Conversations and a Convoy

It's been an interesting last 2 days, so I thought I would write a little bit about it.

I left early in the morning on the 28th for Romania. My parents dropped me off at the Orange County airport. I flew from Orange County to Chicago...the flight went by pretty quick, nice and smooth, up until the decent into Chicago, which was totally bumpy and made me a little sick, which never happens to me! I was excited to grab a quick snack in the airport as ORD has this one little place that makes the BEST vegetarian quesadillas...but alas, I was short for time so I rushed to the International Terminal, only to find that McDonald's was pretty much my only option in there. Mental note, eat in the domestic terminal next time around.

I was SUPER blessed on my flight to London. We had the nicest plane ever! It must be brand new, each seat had its own touch screen, with a library of movies and tv shows. You could stop, start, pause and play any movie in the library at your leisure. It was awesome. I also had 2 seats to myself! So after watching Sherlock Holmes I went to sleep, or tried to. I can never sleep on planes. Oh well, at least I was super comfortable.

Next stop London. Not much to say here, I had basically an hour and a half to get from my plane, through security and to my next terminal. Then I was off to Budapest, Hungary. At this point I was exhausted. I had been up since 5am, and like 17 hours had passed or something. So I actually got some sleep on the plane all hunched over in my seat leaning on my tray. That made that trip go by fast! In Budapest my driver was on time to pick me up and we were off to Oradea!

So, there were 3 others in the van with me going to Oradea, and everyone spoke Romanian! Ha! After not speaking any Romanian for 2 months it was fun to get thrown back into it. I had an interesting conversation with one gentleman about communism. I don't usually have conversations with strangers about politics in Romania cause you never know, you may get the one guy who loved communism cause he was corrupt during that time or something. But this guy brought it up and sort of asked for it when he mentioned Obama to me. Now I do not usually speak about politics on my blog. But it was an interesting conversation. I started mentioning to the guy how I felt about Obama and the similarities I have been seeing in America and what Obama wants to do with America with what I have seen in post-communist Romania and for that matter what I have heard from my Romanian and Hungarian friends I have interviewed on the subject. He said something that rings so true in my mind, and something that I usually say when people talk to me about wanting more government involvement in our personal lives...he said basically "Americans do not know what Communism is because they have never experienced it" he went on to say that it always sounds "good", and can even sound "democratic". But the reality of it is, it's not good and it is certainly not democratic and takes away your freedoms. The cute little grandma next to me entered the conversation at this point and pretty much agreed with everything we were saying. Stating that America just doesn't know what communism really is and how detrimental it is to the people, society and economics of the country. I guess it was all just a reminder to me to continue to pray for my country and for it's leaders and for the elections in November! I NEVER want to see America end up like Romania...

So anyway, I'm off my soapbox now...onward we go...my drive to Oradea led us through grape vineyards, orchards and bright yellow flower fields. Hungary in the spring is lovely! About half way through we stopped at a truck stop to use the restroom. It was called Convoy City. Awesome. I walk through the swinging doors, ones like you would see going into a saloon in the old west, to find Johnny Cash playing overhead, "because you're mine, I walk the line..." Awesome again. After a brief stop we journey on to Oradea. I did fall asleep at some point during the car ride, I was so exhausted I really don't know when the last was I felt that bad.

We then made it through the border of Romania and I FINALLY make it to Ibi's! After 25+ hours of travel I arrived in Romania on the 29th! I showered and had a great meal of spaghetti and meat sauce. Ibi is such a blessing to me. She always has the table set so pretty and makes such yummy food for me! We caught each other up about the past 2 months and what the Lord has been doing in our lives and teaching us. It was awesome to see how the Lord has been blessing Ibi and working in her life.

Since I knew I wasn't coming back to Romania for long I filled my suitcase with gifts and clothes for my Romanian friends here. It was so fun shopping for them! Now Ibi is probably the only person I know who is thinner than me. So I brought her a bunch of my old nice clothes that I don't fit into anymore. She was SO happy! It was so fun to see that they all fit her so nicely. Sometimes it can be so easy to bless people. I'm happy I brought those things.

Well, I am off to Timisoara in a few hours. A 3.5 hour train ride awaits me. So much traveling is ahead of me this month! Please keep me in your prayers!

Pa! (bye!)

Rachel


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