What's the grossest thing you ate on your mission?

Lasi, Romania

This week we were able to collect some food to help someone out. It was a great opportunity because there aren't a lot of things we get to do for service in Romania. We also had a member invite us in and give us a meal. It was very sweet. How could we refuse her the blessings of serving? There was mood music and everything. (Enya was playing in the background.) When she pulled out the salad from the refrigerator, I couldn't believe it. It was green! Romanians do not eat a lot of lettuce, or lettuce-like things, let alone salad. Yet, there it was: a delicious... dark green... salad... made with shredded Romaine lettuce.

There were also little strips of some type of meat in it. I examined it trying not to look suspicious, but it did not look like your ordinary muscle meat. "It looks like tongue," I said to myself. I am pretty sure I saw some taste buds. So, not to be impolite, I asked how to make it. She told me all that was in the salad and how to cook .....  PORK TONGUE! Mmm, pork tongue. "It's tender and has to be cooked just right." It was actually fine, and if you didn't know what it was, you wouldn't have blinked an eye at it. But, just let it be known.... I ate pig tongue!



Puzzles and Paint

This week for Kids' English we made animals and played a game with animal noises. Everyone was an animal. The object consisted of  a "blind person" in the middle who would point to an animal and guess the animal based on the sound the class made. It was fun. We also worked on colors and numbers. To work on these we did a color-by-number art work! I think it was a cute idea. I wonder if there is any market for coloring book artists.

We also completed a puzzle this week of a monastery. It was awesome. Putting sky together is a pain though, when there is nothing but the exact same blue. That in itself could be a puzzle. The hardest puzzle in the world!  A plain picture of blue sky. Though perhaps there could be one cloud for variation. I will have to give it some thought. It would be a challenge none the least.

Watermelon Hats

My favorite part of summer is watermelon. It's one of the only redeeming factors for it being so HOT! I'm happy Romania has watermelon too, but who wouldn't. It's so delicious and keeps you hydrated. And we have found a new use for our watermelons. Carving them out and wearing them as hats helps us keep cool too. Physically cool and socially cool.

By the way, children are so fun to teach. They learn so much faster than anyone gives them credit for. We need to redo the education system in the US and speed up the teaching of elementary schools. We need more innovation in the world, like watermelon hats!

Teach the children.....

English Lessons for Children poster

This week we decided we were tired of all the people asking us if we could have children at our English classes and made a class for children. We designed some flyers that day and got them printed, then started handing them out to all the families. We needed something happy and bright. Something that would get people to think, "Oh, this looks fun. Of course I want my children to go there with these nice American girls." If they said that our lives would be perfect. All I need to do is flash a smile and wink, maybe curl my hair a little and woo them with my charming American accent.
People are so grateful for this opportunity for their children. It shows how much people want the lives of their children to be the best they can. Learning English is a part of that. It's going to be so fun! We have BIG plans. Those include playing many games adults would never play with us because they are too "mature".  I can see it now, Sora Heim in a picture with 20 little Romanian children, trying to teach them English as she acts out words with the children. It'll be great.