Marilyn In Romania

A Year Ago . . .

2007-05-31T09:36:00.000-07:00

I went to meet Alex and Howard, a dating couple, in Slovakia where Alex is from. From Slovakia, we traveled together by bus to Prague in the Czech Republic.

I thought as I wondered around the streets of Prague about where I was a year ago, teaching hectically in May when there was so much to do and prepare for, and where I am now traveling and living in Europe for a year. I think I would have treaded 3 weeks of my past just for yesterday alone. Wouldn't I rather be traveling this train I'm sitting in on Monday at 8:13am looking at the luscious green outskirts of Prague fly by than teaching a math lesson? But, in all honesty - there were some great math lessons . . .

I think it must have been the hum drum that scared me and killed me.

As Howard politely led me to the train station this morning, he got me talking about the future and I realized that two months from today I don't know what will happen - where I'll be living in Romania. All this ambiguity is refreshing to a young heart that for 5 years listened to the same song.

I know there are advantages to listening to the same song over and over, and each time hearing new things. But can there ever be anything like listening to a song for the first time? Thank you, God, for giving me a new song. Why have you been so good to me? Thank you - it is completely unearned.

The Civil Ceremony

2007-05-17T13:35:00.000-07:00

Having a good day in Romania is like climbing a little higher when you’re already on the top of the world.

I woke up before I was naturally ready for it, which is unusual for me here. Vio opened my door and reminded me the time I had quoted I would wake up. I walked around the apartment like a drunkard, increasing speed until I was whipping out the door with a promise to Vio that I’d be back.

Today Conrad and Vio would be legally married in a court in Romania. Their church ceremony will take place in July, a little more than two months from today. Her fiancé’s parents had Emailed me from the states to ask if I could buy some flowers to give in their stead. I like spending other people’s money, and that’s what I did when I saw the yellow and orange roses at the florists. I asked for a dozen and watched a Romanian girl wrap them up with care. I was waiting anxiously for the flowers to be ready, when I realized I couldn’t make time go faster by wanting it to. It was a waste not to enjoy the moment as I watched the florist take so much care with the dozen roses I had ordered.

As I stood their waiting I had time to marvel that 6 months here have equipped me to communicate with the florist, even though I’m still a beginner. Now I have little wings, and though I may not fly beautifully, it is nice to know I don’t have to be afraid anymore of jumping out of the nest.

I rushed back home. It’s fun to walk down streets in Europe with a bouquet of a dozen roses in your arms in the middle of May. Personally I like the curiosity it provokes when people see a happy young woman alone on the streets with a huge bouquet in her hands.

I opened our apartment door a crake and spoke to Violeta, who was all dressed up for the civil ceremony. She was waiting for the event by calmly reading her Bible on the couch. “I have a present for you from Conrad’s parents,” I spoke in Romanian. We agreed she should cover her eyes. The roses were so beautiful and we admired them together. Part of the beauty of the flower is that it dies. Would they ever be as beautiful as they were this morning?

It was pure joy to meet everyone once we arrived and I had been given the job to video taping everything. In Romania that gives me the right to stand and move almost anywhere I want during the ceremony. How great to really get to be the fly on the wall for a short time.

Before the ceremony I had made chocolate chip cookies. After the ceremony everyone gathered to eat sweets. Conrad held the tray of Chocolate cookies in his hands; another piece of America to this official Romanian marriage besides the American groom. I spoke Romanian and listened. What happiness! After the ceremony we took pictures at the park and then moved on to Vio’s brother’s apartment where we got to eat and talk and talk and have fun. Vio’s brother and his girlfriend keep telling Livia to speak with me in Romanian, instead of English, and it was great to feel part of their family and their home and their hearts for a time.

So today was an incredible day in my life because I was loved, I was spoken to and spoke to others in Romania and I was with people I loved and felt safe with. I thank God for the best year yet and that today he didn’t give and take away, but he just gave.

Grass

2007-04-20T11:22:00.000-07:00

I was helping prepare for Simona and Raca's wedding. I was making small decoration bouquets with Carmen and Roxi in the church. When we ran out of the green leaves with the white in the center I noticed Carmen at the front of the sanctuary. She was pulling green leaves with white in the center out of the potted plants so we could add them to our bouquets.

"No one will miss them," Carmen told me when she noticed me watching her take them.

Then I looked at the materials we were using to make our bouquets. At that point in dawned on me that ALL of the green leaves with white in the center were from the same potted plant at the front of the church, not from the florist as I had imagined.

"How many of these long blades of grass should I use in the bouquet?" I asked the girls.

"It doesn't matter. There's plenty more where that came from." I thought I recognised the blades of grass from the church parking lot.

I had to smile at how funny it was that among our special decorations were many things we looked at every week just used in a new way.

Art After Life

2007-03-11T11:41:00.001-07:00

I left the country for a day. When I arrived at the capital of Hungary, Budapest, the microbus driver and I reconfirmed as best we could with my limited Romanian that we would meet at the bus station about five hours later for our return to Romania.

—I came to Budapest because I had to leave the country every three months so that I did not remain in Romania illegally.—

After he drove away I was left to myself on the streets of Budapest, a place where the average citizen appeared more American to me, but the language was further from my understanding than Greek; I don't know one Hungarian word. After a snack and a self-tour of the bus depot, I hit the streets. I couldn’t find a map of the city and so decided to attempt a walk without one.

I walked for about an hour when I came across an interesting cemetery. The graves weren't packed all together, in fact, there was often open green lawn between each site with enough space for a car or two to fit. It was like a park. Huge, life-sized statues stood atop the tombstones. One tombstone had Christ carrying his cross, another had three life-sized women, joining hands, and all three weeping. Other graves had beautifully sculpted women looking down thoughtfully. There was a sculpted man with a walking stick, who appeared so comfortable with life that death was the last thing he expected. There were many romantic sculptures and being in this cemetery was like walking in a museum. When I admired a piece and looked at the date I was sometimes surprised by the year. 1843 was engraved in one, the beauty, the originality, and the youth of the pieces made me think these tombs had been erected more recently. I guess even in that era people were every bit as creative and original as we are today.

Many tombs had statues expressing deep sorrow, like the three women joining hands that I described earlier. There was an adult woman with a young adolescent boy standing beside her. Below them a life-sized male figure clung to the tombstone tortured by grief and longing. The woman and boy seemed not to notice him, while the male figure seemed not to notice anything but them. I was attracted to the open expression of grief that these figures portrayed. It reminded me a recent conversation with Romanian high school students. "There is something unnatural about death," I told them, "It just seems wrong." When I said "wrong" I meant out of the ordinary, weird, and absurd even.

As we were driving to Budapest I was thinking about how the consoling words, "He's in heaven now" don't really cut it for those that have lost a loved one. As "spiritual" as we may want to be, just knowing the deceased’s abstract personality still exists in another place—even a better one—doesn't compensate for what we've lost. We lack their physical presence. Losing something, somebody, that you can hold and touch and feel and even just look at is a tragedy.

Robbing us of our physical form—is—robbing us. I don't understand, of course, what the afterlife is, but I have to believe that there will be a physical realm to it. When the Bible describes us as being made in God's image, we are inclined (or even encouraged) to think that the word "image" only refers to a spiritual concept, but I am tempted to contemplate that our physical image is also makes us God-like. Image, after all, in its most basic sense is something physical.

After these thoughts, the weeping concrete statues that stood atop of real people turning to dust below, demonstrated grief in a real sense for the physical body (and all that comes with it. How can we separate soul and body?) that is lost at death. And it seemed very Christian to me to weep at death and hate it... as these ornately adorned tombs seemed to condone.

If we hate death with ever fiber of our being, are we not being more like God? No one hates death more than God who fought death to the core and ironically even gave his life so that His children could live forever. If we hate death, and when I say hate, I mean HATE, we are more like God. We are allowed to say, "Death, I hate you, and I will NEVER give into you." And I don't mean a hatred of a metaphoric death, but a hatred of real death. Death that smells bad after a few days.

In conclusion, I leave you with a mental picture of my favorite statue: The woman stood on two legs, but she was bent over, crying, leaning on a man beside her with one of her hands covering her face and her head close to her knees. In her posture of grief she seemed so controlled by sorrow that she did not realize neither the man on whom she leaned nor his stature. Unlike the woman, the man stood upright; he was strong. He looked up to the sky with a concentrated gaze. You might have felt he was disconnected from the woman, but he held her hand with the same strength with which he gazed upward. It didn’t take long to recognize that the man was Christ and the woman, my heart told me, was any of us who have ever wept with one hand over our eyes and the other, even absent-mindedly, in His grasp.

2007-03-11T11:41:00.000-07:00

Hit

2007-02-17T06:31:00.001-08:00

I jumped out of the backseat of the car at a stop light. I had forgotten I promised Delia I would meet her at my apartment, and left the house when Vio invited me out. I had to get back home before Delia arrived.

I was thinking God always had a reason for me being this forgetful when I noticed a strange sight. The street was full of buses and cars, but no one was in them. "I could steal a bus," I considered, but then I realized that there was no where to drive it. It was stopped behind other empty cars. I noticed two other empty buses on the road. "Why would buses be completely empty?" I had seen this once before in Romania. When I was on a bus in Timnisoara there was an accident in the road ahead of us. The cars had to stop, including the bus, and all the bus passengers, myself included, got out of the bus and simply walked to our destinations.

Then I noticed the throng of people on the street. I joined them to see that a man lay in the street in his own blood. The car that hit him, beside him. The Ambulance was there with medical professionals. I saw one bloody boot beside the man and the other boot on the his foot. I couldn't see his face. People gathered silently on the street to watch, giving plenty of room to the medical crew. A lady came up next to me and asked me who it was. "I don't know," I said, and a man infront of her explained to her what he knew. I was praying as I stood there, and something in the silence of the mob told me that I wasn't the only one. Little kids were there, too, looking at the blood and the motionless man. "It's a good lesson for all of us," I considered, "to be careful pedestrians and drivers. Perhaps it's even more effective than 'Red Asphault.'"

I enjoyed how Romania wasn't like America for a moment. These police weren't pushing people away. There was nothing wrong with our looking, and perhaps there were lessons learned from watching that the best Driver's Training Course couldn't match. Furthermore, I like how even three bus drivers stood on the street and watched - and everybody just left there work and their jobs and the important things they were doing - just to see what happened. Because human life mattered more then getting things done. This man's life, or even just his traumatic experience, was worth MORE than hundreds of schedules and there was nobody in the crowd arguing with this.

2007-02-17T06:31:00.000-08:00

Listening

2007-02-15T00:35:00.000-08:00

"When we first married," a Romanian woman told us in her home, "My husband talked, and I listened."

"But as time passed," the husband explained, "my wife talked and I listened."

"But now," the couple continued, "we both talk, and the neighbors listen!" The wife leaned back in her chair, eyes shut as she giggled. The husband leaned forward as he smiled, enjoying the sight of us, his guests, laughing at this explaination of their relationship.

This wife had married at eighteen to a husband of twenty-three. Here they sat as grandparents, showing us the pictures of their youngest curly blond-headed granddaughters, enjoying life as if it was some sort of kiddy roller-coaster. The wife would run into the other room when her husband or a guest needed a napkin or a spoon. The husband enjoyed nothing more than telling jokes to the guests that came other. When I had first walked in the home, I had thought the couple was brother and sister or else just two good friends, yet somehow not necessarily husband and wife. I didn't want to leave their house.

Privighetoare

2007-02-09T07:00:00.000-08:00

There is a small singing bird that is very common in Romania. Sadly, however, the "privighetoare," as it's called, only sings its beautiful songs at night. Craftily, people put the birds in cages and covered them so the birds would think it was night and sing during the day. More ruthless admireres of the privighetoare ripped the eyes out of the birds so they would sing all the time - living in an endless night.

Traian Dorz was imprisoned for 17 years during communism in Romania for writing Christian poetry, and he compared himself to these birds. Imprisioning him and banning him from paper and pencil was like ripping the eyes from the Privighetoare. When they took away the sun, and all that brought light to his world, it withdrew from him the sweetest songs.

Cultural Difference #17

2007-02-02T07:13:00.000-08:00

I was sitting in the park downtown. A very old man walked slowly by. Somehow it seemed odd to me that he was pushing a baby stroller. I wondered what was really inside. It was very cold here, and he was fully stocked with winter ware, including those thick wool eastern European hats. Another very old man was walking by in the opposite direction. He also walked under thick clothes with a Russian winter hat. As the two were about to pass one another, the man without the stroller briefly acknowledged the other man and then stopped and investigated the contents of his stroller unabashedly. The countenance of both men changed into large grins. Then the stranger cooed and baby-talked to the little contents inside the stroller, with a softness I usually only hear from women's mouths (at times when women forget others are present and they are with a precious child). The man with the stroller joined in, also cooing unabasedly at the infant in the public park. Both men exchanged knowing smiles and then kept going.

I have had other opportunities to observe how men approach infants/children, and the examples I had seen so far were very similar to the example of these old men.

Cooing at this child seemed to culturally signify two things about these men.

#1 They are human. Having a tender heart toward children shows we have a soul and are not machines without feelings.

#2 They are men. In Romanian culture it is not embarassing to coo at a baby because the majority of men do it, are publicly observed doing it, and when they are observed doing it they are respected.

I am thankful that some men somewhere in the world feel free to coo.

Opening the Opera House

2007-01-18T08:14:00.000-08:00

I mustered up enough courage to walk into the "Information Office" at the huge Opera House downtown. In Romanian I asked the man at the information desk about ballet in the city. He (and the other two in his small office) responded in the positive. After asking more questions, he led me upstairs to two girls. One of them spoke English. I could just tell from her strong, lean arms that she was some kind of dancer or gymnist. In the backgroud I could hear someone in the building singing opera. Being in that old European opera house, talking to this dancer, and hearing someone singing live opera in the backgroud was just like what I imagined it would be like to be a European Ballerina in Paris or Russia when I was a kid. I asked this woman where I could find ballet classes and she told me to return in the morning and talk with the directer (maestro!). "He doesn't speak English," she told me, "but the girls will help you." As she was speaking, a girl walked into our room. Her back was super straight and her feet turned out as she walked. The sight of her instantly increased my longing to dance! I was SO excited to find this place, and have the hope of dancing, and for the little adventure of going into the building and speaking Romanian that I wanted to sing and shout at the same time! :)

So this morning I woke up and put on my dance clothes and walked back to the Opera house. When I arrived there were many more people in the room small room, who looked at me as I entered. I made eye contact with a woman and then spoke to her in Romanian asking about taking dance classes and talking with the directer. (maestro!) All the romanians listened to me as a spoke with her. Hearing a foreigner was interesting enough for them to put what previously occupied them on hold.

I talked with the director, who spoke no English and watched part of a class before I left to work at the high school. Dancers were running around in costumes. They have a performance tomorrow night.

Like I said, we were inside on old opera house. This dance room was on the third floor with bars and mirrors and a great floor for the dancers and you could see the branches of trees (all bare) outside the nine windows in the room. You could faintly hear and see the busy Romanian city with people walking all over the streets and old cars pushing through the streets from these antique windows. Sun slipped through them, one of which was open in the cornor. All the heaters were turned on. An older joyful woman played the piano, and the head of a donkey (obviously part of a costume) was atop a table by the piano. The sight was poetry to one "hungry for dance." And It is great to hear a Romanian dance teacher saying the words so familour to a dancer, "sue-ta-new," plie, etc.

Speaking In Laughter

2007-01-07T12:54:00.000-08:00

We were going to go for a walk tonight in the snow, but before I reached the road I saw 22 year-old Cosmin filling a large plastic bag with snow. "Have you ever done this?" He asked, as he placed the the bag on the icy road. The road was on a hill because our cabin was in the mountains and he slid down the road sitting on his plastic bag. His 19 year-old (?) wife followed him on her own bag a few moments later. When he returned he threw some more ice in the plastic bag and handed it to me. Cautiously I got down on the road and took off. It was SO fun to slide in the snow and the bag worked VERY well. When people offered me a plastic seat later, I declined. Because of the incline in the road we could slide quickly! and remember that it was night so we couldn't see so well, though the snow was a blinding white by day.

After a few times down the road on the plastic bag the Romanians introduced by demonstration the next level of sledding: "tail" sledding. First two people sat on plastic bags or seats on the icy road and faced each other, then a third person sat behind the second person and wraped their legs around them. Then a fourth person was added and so on until there were 8 people sliding down the mountain like a snake escaping fire.

Later I got the courage to join. It was one of the best dangereous decisions I've made! We really built speed all together, holding someone's legs, feeling someone's arms wraped around yours, holding on tight so our tail wouldn't break (which I did; which was also fun). I remember laughing as we walked back up the hill in the night and telling myself that I had to record this moonlit night and the moments I had of really losing myself in laughter and loving life. I noted this as we walked back up the road telling each other in laughter what a good time we were having.

2007-01-07T12:43:00.000-08:00

New Years Knees

2007-01-07T12:29:00.000-08:00

First written January 1st on the train from Sambateni to Cluj, Romania

For New Years I was at the Foster's with plenty of other people from their village. Lots of goodies and vegetable salads were made. Alina M. was going to write down questions and put them on cards for people to answer. I thought of a good amount of the questions in the end (and I fear they may have seemed ridiculous to the Romanians) and Ioana came up with some, too. Then we did something I've always wanted to do at the New Year. We got down on our knees and prayed. And we really prayed - like we never do in America. We spent time in prayer. Aluna broke down in tears praying. How beautiful to see in a beautiful 15 year old girl.

I loved spending time on the floor. This is how we brought in the New Year.

Losing Power

2006-12-17T12:23:00.000-08:00

We were sitting in Church on a Sunday evening singing a song when the lights suddenly went out. It wasn't just the lights that went out. We lost all power in the building.

We didn't stop singing. We just kept singing in the dark. Nobody screamed or paniced when the lights went out. We could all hear one another singing loudly. In fact, it seemed that when the lights went out these determined people only sang louder. There was a stubborness in their voice that said, "Turn of the lights! Turn off all power! We can worship God in the dark!" The hinderence to worshiping our God ironically seemed to make us better worshipers. If you listened closely underneath the sturdy voices you could here the guitarest, far away on the stage without the power of an amp, still strumming the chords. Then we got to the end of the song (I think the only person who needed the words on the overhead was me. Everybody else seemed to have every verse memorised). It was still dark. The pastor's voice was heard at the front of the church. He begain preaching as though the lights were on. Church kept on going. Someone in the balcony turned on a small flash light and shinned it on the pastor, but the light was so weak it barely made a difference.

When the lights finally did come on in the middle of the sermon, what do you think happened? Absolutely nothing. Nobody seemed to care. The pastor just walked up to the pulpit and continued preaching, now with the aid of the microphone.

It was so great to see in this example of what church was to these people. It was them.

At the Catacombs in Rome, Italy

2006-12-13T06:38:00.000-08:00

Today I had a glorious time at the catacombs in Rome.

We had an English-speaking guide from the states.

He asked me if I was from Spain because he didn't expect Americans in Rome in December. I was a surprise, and he was a surprise to me.

He told the story of martyrs so plainly, as if he were reading the instructions for how to replace a lock. He didn't speak irreverently, just simply. He aimed to relate history.

Yet, how could I keep from weeping at his words? Did he see the tears in my eyes? Why wasn't everyone else crying? How precious! How glorious to be in those tombs. I felt unworthy to be the sister of those who were buried here long ago.

Our guide calmly reminded us of death in a peaceful and fatherly way and of heaven and hell, and expressed that he hopes for heaven. His hope was beautiful in part because it was humble. He wasn't braging, though some in this world would say he had a right to. He spent his days as some kind of priest (as far as I know) in ROME, as a CATHOLIC, talking about martyrs of the faith (all things that seem to qualify Him for eternal life). You'd think he'd have a right to brag, an earthly right. But in truth he was humble, as we should be. Can we, too, go to heaven? Though there is no fire on our back or wild dogs encircling us, as some martyrs faced? Even us who might forsake our faith should we encounter such a moment? Can we weak in faith be His sheep?

In answer to this question think again over the parable in Matthew 20 about the workers in the vineyard.

"The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 'These men who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, 'and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work in the heat of the day.'

"But he answered one of them, 'Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?'

Can you believe that we will receive the same wage as the martyers? This is because our Lord is generous.

Wives' Tales

2006-12-01T00:07:00.000-08:00

There is an old wives' tale that is only said to be effective during the dreams that you have while you sleep the evening of November 30th (the eve of a National Romanian holiday for their country - like our 4th of July.) This tale says that if you eat a piece of bread with salt right before going to bed, and then dream that a man brings you a cup of water then that man in your dream will be your husband.

Whenever you get the hiccups here, that means somebody is thinking about you. If you can think of the person is who is thinking about you, your hiccups will stop.

Whenever the clock has a double time and you happen to see it (like 22:22 or 11:11) that means someone wants you.

"Smack that"

2006-11-28T10:00:00.000-08:00

Today at the gym a Romanian woman asked Vio (my roommate) to ask me what "smack" meant in English. A pop song was playing of which the chorus consisted of the words "Smack that!"

How does one explain what "smack that" means?

I told her that "smack" can mean a kiss, or it can also refer to the sound made when a person hits another person. Or it could mean "junk," no? Help me out here English speakers!

"SMACK THAT!"

One time in a finance class

2006-11-27T08:40:00.000-08:00

I went with my Roommate, Violeta, to one of her finance classes. Vio talked to the teacher before hand to ask if I could sit in on the class. Bringing an American to his class seemed to catch him off gaurd, but he had no problems with it. Once inside the class of possibly 75 students, I noticed they were all taking notes while he spoke (In Romanian, of course). I was prepared with my student note book. I took notes of the interesting sounds he was making, though I had no idea what they meant or if I was hearing them correctly - then he started walking around the classroom as he spoke. Vio and I were sitting right by an isle. I decided the best way to keep from being noticed was to try to act normal and at ease as he passed by. Apparently I was doing a pretty good job acting like I knew what he was talking about, because he paused in the middle of his lecture as He passed by us and looked at me, saying in Romanian, "Do you understand what I'm teaching about?" I paused because I wasan't 100% sure of his question, though I knew he was talking to me and asking about my understanding.

"No," I said in English. (Speaking in English would make my point more clearly, right?)

And then he said the nicest thing, "Probably about as much as I would understand if this class were taught in English." Then he continued teaching and I continued taking notes

After the class I thanked him and he asked how it was. "Bine," I said. He told me he thought the best way for me to study the Romanian language was with a Romanian man.

One time at the bus stop

2006-11-27T08:34:00.000-08:00

I travel on the city bus.
An old woman at the bus stop asks questions (In Romanian) about which bus to take.
"I don't speak Romanian," I tell her (In Romanian).
"Then what do you speak!?" she asks (Romanian) as though it's possible I don't speak at all.
"I speak English." (In Romanian)
(In Romanian) "I don't speak English. I speak German. I speak Italian. I speak Romanian, and my daughters, they don't speak English either. One time . . . but I do know some words in English. (In English) I love you, goodbye, hello, go. (In Romanian) So I will tell you: (English) Goodbye."
She was very cute.

Why did I come here?

2006-11-27T08:29:00.000-08:00

I wanted to learn Romanian and discover new things (In that order).