A beautiful sunrise greeted us this morning. We were up early as Jonathan had to go into town with his dad to work on getting their Romanian health insurance renewed. As residents of the country, they are required to have it. It will be a long day for them, full of paperwork and long lines across multiple government offices. Hopefully he will be back early this afternoon.
I opted to stay home and get some other things accomplished. On my agenda for today is doing laundry, baking bread, cleaning the bathroom, and sweeping the floors. Normally on Thursday afternoons we go over to my in-laws' house, but we may postpone our work over there until tomorrow, depending on when Jonathan gets back. This evening is reading class with Ion. I was impressed last week with how far he's come since I was here last year. It is still a challenge for him, but he is making progress.
Well, I need to go check the fire and get a load of wash started. More later...
12:00pm
When living in a new culture and learning a new language, obstacles can arise at almost any time. Such was the case while making bread this morning. I opened the cornstarch to put into the dough and realized that I didn't have enough. I can't just run to the store to get more, as we don't have a vehicle, my bike hasn't arrived with the shipment yet, and the nearest store is a couple miles away. "I wonder if we have any more..." I knew I hadn't seen any more of that brand in the pantry, but I didn't know if we had any other brands. I looked on the shelves in the pantry, grabbed two bags of white powder that looked like they could possibly be cornstarch, and went back to the kitchen to check the box to see what 'cornstarch' was called in Romanian. Amidon alimentar fin. I looked back at the bags I had grabbed. One said amidon alimentar din porumb ('from corn'), so I knew I could use that one. The other was in French (the beauty of living in Europe) and said farine de mais. Thank the Lord for google translate! :) I turned to my computer and typed it in. 'Corn flour.' Hmm... In Asia 'corn flour' meant 'cornstarch,' but did it here? Or more accurately, does it in France?? I opted for the safer route and opened the amidon alimentar din porumb. I'll have to ask Jonathan about the corn flour...
1:15pm
The bread is cooling, the floors have been swept, the bathroom is shining, and the wash is ready to go to my in-laws' to be dried (we don't have a dryer yet, and depending on the load, it can take our laundry several days to dry on the line running through our unheated attic). Jonathan also arrived back from town. He had a profitable trip, though they didn't get everything accomplished today. They will have to go in another day to finish the process. On the way home Jonathan was able to pick up some silicone caulking for the wood stove in the bedroom. There were a number of large cracks in the mortar that were leaking smoke into the room whenever we had the fire going. Jonathan tried fixing them once with some grout for the stove. It worked well for a few days, but didn't hold up and was cracking and making a mess all over our floor. So after he got home he cleaned out the cracking mortar and filled in the gaps with the silicone. It has to sit for 24 hours, so we may have to run a space heater in there for a little while this evening, but Lord-willing that will solve the problem!
8:30pm
After lunch we walked the 15 minutes to my in-laws' house. It's been pretty cloudy recently, so it was nice to have some sunshine on our way. And while it was chilly this morning (around 19 - nothing like you in the States have been having), it was quite pleasant this afternoon in the 30s. We helped with some cleaning, and Lari and I had our weekly piano lesson. Later in the afternoon we walked over to Ion's house for reading class. When we got there Ion suggested I go in the other room where it was warmer with Lari and Sara, who were having English class. His wife, Mariana, was in there, too, and while I couldn't communicate much, I enjoyed listening to them and learning a few Romanian words along the way. After our classes were over we returned to my in-laws' house for a yummy dinner.
It was a busy day, but a good one. Soon it will be time to head to bed, but first we're going to try to look at some dryers online. Oh, and I found out that corn flour is not the same as cornstarch. I'll have to look up how to use it...
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