Day 31 and 32: Our halfway week

We are back in Reghin now. We returned to our apartment yesterday, and were greeted with the most horrible banging, drilling, and construction noises that one could possibly make into our wall. Apparently our neighbor is doing some "home repair" or destroying everything in his flat because the noise has been going on for a full day now. It's enough to drive us crazy, but I will admit, our washing machine is abnormally loud, so maybe this is payback and we're getting a taste of our own medicine. :)

This week is our halfway week. Katie and I couldn't remember exactly what day would be our halfway mark, so we decided that we would celebrate this whole week. We will fly home exactly a month from today, actually. A new market opened right beside our apartment building, so we went grocery shopping yesterday, and bought some Snickers and Peanut M&M's to celebrate. We also got some kind of cake thing that we thought would be good, but like everything here, it was flavored with Rum. I don't know what it is with this country, but they put Rum flavoring in EVERYTHING that has chocolate. It's sold alongside vanilla here, but I think they use it way more often than vanilla. Katie and I are sick of chocolate that isn't just chocolate, so we're going to serve our "rum cake thing" at our halfway party this weekend so we don't have to eat it haha. (We decided to invite some people over to play Phase 10 on Friday.)

I had goulash(is that really how you spell it?) finally yesterday! Apparently there's more than one kind, shows how much I know, but we had potato and sausage goulash. It was amazing. I definitely want to take that back home to America and have it again. There really haven't been THAT many things that I've eaten here that I am set on making once I get home; maybe two or three things, but goulash is now definitely one of them.

While Katie and I were at Harghita, we had the opportunity to talk to an amazing woman named Margaret. She is from England, and moved to Romania back in 1990, but she has been coming to Romania since 1973, I think. She's a full time nurse now at Harghita, but when she started coming to Romania, it was to smuggle Bibles and Christian literature in during the communist era. I cannot even begin to express how incredible it was to sit and listen to some of her stories. Katie and I were kicking ourselves for not bringing a recorder or something, but of course we didn't know beforehand. She is the epitome of someone who has lived a full life, and a life of service for the Lord. It is so different to read or learn stories in school about communism than it is to actually get stories from the mouth of someone who experienced it firsthand, and who knew people who were killed for their beliefs or suffered greatly at the hands of Ceausescu. Katie and I were so blessed by meeting her, and getting to hear about her life. As cliche as it sounds, she is probably one of the greatest people that I've ever met. I'm sure there are a lot of people like her in the world who have even more incredible stories; I'm just so extremely grateful that Katie and I had the opportunity to speak with her. I think she has made a lot of sacrifices in her life, but if you mentioned it, she would probably disagree that they were sacrifices. Margaret's life has been so fulfilling; one day I hope to say that my life has had a third of the servitude that hers has.

"He must become greater; I must become less." John 3:30