Update 1/29-1/31

As you can tell, we have been without internet for the first couple days of the program. I left Boston Friday night, and headed to London Heathrow. Getting on the plane to Bucharest I met Rosie, who was actually even in the same row of the place. I didn’t sleep more than an hour on either flight, so I was very tired by the time we got to Bucharest. We went through customs and got our bags very quickly, then went out to meet up with the group. When we arrived Pat, Cora, and Dan were there already. There was some confusion as Evan called Dan to say she missed her flight and would take the train to Barlad on Saturday, but he thought it was Karen,, so we were all surprised to see Karen a few minutes later! We took the van, and stopped half way to eat at McDonald’s. I slept for about an hour on the way to McDonalds, but forced myself to stay awake for the rest of the drive so I would be able to sleep that night. I passed the time by watching the kilometers to Barlad go down (very slowly I might add). We got to the hotel and got situated in our rooms; one double, the rest singles, and two of us are upstairs this time. I unpacked and got settled until about 11:30 p.m., then slept until 4:00 a.m., and was up for the day due to jet lag.

On Sunday we had breakfast at 9:30, then most of us headed over to the clinic for an hour long “sneak peek”. We had a hard time leaving the kids, and they were all upset after not having volunteers for three weeks, and us only staying a short time. We started orientation at 11 a.m., and then had lunch around 12:30. After that I was too tired from jet lag to function, and I took a nap while everyone else toured the clinic again. Then when they returned we continued orientation, had dinner, and then did even more orientation. We ended the night looking through babies’ journals. And got our group assignments, though those don’t really apply at the moment as there are children quarantined in different areas for different things, so we need to spread out more. I went to bed around 10, and slept on and off until 6 a.m.