Journal Entries from Scornicesti Trip 2003-2004

In the winter of 2003, Danut and I decided to go on a mission trip to Romania for the winter. The mission trip would be located around the town of "Scornicesti", which is the hometown of former Communist Leader Nicolae Ceaucescu.

Scornicesti is a small town of about 5,000 inhabitants located in Oltenia, one of the poorer "counties" of Romania. Oltenia is known for it's Poverty and Orphanages. In Scornicesti, they have a few factories where they make jeans, and this is one of the main occupations of the residents that live there.

The city is not well kept, and in fact it looks like a city that has gone through a war (though I doubt it has). Romania in general feels like a country stuck in time. If Romanians are reading this, I apologize if I make your city or country sound poor, but it's fact. For the Americans reading this I would like to say that we, as Americans, live in Extreme Luxury. Kids here drive cars and can go eat out at restaurants every day if they wanted to and still have money left over to be well off. The people in Scornicesti have to worry about what they will eat and whether or not they will have heat for the winter season.

One last fact about Scornicesti, I don't know if this changed, but running water for the faucet or bath works for 4 hours every day, 2 in the morning and 2 at night. They are trying to "conserve" water, though most people fill up their bathtubs with water for daily water use throughout the day (probably wasting more water if anything).

Scornicesti has one orthodox church and a christian church which is hopefully completed by now.

Part of the purpose of the mission trip was to help set up the "Zile de Bucurie," which means the "Days of Joy" translated. This Christmas celebration is a 3 day festival held in the Town's Cultural House during the evening hours. The other purpose of the trip was to visit the many Orphanages throughout the country. The visits to the Orphanages was one of the most shocking parts of Romania and changed my life.

I will be entering random journal entries from my Trip to Romania. I never had the intent of sharing these when I wrote them, but I hope they make sense. There might be more personal stuff that I will not include in the blog. Just so you know, the entries have an overall "sad" tone to them.

-mic