The Happiest Place on Earth

Kirsten and I spent two nights in Vernazza and could happily have spent the rest of our lives there. It's one of the Cinque Terre, five towns on Italy's northern riviera that are connected by a hiking trail (a hiking trail that is mostly lovely except for the last bit we did that made me want to cry when I realized how many steps UP it involved).

This is the view of Vernazza from the hiking trail. See the reddish building behind all the umbrellas on the square? That's where we stayed. And see that pretty sea down there? That's where we rewarded ourselves for our hours of hiking (and where I cut up my foot on rocks).

This is the delicious strawberry and chocolate panna cotta we ate at my favorite Italian restaurant, Il Pirata. We ate breakfast there the morning we were planning to leave, but then we postponed our departure to Milan so we could eat lunch there as well.

I need to go back to Vernazza.

I'm in Italy

I love Italians and their delicious food products even though they are all far more beautiful and well-dressed than I am. I ate a plum today that was so good that I feel inspired to write an ode.

Stolen Photos

These are photos from Romania that I stole from other volunteers on my team.

This is the hotel where we lived.

Iunela is very sweet with all the babies. Whether they like it or not. Petre used to get propped up like this when he was being introduced to the concept of tummy time. It always made him look so pathetic.

This is Alina, the tiniest girl in the world. She has fetal alcohol syndrome and weighs a mere 10.5 pounds. Remarkably, she can walk and zips all over the place.

This is Alex. She has brittle bone disease. She's a great fan of magazine reading.

I think Iunela looks hilarious when she wears this little outfit.

Andrei is not a solemn kid, but he always looks solemn in pictures.

If he had his way, Andrei would be snuggled up like this all the time.
I look like a dentist when I wear this particular scrub top.

This is the preschool teacher who comes to the hospital in the afternoons and works with the older kids. She is so fantastic at her job. I learned to count to 4 in Romanian by being on the playground with her. When I told her that (through an interpreter) at our going away party, she told me that next year I can come back and she'll teach me the rest of my numbers.

Don't Ask How I Did It

Mihaela looking deceptively mild-mannered. This child is a monkey. She can (and does) climb to the top of the fence around the playground and she's usually on top of this swing, not sitting down on it. She and Gabriela are twins.

Iunela loving down Celine. Celine does not appreciate the affection being lavished upon her.

Marius looking solemn (and fuzzy).

Sammy, my dancing partner, also looking like he's posing for "American Gothic."

Daniela looking elfy.

Marius and a tiny puppy. I loved this puppy. Marius did not seem to care about him at all. He looks like he's looking back at him, but he's really examining the snaps in the stroller.

Ion and Andreea share a stroller.

One Picture=25 Minutes of Negotiating with Computer

I don't know why the computer at the hotel is so hard to use lately. It's a mighty miracle that this picture would upload. When I get to an Internet cafe in Italy next week, I'll try to post the rest of my pictures of the children.

This is Andreea ("Big Andreea"). I think she's about 3-years-old, but her journal says her last evaluation determined that she functions at about a 2-month-old level. She was really happy this day. She enjoys being talked to and she LOVES it if you dance close to her while holding another baby.

The Night Shift

I'm usually with the non-mobiles at the hospital, but tonight I went in to help Melissa with the other group--the runners and the climbers. And that is where I met my new best friend. His name is Sammy. He's four and he has Downs Syndrome and he's a dancing. machine. At one point, I was dancing with him in my arms (no small feat--he's a CHUNK) and he was so excited that I thought he was going to hyperventilate. I was imagining tomorrow's newspaper headline: American Volunteer Sends Beloved Local Boy into Cardiac Arrest. The boy loves to groove.

Then I pretended to eat up Andreea and sat with Iunela out in the lobbyish area while she munched on some kind of Romanian treat that resembles cheese puffs. Not a bad night at all.

Oh, yeah, till we popped everyone into bed and left them shrieking for more good times. Except for that.

Wait for It

I have more pictures. I have pictures of beautiful monasteries and I have pictures of little children you have not seen yet. I do NOT have any pictures of the hilarious Iunela, one of the toddlers. She came marching into the baby playroom the other day, grabbed Ion around the neck and kissed him, made her way through the babies, patting them as she went, wedged herself into a bouncy chair long enough to pretend to be sleeping for about 2 seconds, and marched back out to charm the aides in the hall. She had come and gone by the time I could detach the babies I was holding and reach my camera.

I only have one week left in Romania. Here are some of my favorite things here:
1. I love the way Andrei pats me with his fat, dimpled hands when he sits in my lap (I do not love the way he vomits into my slippers).
2. I love that Gabi was sitting up by herself last week!
3. I love the moment when we enter the playroom first thing in the morning and the crawlers swarm us.
4. I love the way Marius dimples up if you swing him in the air.
5. I love other things but someone's waiting for this computer. We shall continue tomorrow. Wait for it.

More Pictures

Cristi (that's a boy's name in Romania) is 3-years-old and I'm certain he doesn't weigh more than 15 pounds. He also has Downs Syndrome and he was finding Petre very interesting yesterday afternoon. Petre looks really weird in this picture--like a fake baby. Unfortunately for Petre, the children are dressed in whatever clothing fits them, regardless of color or pattern. Most of the 3-6 month sized sleepers seem to be decorated with darling pink flowers, so we thought Petre was a girl the first day we met him.

Ema is on my lap and Daniela is being kept from smashing Ema. I LOVE having the kids outside. We're all so much happier. At least until the "mobiles" come along and terrorize the little ones, shaking their bouncy seats and stealing their toys.

This is the happiest baby I have ever met. Her name is Andreea. She likes to drum.

What I Read When I'm Abroad

Look! It's a book post! From Europe!

My reading options are severely limited while I travel since I can't carry many books with me, but here's what I've managed to read (that I can remember) since leaving the States.

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick
My brother sent me off with a couple of Philip K. Dick books. I read this one on my way to Rome. I liked it. I don't remember the specifics of what it's about, but it's sci-fi. When I picked up the second Philip K. Dick book I had with me, I couldn't get into it and I think it accidentally got left in Kirsten's dorm.


Persuasion by Jane Austen
I bought this one in Bath, because it cost less than 2 pounds at the Jane Austen Centre and because I was already feeling the Jane Austeness of Bath and watching the movie version of Persuasion every other night anyway.


Anybody Out There by Marian Keyes
Marian Keyes writes chick lit along the lines of Sophie Kinsella and Katie Fforde. This one was on the bookshelf at our flat in Bath. It's more serious than the other Marian Keyes fiction I've read. It was good enough.


Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain
Also on the bookshelf in Bath. I was enjoying it, but I hadn't finished it when we were leaving England and I didn't want to haul a hardback book with me. I'd already been ripping my guidebooks to pieces so that I only brought the relevant pages with me to Scotland. Paper is heavy.


The Girls by Lori Lansens
I picked this up at a thrift store in Bath, and it's a wonderful novel. Conjoined twins Rose and Ruby Darlen are about to reach their 30th birthday, making them the oldest surviving craniophagus twins in history. As they approach this milestone, Rose sets out to write the story of their lives, chronicling their experiences growing up in rural Ontario with their adoptive parents. Chapters alternate between Rose and Ruby's perspectives--a perfect device to reveal the unexpected plot elements that drive the story. Really, really good. Read it!


A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
My sister-in-law gave me this one to read after I went to Paris. True confession: I'm still not done. I started reading it after Paris and it was fantastic to read about places I'd just visited, but I find I can only read a couple of chapters at a time before I wander off to another book. I pull it out every few weeks and read a little more.


The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
AJ brought me this one when she joined me in Greece. If you follow YA fiction even a tiny bit, you already know all about this one. It's a well-written, dystopian, adventure story and it's enormously popular. I really enjoyed it, but, unlike most of the people I know who have read it, I'm not willing to sell my grandma to get the sequel.


The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
AJ brought me this one too. A concierage and a 12-year-old girl living in an exclusive Paris apartment building both find themselves alienated from the society and cultural of the building, but they're brought together by the appearance of a new tenant. It's translated from French (and, unfortunately, it shows sometimes) and it's interesting and has received excellent literary reviews, but there's a twist at the end that I think I'm too American to appreciate. I'm still thinking about it and fretting about it. I know why it ended as it did, but . . . I need someone else to read it so I can talk about it.


Vinyl Cafe Unplugged by Stuart McLean
I was given this one in Scotland and read it in Turkey. It's an amusing collection of short stories about a Canadian family. One of the blurbs on the back cover calls it "ridiculously wholesome." Possibly because I'm homeless and always on the move, I find the gentleness of the domestic humor very comforting.


The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
Yeah, I know that everyone in the world who loves books has already read this one, but I hadn't gotten around to it yet, so I grabbed a copy in the Istanbul airport to use up my remaining Turkish lira and to provide myself with something to read while stranded on the side of the road in Romania. It is, as promised, excellent. Some of the language is just so good that I wished for someone to be nearby while I was reading it so I could shake them and say, "Hey! Listen to this!"


The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
My roommate here loaned me this one, and I'm only about halfway through, but I'm finding it very compelling. It's going to be a sad, sad day when I'm done with it, because I already checked out the selection of books left behind by former volunteers and it's all Stuart Woods mysteries and poorly-written inspirational romances. Apparently, volunteering to work with children does not draw a literary crowd.

These are (Some of) My Babies

Marius and Andrei hold a baby summit in the hallway.

Gabriela - Gabriela doesn't sit up on her own or walk or talk (but she can crawl!). She loves balloons and being tickled and she's about 12 kinds of sweet.


Ion - Ion's at the hospital because he's had heart surgery once and will likely be having it again at some point. Because he doesn't have any development delays or cognitive problems, he's much faster and more active than most of the other kids and tends to smash them as he crawls in wild pursuit of whatever he wants. Here he is in the stroller AFTER we discovered that he's a bad stroller companion for Marius and popped him into his own stroller.

This is a terrible, fuzzy picture but I didn't realize that until the photo was uploaded and it took FOR.EV.ER to upload, so I will not allow my labor to have been for naught. Here I am with Daniela. We often converse this way, because she's more willing to agree with me that she should stop shrieking when held aloft. I'll try to post more photos of her later so you can see how elf-like she is. She doesn't look like she belongs at the North Pole here. But she does. We had to wear surgical masks all this week. It really gets in the way when I suddenly feel the need to grab and squeeze and kiss the kids.

Babies Babies Babies

I can't make the pictures download! Argh!

So, I'm working with about 15 babies. They're at the hospital because of problems like malnutrition, heart conditions, or developmental delays. The hospital is just a short, 5-minute walk from the hotel where we're staying, so we go back and forth three times a day to feed the children, to play with them, and to work on developing their motor skills. Today my favorite is Daniela. She looks just like an elf and I can read her mind. Usually she's thinking either, I'm starving! Feed me immediately or feel my wrath! OR Hey! Hey! Make that monkey dance again. Again! She would easily fit in my suitcase if I could just get her through customs.

Guess What I Found?!

This will only be exciting if you spent the summer of 1998 in St. Petersburg, Russia living off an odd kind of cakey cookie. Yes, that's right, I just got back from the grocery store in Barlad where I found--ta da--priyaniki!

Also, babies are nice.

Not to Worry the Parents, but . . .

I've had a rocky start in Romania. I caught a cab at 5:00 this morning to Taksim Square, rode a shuttle to the airport, made it through the very long lines at Ataturk Airport, and arrived safely in Bucharest. And then there was the disaster. I went to the cafe where I was supposed to meet Mihaela, the local team leader for my volunteer group. Mihaela wasn't there, but a woman who is also volunteering was. We didn't know what time the rest of the team was arriving, so we hung out in the cafe for an hour or so until a young Romanian woman with a badge approached us and told us that our bus had already left but that it was coming back to get us, so we had to hurry. I ASKED her if she was with our organization and she said she was and that is why I got on the bus full of international GPs. Soon after we started rolling out of the city, though, I was gripped with a very strong feeling that this was all wrong and that I was still supposed to be in a cafe in the airport. SO, I made my way to the front of the bus and talked to the woman in charge and, sure enough, I was on a bus going to a medical conference in Brasov.

The woman on the bus called our organization for us and explained to Mihaela's husband where we were (about 40 minutes away), while I chatted with some international doctors who found the whole situation hiLARious, and the solution reached was that my volunteer companion and I would hop off the bus right there and Mihaela's husband would come to get us as soon as he could. Which was two hours later. I spent some super quality time sitting on the side of the road watching horse-drawn carts roll by and making friends with a little Romanian boy. Not the worst day I've had on this trip.

I'm now safely in our village. I'm sharing a room with a nice girl from Wisconsin. We have satellite TV and a giant bathtub and a deck and free Internet access. Monday we start work at the hospital.

All's well that ends well.

These Pictures are Lame

I can never see the pictures I upload until they're actually on the blog. I don't like these ones, but it just took me 20 minutes to upload them (delaying Turkish Bath time), so they're staying.

This is a courtyard in Topkapi Palace. The weird spots to the right are water droplets spraying from the fountain in the center.

This is the interior of the Hagia Sophia. It's so huge and stunning. No picture could really do it justice.

This is an area called Pammukale. It's a series of pools created from calcium deposits. Pammukale means cotton castle.


From a Hittite Frieze

Mosaic from Chora Church. This Byzantine church has amazing (I need a thesaurus--everything is amazing, beautiful, stunning) mosaics. When the Ottomans came into power, they transformed the church into a mosque. They simply whitewashed over the mosaics and frescoes, preserving them until the mosque became a museum.

Notes from Turkey

1. I appeared on Turkish television two nights ago. I was interviewed about Ramadan and how I thought it affects the city. I was wearing very unfortunate clothes and sporting very unfortunate hair (not unusual).

My European TV Debut

2. I saw John the Baptist's arm yesterday. It's encased ın hand-shaped metal ın Topkapı Palace and it looks straight up evil.


3. When we were ın Italy, the Coordınatrıx lamented that the Italıan men were not attentive to us. She should have come to Turkey. I've become an excellent lıar ın Turkey. It's absolutely essentıal to extract myself from all the conversatıons ın whıch the men here try to ınvıte themselves back to our hotel room or try to persuade us to come for a drınk wıth them. We almost always get accosted when we're out and the conversation almost always ends with a Turkish man saying, "Where are you going now? I will come with you." This exchange from the Spice Market yesterday is typical (the whole transaction took place as I was walking; I never stopped):

Merchant: I have pashmina inside my shop for your mother-in-law.

Me: No, thank you.

Merchant: Why no? You do not like your mother-in-law or you do not have a mother-in-law?

Me: I do not like my mother-in-law.

Merchant: Wait! I have poison.

4. A speedo swimsuit is never a good idea for a man. Especially for men who come from countries where close-talking is okay. (I'm talking to you, Australia!)

5. How to Cross the Street in Turkey:

1. Stand on the curb and look anxious.
2. Watch taxis drive too fast and consider your own mortality.
3. Wait for locals to reach the curb.
4. Attach yourself to the locals and zip across the street in their wake, using them as human shields.

6. The Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia

• Seeing the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia lit up at night is good.
• Seeing the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia lit up at night during Ramadan with crowds of Muslims picnicking on the lawn is better.
• Seeing the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia lit up at night during Ramadan with crowds of Muslims picknicking on the lawn while prayers are sung out from the mosque and you munch on Turkish Delight is the best.

Crowds around Hagia Sophia

Blue Mosque with Lights Strung for Ramadan

7. I have lots and lots of pictures of gorgeous mosaics and crazy Medusa heads and beautiful sites. One day I will let you look at them.