Romania (FINALLY!)

Sometimes extroverts get the blues, too. Right now, I definitely have the blues. I just graduated from college, which is a great relief and anti-climax all at once. My closest friends live at least 30 miles away, which is ridiculously inconvenient. My social life in Riverside...well, let's just say that I've become really close with Clinton and Stacey. And I'm at home, writing this, on a Saturday night. It's an in-between season of life, which is necessary but extremely unsatisfying. So I went back and looked at pictures from Romania, which makes me happy. This is probably the happiest I've been in a while. So here are some pictures that I never posted. Maybe I did (I don't think I did though). Click them to make them bigger. In no particular order:

New friends in our new favorite living room.

After (during, really) Sunday liturgy at Holy Trinity. The church was packed! Can you tell how cold it is?

Us, on the bus from the airport to our temporary home. It was about 3 hours up winding mountain roads. Not unlike the roads upon which Jonathan Harker traveled. Perhaps even the self-same roads!

Jesse, myself, Adina, Ksenia, and Paul. Adina is blind, and a student at the only primary school for blind children in all of Romania. She's an amazing little girl.

At the Center for Social Integration, they love Americans, particularly ones from Dallas. Here, Matt & I demonstrate our enthusiasm for both America and Romania.

We spent our whole Tuesday doing this: scraping (lead-based?) paint off of the walls of the hallway at the Center for Social Integration. Things got pretty powdery. Some of the guys who live there helped us, like Adi in the green shirt.

On our last night with our new friends, we went to pizza. Here Lillian and I are eating and trying to converse with Nicu (short for Nicholai/Nicholas) and Florin, who runs the program for these guys. He grew up in orphanages, and when he had to leave upon adulthood he had no one to support him. He establish the Center for Social Integration for young men like him who need support so that they can finish their educations and become good members of society.

This is myself with Florin. He smiled like this THE WHOLE TIME we were there. I am sure he smiled like this THE WHOLE TIME we were not there. I am sure he is smiling like this RIGHT NOW, because he is full of love and joy.

This is Mihai. He became good friends with us, because he speaks a lot of English. He has a tender heart and a sly sense of humor, and took great pleasure in singing some good old Backstreet Boys for me.

Calin, Dany, and Adi. Dany and Adi are brothers, and Calin is great. This picture is from Thursday afternoon, when we went to play pool and go bowling with the guys instead of finishing the project. We intended to finish the project, but when we got there it was all done! They had stayed up into the wee hours of the morning finishing the small job we had left from the day before. So we all just hung out instead. :)

Dany. One of my favorites. I was really sad to say goodbye, and I said goodbye to him last. He IMed me the other day on Facebook, which kind of made my day. <3>

The view from Bran Castle. Beautiful, even it if was freezing cold.

Adi and I. He and Dany both love dancing. They were a lot of fun to spend time with, and even though they were unimpressed by my premium knowledge of the Romanian pop band O-Zone, they loved to show us other music and the dances that go along with it. Awesome.

The whole group after finishing the hallway renovation, friends from the U.S. and Romania.

I miss this.