So. Friday I went to my new placement at the nursing home. And it was probably the worst day of my life. First off, I took some sketchy minibus to the village of sacale, and then walked past a bunch of construction to Christiana. There was no one there who spoke english, so a nurse handed me a paper with exercises on it and brought me upstairs into a room with 2 women. She pointed to the both and said exercise and massage and then left. So I got the idea that I was expected to treat. Now granted, I haven't had an ounce of physical therapy training except for what I've learned here. And I speak zero romanian. So treating old ladies is very difficult when you don't understand what is wrong with them medically and cannot instruct them. I did what I could with these two ladies, which was next to nothing, then went back to the nurse to ask for the physio. She shuffled me back upstairs into another room and said massage. This kept happening, and I felt super out of place and uncomfortable and frustrated that I couldn't figure out some sort of solution to the problem I was having. I did talk to one tenant for a bit (the only person in the building who spoke english) and she was telling me how frustrated she was that they never let her out of the bed. Not an ideal situation, but not one that I could really help because I'm actually not a physio. I began texting with Brittany, one of the journalism volunteers and one of my best friends here, and she told me to leave, that it wasn't safe for anyone. I asked one more time if there was a physio, and they said no, and then I went back to the office to beg Razvan to not make me return. So that was my awful placement day.
I spent the remainder of friday moping around the office trying to recover from my traumatic experience. Basically, the office became packed as the day went on, so there was little work and lots of socializing, and then we went to get milkshakes and hang out. So it turned into a better day!
Saturday we had this great plan to go hike a canyon, but it was suppossed to be rainy and everyone was tired, so we scratched that plan and stayed in Brasov. About 10 of us met up and went to the skinny street, st katherine's gate, and the citadel. I feel like in the first month I was here, I did a lot of the traveling and big things that I wanted to do, so now more I'm just enjoying the people. It was nice, we went up to the citadel and took a boat load of pictures and explored, got lunch at the irish pub, and just hung out. Then we all split to go home for dinner.
And then my new roommate came! Her name is Suzie and she's from france studying medicine. She's super nice and we get along great, which is good because before she got here, I had already decided we were going to be best friends. We ate dinner, talked about life, and then went back to Republicii to meet up with everyone for Kate and Jill's last weekend night. It ended up that Suzie was tired, so Brittany, Matt and I walked her home. On the way back, we decided the bar we had been sitting at was too loud, so we got pastry baked apples and sat outside and talked. It was super nice.
Today we slept in and then went and wandered the town so I could show Suzie where she lives (since I am such a pro at this city!). We met up with a bunch of the volunteers for lunch at a place that had a table that looked like a boat (which obviously we took!). Then we took a mass carrefour trip to buy chocolate and fruit, and then went to the bakery and sat in the park. Tonight we went and got chocolate pancakes. There are 20 volunteers here right now, though 3 are leaving tomorrow to go do archaeology. So many people! We haven't had this many at once yet! Thank goodness that most people who come to a foreign country to volunteer are easy to talk to!
Tomorrow it's back to Hospice, which I've never been so excited for. Some of the kids that I had the first week I worked will be back this week, so I'm looking forward to seeing them!
I promise I'm going to start writing more. I just feel unexciting because Romania is now like home, and I feel like it has become almost routine. In a strange way, it's a super great feeling.
te iubesc,
Alyssa
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