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!