Here is Elly with the next exciting instalment of our Eastern Europe Excursion!

Sunday 25^th: James Nairn had our first day in Targu Mures all planned out for us, which was lucky as we had no clue where to start. In fact, his first words to us on Saturday evening when we got off the bus in TG were ‘Are you guys keen for some paintballing tomorrow?’

Us: yeah! Sure!

James: ‘Oh that’s good, cos I’ve already booked you in.’

Sunday was to be spent with us checking out a local church, then paintball, with a beer to finish off the day.

The church service was held in a nearby disused cinema in the centre of TG. It was a pretty nice little church, maybe 100 or so youth and young adults. The band was quite good – they played at least one Hillsong song in Romanian, which was entertaining but sadly we weren’t familiar with it. Accompanying the band was a small group of girls up the front who danced to each song. I did find it baffling at first but I guess I’m not used to seeing dancing in church as a way of worshipping God. The songs provided a handy crash course on Romanian pronunciation which we found helpful, and Humphrey was relieved to see something in Latin lettering (our Turkish church sings songs in Turkish but written in Cyrillic). Even though we all skipped out early (the message was in Romanian and translating was hard), we all felt good in that church. Our impression from the small time we’d been there was that God was definitely present and it was alive and vibrant. Plus being in an old cinema added massive cool factor!

I must now slide quite considerably down the scale of sophistication and tell you about the hereby dubbed ‘Paintball Game of Death.’ For those who have never cared about such things, paintballing is banned in Tasmania, which does cause some grief among people we’ve spoken to. I’ve heard many reasons why it’s banned and it seems that the main culprit is the tough gun laws we have. Which is fair I guess, cos paintball guns do act a lot like normal firearms (in my ignorant opinion). Tasmania does however offer laser skirmish, which nearly everyone I know has played at least once. I guess it might be fun, but I’d never had the opportunity. After paintballing I’m not so sure I’ll ever go laser skirmishing. In a sentence, the general idea of paintball is you have 2 teams and a fort to protect or a flag to capture, if you’re hit anywhere at all with a paintball then you’re ‘dead’ and the game is over when the fort is compromised/flag is captured/an entire team is wiped out. Ultimately, the entire day is over when everyone has run out of paintballs (we had 100 each ~ 1 hour of game time).

So we had the ‘immigrant team’ (us) and the ‘teacher team’ of James and two guys from the school: Rob (a fellow Launcestonian) and Dave (a Texan). We donned camouflage suits and were handed guns and the first game started. I quickly had to learn some basic paintball survival skills: kneeling in mud is ok, how to run while half squatting and holding an awkwardly shaped gun, that the v notch thing on top of the barrel is supposed to help you aim, and that being shot in the face isn’t too bad. Thank goodness for the Darth Vader style helmets we were wearing! We played maybe 6 games altogether, some on a field with obstacles, and some in a pretty little forest that was on a hill.

There were some minor injuries – paintball pellets can be pretty hard after being shot out at high velocity and bruising is quite common – and so we stood around admiring each other’s handiwork.

The most impressive injury was Stu’s which was inflicted by his best friend and fellow team member Humphrey. Stu had inadvertently walked in front of Humf, which panicked him and caused him to reflex shoot from a distance of about 3m, completely shattering the ’5m rule.’ Stu’s still living so it’s all good.

We followed paintball with a bit of hanging out at Dave’s place before dinner of pizza and beer at an Irish pub (yeah, weird, I know) and more drinks at a nice little cafe-bar called Shiraz (which I’ll describe more a bit later).

The rest of our time in Târgu Mureş was spent doing the odd touristy thing or two, but really, only two words sum up how we spent the rest of our time: Shopping and Shiraz.

Lets start with my favourite, Shopping.

We spent hours shopping on Monday and it was great, followed by more on Tuesday, and a little bit more on Wednesday. We had been told many stories from Jon and Margot in the past about how good shopping in Romania was and when we arrived in TG we understood. Even though they are neighbours, Bulgaria and Romania differ in so many ways and the shop selection was just one of those ways. The exchange rate was well in our favour (~ 2.6 Lei to $1) and prices looked about as much as what you’d expect to pay in Australia…until you divided by 2.6 and realised what a fabulous bargain there was. Quality-wise, I found Romanian products just looked and felt a lot more reliable than what was on offer in Bulgaria, plus the fashion was a lot more western. I had already developed a slight phobia about shopping in Bulgaria and after 5 days in Romania I don’t think I’ll ever shop in Bulgaria again if I can help it.

I’m writing this from home in Haskovo now and we just added up how much we spent on clothes. We did quite well and now especially because of scarves and massive down filled jackets we’re ready to face winter!

Of course, the shopping itself would not have been the same if we didn’t have Margot ‘Personal Shopper Extraordinaire’ Nairn taking us around the town. She and I at least had great fun. Both my mums at home in Ausland know just how much I love a good shopping expedition so I was suffering massive withdrawals, and it seemed that Margot needed some good proper girly time too, so we both ended the week with fully recharged batteries and only slightly sore banks.

At night when James was finished teaching we developed the habit of hitting Shiraz.

I’ve already mentioned once that this was the name of a trendy little cafe-bar so don’t be worried that we just spent every night drinking shiraz (incidentally, a wine we haven’t had heaps of luck finding in shops here). Rather, we spent most nights drinking ridiculously cheap beer and cocktails while listening to endless Coldplay on shuffle (not a very imaginative bunch music wise). It was a fun place to hang out and unwind from the terrors of teaching or the tired muscles from endless shopping/touring. We also grew a lot closer to James (he is the older brother of one of our closest friends Andy) which was really good too.

We’ve nearly caught up timewise in our blogging, which is a bit of a relief. I think the next post will most likely be about the touristy things we did in Târgu Mureş, which consisted of exploring Transylvanian Romania – and falling in love with it.

For now, we’re back in Haskovo for the next few days, catching up with Dave and the washing and generally having a bit of a relax, battery recharge and budget check. Maybe even let our readers get a bit of a breather before the Turkey tour onslaught

Bye bye for now!

Elly xx

We recently spent two social evenings in our local mahalle. Just a refresher for all of you not up on our BG lingo, the mahalle is where one would find most of the Millet. In Turkish mahalle means ‘neighbourhood’ but it’s also a euphemism for ‘slum.’ It’s easy to see where they get the idea from, especially with the sewer water running freely down the middle of the main street.

The Millet sure know how to throw a good street party though! Last Tuesday we were invited to a ‘Welcome Baby’ party for a girl that I met during our first week here who had given birth to her first child on Sunday or Monday. As we walked towards the house with Kathryn and Aydin, I commented that the song we could hear in the air was familiar…and getting louder the closer we got. Indeed, the ‘Welcome Baby’ party was well… like a bush doof as Stu put it. Just without the drugs. The music was far too loud for any conversation, there was lots of dancing, a big trestle table was set up for the 40+ men in attendance to sit at and eat and drink and smoke. We were greeted by the new baby’s grandmother, who took us inside to meet him. We were amused that while this big party (there were maybe 200 people milling about) was being held because of the baby, the guest of honour and his mother were huddled in a room at the far end of the house, trying desperately to feed and sleep.

The four of us sat in the baby room; poor Stu didn’t know where to look with all the breastfeeding going on. He chose to stare at the floor until this plan was foiled when the floor became our dinner table and was set with newspaper covered in porn.

David told us afterwards that the party wasn’t really about the new mother, or even the new baby. It was thrown by the new grandmother, but even then it wasn’t about her either. I guess any excuse to party will do!

Tonight (Sunday) we were invited by Mirem to accompany her family to their church meeting. In the past week she had been encouraging (read: badgering) us to memorise the Lord’s Prayer (or Matthew 6:9-13) in Turkish and when we finally accomplished this, she announced her plans to introduce (read: show off) us to her meeting. This was the first time we’d been on a social outing as a friend of a local without David or Kathryn and it felt pretty special!

The meeting was held on the outskirts of the mahalle in the house of a man named Osman (we think, no one actually told us). We opened the meeting by reciting the prayer (Stu did much better than me) and we managed to bring tears to some eyes (in a good way – we don’t think it was because of our wonky pronunciation…). The group then sang some songs; we had been handed a Cyrillic Turkish Bible  which, amazingly, we managed to follow. Osman then read from Hebrews 2 and preached a bit on it, then the group shared prayer requests and ended with more singing and collection. Mirem translated some of it into simpler Turkish and so we had a vague idea of what was going on. The meeting lasted just over an hour and had similarities to western church.

We didn’t mind that we hardly knew a word that was being said, it was quite fun and felt good to be included in a local church like that. Mirem announced before the meeting that we were also coming to a prayer meeting on Wednesday night which should hopefully also be enjoyable.

We welcome a new reader today – Mal. Good to have you on board! More rangas the better.

Have a good one

Elly xx

I can’t believe it’s been 3 months already! Of course, we sometimes think I can’t believe it’s only been 3 months! but I think the former is my usual feeling. I’ve reached the stage where certain memories of home give me a rush of Oh, yeah! We used to do that! On the flipside, some of the things which seemed really weird to us when we first experienced life in Bulgaria seem completely normal now… Still haven’t eaten шкембе (tripe) though.

Homesickness: I definitely experienced this differently to Elly. I never had any sudden realisation that we were ‘stuck somewhere uncomfortable for 12 months!’ – for me it’s been more of a gradual piling up of things that I appreciated at home. The fact that the pile is growing probably means that I’m missing home more now that at any other point of out trip, but really, I’m not yearning to get back. For the most part, I’m finding our lives here quite enjoyable – and in the times that I’m not, I’m at least enjoying the challenge of it. Don’t get me wrong; no one enjoys being out of their comfort zone, but I suppose I have the knowledge that God put us in this crazy situation, and he’s in the habit of putting those who follow him into circumstances where they can be challenged and grow.

Language: it was fantastic to start actual Turkish lessons two weeks ago with a lovely Millet believer named Mirem. I was initially dreading the amount of time Dave suggested as a minimum for language learning: 15-20 hours a week’ – and less and we wouldn’t make much progress. I really couldn’t see where we’d find the time and energy but we’ve managed so far. I think the reason for that is that learning something you can use and benefit from straight away (eg. by communicating with our teacher who has almost zero English!) is very rewarding. Chances are that our spoken Turkish will remain fairly limited (ie. slow and stilted) by the end of our time here, but already we’re enjoying the novelty of being able to follow Dave and Kathryn’s ‘secret’ conversations. Mwah ha ha!

Teaching: this had been going quite well. I think in the last month or so we’ve been getting a bit frustrated with the material – or at least its suitability for Aydin, who requires lots of repetition. Catering it to him is hard work, but we’re getting better at it. I think we’re doing a good job – and so do Aydin’s parents! The student himself… generally enjoys school, but certainly isn’t afraid to tell us if and why we’re boring him!

Free time: at first we spent hours on the laptop corresponding with home, fine-tuning the blog, keeping up with websites we frequented at home… This was a natural reaction to the initial culture shock, but it began to feel a bit shallow and we started to feel bad for not getting more involved with our lives here.

So we threw ourselves into some of the things Dave and Kathryn were doing – various forms of visiting people and/or walking through the mahalle. This was all 100% Turkish language stuff usually on very hot days. And it exhausted me immensely! I suppose on reflection that I’m the kind of introvert who get tired out by social interactions even in my own language and culture, and some of the extended times we spent with people – completely voluntarily, I should point out! – left me tired out and headachey for several days. Sounds wimpy, I know, but give it a go and you’ll know what I mean! We had a good chat with D+K one Sunday arvo and I decided to be more realistic with the amount of intense cross-cultural stuff I volunteered for.

Elly and I both started writing bits and pieces of fiction. This was something I had resolved before we left to get into the habit of doing while in BG and I’m very pleased that I’ve managed to. I’ll tentatively consider putting something on the blog for your perusal at some stage in the future (was that non-committal enough?).

We’ve also spent a lot of time listening to music. One of Elly’s birthday purchases was a nice set of speakers. It’s incredible how good music can sound out of real speakers when all you’ve had for 3 months is laptop in-builts!

The future: we’re looking forward to October when Humf comes to visit us. The plan was to jump in a Lada and drive around BG as well as Turkey, but since Elly and I witnessed a nasty car accident last month we’ve been less keen to drive ourselves (buses are good, here). However we travel, it’ll be awesome! The long, mountainous train journey to Bansko (ski resort) is on the menu – for the scenery rather than the skiing. Lots of planning to do!

Aydin and Kathryn will be visiting Australia in that time to visit lots of specialists and generally to gauge Aydin’s progress. There’s the possibility that D+K will need to move back to Australia for Aydin’s sake. That would be a huge decision – they’ve been here for 12 years.

Elly and I are here to help D+K but also to work out for ourselves what we want to do next. At this stage we’re not feeling drawn to long-term mission – which was one possibility for our future – but we remain open to it. We really admire Dave and Kathryn as well as all the other families we’ve met who are doing amazing work here. We are sure that God is using this time to grow us and that we’ll be more able to engage with whatever he has planned for us when we get back. That’s in May next year, by the way.

Signing off (and handing over to Elly),

Cheers,

Stu.