the saint, though I managed to get some of the cloth with my lips. I also wrote out a prayer and handed it to a priest, who did not deign to place holy water upon my head.

We went to get gelato at a little street vendor and a gypsy woman came up to us and told us through words and motions that she was hungry and she needed food for her and her adorable little boy who was with her. We said no and went to sit further down the road to wait for the rest of the girls to get their ice cream, but then the gypsy mom followed us and kept begging. Aislynn gave her ice cream to the little boy, which she shouldn’t have done and said so, but it was very tempting. Then they kept following us for a little while as we were leaving. I now understand why they tell us to not give anything to the beggars. We would be out of money in a day and they would all follow us around.

We went to the Mormon church to meet up with Alexandra again and the missionaries let us in. Apparently we can fill up out water bottles at the church because they have a filter! I never knew how overwhelming it would be to not be able to drink tap water. I’ve always hated brushing my teeth with a water bottle like when we’re camping. Ugh.

We made dinner together today as an apartment! We made weird sticky spaghetti noodles with canned spaghetti sauce and spiced bread. The apartment got pretty smoky. Good thing we don’t believe in the current, so we could open the window! Romanians also believe that sitting on the ground makes women infertile. None of us will be having children.

Getting to Know Iasi

We got into the apartment around 2:30 this morning. Our apartment didn’t go to bed until around 4. Mostly because we were too lazy to find our stuff to get ready for bed. We had a really good time laughing and bonding and talking about pee. Me, of course. When we were getting ready for bed, we were looking for sheets to put on our bed. There are only 4 beds for 5 of us, so we’re going to take turns sleeping on the pull-out couch. 

Last night, Kelsey and I were sharing one of the bunk beds in the back room. Chelsea’s bed had a note on it that said that she might want to wash the sheets. This was not reassuring for the rest of us. I couldn’t even find a fitted sheet, so I had to lay a duvet cover down on the mattress and sleep with a couple of blankets over me. Kelsey looked at me with her Crazy Eyes and said: “LEIGH! What have we gotten ourselves into?!?” I couldn’t find an answer.

Today we wandered around a bit. We went to the grocery store with Aislynn. Thankfully since, despite Sarah’s (our teacher) best efforts, we had no idea what anything was. The cashier lady was already pretty grumpy seeming. Aislynn told the girl to give me a sacur since I was too pathetic to speak. I’ll have to tell you later how all of the stuff tastes. 

People there do not say excuse me! I kept saying “nu va superati [excuse me],” but let’s be real, I was not always the person who was in the way. We did have some cereal this morning since Aislynn left before we woke up and she bought some. The milk tasted slightly different, but was still pretty good. The cereal itself was kind of like cocoa puffs but in a weird leaf shape.
And guess what. The toilet paper is scented! I didn't even know until after I bought it and someone else mentioned it. It smells sooo good! I don't know why this is necessary, but I still love it. Especially because our apartment smells a little weird...

We have Jesus, Joseph Smith, and Gordon B. Hinkley hanging in our apartment. The new apartment, that no BYU girls have lived in before, had this clock hanging up:

 I edited it for you. Also, a harpoon:

On the way home, we had some pastries. I got a delicious bread thing with nutella type stuff in the middle. It was quite delicious, but I cannot get it very often since it is very similar to a donut. 

We just got back from dinner at a little pizzeria. It was just our apartment plus Larson since her roommates left her. It was a blast. Especially since Aislynn tried to order pizza at the window for a different store. When she went to the right window, next door, she told the lady what pizzas we wanted. The lady just kept saying: foarte bine (very good). It turned out it was a sit down place and we were supposed to sit while a waiter brought our menus. We failed. It was quite humorous, though. It was a great night.

On the way home I had Chelsea take a picture of me in front of a sign with a guy with an afro so it would look like I had an afro, but I forgot to pull my hair back. :(

I love it here!!!

Me and Camille (I was trying to confuse people by wearing an Asian shirt):

Meeting Iasi

I finally left this morning for Iasi! By "this morning," I mean yesterday morning. I have been traveling since yesterday morning at 11 (I had to ride MoEx since Mom didn’t love me enough to drive me.) It was terrible. I laughed at the old lady next to me who asked that we stop in the middle of the drive for a bathroom before we even started driving. Then about 30 minutes through I had to pee extremely badly. It was the worst experience of my life. I arrived at the St. Louis airport about 3 hours before my flight. I found my gate and sat and watched Flawless. It was about Michael Cain stealing diamonds from the London Diamond Corps. It was pretty good. Then I arrive in Chicago.

The flight was delayed about an hour. I entertained myself here by calling Mom and Dad for the last time, eating some fake Chinese food, and guessing which country people were from before they spoke. Then I went on the flight. It was about 8 hours long. Thankfully they had some movies on the flight. I watched part of Mission Impossible 3 and something else that I don’t remember. It obviously had a huge impact on me. I couldn’t sleep a wink the whole time. I had earplugs and a face mask and a pillow, but I still couldn’t sleep. I might take drugs next time.  I ended up in London about an hour and a half after I was supposed to. This was actually a good thing. I thought that I was going to be the last of the girls there, but I ran into most of them at the security checkpoint. This was very exciting.

The gates were weird. Our gate didn’t even open until 10 minutes before we were supposed to board. It was baffling. And the Heathrow airport is humongous! We had to ride a bus to the airplane and we were clearly the loud American girls. I like to think that we were amusing everyone else with our conversations. But we didn’t all sit together, so the flight was safe from us jabbering the whole time. The people sitting next to me were Romanian. I think the woman might have been talking about me. I pretended not to know Romanian until the very end of the ride when she handed my tray to the stewardess. Then I said multumesc (Romanian for ‘thank you.’) Her facial expression was great.

The British steward was determined to give everyone their meal. I dosed off for a bit and when I woke up the meal was sitting on my tray table (halfway on the other ladies since I was sprawled across my table…) Apparently one of the other girls was asleep almost the whole flight, including when he brought the meal. He left it on her tray and then at the end of the flight, when they were gathering the trash he hemmed until he woke her up. This never would have happened on an American flight. I thought it was quite humorous. The British also offered tea and coffee for free. Unusual. *Note to self* I did not like the chocolate truffle, but I forced myself to eat it because I thought the lady next to me would be bad if I didn’t.

We have been chilling in the Buch airport for a while. We weren’t even allowed to go past security until about an hour before our flight. Weird. And you don’t have to take your shoes off. We finally made it through security. I talked to a nice lady behind me who was with a very, very attractive guy who spoke perfect English, but was from Huntington Beach, CA. He said he went on an internship here 13 years ago and never really went back. I thought this was very strange since he did not look close to old enough to have been applying for his Master’s degree 13 years ago. I hope for some odd reason we see him again.

Now our flight has been delayed for two hours, so we’re just chilling by our gate. We had internet for a split second from some guy named Greg’s phone. I sent a one sentence e-mail to Mom and Dad, but then the internet (Greg) left, or else had heard us saying “USE GREG!!!” and turned his phone off. Megan just fell off her suitcase loudly. Everyone looked. It was quite humorous.

Getting Ready

Wow, last time I posted I was saying that I wanted to go on a study abroad. Now I'm on my way to an international internship! I will have many more updates coming soon!