Picnic by the stream

This afternoon, a number of us took some people from the centre's disabled people's support group out in the minibus, to the countryside, to a park area where there is woodland, plenty grass to rund around on and a beautiful refreshing stream that you need to walk across to get there.  One of the things I've loved most over the last few weeks is to be able to engage far more with the natural elements such as swimming in lake and taking in the scenery.  So now I've been able to do this in Romania too.  It was very hot today, so getting my feet wet was a welcome relief.

No sooner were we across the stream and laid out the blankets, most of us were back in the slightly deeper part of it to paddle around and... well it wasn't my intention when I got in...but to soak eachother as well so that nobody got out untill we had no dry patch left on our clothes.  As you'll see from the pics below, we had a lot of fun playing with the ball, soaking everyone and just generally keeping cool.  After that we settled on the grass for a picnic lunch and then some songs with Jonny and Danny playing guitar, and the drum was in attendance too.  We also found time to play some games with the parachute, which was interesting trying to follow the Romanian instructions, but I think I coped not too badly.  I also had a chance to share my experience of disability with one of the ladies in the group.

It was a very special time once again, largely because it was such a simple thing to do, but yet means so much to the people in the group.  Like the girls I blogged about yesterday, none of these families have cars and they very rarely get out, and when they do they have to face bad attitudes in the streets.  Out there by the stream, they could be away from all that, and just relax and enjoy interacting with others.  It's staggering how affordable such an outing is to us in UK terms.  I'm told that the whole of the centre's transport costs (of which this trip is a tiny part) can be paid for by £10.  Our money could provide infinite numbers of these trips for so many more disadvantaged disabled ople.  There's no big plan to put together or programme or regulations and training requirements, it's simply giving people them the most precious gift you could give, TIME!!  It's a gift that is returned 10 fold by seeing and knowing how much they have enjoyed and appreciated it.