The team arrived yesterday by train to the Beclean orphanage where they will be staying for 6 nights. Today the team went to the Ilisua orphanage (25 minutes away) and put on an "indoor program" because of the rain. It is rainy and colder here. We are normally used to shorts and t-shirt weather! The children were so happy to be with the Canadian-Romanian team and received lots of personal attention which they would never otherwise receive. Team members who had never been there before were moved by the unusually poor conditions...
Things are going really well here in Cluj, the sun's even shining today after two days of cold and wet weather.
The team's first trip was at an elderly care centre where they gave out bananas, sang worship songs and practiced their Romanian. The language barrier was something that most people felt was a challenge and disappointed they were not able to carry on a full conversation. We were so grateful for the romanian volunteers who were there to translate conversations beyond 'hello, my name is... how are you?' This early challenge encouraged the team to study their Romanian ...
The team arrived safe and sound around 9pm local time (7 hours ahead of Toronto). There were no major glitches on the trip and they were met by the bus driver at the Budapest airport. They then drove about 8 hours to the church dorms where they will be based for the next 4 days. They were welcomed, settled, fed and then we sorted through the 20 plus hockey bags with supplies most of which has been labelled and put into temporary storage. The team was in bed around 11pm. Tomorrow we are up early and leaving for more health checks at 8am. We will try to report again in the next couple of days. Bob (for Lori, Mike and team)