O zi buna! (and that involves cleaning of course!)

This has been my second home (yes, I am referring to the WC), for the past few days, but GOOD NEWS - no more sick Jess!

I've started to think if Americans couldn't flush their toilet paper in the toilet and had to throw it away in a garbage can right next to the toilet (yes, we really do this)- they might start to realize how much toilet paper they actually use! All this talk about going green - let's start with the toilet paper kids!

Disclaimer: Sorry for being so blunt on this blog. It is what it is though! 

I haven’t quite adjusted to the time difference, but I slept in until 10 this morning which made me feel like a champ! I woke up feeling completely revived and ready for the day, which was excellent because it was a great day. 

On Sunday, we had our apartment meeting for the week. Normally, the facilitator will be in charge of this and run the weekly meetings. However, as you may or may not know, our group is very unique in that we did not have a language course, we had a mini prep course and we don’t have a facilitator. This could be to our disadvantage, but I also think it will make us depend on each other more.  Already, I think we have made quite the team. I know they were super helpful when I was sick, and already we have all contributed to make things work. Talk about the ideal apartment situation – never in my years of living with multiple roomates have I had one work so successfully. I know we have only been here as  a group (and not everyone in our group has actually arrived) for less than a week, but this isn’t your typical BYU apartment “do your own thing” Already we have our apartment fund setup – this is for the basics (bread, water, butter, cleaning supplies, etc.) We also have a fund setup for diapers for the children (as that will probably get expensive once we start working at the hospital). We will all contribute a certain amount and we have put someone in charge of that to make sure the money is budgeted and kept track of. We also figured out during our Sunday meeting that we would have to do weekly cleaning (my favorite part). I am not sure what it is, but cleaning is so therapeutic for me. It could be my slight OCD getting the best of me, I’m not sure! So I volunteered to put together our job chart. J

Is it unhealthy that I slightly love the job cleaning chart?

Again, the cleaning Nazi (myself), came out in true colors today. Hopefully my roomates were okay with that. Maybe it’s my way of coping with an unfamiliar situation? Regardless, we were all sitting on our laptops (a familiar sight in our apartment) and I decided that I wanted to vacuum the floors and the couches because they kind of give me the creeps if you know what I mean.  Not meaning to make the other girls leave what they were doing, I started figuring out the vacuum and taking care of the front room. Dani and Liz both started helping me out. Then, I knew we had tons of pigeon crap (literally) all over our balcony making it difficult to tip-toe and dodge your way around to dry clothes on the clothesline. (Remind myself to be grateful for dryers when I come home). So, we got one of our old brooms we found and started sweeping and cleaning the balcony.

Megan sitting on one of the couches that I may or may not be afraid to sit on. I vacuumed them today. I will have to take a close up of this one. The dark design disguises the holes the size of quarters in it. 

Amidst all this, there is a backroom right  outside my bedroom that is part of the apartment, but it is still outside. Apparently the door did not get closed tightly (not in my bedroom, thank goodness), but to the outside door, so a bunch of pigeons were hanging out for who knows how long and have made themselves comfortable. We have big plastic bins that past interns have used full of coloring books, toys, old scrubs, diapers, blankets and sheets,  all outside in this little patio breezeway. Pigeon poop and feathers ALL OVER EVERYTHING! Mario told us that eventually it would need to get cleaned. I figured since we were already cleaning up after the pigeons on the balcony, we may as well try to conquer the back patio. Wow – good thing I have super troopers for roommates. We all pitched in and cleaned that bad boy out. I’m thinking there is a good chance that no one has cleaned back there for a LONG time. After going through a few sponges, garbage bags, dumping a box load full of pigeon crap and feathers, dust and whatever else you can imagine, we finally got the place tidied up.

In the meantime, we found an old diaper fund of one of the past groups with 160 Lei in it. We were thrilled. Though this means only about 50-55 USD, that is a good chunk of change! Thank you to whoever may have left your diaper money in the weirdest place possible – a gross bag in the nasty pigeon hole. It was a blessing for us today – especially when we are all on tight budgets.

After the videocrew from “Dirty Jobs” left – Just kidding, but we may as well have been on that show after today…we finally were able to grab a snack and head to FHE which we are in charge of . It was my first time going to the church and I was super excited to see everything. We go to church on the 2^nd floor of a house – we call it the “Villa”. Every semester, the BYU girls are in charge of the FHE activity on Monday nights. We decided to bring the card game Uno to play with the members. We arrived with Petru, Mihai, President Popovici, Sora (Sister Genevieve) – who may be my absolute favorite, her son, Gianina (an older woman who speaks pretty good English, the 2 Elders in the area,  Florentina and Aurelia (who everytime I asked her what her name was, she would say “J-Lo” and laugh. Yes, that might be funny to her, but with this whole Romanian language barrier, I probably would have assumed that was really her name and called her that. I need to ease up a bit I guess. Back to FHE – I feel like I am a competitive person. Tonight I realized I am in it with the champs! The whole time they kept telling us to go faster and would get impatient with each other and were super competitive! It was quite the sight. It was good practice for us too to learn Romanian colors and numbers! Thank goodness some of them speak Romanian and most of them who don’t are so understanding of our situation. What a blessing. I can’t tell you how great it is to have people who are so welcoming and loving. We don’t even know them, but yet you would have thought we had known them for years the way they involved us.  Though there numbers are few, their strength is incredible.

This is the villa. Once you get up the staircase, that second floor is where the Iasi branch meets.

I have been raised in an area where stake centers are like McDonalds and Wal-marts, on every corner! Here, it is completely different. I was not able to attend church yesterday, but I heard how amazing it was. The members have sacrificed so much just to go to the temple, or to see the prophet. They have not been members all their lives.  It was a sacrifice to become a member of this church – and they do not have a lot – but you can see the joy and happiness it brings to them. What a remarkable thing that I get to be a part of. I hope I can take everything in and learn from them – because I know I have a lot to learn.

Well, I better be going to bed now. Wow, o zi buna (a good day).