3 rd week in Romania

Hello Everyone;

This is the third week in Romania and so far it has been nothing
more than language classes (which are going along well). So far
with being in a the large city like Ploiesti, language hasn't been a
problem as there are a lot of Romanians that can speak
English and French (among other languages). One part of our
training is that we have to do a project that will somewhat
parallel what we will be doing once we arrive in our sites.
They attach you to an organization and then we spend several
days working out a mini-project that will take no more than
3 or 4 days to implement. There are three of us, being Eric,
Kristina and me attached to the Social Service Department of
Ploiesti ... the sponsor of our project.
It is a really great opportunity to go along with the social
workers (whom are just superb) to see the people
that are in their programs. They do have quite a few
(underfunded) programs that take care of a range from children
to handicapped to elderly and even family planning issues. Also
the do some work with the Roma (Gypsies).
We had the great opportunity yesterday to follow along the
workers to a house of a lady named Dorina. She is an elderly
lady of 72 and has a very bad case of skin ulcers on her lower
legs. Her legs are huge from inflamation and she has no one in
the world. No family whatsoever and she lives on a very small
stipend that the Social Services provide. She has a home
caretaker that works/stays with her 40 hours a week, which
breaks down to 5 eight hour shifts, Monday through Friday. The
interesting part of this is that the lady caretaker was unemployed
and hired through the Social Agency. It adds up to getting
two birds with one stone. I thought that it was a really good thing.
First I must say that Dorina is such an interesting person. She
was a language teacher in villages throughout Romania a majority
of her life. She also worked for a TV/radio station during the
Ceaucescu regime. During that time Ceaucescu wouldn't allow any
other language than Romanian to be heard, spoken ... etc.
Dorina's job was to translate songs, poems and other things
to the Romanian language. She even showed us a couple of records
with her name on it and I believe that she even sang
some on the records. It was an interesting and fun encounter.