Tutova: Thursday July 30

It is so hard to believe that we have already been at the clinic 4 days. Time has just flown. We have already seen so many milestones obtained and it is so nice to see the smiling faces of the children as we get there in the morning and after nap time to pick them up out of their cribs. To hear sweet Ionela saying Buna, Mama, or 'ello into whatever she can make into a phone! This morning little Andreea was so much closer to crawling and any day now we shall see it occur.

When we got to the clinic this morning the dog that got hit by a car was limping around but still alive. We were afraid it may have met the same fate as the biting dog from last year. Lunch today consisted of a vegetable soup with- you guessed it- cooked carrots. And for the main course we had a plate of beans with a sausage- much like the hot dogs dad picks up from the butcher in New Prague. After I took a few bites of the beans guess what was in it, yup cooked carrots.

We went back to the clinic after naps and Marius and Gabriela we out of sorts. I believe they are both getting their 2 year molars. They are only a week apart in age. We fed them their bottles and then played with them and cuddled them. Trevor one of the young volunteers is so wonderful with all of the kids, but he was able to find a baby to volunteer to be bounced on the bouncy ball with him. Still no word on Paula but hopefully she will be back next week. In the afternoon Mihaela (our country leader) turned on the car and had a mini disco session with Ionela and Anna-Maria, as well as Erin one of the one week volunteers.

We went into Barlad for the last dinner as a group of 19 volunteers because on Saturday 5 will be leaving for home but before that we met with the travel agent to arrange the weekend trip. We then had some free time so Amy and I went to the Plus Market to find the cookies we had been craving for a year! We each bought 4 bags and met up with the group to go to the restaurant. The name of it escapes me but it was wonderful food. We started off with a salad it had tuna on it so I passed on it but got a Bulgarian salad instead, which I split with Nicole who did not care for the tuna either. The rest of the food came out family style and it was really a free for all. There was the mamalegua (polenta) again and three different types of potatoes- fried, mashed and fried with ham. We had a type of Romanian meatballs, Pork and two different pizzas. there was vegetables too (uh huh- cooked carrots amongst them.) And for dessert- finally Crepes with chocolate. it took everything we had to roll ourselves onto the bus back to Tutova. We were sent back into the hotel with a beautiful sunset.