Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Happy Birthday Suzie

Does anyone remember it's my birthday today? Man, I would have loved to open my computer to birthday wishes from family and friends today.

I went to the eye doctor today and spent yet another day in my hotel room away from the children. I was able to be there for the morning feeding for about 2 hours. Tomorrow, I will be able to be there all day. I'm looking forward to it. The eye doctor took a look at my eye and told me what it needed most was to rest it with a patch on it. Keeping it closed keeps it from scraping on the scratched cornea. He prescribed 2 medications, one antibiotic, and another that is s'posed to knit the scratch together...whatever that means. This was all done with an interpretor, so hard to understand just exactly what it is I'm putting in my eye. But I think I'm going to live. I thought I would give you some descriptions of some of the things I'm experiencing while I'm here.

The eye Dr.: Very small examining room. about 6 x 6. It was so small that the 2 chairs could not face eachother. One sat sideways and the other faced the machine used to examine eyes. That was it. There was an outside office where the Dr. and his nurse both sat at the same desk, admitting patients. That room was about 10 x 10.

The dogs: They are everywhere. Evidently when this country was under communist rule, the communists did not like the villages. They wanted all of the people to be in the city in apartments. They would torch entire villages and force the people out of their homes and into the city. They were not allowed to take their dogs with them Some of them took them anyway, but they were not allowed inside, therefore, they multiplied and multiplied and multiplied. A common night here is to be woken 6 or 7 times with many dogs barking and fighting right outside your window. Sometimes you just want to throw a hand grenade. It's a hard place to like dogs.

The people: very happy to accomodate us, but they can tell we are Americans. They are polite and try very hard to communicate with us on some level. Like anyplace, there is a minority group here that is not looked on favorably. The dreaded Gypsies. They are shunned because they will not phase into society. They say it is their tradition to beg instead of work. They do not educate their children, except to beg. The children are taught from a very young age to beg and bring home money. It is organized crime. They have 14-16 children and put them on the streets. When we were on the train they would get on at one village stop and ride, sing for every carload of people and then hold out their hands for money, and then get off at the next stop. Interesting to watch the Romanian people absolutely ignore them. We have been advised that we can give the children food if we want to, but never money.

Health care is free in Romania, but 14% of their wages are taken to pay for it. You can see why some of them are not happy with the gypsies. Both Romanians and the Gypsies also recieve free education. The gypsies do not take advantage of that either. They continue to live the life they are used to. I've been told there are 2 million gypsies in Romania.

The 2 cities we travel between are Barlad, where the hotel is, and Tutova, where the clinic/hospital is. Barlad has a population of 75,000. and Tutova has 50,000. All of the buildings are incredibly old, and the new ones are very cheaply built. Our hotel is fairly new, but we all have leaky showers and very hot rooms. We turn the heat completely off and open a window with snow on the ground, and it is still warm. One cool thing is that they have heated towel racks in each of our bathrooms so it's easier than I thought it would be to dry clothes. They dry very quickly.

I have still had only chicken, except one meal of pork. Breakfast is granola, milk, a cold egg, or small cold omelette, or a hard boiled egg. There is usually a bananna or orange too. Lunch is chicken. Dinner usually has a salad of cucumbers and tomatoes, vinegar and oil,with chicken. We are drinking bottled water. All in all, it has been very interesting learning the culture here. I will write another blog about the children, and I do have some pictures to post. I just have to figure out how. Love to you all. Please write.