broken knuckles

I spoke to Kenny this evening on the phone and I obviously missed something when I talked to him yesterday - I thought he'd said he was just bruised, nothing broken, but in fact he has two broken knuckles so his hand is strapped up. Amy's feeling worse today, she said it feels like there's broken glass in her throat but she's still glad she had the op. 

We had another interesting donation today. Just at the end of the day as we were about to leave the day centre we had a phone call offering us 100kg of pastries. The downside? We had to collect them right away. Most have gone into the freezer but some were defrosted and needed cooked straight away - we'll give them out tomorrow. By the time we spent all evening cooking pastries we had no desire to cook dinner, so guess what we had? 

Traumatic week and it's only Wednesday!

Well, I suppose most weeks seem to have their trauma but it's only Wednesday and this week has seen more than enough for our family. Amy had an operation on Monday to remove her tonsils - after frequent severe bouts of tonsilitis for over 5 years the ENT department finally agreed to operate. Amy's form teacher is very concerned as this is Bacalaureat year and Amy can't afford to keep missing school. The operation was done under local anaesthetic and was quite an ordeal for Amy, I don't think I could have done it! She is still off school and in a lot of pain but she's looking forward to a tonsilitis-free winter.

Today I had a text message from Kenny saying that he'd been beaten up last night and ended up in casualty. He says he was checked over and x-rayed and apart from bruising and concussion he's ok and actually attended lectures today - very dedicated of him, but I don't know how wise given the concussion!

Otherwise life is busy and more than a little stressful. Renovation work at the day centre is nearing completion, we have paint colour and tiles to pick and it should be finished by the wend of next week. When it's over we have the daunting prospect of tidying up and sorting through all the aid which all had to be piled into a huge mountain in one of the activity rooms. Add to it all this evening's unannounced arrival of 1000 shoeboxes and you can see why we're a bit stressed.

Johanna's graduation

Seems like I'm doing this blog backwards these days. I didn't have time to write about Johanna's graduation at the time as we had a team here working on the day centre courtyard and we were really busy. it was hard enough for both of us to take the day out for the graduation never mind actually finding time to update my blog!

On the day Kenneth and I and Helen, along with Johanna and Philip and of course Yasmina, all piled into the minibus and set off for Timisoara. Granny unfortunately couldn't make it because she was having a lot of back pain and still recovering from her fall in Turkey (she has since had an MRI and has two badly herniated discs).

The ceremony was actually not too bad even though there were several speeches! The students all recited the hippocratic oath together and sang a Latin song -not all that different from Romanian really ... if I'd worked harder on my Latin at school I'd have learned Romanian much easier!

After the ceremony there were the usual endless photos, we took a few of course. Pictured here is Johanna with her group - each year is split into sections and each section has several groups. Johanna began her studies in the English section of the university along with many other foreign students including Indian, Saudi Arabian, American, Greek and many other nationalities. In final year Johanna transferred into a Romanian section as by then she was fluent enough to study in her second language. it has been a hard year, especially taking exams in Romanian but we are all very proud of her for succeeding.

stop press ...

We just arrived home and Amy and Kate started cooking dinner for everyone. Kate dropped a heavy glass jar on her foot which immediately turned blue adn swelled up. Johanna said a trip to the hospital was indicated. At that point the phone rang and Amy answered. it was one of the street boys to let us know that one of the boys has been found dead on the streets. he doesn't know any more, so when we go to the hospital, Kenneth will go to the morgue to try and find out if it's true and more details.