DAY FOUR [ringing in a NEW year!]

Yesterday. Wow. Let's just say that Romanians are MUCH better at ringing in the New Year than Americans are! :) So yesterday morning we all worked around the house to get ready for the party. I peeled potatoes for a good couple hours. We then went to Parish in the afternoon and had a small little celebration for the orphans there. We watched Kung Fu Panda (in Romanian with English subtitles), then handed out little goody bags. Bad idea considering the bags had every kind of noise maker imaginable and the rest of the afternoon consisted of all the kids coming up to your ear and blowing as hard as possible. :) We spent the rest of the time just playing with the kids. Yesterday was the first day any of the kids told me they loved me... which I realize they say to everyone but it's so adorable and I can say it back to them and really mean it! During the movie a girl who's probably about 10(?) named Catalina came up to me and we "cuddled" the whole movie while we joked around and taught each other words. She also thought it was a hoot to tell us that the only guy team member was her and she was him and all that silliness. So that was really fun. I played "Go Fish" with a 13 year old boy who would read the sea animals names off the cards which was very impressive but also very hilarious how he would pronounce things! I also interacted with an older (maybe highschool age?? It's so hard to tell!) boy named Berkey (sp?) who knew a lot of english- one of the first orphans there that I was really able to communicate with, so it was fun. He has a really big heart and I've never seen him be mean or beat up on any of the other kids which really can't be said about most of the other orphans. I left the orphanage with a huge smile on my face yesterday, just absolutely beaming because the kids are just so great, despite the fact they can be mean to each other at times. I guess it's just like brothers and sisters!

After Parish, we came back to the house to find some guests had already arrived for the New Year's Eve party. It was a party for all the graduates of the Transition Houses, so there were about 30 that were able to come (out of the about 100 that have graduated). Most of them were in their twenties. At first it was kind of awkward because our team speaks only English and everyone else speaks only Romanian except our few translators. However, as the night went on it got very comfortable. We had dinner, then got into teams and played "Minute to Win It" where there are a bunch of challenges to have to complete in one minute to get a point. My team won, which was VERY exciting for everyone. We then had dessert and just played cards and talked. At midnight we went outside to witness the huge city fireworks that were being fired off in the street and at surrounding neighbor houses. And teenage guys are the same here in Romania, they were lighting fire crackers and throwing them at us, just loving watching us American girls scream. It was frightening and I thought of mom just being very unappoving of it all. :) Haha! But it was so great because we literally just ran through the streets tooting little party horns, screaming and running away from fire crackers, and yelling "La Mutzan!" (Happy New Year!) During the evening, a guy named Costel had a translator come over and a few of the girls on the team talked with him for a good portion of the night. He shared with us his great love of singing and sang a few songs. I have noticed that a lot of the people we meet will want a translator to come over just so they can tell us random things about their life like how they like to play soccer, sing, or eat sweets. I wondered aloud if it was a Romanian thing, but then someone on my team suggested that it could be an orphan thing, since everyone who has done that has been an orphan and they don't have parents or family to tell those kind of things to. Which made me really sad because it reminded me of how whenever I have something exciting like I ace a test, a lot of the time the only people that really care are my family. I've especially noticed this since my parents have moved oversees that a lot of what I would talk about on the phone daily is stuff that noone else really wants to hear. But it's awesome because H2H and the staff have really become these ophans family. That's where they come for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, etc. That's who they tell their exciting news to and who they share life with. So this New Year I am SO thankful for H2H and the opportunity I have to join their family for a short time!