Archive: June 9th, 2008

May 26th

Wow, you can tell I'm happy to be done with reports when I blog 3 times in 2 days.
The 26th started with a laid-back morning with my parents. Somehow the Mormon temple came up and Vasi said he'd like to see it, so we added that on as his last tourist destination in town and journeyed into downtown Mesa. I always forget that other places don't have LDS people to the extent that we do - it was just such a normal part of my growing up that I don't even really think about it. Anyway, he had only ever seen LDS temples in pictures so he wanted his picture taken in front of it and such. So we did that before heading to my friends' house for brunch.
It was nice to be surrounded by my own crowd again at the brunch, actually. The weekend had been full of so much 1:1 time, and we hadn't had time to talk to anyone at church the day before, so it was nice to really spend quality time with people. While Vasi shared his views on a variety of issues with my friend Cassidy, I got to share my Romanian experiences and hopes for the future with some friends who hadn't heard much about it before. Vasi eventually joined in that conversation, and he answered some questions from people about cultural differences in the church here and what he's observed. It was really great.
Then it was back to Romanians, and for the first time, I wasn't very excited. I was mostly just tired, and the gathering was a huge picnic at a park, and Vasi wanted nothing more than to play soccer with other Romanians. I only knew one other person who was going and she wouldn't be there right away. So I sat and watched Vasi play soccer for awhile, trying not to think about how the weekend was almost over and I should really be facing my work plans. It was great, though - there was an older man watching the soccer game, too, and he turned and asked me in Romanian where I was from. I decided to continue the conversation in Romanian while I could, and when I finally told him I wasn't Romanian, he was actually surprised! I was so pleased that I'd pulled it off. We switched to English at that point - turns out he's a pastor at a Romanian church in town. Anyway, later, I wanted to ask him a question and decided to do it in Romanian just for fun, and i succeeded at that also!
The whole picnic was quite an experience. Growing up in Phoenix, you get used to walking through a public place and hearing people all around you speaking another language, but chances are pretty good that other language is Spanish. I can't even explain how bizarre it was to walk through a park in Arizona and just hear Romanian all around me - well, romengleza actually - the Romanian equivalent of Spanglish. And I got to be a part of it to a point. When I went up to get a water from the food area, for example, they seemed to be out. I was digging around in an ice chest and someone asked, "apa?" - "water" in Romanian. I responded "da" to say yes and was thrilled even by such a minor Romanian interaction.
But sitting around a park all day when vasi was busy with soccer and my other Romanian friend was nowhere to be found was not the best use of my time. I decided to go find a Starbucks and get some work done so that I could feel at least somewhat prepared for the week to come. Came back to the park after a bit and finally found my other friend - we sat and watched volleyball then for awhile before Vasi and I finally left.
That night, we met up with his friends from his hometown at long last. We went "out to dinner" at McDonalds - not much else was open, and in Romania, McDonalds is actually a destination, but it was still pretty funny to me. This was an intense hour or two. They all spoke in Romanian and offered to switch to English, but I told them not to bother. It was really beneficial to me to need to translate for myself and I was mostly able to. Turns out, though, that I can't eat and translate at the same time. I would literally take a bite of my parfait only when there was a pause in conversation. Eventually, the conversation got pretty serious - about doctrinal differences - and I asked that we switch to English, which we did.
I don't even want to get into all that this conversation encompassed, but it was a hard one. I ended up feeling sort of attacked for my doctrinal convictions, and I couldn't even tell where Vasi stood on things anymore, because he was really busy clarifying my ideas to them and their ideas to me since he's pretty perfectly bilingual and none of the rest of us were (well, unless you included knowing Romanian and Hungarian, which Marta did, but that's beside the point). Anyway, so I felt a little bit isolated. And then in my exhaustion I let my emotions get the best of me, and by the time we left I was feeling pretty lousy. All of a sudden, I was scared for the first time about being out of my comfort zone in the mission field in Romania - away from likeminded believers. It raised a lot of questions that, thankfully, I've been largely put at ease about in the weeks since. It was a good experience to have though - I should never just assume that adjusting to life away from what I'm familiar with will be easy.
I don't think I'll blog about the 27th because nothing much happened except for coffee with Vasi, taking him to the airport, and work, work, and more work...so this concludes my series on Memorial Day Weekend. :-) It was a weekend full of profound questions, profound answers, profound beauty, and lots of Romanians. All in all a wonderful weekend but one I am just now recuperating from.