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.