Julie White has been in Romania & Hungary since early this week. Below is an update from her. Please keep her in prayer as she travels, studies, and ministers.July 21, 2007
Hey everyone!
For some of you this is the first update, so I'll try to catch everyone up on what's been going on. This keyboard has all the letters in the same place as in the states, so it should be easier.
Since I left...
We spent a few days in Budapest, Hungary where we: climbed a small mountain to reach some famous statues and castles (Buda Castle), went to the House of Terror (a building that was used as the Nazis' center for executions), visited the Jewish Synagogue (world's second largest), visited a couple NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and I (I alone...) ate a dish called Lung in Sour Sauce.
Since then...
We spent a day traveling to Romania. It was supposed to take 6 hours but was about double that. Along the way we stopped at an NGO called The Smiles Foundation (www.thesmilesfoundation.org). It is a religously based/funded organization that built a school for Roma (gypsy) children. They have also built and house gypsy children that have some sort of birth defect and would normally be abandoned by their families. Shortly after that stop we went to the Roma community where The Smiles Foundation targets their work. We took many pictures with them and their children...it's a different world. I met one woman who is 18, her husband is 17 and they already have two children.
We finally arrived at our destination and started working on the Habitat for Humanity build the following morning (Thursday... I think?). Our assignment is to dig a trench next to a house that is already built. This will give the rain water some direction so it won't flood the house. We have a team of about 13 students (all from BC) but it's still rough going!! In Romania there's a law that states that if the temperature reaches 104 degrees people are not allowed to work outside. We've never been able to do a full day's worth of work due to the temperature, so needless to say it's quite hot! By the time we eat lunch (sometimes earlier) it's too hot to work. Yesterday when we left (before the temperature peaked) it was 114 degrees. It's a dry heat and we're all drinking TONS of water... and just in case anyone needs an experienced pick-axer, send 'em my way! Manual labor is used instead of machinery because under the communist regime people were forced to do volunteer work (yeah, when you figure that one out let me know how it makes sense...) and in order to keep a lot of people busy, they did everything by hand. So, that trench is being put in with hard manual labor...
As it is a class trip, we each have our own individual assignments, hence why we're visiting NGOs. My topic area is human trafficking and my goal is to analyze what the Romanian public's view of trafficking is. Since I've been in Romania I've been able to interview about 14 people, including people at the Habitat build, my taxi drivers, a Jesuit priest and a social work student here in Cluj. So far it's been really fascinating and going very smoothly!!
We have tomorrow (Sunday) off from work but will get back to the build site on Monday and will finish on Tuesday. Sometime while we're in Cluj we'll be visiting a human trafficking NGO, which I'm wicked excited about!
Hope everything is going well in the states... send me some emails when you get a chance.
Bye!
Julie
