Sep 17 - Sep 24 and my London Trip!!

Another great week with my kiddos!! Some of them were a little sick this week and so they were fussier than they usually are.  I have been trying to work a lot more on the language so that I can communicate with the children better :)

My little boy got back from the hospital so this week I was able to get my daily hugs in again! :)

Some of the other kids have started to come up randomly to give me hugs as well! I already love hugs but those precious kids I just love them ten times more!! This week was our now 3-year-old girls’ birthday!! She is the girl in our group that is a little quieter and shy, so it was so fun to see her so happy!  We had cake and presents for her and she loved the presents! So cute and I loved seeing such a big smile on her face!

Nicole and I are trying to do more of the speech therapy exercises with the children and this week I could already see the kids progressing!  They are becoming more comfortable with us and they also are learning more, so this week they started saying more words and are becoming more vocal!! Makes me so happy!!

I also love the caregivers that we work with in the apartments!! They are so sweet!!

Unfortunately, this week, even with all my efforts to stay away from all the sickness (with the kids and with people in my group), I still got a stuffy nose! It started off as just a head cold with congestion, but it has now moved to my throat.  The nice thing is right now it is just my throat and not both nose and throat so that is good.

This week we only worked at the apartments Monday-Thursday because Friday-Monday was our first Vacation!!  For our first four-day vacation we chose to go to London!  London was so amazing!  A lot better than what I was expecting!

We woke up at 5:30 on Friday morning so that we could get to the airport here in Iasi by 6:30. Our flight left at 8:30 and we got to London at 9:45 (It was a 3-hour flight, but London is 2 hours behind, so we gained two hours which was nice!) When we walked out of the plane the fresh air felt so nice!! I did not realize how much I missed fresh air that smells like the ocean!  London has similar weather as Seattle which I really liked! It was also about 68 degrees when we got there which was so nice compared to the 80 degrees that we have been having in Iasi.  Another thing that was so refreshing as we entered London was that English is the primary language!! I was excited about the language before we even got to London, but I did not realize how refreshing it would feel! As we walked into the airport we realized we had not mapped out how far away our hostel would be from the airport.  Luckily we were able to ask around (because people spoke English) and found a good price group ticket from the airport to the train station and then from the station to the general area our hostel would be in.  While we were on the train to our hostel I felt like I was in the trains in the Harry Potter movies because of the scenery and also because of every one’s accents!  (I love the British accents!!).  Everything was so green and clean looking!  The air was super clear!! 

Our train stopped at “Elephant and Castle” around 12:30 and from there we started to look for a place to eat!  We found a place that looked like it had fish-n-chips called Leños and Carbón.  It ended up being a Colombian food restaurant and did not have fish-n-chips but is still had fish so that was good.  All of our meals were so good and very filling!  My meal was called Frijoles and Chicharron (I’ll add a picture at the bottom).  My friend got salmon and couldn’t finish it, so she let me have some of her fish too! It was all so yummy!! I wish they had a place like that here in Iasi! But then it is probably a good thing that they don’t because then I would really be broke!

After Lunch we walked to find our hostel.  On our walk we were able to see a lot of apartments houses and they were all so pretty! I love architecture and design the buildings have in London!  It is so elegant, antique and pretty!  The hostel that we stayed in used to be ab old boarding school, so it was pretty big!  Our room had 3 bunk beds and there were 5 of us so each night we had a new random guy in the room with us but luckily they were all pretty nice.   After we got all settled in we planned to go to the “ London Bridge” but we didn’t want to walk all the way there because it was a little ways away from our hostel, lucky for us there were some bikes that we could rent and they had parking stations all over the city so we rented those for 2 pounds each and rode around London, it was so much fun!! The London Tower Bridge was so pretty and there was also the London Tower (more like a castle) that was right next to the bridge!  I was kind of sad that we were not able to take a tour of it because it looked super cool, but it did cost money and we had a pretty full schedule of other fun stuff for the weekend.  There was a free Jim Ripper tour that we were going to go on Friday night, but we couldn’t find it and it was getting pretty dark and cold, so we came back to the hostel (ridding our bikes most of the way) and got a good night sleep, the beads were not spring beds, so they actually were more comfortable than my bed back in Iasi!

Saturday was full of so much fun activities!!  We woke up around 9 and headed out for some breakfast, we found this cute little café and it was actually really good!  I got banana nut bread, an egg and bacon sandwich, and a green smoothie!  Saturday was pretty rainy the whole day, so we choose to walk most of the day instead of riding our bikes so that we could hold our umbrellas. This actually worked out pretty well because we were able to see more things as we walked rather than riding past them fast on our bikes!  After Breakfast we walked to Big Ben and some souvenir shops, sadly Big Ben was under construction so all you could really see was the clock part of the building.  The buildings surrounding it were really pretty though, and as we walked across the bridge there was a man playing the bag pipes so that was super fun!! After Big Ben we went to Buckingham Palace and the gift shop there!  I just love the art and architecture on the Buckingham Palace grounds! It was so pretty, and I love old fashion things, which made it even more breathtaking and unique!!  On our way to Kensington Palace we walked through Kensington gardens which was super pretty and relaxing because it reminded me of home!!  I will always choose nature over a big city so that was so fun that I was able to find such a beautiful garden in London!  There were lots of trees, green plants, and flowers!  When we got to the palace there was a beautiful pond in front of it with tons of swans, geese, ducks and other smaller birds.

After we explored around Kensington palace grounds we made our way towards the Churchill Arms Pub where my friend Kendra really wanted to have dinner at.  It was such a beautiful building covered in all different kinds of flowers and then on the inside they had all different kinds of things hanging from the ceiling like baskets in one room, lanterns in another, and in the room that we ate in there were tons of hanging plants!  It was so cool!!   The restaurant at the Pub was actually oriental food which was surprising but was really good!  After then Pub we went on a search for some dessert.  We had talked about wanting to go to M&M world, so we bought a train ticket that would take us to M&M world and then take us home.  We took the tube (which is like the subway) to an area that had M&M world and tons of other small shops and restaurants.  It ended up being a popular square and there were lots of people there.  On the street next to this square there was a china town street that we walked down and explored too!  Sadly, the tickets that we purchased were just one-time tickets, so we ended up walking the rest of the way back to our apartments.  In total we walked about 15 miles Saturday!! It was so much walked but so much fun and I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way!

Each day in London just got better and better!! Sunday we bought all day tube tickets because the places we were wanting to go were a lot more spread out and we were on a time schedule.  Our first stop was to Platform 9 3/4 to take a picture by the Harry Potter wall and go through the gift shop!  It was really busy when we got there so we actually waited for 40 min to get a picture by it, but it was totally worth it and so fun!  Next, we took the tube to Abbey Road and got pictures of us on the sidewalk and we also got to look through the gift-shop there as well!!  That was pretty fun as well!  After our adventures at Abbey Road it was lunch time we found a restaurant called K&M’s Fish & Chips and it was SOO good!! I got battered Cod and Chips (which are like thick fries) and Ginger Beer!  I was in Heaven!!

Once Lunch was over we headed over to the Venue where Halsey would be preforming and waited there for 2 hours before the doors opened.  Several weeks ago, when we were planning our trip to London we saw that Halsey was preforming and bought ticket to see her!  The concert was absolutely amazing and was the first real big concert I have ever gone too!  We were standing from 5:30-11 though so by the end of the night my feet were dead! 

On Monday we woke up and packed up all of our things from our room in the Rest Up London Hostel and headed off to The Breakfast Club for breakfast.  When we got there there was a 30 min wait so we walked across the street to a big market they had there.  At this market there were lots of small shops with samples of olive oil, tea, cheese and fruit!! There were also several other food shops and I just which we had more time and more money there because it all looked so good!! For breakfast I got an eggs benedict dish and it was pretty good, I wanted fried chicken on it, but they were all out, so I had to settle for chorizo, haha.  The other girls got blueberry and granola waffles though and those were super good!!  After breakfast we got on the tube to find our way to the airport!  After a lot of asking directions, back tracking and some great promptings from our loving Heavenly Father (thinking to look at the departure times for the train to the airport) we made it on a train to the airport and when we got to the airport we still had 2 hours before our flight left!  Good thing we did too because one of the guys in our group booked the wrong flight, so we had to go through the process of helping him get the right ticket!  We all made it safely on the plane and got back to Iasi at 9pm, sad that we were not in London anymore but so happy to see our kids the next day!!

 PICTURES:

If you know me you know I love food! haha, London spoiled me!

GROUP PICTURES :)

Kensington Palace

 Kensington Gardens

 Buckingham Palace

Abbey Road

London Bridge

How many tourists can you fit in a red telephone booth? 

LIVING THE DREAM!

London Bridge

Halsey Concert

The hostel we stayed in

Pretty sunset flying back to Iasi

 Churchill Arms Pub

Kallye!!

Emri!!

Pretend it looks like im flying! I did jump but the camera didn't catch it... haha

I LOVE LONDON!!

Sep10th - 13th

Hey Hey!!

I am probably going to say this every single week, but it went by so fast and also I just absolutely love my kids and am so blessed to get to work with them every day!! I am three weeks in with working with them and I have already learned so much from them and love them unconditionally!!

One of the little boys in my apartment likes to pick at the sheetrock on the corners of the room and on the windowsill and eat the sheetrock.  Because of this he was at the doctors all week and I missed him so much! He is the one that will run up and give me hugs all the time and I missed that a lot this week!  For this week we just had the 4 girls, and even though we were missing our one boy this week felt even crazier!  Two girls (the 5-year-old and the 2-year-old) love the attention so if they are not getting all of the attention they like to throw a fit! It’s hard to explain to them that it is important to share and to take turns when I can’t speak the language, but It crazy how much I have already learned about them and how to resolve conflict without knowing their language!

Also, this week I was able to sit in with the speech therapist and observe the different exercises he does with the kids and how he works with them.  He explained a lot about what he does and why he does it and then showed me what he would like the other worker and I to do with the children when he is not there.  It was a really neat experience and it was also neat to be able to recognize some of the things he was doing from the classes I have taken back at school!

Thursdays we usually have game night with the missionaries, but it got cancelled at the last minute and we did not get the memo till we had already walked to the church building.  So instead of just going straight home we decided to walk around and explore a little bit!  It was lots of fun and then we stopped by a grocery store on our way back and got stuff to make smores with!  When we got back to the apartments we roasted these twisty flavored marshmallows (all we could find at the store) over our gas stove and then had chocolate and crackers to put them on!! It was soo good and lots of fun!

On Friday I was able to work at the apartment that has the Down Syndrome boy to fill in for a girl that was sick!  Sad that one of the girls was sick but happy because I LOVE THAT LITTLE BOY!!  And it was fun to see all the little kids in that apartment they are all so cute and I love them all so much!!  One of the little girls in that apartment loves to pull hair and she always looks so cute and innocent so you never know it’s coming but I had to redo my hair at least 5 times!! Haha every time I would lean over or try and pick something up she would come out of nowhere! I love her though! Several of the kids in this apartment are further along in vocal development than the apartment I usually work in.  It was a little sad because they would try and talk to me and I would not be able to understand what they were trying to tell me, but then again we were still able to have a lot of fun and play and work together with the limited language I do know but also through other forms of communication besides verbal! :)

This weekend we took a little trip to the neighboring country, Moldova, to visit where our head teacher, Jessica, served her mission.  It was so much fun, and I was able to get several cute souvenirs for an awesome price at a little outdoor market.  We got to our hostel where we would be staying for Friday and Saturday night around 12:30 at night.  We were supposed to get there at 9:30-10pm but crossing the border ended up taking a lot longer than what we had planned. 

Btw a hostel has a more dorm like feel to it, it is a lot cheaper than a hotel and is designed for travelers.  In this hostel there were several rooms and each room had several bunk beds.  The room I stayed in had 4 bunk beds, so it was able to hold 8 people and then we had a shower and bathroom in the hallway with a kitchen across the hallway.  This hostel also had a cute little courtyard, lounge area outside as well for us to sit, visit, and eat.

On Saturday we woke up early because we only had one day in Moldova.  After our big group of 13 walked around and got breakfast we broke off into smaller groups so that we could get more done.  I went with Jessica, one of her friends from her mission and two other girls from our group to Orhei which was an hour away from Chisinau (where we were staying). The bus that we took to get there and back only cost me like 3 dollars! (It is super cheap in Moldova!) Orhei was such a cute little city and I loved it even more because the air was so clean and fresh unlike the big cities I have been in lately.  We walked around the city and visited some of Jessica’s friends from her mission and when we got back to Chisinau her friend Maria brought us to a tango dance in the street.  It was fun, different and kind of weird because we don’t speak Romanian, but it was fun, haha.  Saturday I walked a total of 9.3 miles, took 24,505 steps and climbed a total of 21 floors (according to my health app on my phone). My shins definitely were feeling it by the end of the day! After dinner and before we went back to our hostel we stopped by a grocery store to get some food for breakfast.  I got a yogurt drink, two nectarines, a chocolate coconut croissant, dried apricots, a large water and a chocolate bar for 100 Moldovan Lei (Which transfers to 6 US Dollars!)

After this weekend I have now officially been in 4 different countries! Haha Throughout these past 3 weeks I have said so many little prayers!! Lots for safety and lots for gratitude! I am so grateful for this opportunity and for the adventures that wait for me in the near future!

It has been such a great week and next weekend I get to go to LONDON!! I am so excited!! Till next time! :)

Pretty trees! 

Nicole Dunn, Rachel Bigalow, and me :)

Upside down house

Orhei Adventures! :)

My cute roomies :)

Sunsets in Iasi

Making marshmellows Thursday night

Yummy ice cream bar 

We found a random grape vine on our Thursday night walk

Moldovan Lei

Sep 3rd - Sep 9th

I can’t believe how fast the weeks are flying by!! Working with these kids is so fun and I am already learning so much from them!  It’s amazing how much I’m learning considering I can’t really speak the language and verbally communicate with the kids. 

The orphanage that I am working in is specifically for children with disabilities.  Some of the common disabilities are attachment disorder, autism, blindness, brain paralysis, cerebral palsy, deafness, down syndrome, epilepsy, fetal alcohol syndrome, muscular atrophy, speech disorders and others.  Some of the children have more severe cases than others and the ages right now very from infant to 10 years old.  Depending on their disability and age they are placed in rooms that will best accommodate their needs.  The children at the orphanage have more severe disabilities and need more doctor/nurse attention, whereas the kids in the apartments are given a more 'homelike' feel so that if they are placed into a foster family its not as big as a change.  With several of the kids already having attachment disorders because they are not with their parents, it is not fair to them if we, as volunteers, are always switching between rooms.  So this week we were assigned our permanent rooms for the rest of the semester!!  I am working in the apartments and I absolutely love all the kiddos!

On Monday they had not bought our bus passes yet, so we were not able to go out to the apartments, so we just doubled up in some of the rooms in the orphanage! I got lucky enough to double up with one of my roommates who is working in the room with all the infants and babies!  We spent most of the time outside because it was a really nice day.  In the infant room there are babies and then there are a few children who are older but have disabilities where they still need feeding tubes and can’t move on their own.  For the first few hours outside I walked around with one of the older kids in a stroller.  It was so cute because as I walked around the courtyard behind the orphanage some of the kids from other groups who were a little older would come ‘help’ me push the stroller!  As I was walking around with a child in the stroller another little kid, who was about 4 or 5, came up to walk with me.  We walked passed one of those trees that have the helicopter seeds on it and as we passed a branch I hit the tree and several of the seeds spiraled to the ground. The little boy that was walking with me found this so fascinating and funny.  So, for the next 10-15 min we stood by that tree and hit the branches to make the seeds fall. He would laugh every single time it was so cute!!

While we were outside with several of the newborn babies the caregivers came out with bottles to feed them.  I was able to hold this little baby and feed her the bottle and, oh my goodness!  She was so darn cute!!  The rest of the time we had there I took care of the same baby I bottle fed! When we went back inside it was about 11:30 and only had 30 min left till we had to leave so we were trying to put the babies down for their naps. I stood by this little girls’ bed and was able to rock her to sleep!  She was so precious, and I just wish I could have held her forever!  I also wish I could be in more than one place at once so that I could work in the baby room this whole semester as well as the apartments.

Tuesday was my first day working in my assigned room!  The apartment I am working in has a group of kids with several different disabilities.  That first day it was pretty hard to work with them because they were not completely comfortable and familiar with us yet and with their disabilities it is hard to do a large group activity with all of them.  Although it was kind of chaotic I was still able to have fun playing with some of the children and the speech therapist that was there told us they we did really well, especially for our first day.  Tuesday afternoon I was not planning on going back to the apartments but my friend Sierra that worked in one of the other apartments needed someone to go with her because her buddy Nicole was sick, and she didn’t want to travel by herself, so I went with her.  This apartment was one of the ones I really wanted to work in because it has a little boy with down syndrome that I fell in love with the moment I saw him!  I was so happy that I was able to work with them even if it was just for one afternoon.  It is crazy the amount of love I feel for this little boy! We went to a park near the apartments while we were there and as we were there one of the little boys, we will name him josh, wanted to go down the slide but was too nervous to go by himself.  So, he asked me to go down with him, the embarrassing thing is I did not fit it the slide, so I had to sit sideways to be able to fit.  And Josh just wanted to keep going down it over and over again.  The playground we were on was pretty old and the steps up to the slide were wood.  This being said, I was very careful each time up walked up these wooden stairs.  BUT with my luck, as we were getting ready to go, the little down syndrome boy did not want to go down the slide, so I reached up to grab him from the stairs part of the slide and as I leaned forward I broke off half of the wooden stair… haha luckily the worker there thought it was funny and so nobody got mad at me! hahaha

On Wednesday we went to the apartments from 9 – 12 and then again from 4 – 6 (we go back in the afternoons MWF).  In the morning I was getting kind of frustrated because I really wanted to connect with the kids right away, but they had really short attention spans and I was not able to speak to them, so it was hard to ask them what they wanted when they would get upset.  As I was feeling frustrated for not knowing the language and not being able to verbally communicate with the kids one of the little boys came up to me and gave me a great big hug!  This was just what I needed and what he needed as well.  Ever since then he will come up to me at random times throughout the day to give me a great big hug!  I love it!!

One of my favorite things to do with the kids is dance to music and it is their favorite too because I spin them around.  Even though it is a big workout for me I love it because the kids are so happy and are always laughing when we dance, and it reminds me of when I was a kid and my dad would dance with me!!

Thursday nights the missionaries hold a game night for the younger members of the ward and so some of the girls and I went.  It was lots of fun because we were able to meet other Romanians our age and we played several games, learned the hula dance to the Moana song from one of the sister missionaries that use to work at the Polynesian Culture Center in Hawaii, and had pizza and some really good donuts!  It was lots of fun!

There are different caregivers or ‘educators’ as the orphanage calls them, that work in the apartments, so it is not always the same lady each day that we work with.  Luckily all of the educators that have been in my apartment so far are super nice and try their best to communicate with us!

 On Friday, the educator was super fun and did a lot of fun dances and activities with the kids.  For snack she gave all the kids Twix bars.  At first I thought that was a funny snack to just eat Twix bars but then I remembered what the speech therapist said, and it was actually very helpful for the kids!  The Twix bars were in the fridge and so they colder and harder to chew.  As the kids took bites of the candy bar they really had to use their mouth muscles to chew it up and eat it.  As a child eats more solid foods it helps strengthen the mouth muscles that also help with speaking.  And then the educator also gave me and Nicole Twix too.  (there are two Nicole’s and this Nicole will be the other girl working with me in the apartment for the rest of the semester).

Living in the city means there are a lot of small shops on the streets selling food.  Right next to our apartment are several gelato, pretzel, and pastry shops!  This is so dangerous for me!! I have had way too many sweets since I have been here and have been wanting to work out more.  So, Friday morning I went on a run with some of the girls from my group and then afterwards did a small leg workout in my room and it felt so nice!  I am just nervous for when it gets cold and snowy and slushy outside and I can’t run anymore! Haha.

The week was so much fun, and I am so excited to work more with the kids from my apartment and learn more of their language!

My lovely Group in front of the orphanage

The streets are full of flower shops!!

Went to get crepes Saturday morning and I could not choose between a apple cinnamon crepe or a banana nut cream waffle so I just got both... haha 

Gelato!

More Gelato!! (I have a problem...) 

and one of my lovely roommates Kallye