Car thieves are bustin my chops.
I the last two weeks we have had three Livada staff member's cars broken into and two ipods and a wallet stolen... the latter of these being mine. Very annoying.

Thankfully there was not much money in my wallet but its much more of a pain to have to replace all my cards. 2 debit and 2 credit cards, my UK drivers liscence and my Romanian Visa ID card, as well as my membership card for a local cash and carry! ouch!

Oh well I hope the thieves had a good night on my donation to their party fund.

So lock your doors everyone... and don't leave anything lying on the front seat or the boogy man is going to get you too!

Fiona and I went on a fantastic date to the movies this Saturday...

with a van full of 7 year olds.

As I said in a previous post, with the help of Fiona's school, we are trying to do special excursions with the kids from the state group homes around Targu Mures. We just want to help them do things that they would not normally be able to do. It is amazing that many things that we have done hundreds of times and don't think twice about are like a trip to the moon for these kids.

So this Saturday it was Open Season in the local cinema and was it ever an event for these guys. Just on the drive to town you would have thought that we were in a new country by the way they were gawking at and talking about everything that they passed, even though they probably pass the same things in the buss on the way to school every day.

And when we got to the cinema they wanted to know what all the lights were for, and what the big white thing at the front was for, and what everyone else was there for... were they all there to see the movie?! Do they really show the movie on that whole big white thing???!!!! Are those people eating popcorn? Can we have popcorn?? They said this soooo loud that the people a couple of rows behind us gave us their popcorn... which we filled each of their pockets with, or their cupped t-shirts with, or what ever they could use to hold the delicious treat.

And then when the movie started they were all awe struck by the size and sound of it. They were completely mesmorized... for about 20mins, until their attention spans were well and truly maxed out.

One of the kids actually found it more entertaining to bang his seat up and down, over and over and over agian, for about the last half hour of the film. (For those of you who were here this summer. This was the kid with the "Weebock" tracksuit)

But they did love it and it's always is amazing to be part of new and exciting experiences in these kids lives... to see the laughter, to see the joy, and to share just a bit in the wonder of a child again.

Loving the "tinternet"

I have to say that I am really appreciating the old world wide web right now and especially the land of blog and the bbc. Although fiona and I are quite far away from most of ouf our friends and our entire family we do feel pretty connected, even to some of the people that we haven't talked to.

Hearing about your lives via emails, catching up on what has been happening on the blog scene and chatting on messenger have been amazing ways for us to stay close to the many people who have had such a huge impact on our lives. In fact we really shoud never say good bye to people again because we can always be "virtually" connected. Yeah ok, maybe thats taking it a bit far.

Of course I would rather chat with you over a "coffee" or have a bit of banter over a few games of pool (substitute your favourite activity),

... but it's great to be able to stay connected with so many people in this 21st century.

A couple of images that stand out in the last week.

This picture was taken last thursday night at The Underground (our thursday night event). We did a photo scavanger hunt and one of the tasks was the old get as many people in the phone booth gag.

It was a brilliant night and a good laugh watching 60 kids run around town making complete fools of themselves, huggung police officers, cramming their entire teams into taxis, posing with local statues, etc... Thats pretty much our goal for this event... oh yeah and introducing them to this brilliant guy named Jesus.






This picture was at a Harvest games day that they had for the kids at Livada's houses. A great day of the classic games that we have all played several times in our lives.

This one was the old faithful bobbing for apples. It was boys against girls and the boys throughly destroyed the girls and got soaked in the process.

I woke up this morning and looked out my window and this is what I saw...


It's only the start of November and winter has arrived in force. About 4 inches of snow fell today and it doesn't seem to be going away in a hurry.

But the wierd thing is that we have skipped autumn. Last week it was about 20C every afternoon and got as warm as 24C a couple of days.

Its a bit crazy driving at the moment but it looks nice. I think I will be building a snowman soon. 

This one's for Mr Nixon. Frissssbeeeeee!..... Breakdance!


I took this picture a couple of weeks ago when we were visiting some group homes.

Csabi was Niall's best mate at camp this summer. If you ever need a lift in life he is the guy that you want to hang out with. The expression that is on his face in this picture is what you always get from him. He literally never stops smiling... and he has been through a lot in his young life.

Fantastic! These are the times I love this job.