Top of the Morning

This morning might have been my favorite morning so far working in the orphanage. The professors are in town, so they came to visit our apartment for a little while this morning. Of course, the kids did not behave in their normal manner in front of the professors. Danny was way more ADHD than normal, running from toy to toy in a split second. The others were not too far off of the way they normally behave, but they were still confused by the 5 visitors (Aislynn, Mario, and a professor's husband were there, too).
But Angela and I came prepared with questions for the professors. They were very helpful with answering our questions about how to deal with certain misbehaviors and certain teaching styles. It was really helpful, since they only stayed for about half an hour, we were able to implement some of their recommendations already this morning. It will take some time, but I think that it will really improve the help we can provide for these kids and prevent them from hurting one another as well as other people.
The rest of the morning, the kids behaved well, too. Maybe it is because we were already doing what the professors told us to do. We also had our favorite workers at the apartment this morning. It was just a great day overall. The kids in the afternoon were great, too! One of them was a little out of control, but he just got home from a week in the hospital, so we couldn't censure him too much. I would be crazy if I were stuck in the hospital, too.
When we got home for lunch, I got to eat some leftover chili and 2 Cremosso yogurts (oops). I'm also e-mailing Dannon today to tell them that they need to sell Cremosso yogurt in the United States. It's the most delicious yogurt in the world. Mmmmmm....I really want to eat another one right now, too.
The chilli is left over from our big group dinner on Tuesday night. We made dinner for ourselves, the professors, Mario, and Robby. We made Kelsey's amazingly delicious Georgia chili recipe and got delightful Romanian bread and Podu Ros made gogosi (like donuts.) Basically it was fantastic even though we didn't get to eat it for an hour since the professors were late. We then had a long meeting with the professors. They were shocked that only 5 girls out of the 14 of us have our own beds. I don't know how this wasn't known at BYU. Some girls have had to share beds since the program got a second apartment and now we have 3. Really I think that BYU just needs to buy a house out here, or at least outright buy an apartment. I think it would be more fiscally responsible in the long run. The program has already been running for 13 years. I can't imagine it's going to end anytime soon.
We went to visit 2 monasteries with the professors. They are from the 13th century and have somehow survived all this time (with paint renovations and such.) They were beautiful. I'll have to put pictures of them up once the professor downloads them.

I Broke a World Record!

Friday was great at the apartment. It was Children’s Day in Romania, so the older kids got to go to a theater show. Angela and I just had *Danny and *Gary for the day. It was also the first day of Chris’ month long vacation, so it was just us while some other workers cooked in the kitchen. Chris being gone means we will no longer have anyone to translate or explain how things run to us. Luckily we had him for a while so we have a schedule set. Angela and I take turns taking each kid out of the room to work with him on the Brigance. They are much more willing to work when they are one on one. It also doesn’t hurt that we give them stickers when they are good (although I’m not sure if they quite grasp that correlation yet.) We’re working with Gary right now on not pulling other people’s hair. It’s not working. That child has a grip of iron. 

Anyway, on Friday, Gary and Danny were little angels almost the whole time! This is quite unusual. They absolutely love music, so we sang to them a bit. (Angela has a fantastic voice, though we will miss Chris’ guitar.) Danny hums Twinkle Twinkle Little Star all the time. He kept doing this thing on Friday where he would be standing across the room from me doing his little swaying dance, I would look up and beam at him, and he would suddenly smile and run over to me for a hug.

Friday at the hospital we found yet another child who I fell in love with. She doesn’t have a first name since she was abandoned at some center (I don’t understand how any of the kids have last names when they’re abandoned. She had a last name. I tried to ask Chris once, but he didn’t really understand my English.) So I took the liberty of dubbing her Cassie. She is a beautiful Aryan baby with blue eyes and a heart-melting smile and very gross poop. I told her that she can marry Scotty, the first baby who I held in the hospital. Speaking of Scotty, I’m worried about him, they moved him back to the ICU for some reason. Aaaaah!

Last night we joined in this lantern lighting festival near our apartment. We were trying to get into the Guinness book of World Records for the most floating lanterns and we made it (12,700)! 

all the girls

Aislynn, Camille, Kelsey, Chelsea, Me

Chameleon and Me

Pretty much I single handedly made history. I’m still a little in shock that nothing lit on fire, though. There were a lot of wires and trees where we lit them. Some of them were stuck on telephone poles burning for a while and one was on one of the Cultural Palace spires for a while. We only saw one that they had to use a fire extinguisher on, though.