Romania Recap

As promised here is an update of what I did while I was in Romania with Heart to Heart International.

Left Atlanta on July 1st around 5:30 and arrived the following morning in Amsterdam. Waited around for a few hours until I caught my flight to Bucharest, Romania. Was picked up at the airport by Jen, Jenny, and Carolyn then taken to the H 2 H house.

The house was pretty similar to something you would find in the US, just with more bedrooms and no A/C.

Sunday was church, lunch at the mall and then a chance to meet some of the kids from one of the orphanages. H 2 H works with 5 orphanages: 2 close to Bucharest and 3 that are further south. We went to one that was about 45 minutes outside of Bucharest.

 School and girls dorms.

 Some of the boys. There seem to be more boys than girls at the orphanages for some reason.

 Boys dorms.

 A room in the boys dorms. 6-7 bunk beds in each room. Each boy gets one cubby to hold all his things, which usually isn't more than a few pieces of hand me down clothing.

 A box of communal shoes in the boys bathroom.

 The music group. We got to listen to a performance by them.

This little man stole my heart.
We played with the kids and listened to their little band perform a few songs for us and then it was back to the H 2 H house.

Monday we all headed to the music camp that was being held at the girls transition house. I helped cook and clean while Todd, one of the team members lead the music camp.

 Buying watermelon for a snack.

 Music group rehearsing in the back yard.

Girls transition house. During the year this will house the girls who have aged out of the orphanage. They learn basic life skills like cooking, cleaning, and shopping in addition to finding jobs and learning to live independently.
By the end of the day Monday all the rest of the team except for the members coming from Canada had arrived (they arrived Tuesday night). On Tuesday we all headed to an orphanage about 15 minutes from the H 2 H house. There are primarily younger children at this orphanage.

We spent the morning playing and coloring with the kids. In the afternoon I went with a small group to the baby hospital. There are 26 abandoned infants and toddlers housed in one small wing at a local hospital. They stay there until they get old enough to move into an orphanage or are adopted by someone in country (Romania is closed to international adoptions). Because the babies are wards of the state we couldn't take pictures of them or the hospital. It was tough to see babies that were 8 or 9 months old that could barely lift their heads. None of them reached for toys or looked you in the eye when you talked to them. The backs of their heads were flat from laying in cribs on their backs all day. Thankfully it was nice and sunny in their rooms and there were some volunteers who would take some of the babies out every once in awhile. And when they learned to crawl they were taken to a special playroom in another area of the hospital for a few hours a day to get some exercise. We held the babies and loved on them as much as we could before leaving for the day.

This is turning out to be a longer update than I had planned so I'll break it down into two parts. Coming soon: Wednesday-Saturday.