...and it did. However, there is talk that we could be in for some more freezing conditions and some 'big' snow very soon.
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| As noted before - sometimes spelt with a hatted 'i' |
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| Things so quickly go from this... |
When it does warm up and the sun comes out it is possible to anticipate just how lovely spring is going to be. You can almost see the apparantly dead and twig like plants and trees bursting to show their full regalia. - Sorry, got a bit Wordsworth there for a minute. Seriously though, I am really looking forward to Spring. Corina did the Sunday cooking today and made a wonderful Spinach dish which is traditional in this area to welcome the Spring.
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| To this |
With the snow a bit more melted, I took a walk out of the town. There really is some lovely countryside around this area.
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| Tarnaveni nestled in the valley |
Hospital
This week seems to have flown by. We had quite a long ward round on Wednesday which turned out to be extremely emotionally challenging. We 'rescued' one of the female patients who was in a particularly bad way and spent some one-to-one time with her in the club room over lunch. Some of the patients are extremely thin and seem to do little but lay in bed all day. You feel like you are watching them dying in front of your eyes - which is probably not to far from the truth. Anyway, we discussed this at our regular Friday (hospital management) meeting. Staff were concerned that we could not manage the more challenging patients in the club. We exlained that we were very happy to work with all the patients including the most challenging. I am happy to say that staff agreed and will allow that particular patient access to the club.
We takeloads of photos of club sessions - non-of which can go on the blog unfortunately. Initially hospital staff said that they were only interested in 'finished products' from club sessions. However, they all commented positively on how happy the patients looked during the club sessions - and how different to on the ward.
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| No idea how a picture of a police station got into this bit |
Ward Incident
Visiting the wards is harrowing, but there is always room for fun. Kiki was chatting to a female patient who was laying in bed (in German - see previous blogs). Two other female patients rushed over to her, one of them wrapping a lenght of toilet paper into a roll (toilet paper is a precious commodity) trying to hand it to Kiki. The other one started to assist Kiki towards the toilet. For some reason they thought that she was in desperate need of the loo and that there was no time to waste. We are not 100% sure why they thought this, but think it might be the way that Kiki was walking. I said this in German to the lady who we was talking to, who translated it (or something like it) into Romanian. Everybody absolutely fell about laughing.
More about money
I gave a link last week to the charity website for those of you who want to make a donation. In fact there is a direct link, which I will give below:
Romanian Culture
Two key things that people associate with Romania are bad driving and superstition. Well, for the sake of brevity. Here is an example combining the two.
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| The impact of this broom crashing into the tree must have been significant as it broke in two. No news of the driver |
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| The cat was unharmed, and landed in a tree nearby |
There was also a worring story regarding the mysterious demise of a flock of birds.
By pure chance I was nearby and picked up on what was going on. It took the BBC several days to catch up on the story.
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| Bird 4 toBird 10, "I'm bored, shall we all go down the pub for a few jars? What's the worst that could happen?" |
Click on the link below for the sad end to this story
Anway that is enough for today.
Monday is February 14th. Club has been decorated with hearts all over the place that the patients (club members) have spent a lot of effort making.
There will be a report next week.
Pe Curand
Paul
