Good morning!
While you have been sleeping, I have had quite the busy day. We got picked up (with very short notice, may I add) by Raznav, one of the Projects Abroad supervisors. He took us to the office so now we know where that is, and introduced us to some of the other volunteers (who apprently, had no idea we were coming. we've clearly been corresponding with the wrong person). Manasa spent the day there and got to know some of the others, so now we have friends! Well, I guess Manasa has friends and I don't, but we're getting dinner with them all tomorrow, so then I will have friends! There's about 10 volunteers here from all over the world, so I'm really excited to get to know them. There's talk of maybe going to Moldova this weekend? I want to goooo!
So while Manasa was off socializing, I got taken to the hospice. I first met the physical therapist I'd be working with, Anda, and while her English is a little choppy, we were able to communicate. She told me that I would mostly be working with children with neurological disorders, though the hospice also does a lot of work with adults who have cancer. I'll spend half my time there in the day center, working with the children who just come in for the day, doing mostly acitivities such as crafts and computer and other things that allow them to have a normal life. Many of them have muscular dystrophy, and it almost is unhear of for a kid in a wheelchair to be taken outside here during the day. The other half of my time I will work in PT, with both the inpatients and the kids who come to the center. I start all that tomorrow.
There's a cool room that they use for PT called the multi-stimulation room. It's nothing like I've seen in America. It has a large water bed, fiber optic strands of light, a multi color discoball, a tube with bubbly water running through it....im sure I'm forgettting things. The water bed moves to the vibratons of the music to help kids who are deaf to hear. It's an interesting concept, and I'm really looking forward to seeing it used. I feel like I would get really overwhelmed in there, but I'm told it's great for excersises and the children love it.
Today (finally!) I helped with a fundraiser near the center of town. There's an artist from Romania that made 5000 of these clay heads, all with different expressions. He lends them out to different cities and organizations to raise money, so hospice has them currently. The story is that they're all singing for the children, and we walked around trying to get donations. I got to talk to a few people around my age from Romania who were practicing their English on me, so that was really nice (see I did make friends!). They taught me a little Romanian, so we had a good day. We talked a lot about the education system here, and it's really interesting to hear how unhappy many of them are, how they say people only go to university to make more money, and then they leave. They all seem to be intrigued with America. I feel like a comodity, which is strange. It's funny that the lifestyle you kind of just fall into is so far fetched and amazing to others. We're pretty lucky.
Thanks for sticking with me...that was long! I walked back from town today all by myself and really feel at home. This is definitely going to be a fun 2 months (once I get internet....)
te iubesc,
Alyssa
No comments:
Post a Comment