I am home

Okay, I am now sitting in our dining room... HOME!!! What a wonderful place. There is so much to tell, so many stories, but to you that is all they are. When you look at the pictures, you will see the most beautiful children, but when I look at the pictures, I feel their arms around my neck, their hands gripping mine, I see the filthiness, I see their in their eyes a longing to be loved, I smell the unwashed smell, the sewage, the body odor, and once again I feel like my heart is being ripped out of me. The pictures that will be uploaded later, do no justice. They pretty up what is dirty. You don't see the pain, the dirt, and everything else.

(Sorry if this sounds a little depressing, that is not how I am feeling. Well, maybe a little sad , but not depressed.)

The World Traveler who is home,
Kari

I am loved!

Okay, so two people love me!!! And the ppl here do. I have found someone who like MD and M&Ms just about as much as I do!! We have been MD brother and sister these past two weeks. It has been great!

My brain is soo fried. It was about 100 degrees today, maybe more. But it felt SUPER hot!!!! Oh my goodness. Not sure exactly what to write. There is so much that has happened. My brain is not processing very well. There have been several times when I had to turn away and get under control, so that I don't start crying in front of the children. I will have lots of pictures when I get home. Or rather when Kris gets the pictures burned onto a cd. He downloaded everyones pics onto his comp and will burn us a copy when we get home. And there are so many stories. The Rats family, the little beggar boy, the blind, deaf, & dumb girl, Maria & Loare(I dunno how to spell it) and so many more. When I get home and have pics and time amd faster internet I will have more to post about. And after my brain has had a change to process things.

I miss you all. Honestly. I love theses people and the team, but there is nobody here now who I have really clicked with. Andrea had to go home. OH!!! I din't talk about Andrea. Well I dunno her background, but she met the team years ago in Bucharest when they did a basketball camp. Anyways, she was one of our interpreters. She is very lonely. Both of her parents have died and her sister lives in France. She is a PE teacher in Bucharest. She and I really clicked. We called eachother sister, my dear, and sweetie. It was great fun!! She was such a big help to our team and to me personally. We clicked at the right time. I wasn't really clicking with any of the other girls and I was starting to retreat into myself and all of a sudden BANG! This Romanian that I thought was quiet and reserved popped out of her shell. She was a God sent. Seriously. I want her to come live with me. I told her that when I opened my Center that she will have to come out and teach my kids PE and Romanian. :P And she is a kick in the pants. Her facial expressions were so animated and... and... there is no way that I could describe her to you.

Well, I am going to get a massage now. By two Physical Therapists, so there!!! They figured out what was wrong with my knee and gave me an exercise program that will straighten me out. I'll explain more later.

Love you all!!!!

The World Travelor,
Kari

Here I Am

Okay, I am still alive, but I just don't have the brain power to talk about all the things that are going on. I am soo tired, but am not sleeping very well. BUT do not worry! We have an in house doctor who gives out pills!!! So I am going to take mine now and go to bed.

Noapte Buna (Napta Boona)

And I am not going to post ANYthing else until I get some love people!!! I have posted and poured my heart out and what do I get!?!?! Big FAT ZERO comments!!! GAH!!!!! What to do with you all!!!!

Yesterday and today

Oh my GOSH!!! The kids! I have come so close to crying, but didn't cause I din't want them to see. There was this mom with three girls. Not sure the age of the two older one, but the youngest was 5 months and was super tiny. I have a pic I'll show when I get home. Eeoi! I wanted to bring them home with me. So beautiful and so tiney because of malnutrition. The mom had no more milk, so she was spending their momey to get milk for the baby so the other children were starving. It was so sad. (I'm getting a knot in my throat right now.) I just want to love on all the children. Yesterday we were at one village all day and I was just so exhausted when we got home. I din't drink as much water as I needed cause I was not going to use the "Thunderbox." But oh my! We played games, had puppet Bible stories, sang songs, fed the children, washed their hair, did crafts, and loved on the children. It just broke my heart. And to watch them scarf the food down cause they were starving. Yoy.

Today was a free day. There was a Mideival Festival up on the Cidadel(sp?). It is kinda a renactment of back in the day. It was crowded to say the least. Oh my. Mel would have DIED!! There was a gal who eas dressed in something Mel would die for. She was dressed in black and green with some leather and she carried a bow with arrows. I tried to get a pic, but not sure it turned out. So many people were walking past. OH!!! I saw a dude that looked like Orlando Bloom. SERIOUSLY!!! Mom and I had to look at him twice. I almost got a pic with him, but wasn't brave enough to ask. Then we din't see him again. Oh well. I bought some stuff. :P I am a millionare!!! YESS!!! I have a 1 million dollar bill. Can you believe it!? I am rich!! By Romanian standards. GUESS WHAT!?!?! I found MOUNTAIN DEW!!!!!!! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! It doesn't taste the same, but it is still MD. So now I will have a Romanian MD bottle and a Pepsi bottle. It's great.

I am learning two languages here. Romanian and Northern Irish. lol! There are four other ppl here besides our 19. Three are from N. Ireland and the other is from Scotland. Actually he was born in N. Ireland, but he lives in Scotland. Tomorrow we are going to church in Sighi. Dad is playing the guitar and singing two songs. Then we are going to Candu to go shopping for a while before going to the evening service in Tigmandru. I am going to get some handmade lace. It is beautiful! Yoy. I will prolly get some other stuff. Not prolly. I will. ;)

Well, I'll get off now. More will come when I have time.

The World Traveler,
Kari

Picture Picture!!

Okay, I m going to try and upload some pictures:


Yay! We are leaving!

Back in the gate. :(

We are leaving again!

Okay, I am getting gray hair uplading pics. This site will now only be my words. Pics will xome later.

I am going on a walk. More later.....

The World Traveler out

For the Impatient Ones

Amy here, Kari's unofficial webmaster. ;-)

For those of you who are impatient to see pictures (like me) , you can go to the Romania 2006 official website and look at the galleries.

It looks like they're being pretty good about posting updates there.

In for a bumpy ride

Okay so our flight was not so smooth as the previous post. So we get on the plane and start to taxi. The captain comes over the loud speaker and says that there is a noise in the nose that he doesn't like, so they are going back to the gate to have the machanics look at it. The look, they fix, we leave. Start to taxi again, hear captains voice, again. Yeah, heard same noise, going back to gate. by now we are about an hour and a half behind. The captain said that they would try and fix the porblem or find us another flight. We sit for a bit then are told to exit the plane until they figure out what is going on. So we are waiting and waiting and then are told that they have a plane, but it doesn't leave unitl 7:30pm. We finally get off, 6 1/2 hours late. So when we got to Amsterdam at 11am their time, which is 1am your time and find out that we have to wait 8 hours until our flight left. We landed in Bucharest on Wed morn at 12am which was 2pm Tuesday for y'all. We rolled into Hotel Confort at about 1am. We caught a train to Sighisoara at 1pm Wedesday and rolled into Sighi at 5:47pm.

Today is Thursday July 27th at 11:35am here which is 1:35 am there. We have finished bagging 150,o00 children's vitamins and about 7,000 pills to treat worms. And we are now getting lunch ready and then we are going to Tigmandru to start the medical clinics. Where we will set up the clinic, a triage center, and children's center. Bubbles will be getting ready here in a sec.

I have pictures, but they will be uploaded when I have more time to pick and choose what I want y'all to see. Out of the 180 I have taken since Monday.

Love to all!!!!

The World Traveler,
Kari

PS: Sorry had not had time to miss y'all much yet. ;)

And they're off!

Well, we fly in the morning, well actually afternoon, but we have to be at the airport in the morning. Our flight departs SeaTac Airport at 1 pm on Monday July 24th and we have a 2 hour lay over in Amsterdam. After departing Amsterdam we will land in Bucharest on Tuesday July 25th at 3:30 am. After arriving in Bucharest we will then take a 5 hour train ride to Sighisoara, where we will arrive somewhere between 10 am and noon.

Hello!

This is a place where you (friends, family, whoever) can come and see if I have updated on what is happing while I am in Romania, at DTS and PCYM and maybe afterwards, who knows? I don't know how often I will be able to update while I am gone. But check every once in a while to see if I have left something!! This is the first post, the next won't come for a while.

Romania - July 24th-August 8th

DTS - September 14th-March 7th, 2007

PCYM - March 2007-July 2007 (I am unsure of the exact dates as of right now)

Please pray for an open heart as I prepare for the work God has for me. Also pray that the money that I need will come in.

Thank you!!!

The World Traveler,
Kari