Pigeon Soap Operas

I'm in a brand new city with a different companion. Things are great. Food is good. People are good. Life is fun, as usual. I feel like I am on vacation though and will soon be on my way back to Timisoara. Spend 9 months in one city, and you start to think of it as home. I hope Iasi will feel like that in no time. I already enjoy it because of the hills. I've missed hills. What can I say? I'm from a hilly place.

I have comforting thoughts about Iasi and am so glad pigeons are just as interesting here as they were in Timisoara. I don't know why but the ones in the US are boring. The pigeons here do anything. They are basically like watching a movie, or a soap opera on TV. All I need is some popcorn while I sit back for 30 minutes and watch their lives unfold.

MARK

Hey, Maria! Don't let Jim get anywhere near you. He just wants to steal you from me.

MARIA

Oh please, Mark. Jim was just dancing with me. That's all. She walks away back to Jim.

MARK

There is no way that Jim can dance better than me. Check out these awesome spin moves." This is where one male pigeon does his infamous mating dance that is done all year round. I don't think they have a mating season.

MARIA

That's pretty good Mark, but you are always so controlling. I don't think this relationship is going to work out anymore. Jim is just so much more easy going. Plus, his blond hair is soooo attractive.

MARK

Maria! Nooooo! Don't leave with HIIIIMMMMM! Two pigeons fly away one after the other. One second later, Mark turns around and sees a nice lady across the way. How you doin'?

Ok, so maybe I am a little bored. Maybe after some time in Iasi I will have something more to say. It does have really pretty churches though. I hope I have time to sketch some of them.

Goodby Timasoura, Hello Iasi

It's a bitter sweet week for Sora Heim. She sits sad and excited to leave a place she has lived for 9 months and the people she calls friends. But she knows new adventures await for her in Iasi...

My mission travels have taken me from one side of the country to they other. Not so bad in my opinion. I hope that the weather there will be cooler than the rest of the country.

It's interesting how you work and work to become more than just another missionary in people's lives, but at the end that's what you feel like. You are just another one of those faces without names fading into the past.  I think this is how most missionaries feel towards the end of their missions. There should be a couple people who remember me though, right? I did something correct, didn't I? The city of roses will always have a piece of my heart, whether I wanted to give it or not. Maybe, it is just a small capillary, none-the-less Timasoara has a piece of my heart.  It's been fun in the homeland but God is calling me somewhere else.

Goodbye first city in Europe with electric street lighting. Goodbye home of Tarzan. Goodbye first town with public horse drawn carriage systems. Adieu.

Family Reunion

Village where Grandpa
Michael Heim was born

I went to Lovrin. I saw sunflowers on the way, and guess what else? STORKS! Real live storks! It was so cool! They are big. I just was looking up and taking everything in while we were driving and saw these huge nests on the poles with these big birds in them. I freaked out. I kind of thought storks might be a myth.


Great Grandparents
 Josef Heim and Katharina
Marx's Gravestone

Lovrin was fun though. We first went to a Romanian cemetery and were told to go to the German one in a different part of the city. Everyone I talked to was pretty nice and pointed us to the right place. We looked all over the cemetery. I forgot things to make some rubbings of the headstones but I did take some pictures. A lot of the gravestones were so worn you couldn't read them but we found some names. Most importantly, we stopped by the parish on our way out. We rang the bell at the gate. The Priest answered. "I just have a question about the church, and if it has records in it?" " I'm trying to complete my family names." I pulled out my genealogical chart. (How many missionaries carry their family charts with them?)  He invited us in off the side walk but then told us the older records were taken to Timisoara. I've been sitting on them for 9 months!

America Meets Romania

American pancakes, also called
American crepes or puffy crepes

Happy birthday America!

This week in celebration of America, it was American week at LIDL. LIDL is a grocery store which has a different country week all the time where they sell foods from that country. Why did we go? They had marshmallows and Rice Krispies! Sure, they were fake Rice Krispies but they tasted pretty much the same. On a scale of Malt 'O Meal to Kellogg's Rice Krispies, their brand name should have been rewritten from Mcennedy to MKellogg's.

"It's just marshmallows and Rice Krispies" you might say. However, you do not know how hard it is to find a good marshmallow in Romania. A white one is impossible to find. Or, even one without another flavoring, or without sugar coating the entire outside. But, these were wrapped in a star spangled banner package - white round puffs of pure magic. We made Rice Krispie Treats for people. They liked them. They liked them a lot. With Romanian marshmallows they weren't nearly as sweet as the American variety. The last time we made them we used a sweetened cereal to make them sweeter.

If anything 'American week' was fun just to see what people think is American. So far, we have listed marshmallows and Rice Krispies. Other important staples: Peanut butter! (It didn't look so bad, either); hot dogs (they were in a jar, which was a little weird); muffins (they don't exist here, unless you go to McDonalds); BBQ sauce; Salad dressings; brownies; some cakes; (which were suppose to be American, but I have never ever seen a cake like that); And, of course, American Cookies! I mean...Chocolate Chip Cookies (see American Cookies! 04/15/13). All I wanted were the marshmallows and the Rice Krispies, but the other stuff was fun to look at. 

Pass the Pufuleti

Romania has these edible packing peanuts. Ok, they aren't really packing peanuts but they just look like them. They are called pufuleti. They come in different flavors such as cheese and other flavors. They kind of look like Cheetos, but they are not the Cheetos we see in America. The point with all of this is that they can stick together! Being who I am, I wanted to build with them, and build with them I did! I constructed the Salt Lake temple in 15 minutes out of a bag of pufuleti.

All you need to do it eat them down to the size you want, give them a little lick them, and squish them together. They fuze on contact with another pufulet. In the end, you have a food master piece! You can make anything you want. I chose the coolest place on the planet: the literal house of God. There are other things you can do, too. Just use your imagination and voila!