Ceau from Oradea! This is my first post from Romania. It is so amazing to actually be here, I still can't believe it sometimes. My first two weeks have been very busy and I want to tell you all about it.
View from the bridge over the Crisul Repede river.
Monday and Tuesday (May 14th and 15th) were the longest "day" of my life consisting of a total 36 hours of travel and lay-overs. But it was also the easiest international travel I could ever imagine. Not a single delayed flight, no annoying co-passengers, no problems anywhere... And really great service from all of the flight crews. Tuesday afternoon I met up with four girls from California (Emily, Jenny, Brittany, and Shellie) in the Budapest airport and from there travelled approximately 3 hours by car to Oradea. That was the first of several interesting experiences here: the driving. You may think the tail-gaters where you live are bad but I am fairly certain that no one can hold a candle to the drivers here. But the scariest part was passing other cars in oncoming traffic, I was actually scared for my life at one point. But all in all I made it here alive.
Our first day at the Beauty from Ashes center was sort of an introduction day. We met all the staff and the girls who live and work there. Corey and his wife Diana live at the center with their two year old daughter, Evelyn (who is absolutely adorable and has a wonderful little Romanian accent) as well as 5 of the seven young women enrolled in their program. Their staff also includes Diana's parents, Eva and Sandu, Eva teaches the girls to cook and greets all of us with a kiss (or two) on the cheek every morning, and Sandu does the gardening and maintenance as well as making cheese and fishing (see my pictures on Facebook). Then there is Geta, who helps the girls and Diana with their craft projects and "charges" five dollars for everything from passing a piece of paper to helping with the Cricut and has a beautiful little 10 month old daughter, Rebecca. Last but not least are Andree, Ana, and Cosmina. From what I understand, Andree is the director of the Center and the Romania side of the ministry (whereas Corey is in charge of the US side of the ministry based out of Tennessee), Ana buys supplies for their craft business and sells the finished products, and Cosmina is a social worker who gets the girls involved in the community as well as works on the government side of running the ministry.
As I said above there are 7 girls enrolled in the program. Their names are Nadia, Natalie, Corina, Theresea, Cireasa, Rihanna, and Iolanda. They all grew up in Orphanages and are at the center to basically learn how to become responsible, hardworking adults. The orphanages offer no real guidance for the kids in their care so the kids leave at 18 with no idea how to cook, clean, get or keep a job, etc. No one ensures that they are going to school and doing their homework so many of them don't know basic things like telling time. Corey and the staff home school the girls who are too old to go to school. They teach them math, science, Romanian, English, and anything else the girls want to learn. Corey said he recently started teaching them Anatomy after one of the girls came home asking what her kidneys were, apparently some one on the street asked her to sell him one of her kidneys (she said no). The craft business is one of the ways they train the girls in how to work. Most of them make greeting cards and Nadia makes fabric flowers, they also want to try making jewelry.
Corina, Shellie, and Brittany finding buttons for cards.
Natalia working on cards.
So that doesn't cover EVERYTHING but is a short over view of the first two weeks. More posts and Stories to come!
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