HI. So I'm coming home in less than 3 weeks and I can't even believe it. This summer has gone by SO FAST. I'm slapping myself for not writing on here more about my experiences at the orphanage and hospital, but I guess it's better later than never, right?? Anyways, going home is going to be the most bitter sweet thing I've ever experienced. Yes, oh my gosh I can't wait to be back. But it also breaks my heart to know that I will never see these children again. It's hard for me to think about leaving them, and it absolutely terrifies me to think that one day I may forget what they look like, their little personality quirks, or how happy they make me. 

Last Thursday was our last day at the kindergarten. To be honest, the kindergarten was notttt my favorite haha. After coming back from our week-long vacation, the school had changed up everything. A lot of the kids had left for a little summer break between starting up again in the fall, so they combined the separate group of kids and a lot of the kids from my group were gone. It was hard adjusting to the new group of kids because they were about a year younger than the ones in my group, and they new about half the amount of english haha. It was really frustrating because I didn't know how to teach these new kids, so finding out they would be closing the school a lot earlier than expected was seriously a blessing sent from heaven haha. 

Now that we have a lot of extra time in the afternoons, the orphanage is letting us come back in from 4-5:30pm to spend more time with the kids. It's not mandatory, but I'm definitely going to be doing that until my last day, which is only two Fridays from tomorrow (what?!!!). 

Over time, I've learned more about the backstories of each of the kids in my room from the workers. I didn't find out until yesterday that pretty much all of the kids in Isolation come from gypsy families. I knew that some of them did, but it was surprising to hear that there was only like 1 or 2 kids that weren't. I've also just been shocked over and over at the depressing stories of these kids. They've been through soo much, and it's so sad to know that it'll affect the rest of their lives. The gypsy culture is so interesting to me, and I don't ever think I'll understand why they would ever abandon their children or abuse them like a lot of these kids have been. 

I've also realized that I haven't written about most of the kids in my room, so I'm gonna write more bios right now!

David: He is in the first room and just barely turned 1 year old! He has down syndrome and is the cutest little boy. It was so fun because they had a little party for him on his birthday. In Romania, they have this tradition for a baby's first birthday where they take a tray and put a bunch of random career-related objects on it. They'll have like a little soccer ball, a toy doctor tool, a pencil, money, cross, etc., and each thing represents a career. They'll put the tray in front of the child, and whichever first three they choose will be their future! Nobody takes it super seriously, and it's just a fun little tradition they do. David chose the soccer ball, a tool, and money, so apparently he's going to be a wealthy mechanic who plays soccer in his free time haha. I thought that was so fun. Anyways, he's such a chill little baby and has the cutest smile. It's so funny because he'll just be in his crib and if you walk up to it and tickle his belly or make him laugh he'll break out into the biggest smile and his eyes will get super squinty haha. It's so cute. He's also really flexible and will fold over in half if you hold him up haha. 

Alexa: She is in the second room in Isolation, and she's about a year and a half. She was born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, so she's constantly moving around and gets really distressed if you don't give her attention. Alexa is funny though because she loves walking around and will walk on her tip toes. She also always has this really confused or concerned look on her face and will jump up and down in her crib like it's a trampoline if she isn't not chosen to be picked up when someone walks in the room haha. I always hear the workers say "Che Alexa??" to her when she's getting frustrated, which just means "What Alexa?" She's so fun and cute to play with and always has so much energy, and she honestly has the cutest little baby voice I've heard and always will say "gah gah." 

Erica: She's in the third room in Isolation, so she's more disabled. She's about a year old, and I didn't hear about her story until recently. Erica usually cries a lot, and it's not just a whining cry to get attention, but it's like a moaning and in pain cry. It's sometimes really hard for Morgan or I to console her when she starts crying. One of the workers told us that she was a totally normal baby until her mother tried to kill her and she went into a coma. Because of that, she now has trouble breathing, eating, she is mentally delayed, and her brain is always in a constant state of pain, like a really bad migraine. She's on the highest dose of pain killers they can give a baby, but she still is in a lot of pain. I absolutely hate knowing that this was caused by her mentally-unstable mother and that she was a totally healthy baby before this happened. Because of this, I cherish every moment that I walk into that room and she's calm and doesn't seem like she's in too much pain. There have even been a few times where she will smile at me for a few minutes when I walk up to her and start talking to her or hold her.

Dorothy: She is in the second room of Isolation and is about a year old. Dorothy has some mental problems and when we first got to the orphanage she was in the first room with all of the little babies. They had her in a car seat where she sat for pretty much the whole day. I was so happy when they moved her to the second room because now she has a bigger crib where she can move around and not be restricted to a car seat! Dorothy also has visual problems, but she's still so darn cute and has the longest legs ever haha. She's so funny to watch in her crib because she's just so content with roaming around in there and moving around in the funniest way. I love picking her up and touching her face because she gets so happy and her smile is so cute. (common theme with these kids, they're smiles are always just SO CUTE.) 

I LOVE THESE CHILDREN. So so sooo much. And it makes every hot walk to the orphanage or every crappy meal we get so worth it to walk into my room and see their smiling faces greeting me. That never gets old.

Kara

HEY. I'm finally finishing writing about my week-long trip! Haha. So our fourth and last stop was VIENNA, Austria. We got there Friday night and stayed until Sunday afternoon when we flew back to Iasi. Being in Austria made me a little homesick and wishing that I was there with my dad since he speaks German and my Oma was born in Austria, but it was so fun being in a place where my heritage comes from.  

On Saturday, we went to the Schonbrunn Palace, which is from the 18th century and has 1,400 rooms. So it's huuuuge. It also has a lot of land surrounding it with gardens, fountains, and statues. It was so pretty! When you get there you pay for each area that you want to go tour. We chose the gardens and the maze. The gardens were so pretty! The maze wasn't too exciting, and took us about 5 minutes to get through haha. But it was still fun! 

After the palace, we were going to go into the main part of Vienna to walk around, but we got a little lost on the way haha. We were trying to use public transportation, but the maps were a little hard to read and we ended up going the wrong way and getting completely confused. By that time we had to head back to our apartment because we still needed to figure out how to print out our tickets for the Mozart concert we were going to that night as well as get ready. Luckily, we found a hotel that let us use their computers to print them out and we found our way into the main part of Vienna. We walked around for a little bit, saw Mozart's house, and went inside the St. Stephen's Cathedral. For dinner, we went to this really good Italian place called Vapiano's! It was a really cool concept. They give you a card and you go up to the different cooks and tell them what you want and you watch them make it, then they add whatever you got onto your card and you pay at the end. The food was so good! We also met up with the other girls in our ILP group since we all ended up in Vienna on the last parts of our trip. After dinner we headed over to the concert hall since it started at 8:15. The concert was amazing! Everyone was dressed up in costumes from that era and the musicians were so good. I love classical music, so I was a happy camper. After the concert, we went McDonald's for ice cream. The other girls told us about this cool fair that was pretty close to us, so we hopped on the subway and went. The fair was interesting because it was pretty much full of drunk partiers haha, but it was still fun to go!

On Sunday, we just had a chill day. We were all pretty tired from the whole week, so we ended up just walking around downtown and exploring a little bit. Our flight left at about 5:30, so we left for the airport at around 2:30 and got back to Iasi around 10:30pm. 

Vienna was so pretty and I fell in love with all of the gorgeous architecture! 

I'm so so so grateful that I was able to go on this AMAZING trip!! I absolutely loved every place that we went, and I definitely want to go back to some of them. This will be a trip that I'll never ever ever ever forget. 

Kara

HI. Okay so the third stop on our trip was PRAGUE, Czech Republic. Let me tell you, Prague is amazing. If you ever have the chance to go, TAKE IT. You will not be disappointed. To be honest, I didn't really think about Prague being all that cool until we started researching it before we went on our trip, and now I can definitely say it's one of my favorite places I've ever been. Also, it was significantly cooler in Prague, which made the whole experience ten times better. If you can't tell already, I'm not the biggest fan of the heat (summer sux !!!!). 

We got to Prague around 10:30 am Thursday morning and then went straight to our apartment. After taking a little break and getting ready, we left to go explore. We stopped at this cool market where they sold a ton of souvenirs and produce. After that, we walked over to Main Market Square. I love that Prague has cute little cobble-stone streets with beautiful buildings in all different colors. We pretty much were dying from it all. In the square, there's a tall clock tower that you can pay like $3 to walk up, so of course we did it. And the view was sooo good. It was just the best view of the whole city and we stayed up there for a little while. After that we walked over to the St. Charles Bridge, which is pretty cool. There are a bunch of vendors scattered throughout and usually some musical performers, but it's also the most popular place for pickpocketing so we all were extra careful haha. We walked around the city on the other side of the river and then walked up to the Prague castle, which is pretty amazing too. When we were all walking down from the castle, we decided to go into this cool Thai massage place that we saw on the way up. We were pretty much going in for one reason only, and that was large tanks of fish they had that eat your dead skin off haha. We've all seen it on TV, but it's illegal in America for some reason. At first I was a little iffy on doing it with the other girls because I'm really ticklish on my feet, but decided to do it anyways because I'm trying this new thing where I stop being a wimp and get out of my little comfort zone. It's going great! Anyways, it wasn't too comfortable in the beginning haha. It felt like little spiders were all over my feet, which as you can probably imagine doesn't feel too good. We paid for 15 minutes, so around the 7 minute mark I started to relax and it was enjoyable! Plus, our feet felt so soft afterwards haha. So if you ever have the chance, do it! Afterwards, we went to dinner and watched the sun set on the river. Such a good day!

Main Market Square

If you haven't gotten the hint: I love architecture. Especially Prague architecture. 

Prague Castle

The next morning, we had to check out by 10 am so we took our stuff to the train station and put it in a locker because our train didn't leave until like 5 pm. We had gotten suckered into buying tickets for a boat tour on the canal, so we went and did that. It ended up being really fun! It was in this cool boat, and there was a guide who told us a lot of history about the bridge and all the buildings. Apparently a lot of movies are filmed in the river because it resembles Venice but it's cheaper to film in Prague. Pretty cool! After the ride, we went back to the square and walked around some more. We also got a traditional treat thing which of course I forgot the name of haha. But they sold them everywhere, and it's like a sweet breaded cylinder thing. We got ours with nutella in the middle and it was so good! Afterwards, we left for the train station. 

On the St Charles Bridge

 Boat ride!

Those cylinder things I was talking about haha

Prague was just unreal and I will definitely make it back there one day! 

Kara

HELLO. Okay so our second stop on our vacation was Krakow, Poland! I feel like this is another place in Europe that's often overlooked, but I absolutely loved it. It's just the cutest little city filled with cute buildings and so much history and I'm so glad we went! 

We took another night train from Budapest to Krakow and got there around 7:30 am. We went straight from the train to being picked up for our Auschwitz tour at about 9 am, so we used the bathroom of a nice hotel that was nearby to get ready. We got some weird looks and I'm surprised they didn't kick us out haha. But anyways, we all really wanted to go on a tour to Auschwitz because we thought it would be a really cool and eye-opening experience, and it definitely was. I don't think I'll ever forget the experience we had there and I will forever cherish it. It felt so surreal to be in a place like that, and I have so much respect for those who had to suffer through that. There was such a spirit there that I can't describe. We had a tour guide who has been doing it for 5 years, and she was so knowledgeable about everything and told some really cool stories. I loved how the whole place was set up. They didn't want to make it seem like a tour, but more of a pilgrimage for those who suffered and died there. Our guide said also said that it's a way of paying respects towards those who suffered and died there by seeing these places and hearing their stories. We went to the camp Auschwitz and then the much bigger camp Birkenau, which is 17x bigger than Auschwitz and just a few miles away. The Nazi's had built this one second to be used purely as a death factory. I'll never forget this day. 

After we got back from our tour, we arrived at our apartment. It was early evening, so we walked over to the Main Square to walk around and get dinner. It was the cutest square! I loved it so much and took a bunch of pictures. We ate at a really good little Italian place for dinner, and then we all got ice cream afterwards. I had read online somewhere to get this ice cream called Lody, and it was super good! We got it twice while we were in Poland. Listen to the internet guys. We were all exhausted, so shortly after that we just went home and went to bed! 

The entrance to the Auschwitz camp

They had a whole wall dedicated to pictures taken of the people there during the camp

This is just a small, small portion of the amount of shoes they had there. It was really sad to see of them sitting there behind the glass, especially the ones that belonged to children.

We arrived at the Birkenau camp and then walked the same 1 kilometer that the prisoners walked from the entrance to the gas chambers.

Just a few of the many living quarters at Birkenau

An example of one of the trains the prisoners would arrive in. There would be tons of people crammed in a little wagon like this.

One of three gas chambers that was burned down by the Nazi's.

Inside one of the living quarters, this one for women. On the day that we went to the camp Poland was going through a bad heat wave and it was around 100 degrees, but all of us felt really stupid complaining about it because of where we were. We were in this building for about 10 minutes, and it was so hot and humid in there we could all barely stand it. The tour guide explained that they put hundreds of women in there and to imagine how hot it would be with that many. I just still can't believe the horrors that they lived through everyday.

The main square in Krakow

The view from our Krakow apartment!

The next morning, we got up and walked over to the Wawel Castle. It's a pretty big castle, and they sell tickets to different parts of it. We decided to go into the State Room and the Dragon's Den. Side note: for some reason Krakow loves dragons. They're everywhere and there are so many souvenirs that revolve around dragons haha. I'm not really sure where it comes from. The castle was really pretty and it was a cool thing to go and see. After that, we walked over to the square and had lunch, then went back to our apartment to pack up since we had to check out by 12 pm. We went back to the train station to check our bags because we didn't want to lug them around for the rest of the day, and we also wanted to reserve tickets for our train that night. For this whole week trip we had bought this rail pass for like $200, which allowed us to take 5 trains within a 10 day period. The only thing is you still have to reserve your spot on a train you want to take, which usually costs around $5 depending on the train. Anyways, when we went up to ticket lady asking to reserve a ticket for the night train from Krakow to Prague she said they were sold out for that night. We kind of freaked out for a minute haha. It wasn't until we asked another informations desk that told us to go somewhere else to ask, and that lady told us we'd have to do a different option. We were definitely relieved, but little did we know what was coming for us haha.
After fixing everything at the train station, we went over to Schindler's Factory. It's a museum based around a factory that was run by a guy named Schindler who pretty much saved a lot of Jews from the concentration camps. He was from Germany, but he treated the people who worked at his factory really well compared to other places. It was a really, really cool museum because it was interactive and was very informative about what was going on in Krakow during WWII and about the Ghetto. I've always been interested in WWII history, but this trip to Krakow made me interested in it even more. After that, we went over to the Jewish Quarter and walked around and then eventually made our way back to the train station.
So about the train situation. The lady told us that we would leave Krakow at 7:45 pm and then arrive at Katowice at 11:20 pm. Then we would leave Katowice at midnight and arrive in Prague at 6:45 am. We got on a bus at 7:45 and thought we like a 4 hour trip ahead of us until we got off. Like an hour later we arrived at a weird train station and realized it said Katowice on it haha. We went inside and looked on the departure board and realized that our train leaving at midnight wasn't even on there, but one leaving at 3 am was. It was currently 9pm, and sitting in a weird station for 6 hours really didn't sound appealing haha. After talking to a information lady who was confused about the what was going on, and talking to the ticket office lady who spoke no english, we figured we'd just go up to the platform and see if there was a train leaving at midnight haha. When we got up to the platform, there were a bunch of people waiting and we figured out that the storm from the night before had caused the train to be delayed. We ended up hanging out for about an hour and a half until it finally came around 1:30 am and we were able to get on. It was a little stressful and it definitely wasn't an ideal situation haha, but we made it to Prague! Sucked then, but now it's just a funny story.

Inside the Wawel castle

Oh heck yeah. That Lody ice cream I was talking about!

Buuut I'm so glad we put Krakow on our list! It was such a great place to go see, and I would definitely live there if I was ever given the opportunity. I loved it.

Kara