La Revedere, Timisoara

Bible study on Thursday night!  The blonde woman on the right is Nicole Condra, a hearing missionary that we bumped into on the bus.  She is fluent in ASL!  She is very interested in the deaf and was happy that we could help her to meet deaf Romanian Christians.  She is also on a research/survey trip, and she's going to be traveling across Romania for three months.

Learnin' the language

At our apartment.  We are making index cards with Romanian words on the front and English words on the back!  

Cinci - five, galben - yellow, and the others are unreadable :)

A lot of streets sell books like this.  All in Romanian.  They have individual plastic wrappings, for, say, should there be a sudden thunderstorm.

In some corners or walls you will find this!  Like any big city in the USA.

One of the several plazas in Timisoara.  This one is the biggest, but it's quiet and not as lively as Plaza Victory (the one we showed in the previous blog with the pigeons).

A statue that was erected in the 1800's by the local people who were grateful that they survived a plague.

"Oh, you are taking a picture of me?"

Although it was pretty cold 30 F, people still sat outside.  Look on the roof! :)

The Romanian and EU flags.  (European Union)

She's looking at maybe a bird, a plane, or Superman

Communist-era apartment block.  We see this kind of apartment everywhere.  There are also a lot of beautiful modern homes. so it's a mix of the past and the present.

We see a lot of stray dogs. 

And cats.  But they are not really "abandoned" because people like this woman do come and feed them.  We saw a dog in another apartment block that was fed by a resident.  They don't live with their owners, but are fed by a few friendly people.  Alexa's quote - "every dog or cat's dream".  To live outside and be fed!

Policemen

A rough translation is: "You who, more or less, one time, you will go, anxious over our heels, we were of the generation of December 89, a single thought: Romania"

This is on the front of the Opera House, where the Romanian Revolution in 1989 started.  This revolution was much like the one in Egypt recently where the people were angry at the communist government and finally banished Ceausecu from power.  You should look it up in Wikipedia.  

Memorial to those who died in the revolution.  A few were run over by tanks.

This boy on the right is the son of a very friendly Romanian family who lives on the first floor of our apartment block.  This family is the one who helped us settle in and this boy would always run to us and play with us whenever he saw us walking around.  We caught him and his friend playing soccer.  

At the deaf school.  They let us take pictures!  This is Suraj, the first deaf orphan we met.   His situation is a sad one,  but we are happy that he is in a deaf school and is able to communicate with ASL.  We have more information of his situation and a video of him signing, but will share that later when we finish our DVD!  

Deaf children!  All very smart and friendly!  They are not orphans - just normal residential children.  This was our second visit so they knew us and we played in the rec room.

The second deaf orphan we met.  This one can't sign, and we don't know his situation.  We are going to find out more about this.  He is a very cute and sweet boy.  

Ping pong!  The children are actually better than Alex, beating him half of the time!

Szaby Mate, the deaf ministry leader, came with us.  The kids look up to him - and it's good, because he provides a deaf role model for the children.

Alexa with the children comparing signs for animals in Romanian and ASL!

Waiting for the bus after the fun school visit.  We were there all afternoon/night!

Sunday morning.  The deaf church group.  

On our way to the coffeehouse to do our blog, Alexa spotted this "birdman" and took a picture of him.  

That's all for now!  Our next destination is Oradea, a city that's around two hours north of Timisoara and still on the West side.  We will be visiting a hearing orphanage there, a deaf church, and hopefully get some leads on where deaf orphans might be in Oradea.  

Happy Valentine's Day!