as usual, no time to write!

Our lives are always so busy. I always think it's going to get easier and we'll have more time ... but it's never happened so far. While we were in the UK Irina and Viorel's baby boy, Gabriel was born - they are coping reasonably well with having two children, especially as wee Daniela just started school which she is loving. Since our return from the UK three weeks ago we have had a performing arts team - they were great, I'll post photos as soon as I get chance. Then we had the birth of Johanna and Philip's baby, obviously a major event in all our lives.

Last week we finally employed a full time social worker, Dana whose post is funded for the first year by "Humanity at Heart" a small charity in the south of England. We also have Angelica working with us as a general worker in the day centre, her job is funded jointly by PCF Romania Projects in Wolverhampton, UK and our Scottish Support Group based in Falkirk, Scotland. Our new Peace Corps volunteer, Shaneka brings our basic "stable" team to five with Kenneth and myself (hence I use the word stable loosely!). We have Irina and Lidia as regular volunteers -Irina didn't want to continue working full time but would like at some point to be taken on again as part time. Finally, three of the young folk from the streets volunteer on a less regular basis, but we are keen to encourage them and develop this aspect of the work.

These long hoped for additions mean that (at least in theory) we should be able to be freed up a little to do some of the other things which we have long struggled to find time for - more time for writing newsletters and reports and of course more time for sadly neglected family and friends!

oh no ... more clokes!

On Monday evening at 2045 Central European Time (GMT +3) baby Rafaela Alisa More finally deigned to enter the world. More than two weeks late and after a long labour (poor Philip really suffered!) Johanna finally gave birth as she had wanted, naturally and completely drug free. The photo above is literally just after birth once she'd been checked out by the paediatrician and the photo below was taken the next day when my mum came. My mum, myself, Johanna and now Rafaela are all firstborns and all girls, so it was quite a rare and special photo!

to the Uk and back & a nice photo of Scotland

We are just back from a trip to the UK. We drove overland as usual (me, Kenneth, Amy and Yasmina), but this time with our friends Lesley and Innes and their two children Conor and Rachael. The journey was good, the kids behaved really well and Conor and Rachael coped much better than their mum thought they would ... shame on you Lesley!

Our visit was quite a mixture of good and bad times. It was lovely to see friends and family (not that we saw much of family sadly ... need to do a separate trip I think) but we had a few problems to deal with which took a lot of our time. We were also not very well and on top of everything we received some very sad news, the 24 year old son of some very dear friends here in Arad died of cancer and an old friend was found in the river Clyde. We were deeply affected by both deaths and can't even begin to imagine what it must be like for the parents in both cases. Then as we travelled across Europe we heard of a colleagues death.

Coming back saw us, as usual plunged right into the thick of things ... our new Peace Corps volunteer arrived in our absence, a team of entertainers arrived the day after us and there was the usual catching up af all the things left undone in our absence. Then to top it all, more sad news - Philip's lovely dad Malcolm finally lost his years long batle with cancer - we'll miss him.

Amy stayed behind to help friends with their son after school, just until the end of the month. Kenny is hopping between Arad and Timisoara and doing the occasional gig DJ-ing. Johanna is now 9 months and 8 days pregnant ... watch this space!

no time to stand and stare ... or blog!

I was just thinking how litle time I have to do anything these days, least of all update the family blog, when the words of a poem popped into my head ... "What is this life, if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare, no time to sit beneath the bows and stare as long as sheep or cows ..." and so on until it concludes "a poor life this, if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare!"

Well if that's the measure of our lives, then they are poor indeed because the very last thing we ever have time to do is to stand and stare!

Johanna is expecting a baby in August and is finding the the weather very hard going - having been pregnant in Pakistan with Kenny I sympathise, it was a tough nine months with temperatures never falling below 35 degrees C. Poor Johanna is working every day in surgery and the hospital air conditioning is not working so it's like an oven. She and Philip are enjoying life in the country although I think they'll be very glad when they finally get running water and an indoor bathroom! Kenneth is working on the bathroom in his 'spare' time (hence the reason they still don't have one!) and now Mark, our handy volunteer is helping ... so the end is in sight!

Kenny and Amy are both in the middle of exams, Kenny has his univeristy end of year exams and Amy has her Baccalaureat. Kenny hasn't been keeping very well, as well as a lot of back pain he has had a few other health problems and on top of all that he is having to move apartment again. On the positive side, he is still going out with Alina, a lovely girl from the south of the country who is just finishing university in Timisoara. Amy is very stressed about the exams but passed her Romanian and German oral exams with high marks - the oral results are given immediately which was good as it may give her a little much needed confidence for the remaining exams.

Kenneth isn't very well at all but we're not exactly sure what's wrong with him. he's been having headaches, dizziness and nausea. He's has various tests including a CT scan but nothing major has shown up so far. The Neurologist thinks it's nothing major but is sending him for an MRI to be sure . One theory is prolonged overwork and stress ... well, that's certainly a possibility.

two of our favourite houses

This is one of our favourite houses in Arad. It's in need of a little tender loving care, but we think it's still beautiful ...

... and this is Rosanna's and Yasmina's favourite house in the snow!

let it snow, let it snow ...

After two winters with very little snow this year made up for it! We have had snow all through January and February and it was trying to snow again today. Of course snow also means that it's cold ... but most people agree that it's better than rain. I was back in the UK for a few days and it rained non-stop and was so windy that I was freezing all the time. I didn't take warm clothes because I knew it was a good few degrees 'warmer' in the UK that in Romania ... I forgot the wind and damp factors!

The picture above is the view out the back from our 'loft apartment' (some of you might have seen a very similar view on a Christmas card a couple of years ago) and the photo on the right is the view out of the other side looking out over the courtyard ... take a look at those icicles, amazing or what?

Our husky, Roxi loves the snow. We hate having to tie her up but the neighbours didn't appreciate her chasing their chickens and she's a great escape artist so we had no other choice! The fabulous snowman sitting with Rosie is Philip's handiwork. Being an Aussie, it's his first attempt ... not bad eh?
Arad city centre was snowed under too and our day centre the 'Secret Garden' looked even lovelier than usual, see right.

An armfull of kittens!

While looking through some photos to put on the Vis de Copil (A Child's Dream) blog I came across these and thought I'd share them ... aren't they sweet? Their mummy is Kesara, our Birman and the daddy an unknown visitor to the garden ... hmm! All four kittens looked very like their mum, though sadly one died just after birth. We gave one away and kept two, one for Johanna and Philipand one for us, but we ended up keeping them both as Johanna and Philip just took one of our 'outside' cats, tiger Lily and didn't want another after all. Their Westie, Hamish loves the kittens although at first he was a bit scared expecially when they did the hissing and fur on end thing, like in the Aristocats ... hilarious!
The two we kept (don't ask which ones they are in the picture) are now called Mia and Kara and are very sweet, loving cats who like nothing better than to sit on someone's knee and be petted. Kenneth likes to pretend he's a tough guy and always refers to them as 'stupid cats' or some such endearment, but look at the photo for the truth!

Maybe you've heard of the 'Andrex puppy'? These are the Andrex kittens, though truth be told, we can't afford andrex, so it's just a cheapie brand, but they don't care, it unravels just as easily and is such good fun to drape around the house and shred into bits ...

Kenny 21 tomorrow!

Wow ... just looked at my blogs and saw that I haven't updated for almost a month ... where did the time go? The lead up to Christmas was pretty frantic as always but not in the British sense of running around buying heaps of Christmas presents and too much food and drink. We had the builders in at the day centre right up til the 23rd and we were also trying to distribute clothing to poor families and street folk.

On top of all that Kenny had his concussion and broken hand and Amy had an operation to remove her tonsils. Kenneth was working evenings and weekends at Johanna and Philip's house trying to get it habitable for them to move in for Christmas. To cut a long story short, they did move in the week before Christmas and host Christmas day for all the family and a few friends - 22 in all. They still have no bathroom and just the outside earth closet ... life in the country eh!!! Will write more about Christmas and post some photos soon ...

In the meantime it's Kenny's 21st birthday tomorrow and the poor soul has nothing planned - no presents, no parties, no nothing and he's feeling a wee bit down ... need to see what we can do!

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.