Well it's Xmas eve, and I have just completed cleaning the house in preparation for the carol singers who are expected later today, as tradition dictates I must let them in and feed them.... hmm...and now the girls have both left for Budapest yesterday, I have freedom in the house!!! I hope to be singing carols with the orphan kids from across the street, and then heading to one of my neighbours for some drinks... but as with everything here, plans are 'subject to change' at any time!!!
There is only one topic I will talk in depth about today and that must be the success of the nativity play in the hospital, but first I must give you a brief run down of my week here, as its been too nice not to mention... so hope you are all sitting comfortably..... the snow remains here and so everything looks wonderfully white and great for taking pictures, but practically the entire town is like an ice-skating rink, but once you get used to skating around (without blades) its not so bad. This weekend has been a great build up to Xmas, as Friday night was spent with both the Hadnagy (Hungarian) family in the pub, and with my work colleagues and freinds, we ate a ridiculously huge mixed grill, (I haven’t ate that much since that night in Maloolaba, Australia, where we showed that 'all you can eat place' that we could indeed eat ourselves into unconsciousness). The meal came with several salads for the vegetarians, (that’s Karen, Helen & Karen's fella Tam) and after polishing more food off, in one night than I have ate all week, we all headed to Infinity disco, to work it off on the dance floor... and I have to say it was yet another fun night of bizarre music and even more bizarre dancing from the locals (not out group I assure you!)
Saturday was spent with Helen, Karen, Tam, and our two Dutch colleagues (Jack & Janneke) shopping in the malls of Turges Mures, walking around the beautifully decorated town, eating another lovely meal, and having a sneaky ice-cream in the final mall, like all American teenagers seem to do it the movies!!!And yesterday was another fun day for me, heading back to Turges Mures to buy myself a nice warm coat, and fashionable too, before treating myself to a McDonalds. I then headed home to catch some of my neighbourhood kids playing in a town concert at the 'Castle de Cultura' (cultural house). It was like a young orchestra playing some brass music, & Christmas carols, and they were broadcasting it on the local radio station and on the web.... they were all great and it made for a very Christmas feel to the day...
So to the main event.... Friday's 3 nativity plays in the hospital... in the morning we had the men's performance, with two last minute drop out's but one last minute replacement, so the roles of the wise men were filled by Karen and Janneke. As expected the singing of carols by the watching audience lacked any real enthusiasm, in such an environment as a man's locked psychiatric ward, apart from a handful of men who clearly knew every word of every verse of every song, and shared this knowledge loudly, if somewhat out of tune... Our male 'star' was fantastic singing solo, and Joseph kept to his role of finding a place to stay for Mary and the donkey (yours truly), but proceeded to take total care of baby Jesus, leaving Mary fairly redundant... in the stable... The audience numbers did dwindle as the play went on, but I'll put that down to poor concentration of the audience, and not the performance of our cast...the first afternoon performance was on the upper locked women's ward, where we had no drop-outs, and in fact had a last minute addition to the cast, much to our delight... again the role of the star was performed wonderfully, by a women who has a wonderful singing voice, and pretty much silenced the entire audience whilst singing, and our female Mary, was yanking my donkey tail like it was whip, and she ready to win the grand national (a famous horse race) if she could push me faster, much to the amusement of the audience... the singing on the women's ward's was plentiful and at the end of both female performances additional songs were sung by members of the audience and by cast members in Hungarian too....all the cast reported enjoying the experience and we really hope similar things will continue in the future...
A very pleased volunteer team (me, Lia, Janneke, Jacquline, Helen)Merry Xmas to you all Regards from Romania...
Dan
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