Universal?

Trying to get to become integrated in my school has been challenging. Besides the obvious language barrier, I also have had trouble getting used to the very different organization systems employed by my school. All-staff meetings are only announced on the day of the meeting and we don't seem to have an easily accessible all-school event calendar. This has created some challenges for me.

As a technical college, my school has practicums throughout the year for each class. That means for 2 weeks each semester classes who have practicum don't attend any of their normal classes, but take part in a practicum specific to their profile. Some of my eleventh graders told me that their practicum was coming up so for planning purposes I wanted to figure out what two weeks I would not be teaching them. After consulting a number a different teachers they told me to check with the school secretaries. When I went to ask the secretaries about how to find out when my classes would have practicum they directed me to a rolled up poster-board sitting on the floor in the corner. After unrolling the poster-board, I discovered that sure enough this was the schedule for the schedule of practicums this semester. Thus I discovered that for the next two weeks I don't teach 11A and 11D.

While my knowledge about what is happening at school may be limited, I have been lucky to make friends with one of the sports teachers, Adi. He has kept me up to date on the teams he coaches and let me practice with the girls handball and football teams. My language skills fail me often, but the language of the body is universal. I must admit that at the end of handball practice I am grateful when all we have to do is sit-up, push-up, squats and laps around the gym. I can stop trying to understand the Romanian commands and just let myself get in the rhythm of doing something physical. I am not sure if I am getting any better at handball, but I am having fun laughing at myself and letting the students laugh at me too.

As I both try to become integrated and observe my school with my American lenses, one thing I am constantly struck by is the lack of school pride in my school. I think there are some teachers doing great things in my school, but so much seems to exist in silos. Perhaps some of this is due to a lack of school calendar and infrastructure, but it also seems that students aren't aware of what is happening in the school and teachers don't know what their colleagues are doing. I have been attending the football games of the boys teams (the girls won't play games until spring) and have been surprised by the lack of school attendance at the games. I thought this might be a good way to see some of my students or colleagues outside of class, perhaps even some parents, but attendance is not quite the same as it would be at an American school sporting event. Each game has about 10-15 boys from school in attendance and often I am the only woman watching.

Regardless of the differences of watching a game at home, I still love watching the game. Today was an exciting day for our team because the boys finally won a game! We played the high school across the street from ours on their home field. Here is are some highlights from today's match, a 2-1 victory.

Right before our first goal of the game. My school is in white.

The boys get a half time pep talk from Adi.

Romanian football footwear.

It was a lovely, but chilly fall day.

Lessons Learned

One of the things we were told over and over again during our pre-service training was to not compare our experiences with other volunteers because it is an easy way to feel like a failure. In our current digital age it becomes even more challenging when Facebook status updates seem to rule the day. I have been extremely conscious of trying to chart only my own work rather than compare with my peers. Thus, I am happy to report a little growth last week. The previous two weeks I ended up with only 3 students in one of my Friday 12th grade classes, but last week I am happy to report that I had a whopping 5 students in my class. While this still is not the full class, I am closer to getting half the class to attend!

I am working on making my classroom a little more inviting. The previous volunteer at my site left a U.S. map and my mom sent me a Washington state map and some Seattle postcards. I am also working on getting more postcards from across the U.S. to display for my students.

Trying to think about my Peace Corps experience as a whole thus far also proves very difficult. I find myself only thinking of a few encounters that I have had of late. I thought I would share these to help share a little abut what I have learned about Romania.

I tutor a six year old boy in English and then have conversational practice with his parents each week. The family is from my town, but lived in Belgium for quite a few years. They moved back to Romania because they felt Belgium wasn't a good place to raise their children. In Belgium, they frequently went to parks. They said the parks were full of old people walking their dogs, but never out with their grandchildren. They moved back to Romania so that their children can grow up knowing their grandparents well. I can say that if the weather is nice that I do see lots of grandparents out with what appear to be their grand-kids.

However, there is another side to this. Many parents move abroad to try to get better wages. I have many students with one or both parents living and working in Italy and Spain. Some of my students live with grandparents, aunts, or uncles, but a few also stay alone. I can't imagine what that would be like. I find it hard enough at twenty-nine living alone, I can't imagine doing it at sixteen. I have my students write in weekly journals and I thought I share a passage from one of my students. I asked my students to write about their summer vacations, "One of sad moments, was when my mom left to Italy, to work. I was sad not because almost all of the things she maked, now I need to make; just because I am not used to come back from school and meet only my father and my brother. Now I am speaking with her after two days so it is not so hard to live."

This week I met a woman from Holland who moved to Romania five years ago to do aid work and has been here ever since. She had trained as a psychologist in Holland and didn't enjoy work in Holland. She originally came to Romania during one of her school holidays and fell in love with both the people and country. She helps to run a pretty amazing organization, run by just two women, that I am still learning about. Thus far I have learned that they work proving families with basic needs as well as knowledge in family planning and general hygiene. They help families apply for government support, especially in many cases when literacy is an issue. On top of this they also do sex-ed classes in local school as sex-ed is not in the Romanian national curriculum.

I am still working on trying to integrate into my site. I am able to keep myself busy, but still am working on trying to find the community to become a part of. I have been trying to learn to play handball with the girls' team at my school. The coach know some English and tries to translate for me, but I spend most of the time watching and trying to figure what is happening. Today I think I finally understood that I should play zone defense, but I could also be wrong about this. There is always next week!

Day by Day

I have been head's down for the past couple week trying to get accustomed to the final school schedule and creating lesson plans. I have been struggling to create lessons that work for the extremely mixed levels of my students and that don't bore them. Peace Corps provided some books and manuals to help with lesson planning, but I have found most of the activities geared for younger students. My high school students get bored and distracted quite easily so I have been trying to keep their interest.

I thought for this blog post I would show a little about my daily life now that my schedule has settled down. I didn't quite get photos of everything, but I figure I have two years to get it all!

I usually leave my apartment about 7:45 and walk to school.

Around the corner from my house is a big second hand store where they sell clothes by the kilo. On Monday morning there is a big line of people waiting to pick through the new shipment. Each day the price gets a little lower.

Entering my school campus, students are headed to class.

In my classroom, girls huddle around the heater in the cool mornings.

In the afternoons I have been playing sports with the girls' handball and football teams at my school. I find handball very confusing, but I am slowly picking up the rules. I have also been spending a lot of time cooking. My current favorite thing to do is to roast peppers and them bake them in a crust-less quiche.

The highlight of my evenings are my Skype dates with friends and family. The ten hour time with home difference can be difficult, but it's great to see those who are free is the mornings. Yesterday I had a lovely date with the darling Cecelia and her beautiful mama, Eliza! I love technology.