ROSE'S DIARY Friday December 13th 2013 13/12/2013
We have spent the final full day of the Beaulieu group's time in Romania distributing children's shoeboxes in Inand and Cefa and then food parcels and pensioner shoeboxes in Cefa and Berechiu.
It has been a good day, in some of the schools we could see there was evidence of improvement, probably as a result of EU money invested in the country. But the gratitude!! That continues to be amazing. We saw children kissing their shoeboxes and that was moving. In some classes we heard shouts of joy and excitement as the young people opened their shoeboxes.
I am sure all the group will have their own special memories of shoebox distribution - i can only tell you that for me the best part was the very small very informal pensioner distribution at the little village of Berechiu. It was very small - those elderly who struggle to manage the minibus trip to Cefa but they turned out in their own village and greeted us warmly. It had a really good feel to it. We gave out shoeboxes - some of which were named for some pensioners and packed specially by the sponsors from our Adopt a Granny scheme.
I know there were several comments from the girls that it was very cold when we had to distribute outside, if the school had no suitably large room to assemble all the school in. At the first school of the day we saw an immediate improvement in that now the school has a sports hall - a vast improvement on distributing in the school yard! But not all schools have that facility and we had some yard distributions which are really cold.
We had lunch at Casa Mabel and the evening meal there as well. It was traditional Romanian food and the girls all enjoyed it. It was also "chill out" time as they sat around, checking their email using the Wifi there and also talking to the elderly residents - you can communicate without language.