sounding smiles: aici pentru tine.

prietena mea, aici este povestea mea.
ha ha. let's pretend i know romanian, ok? it makes me feel better.
anyway. here is my story. this is my life. welp. 2 days of it, anyway. ha. sunday and monday, at least.

here is bright eyed little me, sunday morning at salt lake international.

breanne and me flew together from salt lake to denver, and in denver kylee, rebecca, and amanda joined the party for our flight to frankfurt. looongest flight of my life. and this was where life started to feel real. there's something about being on a plane in which the language most popular is no longer english. haa. also, our steward was hilarious. for the last part of the flight, anyways.

rebecca, amanda, kylee, and breanne.

in frankfurt, about to get on the plane to bucharest.

kylee, rebecca, me, and breanne.

yes, we're fully aware of how cute we are after being on a 10 hour plane ride. and then sitting in an airport in germany for over an hour. luckily since we were just transferring planes, we didn't have to go through passport control in germany. so we just went straight to our gate. then we flew to bucharest, and everything really became real. like, the guys next to me were speaking romanian. except for when they swore. that was english. haa. on this flight we were all split up in different seats, so i thought i'd just sit there. maybe read. uhhh yeah. fell asleep way soon. and would wake up periodically, but then fall back asleep very soon after. like, couldn't keep my eyes open i was so tired. and apparently almost everyone else slept the whole way too. all i could keep thinking about was how foreign it was that it's the middle of the afternoon, but back home everyone was still asleep. explains the tired thing. ha.

then came the fun. ha.

of course i was on the very last row of this plane. and this was our tightest transfer. like, we had almost exactly one hour from the time we were off the plane to when our flight would leave. and we had to switch airlines. and check in. and we definitely don't speak romanian. haaa. it was an adventure. and we had been told that we needed to recheck our baggage in bucharest to get it to iasi, but when kylee was the only one whose bag came out, we talked to the guy and found out they were being transferred to iasi for us. thankfully, despite the deceiving long winding hallways in the bucharest airport, it wasn't really enormously large. so we ran around frantically, rechecked kylee's bag, got our boarding passes. and made it, obviously. it just made me laugh, really. here we are frantic about missing our plane, but things here run on romanian standard time. like, getting our boarding passes, the guy just said 'better hurry. 5 minutes to boarding.' don't worry. that's 35 minutes to leave time. but he was nice and leisurely. and two other employees were right there just chatting and eating. ha. and then the little tram to take us to the tiny plane? yeah. the driver was just sitting back relaxed, and we were the first ones on the tram. tender mercy.

other detail, michael joined for the last flight.

ahhhh. I'M IN ROMANIA. it's still working on sinking in. but the car honks, the occasional sirens, and the odd musty smell of our apartment is helping. ha. oh as well as the minor detail that they speak romanian here. and everyone stares at us. obviously we don't quite fit in. it's kind of freaky in some ways. but it's life. c'est la vie.

also, please don't let me forget to mention.

romania is beautiful! and so green. outside the city, at least.

a few first views of romania:

and iasi!

mostly all of those buildings that look the same--blocs.

the iasi airport looks like an amusement park from outside. ha. so colorful. :)

mario (romanian woman who works for byu to help us) and teo (works at orphanage)

picked us up from the airport, and took us to our new homes!

they're both very nice. and could tell we were all tired and a little out of it. but gave us some of the most important information needed to survive for a couple days. the basics of living, getting into our apartments. all that jazz.