Well Friday, our last day on the worksite saw finishing up the scratch coat on the exterior walls, and framing up the last of the second floor interior walls to make way for the roof rafters. All that was accomplished and we met our objective for the build.



It was a bittersweet retreat from the worksite however. We have become accustomed to the place, the people and the work.

I for one have learned much from this experience. People of all backgrounds, religious belief, political affiliation, or nationality can rally around a common cause for good. Our team from North America proved this to me beyond a shadow of a doubt. Also, people everywhere are essentially the same regardless of their skin color or their physical features or their language. They live each day one at a time. They work to house and feed themselves and their families. They love, laugh, cry, toil, celebrate, wonder, worship, and care for one another just as you and I. It was a very enlightening experience for me, and I am sure for the others on our team. This adventure will not be forgotten by any one of us in our lifetimes.

We continue to hope and pray for our partner families in Cluj as they look toward beginning a new chapter in their lives by moving into their new homes.

Thank you for following along with us here on the weblog. I have added a number of pictures to the previous posts, so go back and relive it with us with the new images.

Wednesday and Thursday saw the team laying on the scratch coat which will be under the final coats of stucco on the apartment building. Lots of "mud slinging" and trowels flying everywhere. We mixed the "mud" and layed it over a plastic mesh which forms a solid base for the two coats of stucco to come later. The insulation we had installed last week and earlier this week is styrofoam and is a light blue color. We were told today, "Everthing that is blue must be gray" (the color of the scratch coat).



Quote of the day : "I honestly don't remember what I say most of the time, eh?" -- Dennis

Tuesday brings much more framing work at the site. We built 12 second floor interior walls, 3 for each of the 4 units. Lots of sawing and hammering and gophering to keep us all plenty busy. The house is about to really take shape when the roof rafters begin to go in.



The rest of the groups met with our respective families tonight. We all enjoyed our evenings immensely. Let me share one quote from Istvan (Stephen in English) Deac, the father of one of the families. When asked, "Are you hopeful for the future of Romania?", Istvan replied :

"There is a big 'IF'. The 'IF' is our heart...it is not free...it is in a cage."

He feels as though the rapid Westernization of Romania over the past few years has eroded the foundational values of the people here. He is concerned that this will hurt the country's growth in the long run.

We all had plenty to discuss and I am sure were enlightened by our experiences today.

Quote of the Day: "We were like poultry in motion!" -- Bob

Monday's work was more insulation on the second floor of the house as well as a couple more of the interior walls on the second floor which divide the units.

Tonight, one group of us went to have a dinner with one of the recipient families to experience how they live and to meet them and all of their children. They (Jan, Bruce, Cindy) reported that they had a marvelous time and that Jan and Bruce's neighbor in Oregon turned out to be friends of this family from way back. What a coincidence!

The other three groups of us will have our dinners with the other three families on Tuesday.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday ---

This is our break during the build. Our hosts have arranged a tour of a very rural area in the far North of Romania in the Maramures (Mah-rah-moor'-esh) region in the mountains. It is primarily an area of subsistence farming and we also encountered logging. More on logging a bit later.



Our bus arrived late for us on Friday morning due to a clerical error. We finally departed Cluj at around 1 pm and made our way first to Gehrla and stopped for lunch. After lunch was a tour of a local Orthodox monastery at Nicula (Nee-koo-lah) which was very enlightening. One of the priests answered many questions from our group and even showed us a very tiny old wooden church which they no longer use and usually don't allow to be viewed.



Back on the road to Viesu de Sus (Vee-ay-soo deh Soos). We cross into the region at a mountain pass where we stopped for a stretch and some pictures of the fantastic scenery.



Our hosts this evening were two families in this small hamlet of logging workers. Each team enjoys a nice family style meal and a well-deserved night's sleep after an arduous drive of 7 or so hours.



Saturday morning we were fed a very nice breakfast and then boarded an OLD steam powered logging train for a D-A-Y--L-O-N-G journey up into the mountains and back. The train stopped twice for water and twice to be sidetracked. The scenery was just magnificent, and we braved cool temperatures and some rain with cheer. We took provisions for sandwiches and they were quite tasty along the way.





Once we F-I-N-A-L-L-Y got back to Vieso de Sus, we again boarded our bus to Sieu (Shee-oo); our next destination. We were greeted there by again, two families who put us up for the night and fed us a delicious local-styled meal.

Again, we had a very delicious breakfast on Sunday morning and begain a little more touring. Another nearby monastery was even more beautiful than Nicula. There were Orthodox services underway when we arrived and we were able to witness part of the liturgy. The grouds of the monastery were meticulously manicured. The buildings were all made from wood and were timber framed with mortise and tenon joinery and pegged. No nails in sight on any of the buildings.



Next, we went to a small town near the Ukrainian border and visited the "Cheerful Cemetary". Each headstone is handcarved by a local artisan and gaily painted. They depict the deceased doing their job or perhaps even how they died, along with text on the front and sometimes also the back of the headstone to deliver the deceased's own words as their epitaph. We also found a local artisan shop with some woodwork for sale and our guide arranged for a local pensione to feed us lunch.



The long drive home ahead us, we piled back into the bus. Finally around 8:30 Sunday, we arrived back at Hotel Sport for showers, food and relaxing before hitting the worksite again tomorrow.

Quotes of the weekend:

"Is that real water?" -- Jack

"My face is sorta' stuck." -- Dave

"From this trip I have learned a lot!" -- Cristina

Wednesday's workday was a bit lighter. The team was able to finish the floor joists on the rest of the building, then returned to installing the subfloor for the second floor also. Our progress is ahead of schedule so we may have some small delays waiting on materials.

Most of the group has attended an opera this evening. Tosca is playing at the national theater and the tickets were only $3 US. Since we got back a little early today, it was very convenient for all to get cleaned up, a little rest, perhaps a meal and such, before going downtown for the event. We are so lucky to have such diversions during our trip.

We keep on plugging so you keep us in your thoughts and prayers won't you?

Tuesday is more of the same at the work site. Today however, the team began to install the insulation which underlays the stucco. It is a foam board approximately 2 inches in thickness and they are nailed to the outside sheathing of the house. Rather than pay for the roofing felt nails which are typically used to install this sort of insulation, the locals have come up with a much more economical method. Bottle caps!

So to start the day, I, Debbie, Marcelle, and Sal sat on the benches and hammered nails through the center of bottle caps which the Habitat folks had already collected. The bottle cap provides the necessary surface area to securely hold the insulation to the sheathing. Quite ingenious wouldn't you say? Throughout the day, as needed, others in the team would take turns making bottle cap fasteners.

One of the recipient families, the Nicola family created a wonderful hand-drawn banner with their names and a drawing of an animal to represent each member of the family. Tata (Father) was a Bull, Mama was a deer, and on down the line for each child, ending with the youngest as a mouse. They hung it under our bench area. This reminds us who we are working to assist in this endeavor.



Our Canadian team member Dennis was able to take a short bike tour during the workday down to the next closest small town, eh? Dennis is an avid bike rider and seized the opportunity to borrow one of the local's wheels to take a quick turn, eh? He found a small community building an infrastructure and a Catholic church, eh?

Our weather has held up nicely. The heat of the day is upper 70's, low 80's and blue skies with no rain during our work hours as yet.

After our long work day, we walked down to the city center and had pizza night. It was great fun and the leisurely stroll back through a large park made for a nice ending to the day.

Quote of the day: "Who wants to go to the post office, eh?" -- Dennis

Monday finds us working alongside our Romanian friends on the jobsite. This Habitat project is a small apartment building of 4 units, so we are privileged to be working with 4 deserving families. The construction is wood-frame with stucco on the outside, and drywall on the inside with cement roof tiles.



Our work this day consisted of sheathing some interior walls with oriented strand board, nailing up blocks to support the heating ducts and cutting and nailing in the floor joists for the second floor. The first floor walls were already up and sheathed on the outside when we arrived.



Even though this site is quite literally under high-tension power lines, there is no power, so all cutting is done by hand saw. This makes for a slower pace, but no shortage of teamwork since it takes at least 2 people to cut a large floor joist. The studs for the interior walls and sills and such are of course much easier to cut, but with no clamps, it still takes two. One to hold, one to saw.



We were able to do one half of the floor joists on the building this day, and even began to attach the subfloor. They tell us we did three days work in one day, but we think that may be more politeness than actual fact. In any case, it was a joy to meet our new friends and to share a mid-day meal with them.

This night we were treated to a dinner at a restaurant high above town called the 'Panoramic'. The view from above the city is spectacular, and the food was quite good also.

Sunday finds the group (still sans Mel) on a train to Cluj (Clooj), Romania. This 7 hour affair was a great time for us all to get to know one another, and we laughed and joked and told stories and had a big time. During the trip, Dave taught us the Macarena Stretch. :-)



The Eastern plains of Hungary gave way to the rolling hills of Romania about half way through our trip. The Romanian countryside is verdant and beautiful. We passed many farms and orchards along the way. As we approached our destination, the hills turned to mountains not unlike the Blue Ridge from my home state of Virginia.

Once we made it through the mountains, the tracks traced a path toward the valley below and our destination city of Cluj. It is a mixture of the old world European architecture and that of the Soviet era. In the old city center, there are wonderfully ornate buildings, churches and cathedrals. On the outskirts, one finds the high-rise apartment buildings built to house the population during the Soviet era. They are rather shapeless and cold.

Mel met us at the train station here in Cluj. He has been traveling in Europe on his own for a few weeks now and just decided to meet us here instead of waiting in Budapest. Finally our group was complete! With our interpreter Cristina, that makes 15 in all.

Tired from our train adventure, we were treated to a welcome meal fit for a king here at the Hotel Sport, and retired for the evening.



Quote of the day: "I thought you said 'The butter churns fast'" -- Cindy

Let me catch you all up on our progress so far. Saturday, nearly all of us (sans Mel) gathered in Budapest (Boo-dah-pesht), Hungary as our starting point. The culture and history of Hungary is quite interesting and our local Habitat representative, Colleen, was able to give us some interesting demographics and history about the country. There is abundant and beautiful architecture all about the city. The Danube River separates the Eastern from the Western sides of the city. The Buda side and the Pest side as they are commonly referred to.



Our accommodations at the Marco Polo Hostel were dorm style with bunk beds and lockers. We shared these with some German young people also. We were serenaded by thumping music until the wee hours of the morning and then awoken at 5 AM by roudy Germans and Brits in the atrium of the building. Since you use open windows for ventilation, and they were in the center of the building, it all acted as an echo chamber and woke us all up. A long trip coupled with a long walk coupled with a short night's sleep made for some sleepy travelers.

That evening, most of the group went walking to a restaurant downtown and had a wonderful meal. Some then went back to the Marco Polo Hostel, and some of us decided to take in a free concert given by Sting in the Hero's Square. As it turns out 400,000 other people decided that this was a good idea as well. We had an evening of walking trying to find a vantage point as well as pushing through throngs of Hungarians to get to where we could see anything. We never made it any closer than about 3 blocks from the stage but they had 6 or so large video screens to show the action.

A long walk back to the Hostel made for a very LONG day for some of us, but we all agreed it was well worth the fatigue for the story value.

Quote of the day: "Just one more block." -- Dave Kovac

It's officially 11:54 ET Thursday here in Virginia as I begin this post. It's time to go! When I travel, I rarely sleep much the night before. So many details to remember! Excitement abounds! So THAT explains why I am posting at such a late hour.

Our leader Dave Kovac is already on his way, and most of the team will meet up in Budapest, Hungary on June 5th to begin our journey together.

Please keep us all in your thoughts and prayers as we travel.