Tired, but having a great time

Kathy here...thought I would try and update this blog. We are having a great time. Still adjusting to the time change (they are 7 hours ahead of us). We fall asleep pretty fast at night, but then wake up around 3 or 4 AM and then have a hard time going back to sleep. Brad and I were both awake and just laying in our beds for awhile between 3 & 5 AM before we finally fell back asleep for another couple of hours. We think we are doing fine, then all of a sudden I am sitting here trying to do some school work this afternoon (yes, I am taking my last two classes) and my eyes are so heavy I can't keep them open. All of us did lay down and slept for about 2 hours this afternoon, which felt good at the time, but now it is 10:45 PM and we should be sleeping, but we are wide awake. Well, Brad and I are awake, Beth is sleeping. Kind of crazy that body clock that we have.

We have been doing a lot of walking. I have been wearing my pedometer and yesterday we walked almost 24,000 steps. Today we only walked just over 15,000 steps. Guess that nap this afternoon didn't count for many steps. And we were driven around more today which also means no steps. Oh well, 15,000 steps is a lot more than I get at home most days.

We went to the Botanical Gardens and the Ethnographic Musem. Here are some links to check them out:

http://www.clujonline.com/places_of_interest/botanical_garden.htm
http://www.traveltransylvania.net/en/Cluj_Region/Ethnographic_Museum.php

Very interesting places to visit. So much history here, it's just fascinating. We had a friend of the family named Cristina take us to these places. We could talk with her also as she speaks really good English. Many of the buildings were locked at the Ethnographic Museum, but she discussed with the workers there that we came all the way from America and so then they walked around with us and opened all of the buildings so we could see inside. And then when the workers were explaining the history of the buildings, she would interpret what they were saying for us. Then, we met up with a gentleman that worked there who told us he had not spoken English in 25 years (since High School) but yet he remembered enough words to explain to us how old the homes were and what type of people lived there and he showed us all the different stone and wooden tools and told us what they were used for. I am just amazed at their kindness to us "foreigners" as they call us. Really, everyone has been great!

Brad is going to post some pictures here too from our adventures today. Thanks for all of your prayers for our health and safety. We really appreciate it. We feel so blessed that we could come here and are really enjoying our time (even if our feet and bodies are tired).

Kathy Bouwkamp

Kathy and Beth interviewing each other in the TV studio run by the family friend

Family at the Botanical garden

Entrance into the Ethnographic park

The Romanian and the Foreigner wearing a Sheeps "coat"

We ended the day with Andi and Linda at a local restaurant

We ate outside as the grapes hung overhead