Friday, June 26, 2009

A work surprise


Yesterday Mr. Incredible, Nora Nora, and I arrived at the office to find a surprise parked in the driveway.  It appeared we had visitors...

But WHO could this be- arriving in a beat up Toyota with boats and random paraphernalia scattered about?

Take a look....



Upon closer investigation, I discovered kayak paddles...



And around the corner, the kayak waiting in the grass...


An interesting reading choice lay across the outside table...

But the tell-tale sign.... 

...the obvious give away...



...My Uncle Todd's unicycle!

Its going to be an interesting weekend!

Monday, June 15, 2009

Nora's verbs

point


stretch


lean


look


skip


hop

lunge


grab


chomp

Burrito Review- for Jason!



Mr. Incredible and I are constantly on the look out for the best carne asada burrito in San Diego. We've tried many 'hole in the wall' places all over San Diego- east county to the coast. After meeting a fellow Poway resident on this last Romania trip, I was surprised to hear of a place in town that we hadn't tried yet. His recommendation was high- the best California burritos EVER... awesome guac...etc...etc. So we tried it out!




El Ranchito in Poway has the look of a typical 'hole in the wall' from the outside, but is surprisingly clean and kept up on the inside.




We ordered the famous California burritos and a horchata for me (yum). Austin enjoyed their salsa bar as I watched the steady stream of high schoolers ordering their burritos.

Our food came and we dug in. The Carne Asada was tasty, the tortillas fresh, and the rest of the burrito fillings very good. Mr. I finished his and half of mine eagerly.


As I normally go for the Carne Asada burritos and not the Californias I don't know exactly how this one rates... I guess I'll have to take my brother, the King of California Burritos, for a taste and see what he thinks!



Thanks for the restaurant tip Jason- we enjoyed El Ranchito!

Sunday, June 7, 2009

"Its easier to ask forgiveness than permission"

This was our unspoken policy for the last few weeks...

We had permission to perform musical concerts in the sanctuary of the brand new baptist church in Rosiori.



We did not necessarily have permission to push all the chairs aside and bring out face paint,



carnival games,



relay races,



a magician,



and serve popcorn to orphaned children inside the brand new baptist church.



But I promise we cleaned up really well when it was all over!







Friday, June 5, 2009

Driving

Driving in Romania is a bit of a risk. Most Romanians did not start driving until the fall of Communism. So that leaves us with a country of relatively young drivers. Add to the equation the plethora of farm animals, gypsy wagons, and poor construction projects fighting for road space- it all feels like a giant video game without a reset button.

On our journey down to Rosiori, we were held up by a truck stopped in the middle of the highway waiting to turn left. We were about the fifth car stopped waiting. Our van went from chatting about the country side to being jolted forward as the back window exploded- all in a moment. The car behind hadn't been paying attention and slammedinto out stopped van at full speed. We didn't hear the driver touch his brakes once.



As we staggered out of the van I immediately checked all of our passengers for injuries. A few had whiplash and slowly began 'walking it off' through the wheat fields on the side of the road. My mind quickly then travelled to load of instruments piled in the back of the van. We carefully broke out the remaining glass in the windshield and started to check all the horns. Amazingly everything had escaped damage. Looking back at the dilapidated Dacia that had smashed into us at highway speeds we were stunned to see the crumpled damage it had sustained.



One of the guys retrieved a bag of croissants from the middle of the road- our planned breakfast for the next morning but more importantly, the only real casualty of our cat accident.

We were delayed a few hours filing a police report and insurance claims but thankfully we were able to be back on the road with our van- sans back windshield!

Cooking

One of my responsibilities was preparing lunch and dinner for the Biola brass, percussion, and Feller family. We took the afore mentioned group down to Rosiori for three days of intense ministry while the other half of the band stayed at the team house for their own orphanage ministry. They were long days- but great days! The team played, worked, and performed hard all the time. This resulted in hungry team members. With a lot of help and prep from Jen and Jim, I managed to feed everybody during that time without any sign of food poisoning(!!). In fact the team actually seemed to enjoy my culinary expertise. So mission accomplished- I can cook for twenty hungry brass players!

Lots of music...

So back to my 'gone but not forgotten' post, I decided to add the details of the teasers I gave (and the fact that I have 3 + hours to kill in the Minneapolis airport and free wifi). This trip was part Blast from the Past and part Dream Come True for me. I have a music degree from Biola. The opportunity to perform with my old ensemble, under the direction of my former professor was a great treat for me. Though I currently do not have a musical career, the love of performing with a group of peole committed to making beautiful music, has never left me. And even though the songs were not necessarily great musical works and the ensemble was not completely perfect, it was exhilerating to be a part of it again.

This was also a dream finally come true for me. Over six years ago we began talking about bringing the Biola Symphonic Winds to Romania. At the time I pictured the people who were in the ensemble when I was a student. This dream never came to reality during my days at Biola. In fact it didn't become a reality until many years after graduation. I was reminded during this trip of how God does things in His timing-not necessarily my timing. It was amazing to see how God orchestrated each individual's life to prepare them for ministry in Romania. I couldn't have hand picked a better group of people for this trip.

Another side note- this trip showed me that my days of trumpet playing are not quite over. Though my chops are not in the condition they were in in college, I re-discovered that there's still plenty of ability and talent left in me- at least enough to make a joyful noise!

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

RAIN

Wow! We are in the middle of a HUGE downpour! We had six vans full of people driving across the country. We were less than a few miles from the team house when rain drops hit our windshield and lightning began to fill the sky. We turned on to our street and rain dumped from the sky! Buckets! Sheets! A second spent outside rendered one completely soaked ! Thank GOD we didn't have to drive through the countryside or in traffic on the city in this crazy storm!!!

Monday, June 1, 2009

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes!

A quick summary of today:
We planned on doing our concert/carnival at Peris orphanage all afternoon . However, an hour before we were to leave, a knucklehead orphanage director decided to take the kids to a different orphanage for a publicity stunt in front of news cameras and mucky mucks. We revamped things, went to the muckymuck thing and eventually got back to our original land- just a few hours later. Our concert and carnival went great- kids were happy, the team was great,and at the of the day, I get to say I played Jesus Loves Me for the ambassador to China. (a longer post will be necessary to explain later but for now I need to sleep- 2 more concert/carnivals tomorrow!!!)