Danish gathering (Day 11)

Last night we were privledged with meeting our group leader's cousin Ib. Not only did we meet him, but we were invited to his son Jasper's home where he and his fiance Mia had cooked a meal for us. Along with them we also met Tavio and Malena who are brother and sisters, and friends with Ib, Jasper and Mia. When we arrived at Jasper and Mia's home we were greeted with a nice cozy dinner table. Before we ate, Ib had mentioned what he did for work now, after retiring from being a teacher. His stories were quite fasinating, and it was super cool to listen to. Every year Ib travels to Romania, and he stays there for about a month and helps the Gypsy families. When he is over there he will bring anything he can such as clothing, food, backpacks, bikes to give to the families. When he his there he focuses a lot on helping the children of these Gypsies to have a better life, such as having an education, getting glasses, or even a surgery that could better their life. Not only would he do this but Ib also focused on helping building better homes for these people, such as giving them roofs over their house instead of tarps, or adding an addition onto the house to make it bigger. In the process of working with families Ib has been able to bring some people over to hopefully have a better life. Suprisingly those people where Mia, Tavio and Malena. Jasper actually went with Ib sometimes and that is how he met his fiancc Mia. I thought that what Ib was doing was amazing, and I felt like i was BREWing (that's a Concordia saying for Being Responsibly Engaged in the World). I also thought that it would be really cool if we could somehow help in the future by shipping donations of clothing. I was never really aware of the gypsies in Romania, so it suprised me when he was telling stories about his trips.

After Ib shared some pictures and stories, we ate a fantastic traditional meal that Jasper and Mia prepared for us, in which they said it was common to have at Christmas time. The meal was pork, potatoes, sweet potatoes, sauce, and red cabbage. It reminded me of a meal at home, and it was fantastic! The dinner was also a lot of fun, in which we talked a lot about Ib's work, and we got to really know the rest of the gang. It was so nice of them to have invited us into their home, and I was super thankful that Karla had family ties, because a home cooked meal is always the best.
Snipp Snapp Snute!