Diary 4 July 27b/28 Friday/Saturday 28/07/2012
I ran out of energy last night to complete my account of yesterday's note-worthy activities. (The heat is really quite something).
I moved over to Cefa in the middle of the afternoon and on arriving we began by packing the food parcels for the pensioners. This was the reason I had had to share the seat with my suitcase as the boot was full of food for the parcels!!!! We got to Cefa and packed up the food parcels - oil, margarine, flour or similar, sugar, several varieties of pasta, pâté, seasoning, I think that was it, but they were good food parcels. When we got to the church I had a wonderful welcome and was thoroughly kissed and greeted. Then we gave out the food parcels and that was easy and without incident except for one pensioner who was most irate that her daughter did not get a parcel. She argued with Alex at length to no avail then her daughter turned to me to tell me. At this point my knowledge of Romanian (such as it is) deliberately left me, though afterwards I checked with Alex to confirm I had understood correctly that the woman had no man and 3 children. What she did not say which Alex said is that she is making no effort to help herself as there are opportunities to work which she not trying to do at all. At Casa Mabel he would be happy to give her some work in the garden if she would make the effort, but she was not interested.
I then had a text to tell me the drivers George and Graeme were safely back at St Malo ready for the Friday evening boat to Jersey. A later text told me they did the trip in thirty four and a half hours from Cefa here in Romania to St Malo France.
On returning to Casa Mabel after the pensioner distribution I met up with Pierre the student from Jersey who has been helping here. He is highly spoken of for his commitment to work and will be missed when he leaves on Sunday.
I slept really well over night and woke quite horrified it was nine o'clock (concerning as tomorrow I need to leave at eight o'clock!!!)
Alex and Rody with baby Raisa came to Cefa today and yes Raisa is BEAUTIFUL - incredibly like her brother Abiel as a baby. The plan had been for me to work with Alex on the pensioner reports but that didn't work out so we have postponed that till Monday.
At lunch time I took Flori out for lunch and then to Salonta to go shopping. The most memorable for me was how at sea I was to start off with driving a left hand drive car after such a long time! Even after 25 kilometres I was still searching for the gear lever on the wrong side and finding the door handle. Another challenge was filling the car with fuel as Flori's knowledge of English and Romanian did not run to helping me out on that one, but finally we got it sorted - the attendant was very patient I have to say as I parked on the wrong side for the fuel tank and did not know what I needed till I spoke to Alex.
Tomorrow I am off to visit Alex's distant church that has a youth orchestra of which he is very proud. It means I must leave Cefa at 8.00 am to meet him on the outskirts of town at 8.45 am. So I reckon I better sign off and go to bed as I have an early start tomorrow.