Today was great! I went to the orphanage for the first time today. I was a little late, because Mihai and I were having too much fun at breakfast. I took the tramvai and walked into the green gate. The clown painting is getting even more worn. The playground equipment is getting more worn. I was giddy. I walked in the door and went upstairs. As soon as I got to the top I saw Teo in Dr. Ciobano's office. I ran over and gave her a huge hug. She greeted me warmly. I gave Dr. Ciobano a hug. Teo immediately asked me if I wanted to see Alex. He was in the middle of school. We went in there and I exploded on him. He did his signature screams and I hugged him for a little bit and started asking him questions and then we started arm wrestling. For some reason I thought before that I was going to cry when I saw him. I didn't have anything close to that happen. It was like I had never left. It was just unbridled excitement. Then his poor teacher, I had to go and he just kept looking at me. She told me that when I leave the room he won't want to be here. I concurred.
Teo then showed me his computer room. I forgot that she had told me that he has his own computer now in the room where we changed before. It was so awesome to see that people had donated those things. I forgot how much people were working for him on this side. I went around to some of the other rooms. I saw Irina. I tickled her back for awhile and waited for her to make a noise and open her eyes. She seems to be one of the most affected by having no group for awhile. She was fairly unresponsive. There are a lot of kids that I didn't know from even when I was a facilitator, because I was so focussed on Alex. After this room I went over to the Bambi room and hung out there for a little bit. I was hoping to find Larisa, but I forgot she was in school. As I was leaving the room, I saw a girl I barely recognized. Larisa is getting so big even in the last year, she has grown and her face is changing even. She told me in Romanian, "Robby, Alex is waiting in the other room." I asked her if they were done with school for the day. She said, "No, we are on a break." I told her warmly, "It is really good to see you." I ruffled her hair. She did her little deep laugh and clicked her fists together.
I went over to the school room and took Alex out. He was so excited. I mockingly asked him where he wanted to go, but we both knew we were going to the computer. I was amazed at how well his control had improved. He can play a memory game and does it almost effortlessly. We recorded some video and took some pictures with the webcam.
After the orphanage, I went over to scala and tried to work on the mouse thing. I got as far as soldering their clothes drying rack, which promptly broke afterwards, but it was a fun endeavor. I realized then that I didn't have solder. I wandered around for like an hour and then went to praktiker. It is interesting to know that even with a store that looks identical to home depot, there is some stuff that you can't find in Romania. One of those things is PVC pipe.
After looking around the store and hearing the phrase, "It is not possible" several times, I decided to cut my losses and leave with my soldering fluid and a new roll of rosin core. I also bought a few metal tube inserts that I might be able to use with the pipe I bought on Saturday before heading to Bacau.
I decided to walk back to the orphanage, because Teo had told me I could come in after four. I walked off the frustration that had built after wandering around the hardware store in vain looking for clamps, flanges and usable PVC parts for a mounting apparatus and a low-tech solution for manual scanning that I learned from Craig Bogart at UCAT. I got those, "I hate this country! Why doesn't anything work here?! Why can't I find anything?! Why didn't I just bring that stuff from home?! WHY didn't I order it earlier and just pay the money?!" Thoughts. The city looked dirtier and more hostile. The language seemed more unintelligible and people looked stranger. Culture shock. I seem to pass through the stages much faster each time I come to this country. My night in Bucharest immediately after getting off the plane was a rapid confirmation that as much as I love things about this country and there are people here who bring my soul to life, I don't actually belong here and I am still vulnerable to being completely mowed over by people who want to swindle my naive american ass.
Back to the present. I walked back to the orphanage with most of these thoughts bouncing around my brain, or rather spiraling. I walked by the river and over the bridge with the Korn graffiti on it. It was much further than I had assumed from Praktiker, which is right next to Iulius mall. I arrived at the orphanage and a security guard told me to leave despite my protests and explanations of my permission. I walked to the church which is very close and started getting out my soldering stuff.
A young man named Daniel who is dating J. Lo (if ya know then ya know) asked me what I was trying to do. In broken Romanian, I tried to explain the switch interface I was trying to frankenstein. He told me in broken english and mostly Romanian that he was an electrical engineer and he knew his way around a soldering iron. I thought well this is my lucky day. He made short order of the project and needed me no more than to hold some wires straight and help direct the connections I wanted. He even took apart the USB cable to get some thinner wires so that I didn't have to go find new ones (the ones I had brought and used in the previous project were about 10 times too thick). The process took most of the FHE time and I vaguely remember the girls coming in periodically to ask us to join their activities. This is what I came to do and it seemed like a miracle at the time that I would find someone so skilled at this type of thing just hanging around. We continued through the project in broken Romanian and it slowly became the clean device I had seen illustrated and had envisioned. We tested it. The thing worked perfectly. I was washed with a wave of gratitude and gave him a huge hug by the end of the hour. It seems apparent that the feelings I had before were premature frustrations and a defense against my vulnerability. Daniel saved my trip from failure. This is no exaggeration.
