Who and Where?

We’re less than 2 months out from travel to Romania. Recently, we learned who our teammates are and where we will be staying once in country. The key to short-term mission trips is flexibility, but this type-A girl is happy to have some structure to the trip ahead of time.

Our team consists of 2 dentists, 3 physicians, 1 PA (that’s me!), 2 nurses, 1 LPN, a pharmacist, a physical therapist student, a professor, and 10 undergraduate students (3 guys and 7 gals). Our hosts in Romania are a married missionary couple, who are native Romanians and who returned after time abroad to reach their native people for Jesus. One of them is a nurse as well.

The two primarily cities where we will conduct clinics are Baneasa and Constanta (on the Black Sea). We may have an outreach to people in the mountains as well.

Baneasa is highlighted in the Northwest part of Bucharest on this map.

Constanta is on the coast of the Black Sea in eastern Romania.

My next payment of $1,000 is due April 1, 2017 and then I will book my plane ticket.

In other news, for preparation, I have been studying common Romanian terms through an app on my phone called Mondly Languages. Each daily lesson consists of roughly 11 words or phrases. Romanian is a Latin-based language just as Spanish and Italian are. Having studied Spanish, I can attest to some overlap among the vocabulary and grammatical structure, which makes aspects of the language easier to learn. However, Romanian also has a Slavic influence, which has proven to make learning some of the words more difficult.

My sister loves Spanish and has some guru tips for learning to speak foreign languages more fluently, which will help with my Romanian study. She has used a program called Italki in the past and recommended I try it. So, the next step to not being completely clueless with the language is to start studying with native speakers who tutor via web cam. I’m excited to get started!