Travel in Romania

In Romania, I am part of Peace Corps group 27. In other words we are the 27th group of volunteers to come into Romania. Peace Corps started sending volunteers into Romania in 1991. Group 27 is made up of 44 TEFL+ trainees (we all hope to have the privileged of being sworn in as volunteers in August). We will all be assigned to teach in schools in Romania; the majority of our schools will be in rural communities. In Romanian students are required to take English from 3rd - 12th grade so we be teaching any/all of these levels.

Last weekend our group went on Integrated Field Visits (IFV) to see Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) currently serving in communities in Romania. The goal of the weekend was to see how to become an active member of your assigned community, to see schools where PCVs teach and see secondary projects in action. As TEFL+ volunteers we will be teaching, but also once we become acclimated to our communities we will be asked to take on secondary projects to help meet additional needs in the community. Past volunteers have done a variety of things including environmental education, adult English education, model UN, drama clubs and girls volleyball.

We went on our IFVs with our language classes and our instructors so that we could get tutoring over the 4 day trip. I went on the trip with Chelsea, Aron, Martha, and our instructor, Iulia. We went to Galati.

While traveling in Romania one always need to be prepared for delays and having a back-up plan is always a good thing. Instead of having the one hour stop in Ploiesti we were supposed to we ended up having a three hour stop. It was about 90 degrees with a great deal of humidity. My poor Seattle body was not too happy about this.

Another group was taking a maxi-taxi (similar to a mini-bus/shuttle) to their IFV and the maxi-taxi broke down so they had to wait for another one to come along to pick them up.

Chelsea and Aron on the Personal.

We were very happy when our second train came and we finally arrived in our destination after midnight.

Galati is a port city on the Danube in the Southern part of Moldova. The city is very industry, you can see the port in the distance in the above photo. We had the opportunity to walk in a park on the shores of the Danube that was created during communism. The sculptures below are from that era.

School was out of session for the summer at the school we visited although there were some students who were around to take exams and get results. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of the school. I will try to post more about the visit another time.

In the mean time, our practicum starts next week and we will spend the next two weeks teaching Romanian students English for half of the day. I am very nervous, but working on lesson plans so that I will be prepare. More soon!

Limba Romanâ

Bună prietenii mele!
Hello my friends!

I have been working on gathering a few phrases that I have been learning and using during my first three weeks in Romania. I really appreciate the comments, feedback and requests to my blog posts. Thanks to those of you who requested that a write a few phrases for you.

The above toy appeared on the side of bathtub the other day. I am a little terrified of it as the first couple weeks with my gazda and then it just appeared one day and continues to watch me. This brings me to my first phrase.

(Eu) fac duș. - I take a shower.
A ține pasul. - Keep up the pace. (A Romanian expression.)
De ce nu? - Why not.
Tu ești varză. You are cabbage. (An expression meaning you are slow.)
sare de mare - sea salt
sare mare - big salt
el sare - he jumps
sare și piper - salt and pepper
El/ei este fără sare și piper. - He/she is without salt and pepper. (An expression meaning some is dull/boring.)

More soon!

Buna Seara!

The sunset last night was quite beautiful. After having rain all day long we finally had a few moments without rain at sunset. This is the view from my bedroom window. The row of buildings in the foreground are garages for the a large apartment blok that is just outside of the frame on the right.

My Romanian classes are going a little better this week. My pronunciation still needs quite a bits of work, but I feel that I am understanding sentence structure a little more. I try to make sentences with my gazda at dinner each night; she ends up laughing a lot, but I like getting corrected.

Sticky Adventures

On Sunday afternoon I went outside the city to the country property of my gazda's daughter and son-in-law, Gabi and Nico. Nico's parents live on the property next door and have a pretty sizable garden. I think they are subsistence farmers with chickens, ducks and turkeys in their yard. They have a fairly good size piece of property with a large garden and tiny vineyard where they make wine for the family. They have a tiny house that I imagine must be very hard to heat in the winter.
A lot of the plants that are grown here are similar to those that grow in the Northwest. I saw tomatoes, potatoes, strawberries, garlic, onions, butter lettuce, parsley and dill. They also have apple, peach, and plum trees.

We made a fire in the backyard and cooked sausage and chicken on the fire. It was delicious! However, the best part of the afternoon is that Nico is a bee-keeper and has a lot of hives on the property. He had been harvesting some honey so we had a desert of fresh strawberries and honey still warm from the hive. It was amazing!

This fire eventually became our barbecue; our "charcoal" was dried corn husks.