Severin; My Second Home!

Gotta do a quick check-in post here.... it smells like smoke all in the lobby (which is driving me crazy) and we're about to do breakfast.

Yesterday was a big travel day. We were up before the crack of dawn and on the metro heading to the Athens airport very early. We made it in time (and then some) and spent the next many hours on two very small planes to get to Timisoara. I had a few altercations with the airlines regarding my carry-ons (we had to gate check them and it doesn't work the same here; long story short, my bag was ok) and we had to pay again for our extra luggage (only like $35 a bag fortunately). We went through customs in Bucharest where I again might have had some unfortunate experiences with airport staff (a woman was just like "can you please stop chewing your gum?" after interrogating me at the counter) and the security checkpoint at Bucharest was also ridiculous (they pretty much took EVERYTHING out of my backpack). Not a big deal but kinda strange since that's the first time that's all happened here. We got into Timisoara around 3:00 and then drove a few hours south to Severin, where we arrived around 6:30 for dinner at Rica and Cathy's house. After that, Jerry and Bruce went off to meet with a mayor of some town around here and we went to the orphanage to see all the kids I stayed with last summer. It was freakin' awesome to see them again and see how they had grown up!!! We hung out there for a bit and then when the rest of the group went to the hotel, I stayed at the house for a few hours to just hang out with Sammy and Becky. When Jerry and Bruce got back (around 10:30), they brought me to the hotel and after checking some emails, I pretty much crashed.

Today, we're about to get breakfast and then head to Rogova (yes!!!! love it there!) for quick dental clinics and then we're driving 7 (yep, SEVEN) hours back north to Oraeda to work with the gypsy populations tomorrow. I wish I could post more but I'm out of time at the moment. Since this is primarily a survey trip, that means we hit a lot of places in a very short amount of time. I'm not sure how well my posting will be past this since we'll be all of the place and prob. exhausted but I will try to get a post and/or pics up every day.