Time Flies When Your Having Fun!!!

This blog was supposed to run in a sequence with my last entry “two weeks to go” and was destined to be entitled “two weeks after”. But I believe we're currently looking at approximately 12 weeks after and so my original title seems somewhat outdated.

Well what can I say, I have my excuses, you can't deny I've been fairly busy these last 12 weeks, what with having my first baby, packing up my house and moving back to Romania and all. In fact so much has happened I find myself a little stumped for a topic to ramble about today. Every week I have thought of something I would like to write about but it soon becomes old news before I get around to it. Babies just don't seem to understand that you need more than 10 minutes at any one time if you actually want to get something done lol (or maybe they do get it and that explains why they are so good at waking up/getting bored/getting hungry just as the computer loads up).

Nonetheless here I am........ I have found my slot of time. It is a crafty little move that involves walking with the pram down to the mall, lulling Annabelle off for a morning nap and then sitting in a coffee shop typing with one hand and jiggling the pram with the other thus fooling her into thinking she is still walking and earning myself up to an hour of computer time! This is the third time we've tried it and apart from the mean security guard in the food hall, who made me move because it wasn't officially open for another half an hour, it's going quite well!! I successfully managed to prepare a sermon and a bible study, write a blog for kairos and catch up on a few important emails on my last two visits. Today I have the most delicious hot chocolate (seriously it's so thick it's more like a pot of hot chocolate pudding) and a bit of space to catch up on my own blog.

The only problem now is inspiration! The thing about inspiration is that it doesn't always arrive on demand..... just because I have the opportunity doesn't mean I will have something to say. And despite staring at the screen for ten minutes I still have no great ideas, no stories to tell, no lessons learned to share. But I'm going to keep writing anyway because if I wait for something great my blog will disappear neglected and unfinished into cyber-space and even if no-one will miss reading it, I will definitely miss writing it.

I will take this opportunity then, to give you a quick run-down of the last fourteen weeks since I wrote an entry and save the inspirational stories about nettles, dogs and balconies for another time lol. So ….... I am no longer pregnant (which is weirdly normal- 14 weeks ago I felt like I'd been pregnant forever and now I can hardly remember what it felt like at all) and now I'm a mum (which is also weirdly normal since 14 weeks ago I was just me and now I can hardly remember what that felt like at all). Annabelle Summer Craven was born at 12:58pm on Friday 29^th July, one day later than predicted and 11 hours after she first announced her imminent arrival. I guess the birth was pretty straightforward really- I went in with a bump and came out with a baby- but it doesn't matter how many other people have done it before you and how normal it is to have a baby it's such a spectacularly frightening, exciting, happy, painful, mind-blowing, life-changing event that you just can't quite comprehend it for a while. It feels like what I did (and what I am doing) was (and is) something really special and yet there were at least 10 other women on my ward with their new babies and everyone in the world seems to be pushing a pram these days. It's such a big deal and yet so completely normal at the same time. Surely you should have to be selected or have special qualifications or be in some way superhuman to embark on such an amazing and all consuming endeavour.

Since she was born, Annabelle has continued to blow us away on a daily basis. There are no words to describe the joy and love we feel so I won't even bother! I'm sure you can guess what the last twelve weeks have entailed in regards to tears, laughter, tiredness, cuddles etc etc so there's no need to go into detail here. The only unusual part of our parenting journey has been our relocation back to Romania. We flew back to Timisoara on the 10^th September when Annabelle was 5 weeks and 6 days old. I was pretty worried about the journey -a four hour drive to Luton, arriving at 5am for a flight at 7am, 2 and a half hours on the worlds smallest plane, 3 giant suitcases plus 2 hand luggage bags, a pram and a car seat, and of course a six week old baby and two, already tired from a week of packing up the house, new parents. But we made it. I had prayed a lot about the journey and I really believe God was with us- it was a mini miracle. Annabelle has never slept and fed with such impeccable timing before or since...... you had to see it to believe it :-).

We have now settled back into our little flat in Timisoara and have found new routines and baby placating tactics. The 10 minute walk to the nearest supermarket which I probably only actually walked (as opposed to drove) about five times when we were here before has become a daily (at least) sleep-stroll. We have discovered that walking up and down the cold, dark corridor outside our door has weird and wonderful calming effects on a wound up Annabelle, as does sitting on the newly erected swing out front etc etc. Annabelle too is getting to know her new environment, she now recognises when we arrive home and promptly wakes up and demands to be out of whatever contraption she is being transported in, she has also developed a particular dislike for all the junctions around our house and shouts her head off if the car stops for a second. She loves to go walking in the forest in her sling and her favourite place in the world is the play-gym her grandma bought. She has made many new friends here in Romania, everybody loves her, despite her tendency to throw up on them. She is growing and changing and keeping us on our toes!

It's been an eventful three months, an exciting three months, an emotional three months. Life has changed dramatically......permanently.....but I have no doubt it will continue to surprise me, and challenge me, and hopefully provide me with plenty of topics to ramble about in the future!

Two weeks to go..........

Turns out 9 months is a long time!

But then I suppose when you consider the complexities of creating new life, of developing a perfectly formed miniature human being with the potential to grow into a full size adult complete with an entirely unique DNA structure and an individual personality to boot.......it's really not that long after all.

In fact.....it all happens in a ridiculously short period of time for something so spectacular and magnificent. It takes two years to do your GCSE's for goodness sake..... but knock up a new human being.....'let me see.....I think I can have that ready for you in about.....hmmmm.... 9 months!!' What has been particularly surprising to me me about the whole enterprise is not only that it all happens so quickly but that there is so little to do. You'd think it would take more effort on our part to produce this new life. But apart from the obvious initiation procedures- we don't need to do anything.....it just happens. Sure we busy ourselves with obligations regarding food and vitamins and activities, visiting the doctor and doing the appropriate reading but these things are all superfluous......they make us feel better, we like to feel like we are doing our part.

At the very least I was hoping I would be required to eat more (I mean- you'd think with all that extra activity going on there'd be a few calories free to blow on chocolate and ice cream) but apparently nada - I don't get to eat for two-.......my body is so efficient it can create new life with the usual 2000 calories a day. Not only that, it somehow manages to save a few of those precious calories and deposit them on my hips in case I need them afterwards.


Nine months FEELS like a long time though......... like I've been pregnant forever! Simple pleasures like flopping face first on the bed seem like distant childhood memories. I've always gotten a little jealous of the athletes when I'm watching Wimbledon, but this year it was magnified tenfold as I struggled to even sit comfortably in a giant plushy armchair dreaming of running and leaping and diving on the grass......oh how I long to leap!!!! Not to mention the suspense of meeting my very own child- a baby created from me and Lindon- growing all this time inside me, wriggling around and kicking me in the ribs. Here with us- but not yet fully here with us!

It is now less than 2 weeks until my official due date and we are very excited if a little nervous. But mostly I just can't really comprehend it. Apparently in around about 2 weeks time the baby that I've been struggling to imagine is responsible for all the craziness that is happening on the inside of my body is going to join us on the outside. And our lives will never be the same!

There is so much wonder and confusion and excitement and unknown in this world that we take for granted. Because it happens everyday we just accept it. Of course babies are created supernaturally inside you over the course of 9 months and are then born, a part of you and yet their own person. Of course you feel indescribable unconditional love for these children. Of course when you sow a seed a plant will grow. Of course the sun will come up and the seasons will change. I can tell you the facts behind all these facts. Having read my weekly updates throughout my pregnancy I have been kept informed of exactly what was happening when and why. But it doesn't explain the wonder of it all, the 'why?' behind it all. And I still can't truly comprehend what is happening to me.

You'd think in a world as wonderful and incomprehensible as ours we would find it easy to accept a wonderful and incomprehensible God. And yet we let the things we don't know cloud the things we do. We take a huge risk when we decide to have children. We cannot know how it will turn out. We cannot control or understand everything that will happen but we somehow know it will be worth the risk. It will be worth all the hard times and the questions and the risks and the faith, for the wonder and joy of it all. God is not about facts and laws and rigid results and theologies, He is wonder and faith and incomprehension. But as I continue on my journey through life I have always found Him to be worth the risk.

So.....two more weeks (ish)....... if the last two have been anything to go by I think they're going to be the longest two weeks ever....... followed (so I'm led to believe) by years of increasing acceleration as my child grows up quicker than I could possibly imagine!!

Earwigging on the conversations of strangers......

Three days from now I will have my bags packed and be setting my alarm for 3.30am so I can get a plane home to England for the summer. It's been a little odd trying to settle in to a new country knowing that in a few months or weeks I would be leaving again for a while. Generally I've found it easier to ignore this fact and just concentrate on being here but I have to admit it has affected me in some ways- especially in the last month or so. The most obvious being my 'enthusiasm' for my language learning.

Before we came I was so excited about learning a new language. I felt like I had learned loads from the CD’s I had determinedly chuntered along to while ironing and driving to aerobics classes. I could count to a hundred. I could say I wanted something to eat and drink in many different forms, ask how, when and where, say here or there. And, of course, my personal favourite, the catch-all, get you out of trouble phrase "I am English, I don't understand!!!"

But then I got here........and everyone looked at me blank. My pronunciation was terrible I know (stupid tongue- why can't you roll your 'r's) but it wasn't just that. It turns out that pretty much everything I had learned on my CD’s was in fact an overly formal version of what normal people would actually say in any given situation. So even the phrases I thought I knew needed to be re-learned and replaced with new, more usable, versions. For example, suppose you wanted to invite your new friends round to your house for some food- what you need to know how to say is "hey guys, I'm starving d'ya fancy coming round to mine and getting a take-away". Instead the CD has equipped me with the decidedly less friendly announcement "I would like to eat something" which, while it may sound functional when you first learn it, comes across somewhat robotic when deposited into a real-life conversation unaccompanied by anecdotal preliminaries. And then of course there's the realisation that just because you know how to say "hello, how are you?" doesn't mean you'll stand a chance of understanding "er...yeah, I'm ok I guess, been a bit tired recently but I'm not so bad". According to the CD the only response I should ever expect to receive was "good thanks, how are you?".

It's also interesting to discover just how quick your conversation runs out. For example the first time I meet a Romanian who doesn't speak English I am able say "hello, my name is Sam, it's nice to meet you". If I feel confident to hang around I can then go on to ask where they live and if they have any children. I can have a small conversation about how pregnant I am and the seemingly incomprehensible notion that I do not know whether I am having a boy or a girl. By now though I'm starting to get desperate so, in true English style I refer to the weather- I am still a bit weak in this area so I either say "it is very hot" or "it is very cold". There follows an awkward silence before I pull out my 'get out of jail free card' "Unde este Toaletta vuh rog?" (where is the toilet please?) The second time I meet this person I have nothing conversational beyond “it is nice to see you” so I have no option but to come across as a temperature obsessed toilet visiting weirdo.......thank goodness I'm pregnant otherwise people would think I had a problem!

Then of course you have to contend with the fact that everybody speaks better English than you do Romanian. It is both the blessing and the curse of the English speaker. Even those who claim not to speak English at all can understand it better than you think- they have been listening to English music and watching films in English with Romanian subtitles their whole lives. Not that this makes it easy or natural for them necessarily, but I do feel at a slight disadvantage. I have absolutely nothing in the bank, no phrases, sayings or even childhood nursery rhymes- before I thought about coming here I think I can honestly say I had never encountered a single Romanian word. So, needless to say it soon gets boring for everyone involved if we limit conversation to my Romanian. English it is then - a relief and a disappointment all at the same time- I know I should try and insist they let me practice with them but I just feel like such an idiot and it's so hard I can't imagine I'll ever get it right. It takes a really long time to learn a language- it's not just vocabulary, it's phrases and sayings, and gender's and word orders, it's concepts, it's culture.

Having reached the end of the CD learning program I have nothing left but books from the 1980's (it's surprisingly hard to find Romanian language lessons) which I keep intending to work through but which I always discard in disgust as soon as I pick them up again- I struggle enough with my Yorkshire version of the pronunciation when someone says the word to me, never-mind trying to figure it out from the Romanian spelling. Needless to say, as the dates for returning to England have approached I have become less and less disciplined in my determination to try. I asked about lessons but then there didn't seem any point cos we were going home in a few weeks blah blah blah. Excuses excuses I know. I am a bit disappointed in myself actually......but apparently not enough to do anything about it. :-)

I have tried not to waste my time here thinking about the things I miss about home but now that there's only a few days left I'm allowing myself to contemplate country walks, fish and chips and pub meals, and of course the family and friends I will finally get to hug again. And today, as I sat in the mall it also occurred to me how nice it would be not to be a foreigner for a little while. To instantly understand everything that I see and hear around me. To not only be able to talk to anyone or everyone in the room if I wanted to, but to be able to sneakily earwig on the conversations of strangers. To comprehend the cost of something instantly without having to perform arithmetical gymnastics. To know where to go and what to do if I need to pay a bill or the car breaks down (both of which occurred today!). Don't get me wrong I am loving living in Romania but I am gonna enjoy being English in England this summer.

A suitable job for the pregnant girl......

It's taking a bit of getting used to this being pregnant lark.

I've never been one to sit around while other people did stuff. I like to have a go. I'm the girl who joins in with the boys games at the BBQ, I go for the heavy looking box, and I love to get out and push if your car won't start. So when I first announced I was pregnant I was bemused and slightly offended when people started taking my bags from me and insisting I sat in their chair when really I'd much rather sit on the floor. I was pregnant....... but I was still fit, and strong, and much more adept at getting up off the floor than many of the people who felt obliged to help- bless em.

Now that I'm a whale, with an aching back and a very wriggly little being inside me- who seems to prefer to lie primarily in awkward positions- I'm not only more aware of my limitations, I'm infinitely more appreciative of that special treatment!! Still, it's taken me a while to get used to being careful. It's not just the physical stuff- it's all the other risks you suddenly become aware of when you feel responsible for someone so much more vulnerable than you.

I hate a fuss. In fact, I generally hate having my own way. Mostly because I don't know what my own way is. Lindon always laughs at me because when he asks what I want to do, he knows that I'm not really deciding what I want at all, I'm actually trying to figure out what I think he wants so that I can say I want that. Pathetic sounding I know, but it's not something I just do with Lindon. I do it most of the time. It sounds saintly but don't misunderstand, the truth is I very rarely have a strong opinion on what I want to do, or eat, or see- I just want everyone else to be happy and then I can relax and enjoy myself. My genuine preference is to do whatever you want to do because that means you will enjoy doing it and so everything will go well. Which makes me the absolute worst person when it comes to making decisions- I'm the perfect companion for someone who knows what they want but absolutely useless if you need someone to show you a good time. So anyway, my point was that I don't like to kick up a fuss, I'm much happier just going along with whatever is happening around me. The problem with being pregnant is that sometimes you have to make a fuss. Sometimes you have to refuse food that people have made you because it's a risk. Sometimes you have to go home from a party because someone has been in contact with a disease that could seriously harm your unborn baby. And the worst of it is.....it's probably fine...... but then what if it wasn't?

Since I've been in Romania I've been trying to find the balance between not being afraid to get on and do stuff and not taking unnecessary risks. I think being in a foreign country with so many unknowns, coupled with a very strong desire to be well-and-truly home in England before this baby comes, have not only emboldened me in the 'making a fuss' department but have encouraged a little more restraint in the 'joining in' department too. Nonetheless I still find it excruciating having to be awkward.

In an earlier blog I mentioned we were hoping to get involved with a charity in the nearby town of Arad. A few weeks ago we spent four days working with them in the small village of Siria where they have their base. There is all kinds of work to do in Siria and Lindon was very popular with his many skills and talents. I on the other hand was a bit of a problem. I knew I didn't want to work with the kids (the least labour intensive option) because I didn't want to risk getting sick but hard labour was probably not a brilliant option either. The first day was easy, I stayed at the base sorting donated items into bags to distribute to families at Easter. By the end of the day though I had decided that bending down 50 million times to rummage around in boxes on the floor was probably not on the pregnant girl list of job skills either.

So the second day I offered to dig. 'I'll just take it easy' I thought..... 'how hard can it be'? What I hadn't accounted for were the ancient broken tools the poor old widow whose garden we were digging would have for us to use. I was expecting a spade I could stamp on, or a trowel I could kneel with. I was given a hoe. Now I'm not a gardener but it really didn't seem like the best tool for turning over hard soil ready to plant corn- you had to bend at the waist and swing with both hands like a pick axe. But the little old lady was quite bossy, almost scary, and she didn't take kindly to stops of any kind......even the inevitable ones that occurred when the hoe fell off the handle.

..."only not pregnant!"

I think she thought I was fat and lazy at first....... she kept tutting at me and if my hoe broke she gave me hers so I could keep going while she went and fixed it. Then, with Lindon insisting I took a break, I decided to try out my Romanian conversation skills. 'Bebe' I said pointing to my stomach (Romanian conversation is clearly one of those special skills of mine) at which point she grabbed the hoe off me, took my hand and led me to the other side of the garden where she found a much more suitable job for the pregnant girl......I was to drop corn kernels into the little holes she dug. Meanwhile everyone else should keep swinging.

The third day I joined a team driving up to a camp ground an hour away from Siria to do some groundwork. It doesn't sound like the best idea but I pushed for it because the weather was glorious and the location of this camp, in the hills near a lake, was said to be beautiful. There was painting to do, as well as strimming and digging, and as it was outside I figured it would be white wash and suitably ventilated by the wind - so no problems for a pregnant girl. As it happens it was the fumiest gloss paint you've ever smelt, and the day was so still it was making my eyes water, not to mention the fact that most of it required a ladder perched on uneven ground. I painted a door, with my T-shirt over my mouth before I decided to make a fuss. I'm sure it would have been fine but I'd read somewhere that the fumes from household cleaning products could be something of a risk so I decided it wasn't worth it. So I approached the team, sorry to be a pain but could they find me another job. "Sure, take this metal brush and strip all the loose paint off the windows on the cabins so they are ready to be painted." After about 2 hours of this particularly mundane and boring job I took a break and called Lindon. Upon investigating my questions about paint fumes on his phone he discovered that a bigger risk was in fact stripping old paint in case it had lead in it. Great! So off I went again to make a fuss again. I finished the day raking up grass and loading and emptying a wheelbarrow...... at least with physical work you can usually tell if it's having a bad effect.

Since that week we have been making the 100 mile round trip on crazy Romanian roads one day every week to help out with the many projects Networks is running. And finally we have found a suitable job for the pregnant girl. I am spending my one day a week working with Dece- a micro enterprise company that Networks have established which empowers and enables some of the women in the poorer gypsy communities to work from home and earn some extra money while taking care of their kids. Dece workers make hats, and scarves, and bags and hopefully a few other new things soon if any of my research comes in useful. So now I am spending my day sat down. I am researching sales opportunities and new product lines, and apart from needing to stretch and walk a little more frequently than others might I am happy to find I am finally capable of making myself nearly as useful as everyone else!!

What Time is it Mr Wolf?

Where does the time go??

Apparently it's nearly a month since I last posted a blog. It feels like about two weeks.

Similarly the diary tells me I've been living in Romania for nearly two months now and will be going back to England for the baby in one month. It feels like it's the other way around.

Yesterday I woke up before my alarm. The alarm was set for 8am but I was nicely awake at 7.45. Hmmmm surprising. Especially since I didn't go to bed particularly early and sleep is one of my specialities. Good though. I love it when you get up early and get loads of things done. I'd do it more often but as I mentioned sleep is one of my very special talents. So, I now had two whole hours before I had to be at the office for a meeting with Wendy about producing a newsletter for Kairos.

I was having a lovely morning, eating grapefruit, reading, praying, listening to a bit of music when the phone rang at 9:28am. I know it was 9:28 because that's what time it said it was on my phone when I picked it up to answer the call. So you can imagine my surprise when my friend on the other end asked me if I was ok and questioned why I hadn't come to the meeting yet. "Because I thought we were meeting at 10am" was my genuinely confused and innocent response. Apparently I was absolutely right, we were meeting at 10am. The only problem was that it was in fact currently 10.28am.

I had taken the battery out of my phone the afternoon before and when I shoved it hurriedly back in just as I was leaving the house that evening I was disgruntled to find it had forgotten the time and date. It seems I proceeded to rectify this problem somewhat carelessly, and unfortunately the consequences were felt the next day. Not so much by me, I had a lovely morning dawdling about, but definitely by poor Wendy who sat in the office waiting for me for 50 minutes. I really should have been more suspicious about the whole waking up before the alarm incident.

Time is such a funny thing. They tell us it's a constant. But I often find it to be one of the most relative things in this world. Most other forms of measurement produce strikingly consistent results. The scales, for example. Even though I fain shock and surprise they are usually simply confirming my fears and dashing my weak hopes with alarming consistency. Whenever I measure out a litre of water for cooking it usually looks about the same. I'm pretty good at guessing people's heights and even distance, which can be a little confusing due to the different speeds of our available transportation, is usually pretty predictable once you have reminded yourself of your context. A 5 mile journey in a car is a misleadingly short distance if you then find yourself having to walk back. However once we have familiarised ourselves with each form of transport most people can make a pretty accurate guess how long a certain distance will take them to travel. My experience is that, even those who seem incapable of making an accurate prediction,....those who say "I'll be there in 5 mins" to which you nod and smile but automatically assume it will be at least 15...... even those people, are perfectly capable of measuring distance. They know it will take 15mins, they are just hoping to soften the blow of their inconsiderate lateness by making you think they'll be there soon. (I know this because I am this person....... I hate being late...... but I always am........it's another one of those special talents of mine).

But Time..........Time is different. Time is notoriously difficult to judge. Time is so relative it even has the extraordinary ability to appear to have gone both fast and slow to the same person. For example the last eight weeks since I left Haworth.......sometimes seem like an age. It's forever ago since I last walked the dog on the moors, since I saw my family, since I went to Morissons. I've done so much. I've driven across Europe, visited my friends in Switzerland, moved into a new house, furnished said house, made new friends, visited new places etc etc

But then sometimes.......it's like no time at all - Morissons.....pah....I know it so well I could talk a blind man into doing my shopping via skype without the need for video call. How can we possibly have been here 8 weeks already??? What's especially bizarre is that I am capable of these contradictory evaluations of time simultaneously!!!! Right now it feels like both a long and a short time that we've been here. And unfortunately this confusion rears it's ugly head with reference to practically every event that has ever occurred in my life......they were all so long ago and yet they feel like 'only yesterday'...... all at the same time!!!

I realise that I personally seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time thinking about time. "It's passing so quickly", "it's passing so slowly", "how much time do I have", "what shall I do with this time", "did I use that time wisely". I really should stop going on about it. But the other day when I based my day and my decisions on an entirely irrelevant time that I had, it seems, simply plucked out of the air, I realised again that Time is a law unto itself. It just ticks away. It doesn't matter one bit what time we think it is. It is what it is, all we can do is deal with it wisely.

I am currently reading a philosophy book called 'The reason for God' by Timothy Keller and he makes a similar point about God which is worth mentioning. God exists or He does not regardless of what we think on the subject. And if He does exist then He is what He is, it does not matter what we think He should be. It's an obvious point but one which seems to elude most of us post-modern thinkers. We say "well I think that if there is a God He will be like this and will do this" and if he isn't that or he doesn't seem to do what we think he should, we dismiss the whole concept. We then go on to base our whole lives on this decision about God that is merely a personal whim or preference, without really investigating our assumptions.

It didn't matter that I thought it was 9am, it didn't matter that I had programmed my world to exist around the assumption that it was 9am. It was 10 am. And that's the truth of it. If only I had checked some other clocks I would have known it was 10am. But I was so confident of my own clock...... the clock that told the time I myself had decided upon that I didn't see the need to check. And it affected my whole day......and incidentally the day of those around me!! God is or isn't whatever He is or isn't, we cannot dictate this truth or control it with our thoughts or preferences, all we can do is seek the truth and deal with it wisely.

An idea for a tea towel.......

Yesterday we went to a small village called Siria to visit a Christain Organisation called Networks who are  based there. Networks was established in 2001 and has been working with the poor in Romania for ten years. Lindon and I were given the details of this organisation by some friends in England when they found out we were planning to come to Romania. At first I just nodded and smiled......Romania is a BIG country which is notoriously difficult to travel around due to it's distinct lack of motorways i.e. one, in the whole country, somewhere near Bucharest and therefore of no use to us whatsoever. But I looked them up anyway and was surprised to find they were located in the county of Arad, next door to Tinis, which is where we are. Brilliant!!!!

So, after a few calls and emails we arranged to go for a visit so we could see what they do and discuss opportunities for us to volunteer. It takes about an hour and twenty minutes from our house to the base in Siria, so we set off about 9am and enjoyed a nice drive through arable farmland in the sun. It's incredibly flat around Timisoara, which is surprisingly hard to adjust to when your a native of the Yorkshire penines, still, at least it significantly reduces your petrol consumption :-). We arrived at 10.30 and introduced ourselves to Karen, a full-time networks volunteer of ten years, who is originally from Rochdale and whose accent became reassuringly broader and more northern sounding the longer she talked with us. She told us all about the organisation and the different works that they are doing in different communities in and around Arad. We were really impressed by the variety of their activities and the thoughtful philosophies behind their interventions in these communities.

Networks are involved in basic crisis help for the very poor, i.e, distributing food,  firewood and emergency medication for those who desperately need help to survive day by day. But they are also very concerned with addressing the more long-term issues and have many projects to help people work their way out of the poverty they find themselves in. For example, they have a full time social worker who is dedicated to helping people get the id and papers they need to be able to work and get medical help. Without an id card you cannot get a job, sign a contract, access a hospital or claim any kind of help from the government in Romania (Note to self: Get and ID card!). Many people have no papers whatsoever and are not even sure when and where they were born making it a difficult but essential task to get them registered.



Networks also place a high value on education since this will be a significant factor in helping the children break the cycle of poverty that their families are in and so they provide pre- school clubs and homework clubs in deprived communities to help encourage the children in their learning. Similarly Networks are concerned with helping to provide employment opportunities for those who are willing and able to work and have several enterprise schemes on the go. One such project is the Dece clothing company. Women with families to look after are provided with the skills, designs and materials to make high quality hats at home which are then sold internationally via the Dece website. Networks are also helping families by building giant greenhouses in their gardens enabling them to start growing fruits and vegetables and helping them negotiate contracts to sell them to the big supermarkets. We went to visit one of these newly built greenhouses and the owner was very enthusiastic about it...... his only complaint was that he could have planted earlier if only it had been finished lol.


After we'd heard all about it at the office Karen took us for a walk around two of these communities, the rural community in Siria and the inner city ghetto that is kakece (i have completely made that spelling up) in the city of Arad. Despite my enthusiasm for being involved while sitting and hearing about the work in these communities- the reality of being in them was a bit overwhelming. I wish I could say I was filled with instant love for the grubby little kids with bare feet and  (very) snotty noses who came running up to us, punching and hugging us in a bizarre show of affection and demanding to know our names. I wish I found it easy to look them in the eye and hug them back. But I'm afraid if I'm completely honest- the unknown is pretty scary and overwhelming, and these kids covered in dirt and shouting at me in Romanian were very much the unknown and I was a bit daunted. I know as I spend more time in these communities and get to know and recognise the people I will become more used to them and their ways and relax a little bit but at first, in all honesty , its going to be a challenge.

The next step for us is to fill out an application form and work out when we will be available to help out. Our hope is to be able to volunteer on a regular day once a week. Obviously my being pregnant and our limited availability will put restrictions on what we can do but Networks have so much going on that they are sure they will be able to give us something useful to do. I was so blown away by the commitment and ambition of the founders of Networks who have given so much, and achieved so much, that I came away feeling a little bit useless and mediocre .........but then I came up with a wise saying, all by myself, and it made me feel better..........I'm thinking of printing it on a tea towel.......

"Don't let your inability to do everything right undermine your potential to do something right".
                                                                                                                                  
                                                                                                                                    Ta Da!!!!!!!

What to have for lunch...????

I am five months pregnant. Before I got pregnant I thought about what it would be like to be pregnant, then, when I found out that I was, I thought about what it would like to be more pregnant, you know, with a big fat belly and all that. Right now I'm thinking about having my own baby in my arms. But I'm pretty sure once I finally have my baby in my arms I will be thinking about how I will cope when he/she decides it's time to leave home.

Funny how very rarely we are satisfied with the present moment of life. We, or at least I, are always looking for the next thing. I don't know if it's just me but I tend to decide what I will eat for lunch while I am eating breakfast- well I say 'decide' but I am actually truly rubbish at decisions of all kinds so the reality is I merely think about it, ponder it, come up with a few options. You'd think, with the amount of time I spend thinking about what I will eat and when upon any given day, I would be able to boast a rich and varied diet and perhaps have written my own cookery book including all the fabulous new recipes I have concocted during these times. Unfortunately the reality is I usually just end up going with soup!!

There are lots of wise sayings about life being about the journey and not the destination, which when we read we all nod knowingly and say 'it's so true'. There was even that annoying x-factor song a year or so ago which reminded us it was really all just 'about the climb'. And we know it, we know it's the truth and yet we just can't help thinking about what's next.

What's with that!! I'm not saying it's wrong it just seems odd that we are wired that way. We always seem to be looking forward to the next thing. When I get here, or do that, or have the other, then I will be settled and happy and my life will be complete. Somehow we have to figure out how to enjoy now for all that it has to offer.

Unity Square- Timisoara

Right now in my life, I have just moved to a new country, I am learning a new language, I am making new friends, I am finding my place in a new church and a new city and of course I am expecting a baby. You'd think that'd be enough right.......... but for some reason I am spending all my time thinking about what it will be like WHEN I've settled in properly, WHEN I can speak Romanian, WHEN I have lots more friends, WHEN I am useful and indispensable in my new church, WHEN I know the one way system in my new city and WHEN I have my baby. I have so many hopes for my future here- I desperately want to have a purpose and be useful even if only in a small way. And that can only be a good thing right? But somehow my hopes for the future are preventing me from enjoying the present to the full. I should be enjoying settling in and finding my way around and learning about people and places and culture instead of fretting about how long the future will take to come about!!

So the lesson I'm learning this week is one which I really ought to have learnt by now. And to be fair I am generally doing quite well with it, I just have my occasional relapses and moments of panic. It's patience and trust that the future will happen despite of and regardless of how much time I spend planning it and fretting about it. And it's peace and joy and contentment in the moment that I get to live now. You only ever regret it when you look back and realise how good life was back then if only you could have relaxed and enjoyed it for what it was.

Timisoara Cathedral

So....... right now in my life I am sitting on my terrace, writing out my thoughts about life, in the hope that it will help someone else figure out their thoughts about life, watching my belly wriggle with life and making the most of the sun. This afternoon I have a language lesson to do but first its lunchtime and my soup is ready :-)!!