Buckle in folks, this is going to be a long one. Firstly, let me apologize for the lack of activity, I can’t believe it has been almost a month since my last blog. Truthfully, I thought it had only been a few weeks, which in hindsight doesn’t make a lot of sense considering I was in Romania two weeks ago. Oh well I suppose, maybe now I will finally be consistent (unlikely).

Anyways, Romania. For those who didn’t know over spring break I went on a mission trip to Romania with BCM, a club I’m involved in at JMU. It was an amazing experience, and I enjoyed every minute of it, besides the lack of sleep and the grouchiness because of that. Poor decisions lead to poor outcomes, who knew. I also don’t quite know how to tackle the subject matter at hand; there are so many different directions I want to go with it. I guess I’ll just go day by day and see what happens.

Day 0 – Driving, Flying, and a Little Bit of Dying

The entire trip started off wonderfully as I got about three hours of sleep before driving to the BCM from my house, which is a two hour drive. Of course I got there first, so I had to wait for everyone else to arrive and try my best not to fall asleep. We drove to the airport where I put the finishing touches on my five hour playlist to listen to on the plane. Airport was actually extremely easy to navigate, and we boarded our flight with no issues. Now, I’m not sure if you’ve ever been in a plane for twelve hours, but HOLY it can get extremely boring. This is especially true when there is no laptop charging port, so I got to play football manager for about three hours of the twelve hour flight. The rest of the time I spent listening to music, playing on my phone, and trying not to fall asleep. By the time we landed in Frankfurt to catch our connecting flight I had nothing left in the tank. Yet I trekked on, went through the absolute trainwreck that was customs and got on our flight to go to Bucharest. Didn’t fall asleep shockingly, and we landed safely without issue. Our driver was there to pick us up and drive us to the church where we’d be staying.

Now, I don’t know if this is a Romanian thing, an Eastern European thing, or just a European thing, but the driving was so aggressive. I do not think a single American would have lasted a day there; if you defensively drove you wouldn’t even make it out of your parking spot. Truthfully, I was terrified every time I got into the van we rode around in, but ask anyone else who was on that trip and they would agree with me. It was that bad.

Anyway, when we finally got to the church where we were staying it was late afternoon. I fought to stay awake until a reasonable time, which ended up being around 7:30. I passed out as soon as I put my head on the pillow and that was that.

Day 1 – Church With a Dash of Tourism

My day started off wonderfully, as I woke up at 4 am and could not fall back asleep. So, I played football manager until everyone else woke up, which took quite some time I must say. After everyone got up though, we went to church. I had absolutely no idea what to expect walking in there, but I was honestly shocked by how similar it was to back home. The decorum of the church was similar to back home and a lot of the same songs were sung, just in Romanian of course. I did my best to sing along but that went about as well as one would expect. I’m sure if I could understand the sermon I would have thought it was good as well. It was beautiful though; I’ve never interacted with other people of faith outside of America, so it was fascinating to me to see how widespread it is.

After church we went to Old Town Bucharest, which is the historic section of Bucharest. One of the people who worked at the school acted as our guide and I think he did a pretty good job telling us the history of certain things. I can probably still remember some if anyone ever wants to know some Romanian history. We also got dinner while we were in the city, I got some filled sausages, which I forget the name of, but they were so good. After that we walked around a bit more then went back to the church to call it a day.

Day 2 – It’s Called Football

On Monday we started working at the school. We walked from the church to the school but did stop real quick to get some absolutely amazing pretzels. I still think about them. Anyway, my first job of the day was to work Sports Class, which I soon found out was less a class and more just recess. I, along with three other guys from BCM, pretty much played with the kids out on the netted football pitch outside the school. It was an absolute dream to be in a country that loved football as much as I did, I don’t get that same luxury back in the states. For the most part I played goalie as the kids launched shot after shot at me. I saved most of them but sometimes they would catch me off guard or cheat. It was so much fun though, and talking to the kids (or trying to) was something I enjoyed as well. The English skills varied from kid to kid, with the older kids being most proficient, most of the time anyways. So, you had to talk about things they knew, such as say Messi or Ronaldo. That was a debate all week, and no matter how many kids tried to tell me differently I still believe Messi is in fact the GOAT.

I did Sports Class for the remainder of the slots that were available, which came out to about four hours of having balls pelted at me. Loved every second though. We had lunch at the school, and I cannot for the life of me remember what it was. All the food provided for lunch and dinner was delicious though, along with the desserts. After lunch was after school, where I promptly did nothing except stand there and watch some other members of the BCM give a lesson. That was pretty much the whole day, after dinner we went back to the church and chilled until it was bedtime.

Day 3 – Drawing the Short End of the Stick

Tuesday was more of the same stuff for me, worked Sports Class most of the day and had more balls pelted at me. I did co-teach an English class at 9:00 though, where I tried to play Pictionary with the children. Now, if you don’t know I do not have a single artistic bone in my body. Unfortunately, my mother decided my sister would get all the creative genes. Thanks mom. You see where this is going now.

I had to draw fruits and vegetables, which can be a bit difficult when the majority of them are round with little difference between them. There was one point I was trying to draw a tomato, and the teacher asked me if it was a peach. That was humbling. Heck that whole experience was, I cannot for the life of me draw, but I did a decent enough job with my other task. If I am not mistaken, I mainly just wrote English phrases on the board they were learning along with counted with them to ten. Sidenote but their brains are rotted so badly by 67, I about wanted to end it all. But other than my poor drawing I think the class went well along with the day as a whole.

Something I spent the majority of the day working on was building and dismantling desks. And it was not some simple little putting the legs into the holes and you have a desk. No this desk had hooks, a cubby, multiple parts, and a whole lot of pain. It wasn’t hard per se, but holy was it repetitive. And taking apart the desks we were replacing was not hard, but it was carrying the tabletops after. They were decently heavy and we had to haul them down multiple staircases to put them in the basement. I got so gosh dang sweaty from that. That was just about everything for the day, though I did spend my night stressing about a lesson I accidently signed up to give the next day, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

Day 4 – The Lost Sheep

Wednesday. Arguably the worst day for me out of the entire trip. As I said three sentences ago I accidentally signed up to teach a religion class to 6^th graders. Lord help me. I eventually decided on a lesson plan, Putting Others First (Philippians 2:3-4). This was after calling my mother the night before for help along with pretty much getting a written out lesson plan from my leader. Luckily I didn’t have to teach the class until after lunch, so I spent the majority of the day in Sports Class. I did garden a bit though, that was fun and easy to do.

What was not fun and easy to do was religion class. Holy that was a trainwreck. I forget why it was so bad truthfully, probably blocked it out for the most part, but I just did horribly. I am not a natural born teacher and it shows. I had to have my leader take over halfway through the lesson, and even after I do not think it went especially well. It was interesting though, my leader and the person helping me with the lesson thought it went well after my leader took over, which I completely disagree with. I don’t know why but that made me unbelievably frustrated, I just didn’t understand how they couldn’t see that it did in fact not go well. Maybe I’m crazy and it did go well, but looking at the kids faces and body language I definitely thought they were not enjoying themselves.

The failure of religion class left me in a sour mood for the rest of the day. I didn’t say much at dinner or when we got back to the church, I was just unbelievably frustrated. I think part of it was that I knew beforehand it wasn’t going to do well but everyone told me it would be fine. That really ticked me off for some reason, not exactly sure why. But when we got back to the church I just got ready for bed and went to sleep, I just needed that day to end.

Day 5 – I Sea What You Did There

Thursday we took the day off from working at the school to be tourists again. This time around we drove out east to Constanța, a city on the coast of the Black Sea. To get there we drove through the Romanian countryside, which was beautiful even with the overcast day. I should have taken more photos of it but I was unfortunately in the middle seat of the van, so I did not have a good angle to take any photos. It was fascinating to see all the wind turbines though, there were a lot in multiple parts of the countryside. We did have a driving scare on the way though, arguably the worst one of the whole trip, but hey what are you gonna do I suppose.

Before we got to Constanța we took a stop at an archeological dig site with a small museum. There we learned more Romanian history, more ancient history than recent though. The Romans, Ottomans, Byzantines, Greeks, just about every major power of history had been in Romania at some point, it was quite fascinating. And with that, there were also a load of artifacts from different points in history. Greek tablets, Roman pots, just about anything made from stone you could imagine. We also went out to the actual dig sites which had outlines of potential buildings that were there. There were also some wild dogs that kept following us, they were quite cute.

After that we went into Constanța. We got some food, which was quite good, and walked around the city. Something I wasn’t quite prepared for but should have figured, was how windy it was. It was incredibly windy, and that along with it being overcast made it quite cold. Besides that though Constanța was beautiful. We saw the outside of this old grand Casino, unfortunately the inside was closed, and many other beautiful feats of architecture. That was about all we did in Constanța though, and after a bit of walking we drove back to the church and called it a day.

Day 6 – Prepared for Nothing

Friday was our last day working at the school, and it was arguably my least eventful. This is due to the fact that on Fridays the schedule is a bit different for the kids, with them having Chapel (basically a short service) and that specific Friday having Teacher Appreciation. So why is that relevant? Because Chapel and Teacher Appreciation occurred during hours I was supposed to be helping teach a class. One of my classes actually did take place, helped teach a religion class that was much better than last time, which most likely due to the kids being younger.

Anyway, there was one more class I was supposed to help teach, an English class, that the person I was working with put a decent amount of time into planning. So imagine our surprise when we turn up to the class and there is no teacher, because of course they were downstairs for teacher appreciation. For the record I did help with teacher appreciation, I wrote thank you cards for them. But yeah, that was an hour where effectively nothing happened.

There were only three Sports Classes on Friday, so I figured I would be fine dressing a bit nicer and leaving my ankle brace at the church (which I had been wearing all week). So naturally this was the first time the kids wanted to have an organized game of football. By the end of the game not only was I and my jeans drenched in sweat, but my ankle was so incredibly sore along with a giant blister on my foot ripping open, leaving me unable to walk properly. I would be the one to injure myself on this trip knowing me, and I did not disappoint. So I spent the rest of the day limping around barely walking, with my foot wrapped in a bandage so the missing skin on the bottom of my foot wasn’t so bad.

With that I was rendered useless for the manual labor tasks, putting together and moving chairs, due to my lack of mobility. So I spent the rest of the time sitting on the field talking to some of the kids through a translator on one of our phones.

And that was that, our time of working at the school was done. We went back to the church, did whatever it was we did, and enjoyed our last day before having to fly back home the next day.

Day 7 – Sick Again, Naturally

On our final day in Romania of course I woke up sick. Something I failed to mention up until this point is that one of the members of my team came on the trip sick, which then of course spread to the rest of us. I managed to avoid it, until, of course, the day we were leaving. I managed to throw all my stuff together and drag myself to the van to go to the airport, but I was miserable. My nose was running, sinuses were stuffed, and I was about to get on a plane for 12 hours.

Luckily my mother had packed me some allergy medicine which I used to clear my sinuses some so my ears wouldn’t explode on the plane. The first plane ride wasn’t that bad thankfully, but the second flight was rough. I couldn’t tell you how many times I got up and went to the bathroom to blow my nose. In fact, at the beginning of the flight a flight attendant came up to me to ask if I was okay. Now this was due to me having a tissue shoved up my nose, which probably did look a bit alarming, but still.

Somehow though, I survived the plane ride of doom, and we landed in Dulles, which felt it took forever to get out of. We waited on our bags for about 20 minutes I felt, maybe it was shorter I don’t know, my concept of time was completely thrown off by this point.

Something we failed to account for however was that the dorms on campus were still closed, so those of us living on campus had nowhere to sleep when we got back. Luckily my leader let me and another guy sleep in his basement, and I fell asleep with a cat underneath the blanket with me. That was comforting for my sick self. In the morning I drove myself and the other guy back to our respective living quarters, and that was the Romania trip over.

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Woof, that was a load of writing, I did not expect to write that much on just the recap of my trip. And I still have more to say, because of course I do.

This trip opened my eyes in many ways, with the primary ways being religious and societal. They intertwine in a lot of ways so I’m just going to write until I have nothing more to say.

Something which caught me off guard going to Romania were the contents of the country. Simply driving through Bucharest you saw many grand extravagant buildings but right next to them you saw abandoned ones collapsing in on themselves. And where we were staying was technically considered the ‘ghetto’, which basically just meant the extremely poor area. And it showed, whether it was the rusty metal fences, the wild dogs, or even the conditions of the roofs of the buildings around us. As someone who grew up in a suburban neighborhood, I was not exposed to this in my life much. And I am by no means judging these people, I am merely stating observations I saw.

I know poverty is prevalent in every country, including the US, but again it was something I was never really exposed to. I know it is the mission trip cliché, but it truly does put everything into perspective. I have been given so much, I have never had to worry about my next meal, never had to deal with a leaky roof or anything like that. I have been blessed, so I should go and give what I can to others. Whether that is time, money, or anything else, I should go and serve those around me as I am called to do. That is one thing I want to take away from this trip, I want to go and serve others. How am I going to do that? I do not know, but somehow someway I will.

While I didn’t really realize it this trip, this trip has caused me to cement that too many Christians forget about the whole ‘loving your neighbors as yourselves’ thing. Again, that does not mean just other Christians, but everyone, I need people to realize that. It is frustrating when I hear certain things coming from those around me while claiming to be Christian. The hypocrisy kills me. But I am not here to judge them (which is something else some people need to remember not to do), much like how we are not supposed to judge anyone on this earth.

“You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.”

Romans 2:1

The rest of that passage is good as well, which can be found here. But I do not understand how so many people miss this. We are not supposed to judge others, no matter who they are or what they do. We don’t decide who goes to Heaven or Hell, and we don’t know who goes either. There are many things we are not meant to know, and that is one of them. But I’m getting off topic here, simply put don’t judge others, easy.

Final thing I took away from this trip was that there is still light in ‘dark’ places. The Ruth School is an example of that, the work they do is incredibly important, especially for the Romani people. As I touched on a little before, this is a group of people who have been discriminated against and marginalized for just existing throughout Europe and face rampant poverty and challenges. So, the fact that these children are being given access to education and meals is incredible.

This is basically just turning into an advertisement for the Ruth School, but they do tremendous work, in fact I believe my home church is going to be helping Ukrainian Refugees at the Romanian-Ukraine border this summer through them. They currently are working on creating an English website, but whenever that is created it will be linked here. Currently it is just a placeholder until it is made, but I cannot speak highly about them enough.

Anyway, back to my main point, there are always spots of light in the darkness. There are many other organizations like the Ruth School doing work like this, which, Christian or not, is tremendous. The world is a broken place, but there are people working to fix it, and no matter how small the contribution is, it is still better than nothing.

I loved going to Romania. I loved everything there, the kids, the workers, the sights, the food, it just is something that I will never forget for the rest of my life. I bought some souvenirs when I was over in Romania, but somehow, I managed to lose them. I was incredibly upset about this fact, but on the last day we were there we were all given little clay trays made by the children, which is better than any souvenir I could have bought. I took one that was painted like the Romanian flag and will be putting that in an extremely safe place. I hope someday to go back, whether this summer through my church or another time, it just left such a deep impression on me. Maybe I’ll even try to learn the language, or at least try to.

That is all I have for this one, for once I took more than one day to write this. Makes sense when you see how long it is, geez. But I wish you all the best, may God bless you all, especially as we head into Easter. I’ll try to write something for that, but with my track record it will probably come out in May.

(Memory by Sugarcult)