36 hours until I leave for the airport!!

YIPEE!!
LOL I am so excited and cannot wait to get back to those babies!!

On June 3rd I spoke at the Pigeon Forge Rotary meeting about my past and upcoming trip with Global Volunteers to Romania. Shortly thereafter a friend, who happens to be a Rotary member, called and told me their International Committee would like to make a donation! I had to contact the committee chair and explained a little bit more the types of things I would do with donated money (purchase medicine, wipes, diapers, yogurt, anything the clinic staff and Dr. Delia say that the clinic needs). After playing phone tag for a couple of weeks due to my trip with Emily and the committee chair's trip with his family I finally found out that they had decided to donate $700!! YIPEE again!!
This morning I went back to the PF Rotary meeting and thanked them for their donation and gave them a mini update about things I have learned since my last presentation (i.e., Playtex bottle liners not being sold in Romania). They were very supportive and a couple of members even suggested I spend the entire amount on the airline's extra luggage fee and fill an additional suitcase with bottle liners!
I didn't go to quite that extreme -- I think! LOL However, as soon as the meeting was over I met my sister, Trish, my niece, Hannah, and Emily for a whirlwind ride to Knoxville. Emily had a dentist/orthodontist appointment then we hit the stores!! LOL We bought EVERY box of the Target brand of bottle liners at the West Town Target. Then headed to Babies R Us and bought EVERY box of the original - pull down the sides bottle liners. Then we hit Walmart at Turkey Creek -- they didn't have ANY of the original liners but they had the most precious baby crocs on clearance for $1 each so I bought all of those they had. Then we hit Target at Turkey Creek for more liners. Checked a BIG LOTS for original liners -- no luck... Then Trish ran into Burlington Coat Factory's Baby Depot to see if maybe they would have liners -- SUCCESS!! She grabbed 6 boxes there for less than we had paid anywhere! One last stop at Walgreens on Northshore before heading back to Pigeon Forge.. no luck -- you have no idea how hard it is to find the original baby bottle liners!! We have definitely become a society of convenience!!! How hard is it to pull down the sides of the bag over the outside of the bottle?!
So, all in all, I spent about $400 today on items to take with me to Romania. Some clothing for some of the older babies/children, a couple of cute toys we were unable to pass up, books -- you guys know how I feel about books!! I'll take pictures tomorrow and post them but tonight I just want to fall into bed and turn the lights off!! Not sure how I am going to fit everything in my suitcase and I think Mihaela or Dan will have to help me (and all my crazy luggage) get on the train in Bucharest but I had so much fun today/tonight the exhaustion is worth it!!

One last thing before I head to bed... I am sure some of you are thinking why did she buy all this stuff here to cart over there?!? On my last trip I wanted money to take with me to purchase items the clinic needed -- and that worked out great UNTIL we spent an entire day wandering around Barlad looking for all the things they requested and finding very little!! There is no Walmart in Romania -- Well not in any part of Romania I visited anyway!! LOL If you need something for your kitchen -- you go to the little kitchen store. If you need contact solution, you go to the optometry store (yes, I ran out while in Romania!!). If you need baby bottle nipples you go to the pharmacy (and they don't have 500 nipples like Walmart they might have 10.. so you walk across town to another pharmacy and buy 10 more there and repeat until you have located the 35 or so the clinic needs!!! LOL Again experience speaking!). I am so excited though to take the remaining money and help the clinic out with day to day needs like YUMMY YOGURT!! :-)

Thank you Rotary for voting to make a donation - I promise I'll bring back lots of pictures!! (No comments from the peanut gallery ;-p )