Learning the language...

Romanian is one of several main romance languages. Italian, Catalan, French, Portuguese and Spanish are the others. Thankfully there are several Romanian words that have the same meaning in Spanish, which is the language I studied in school growing up.  For example, casa is house in both Romanian and Spanish.  However, I have to say that as I learn Romanian, my Spanish sometimes gets in the way (and I'm by no means fluent). The other day I was wanting to say 'many children' in Romanian and what came out was "mucho copil"--- mucho is the Spanish word for many and copil is the Romanian word for child. Needless to say that drew a lot of chuckles-- esp since I said it at a job center meeting of 15 people! But my Romanian friends have been very patient with me as I'm learning..and most of the kids are downright shocked when I try and speak with them... My pastor said Romanian is perhaps the most difficult of European languages to learn. I'm reminded of that every day.

The words I do have a much easier time understanding are the medical terms-- when I read a medical record or speak to a medical person, I can understand because medical words are latin based.  So usually if you add an "e" or "ia" or "a" to an English medical term, it becomes Romanian. The folks I have translating for me always tell me they don't know how to translate the medical words, they are grateful when I tell them those are the ones I really understand.

I went out to a village with Doina and Paula today and captured something I've seen often this trip. Plants and flowers covered with empty bottles. Apparently this is a common way to protect flowers and plants from the cold as spring comes around and blooming begins.

A few updates..
 - Some folks at the Golgotha Church that our Sunshine School kids performed for this past Sunday have expressed interest in RCE and one family even asked about adopting one of the kids!
- After writing about food yesterday, I was greeted with a dozen freshly laid eggs this morning. Nicoletta, one of the RCE staffers generously gave them to me to have for my apt.
PT update..
-Paula and I had a mini inservice on the trunk this morning. We'll do some more follow up work as we try to give her some tools she can use to assess some of the more challenging kids. Seating and positioning is also on the list

Toni wearing the hat of a doll she loves

- Little Toni continues to challenge us. She has so much potential, but it's difficult to engage her at times. However she is doing GREAT using her weaker left hand-- she's now using it to eat and for all kinds of other fine motor activities. I did manage to capture her in a couple of 'happy' moments when we worked with her today.. the picture with Paula was taken just as she was leaving us for the day..that's when she's ALWAYS happy :)

Toni excited that she gets to leave our PT clinic!

Romanian Word of the Day:

Boss= sefa  (shay-fah) When our Exec Director, Mary Ann Bell is in town, many people just refer to her as Sefa. We took her to the airport this morning very early and Doina packed some sandwiches for us..I laughed when I saw how she labelled them.. see the picture below

Sandwiches for the "Boss", Ovi and Marti