Wednesday

Now that regular classes are over for the 12th graders my Wednesdays are different.  I teach a class of 10th graders at 9:00am and then now have a giant window in my schedule where I used to teach three classes of 12th graders.  

Today I spent a couple more hours in my classroom after teaching to finish grading the final English quiz for two of my 11th grade classes and figuring out their final grades. Next week is last week of regular classes for 11th graders before they start practicum (a month of classes in their profile subject) so next week will mean more goodbyes for me.  For the final question on the quiz I asked students to share some of what they learned in my classes during the past two years. Here are some of the responses I got:

"...she learned us to be quiet and to speack English."
"She gave me a lot of homeworks and this helped me to improve my English writing and reading."
"She is fool of life."
That last one is full of life, I swear.

After finishing averaging grades, I came home and made salsa to bring to some of the mothers at the Foundation.  A few weeks ago I gifted extra seeds that I had left over from planting herbs on my balcony to one of the mothers.  One of the seed packets was cilantro and she asked me what it could be used for so I made salsa to show one use.  Romanian food is not at all spicy so I warned everyone before I shared it.  The responses were pretty awesome.  Everyone generally liked it, but they were a bit overwhelmed by what, for Americans, was very, very mild salsa.  Angela told me she might make it in the winter to warm up instead of making a fire in the fireplace.

While the mothers and I were tasting salsa my dear students were teaching the kids English class in the other room.  Adelina and Oana took over my English kids classes in April and have been going steady since!  They are doing a great job and as you can see the kids love them.

Sharing the Baked Wealth

On Friday I had a long scheduled date with my landlady, Doamna Bintu.  Last year she was forced to retire from her job in a general school and has had more time on her hands.  This has benefited me greatly as she now brings over lots of baked goods and sometimes meals to my apartment across the hall.  I have shared a number of things I baked with her, but there has always been a clear winner for her in the category of "American" baked goods, scones.  I know they are really British in origin, but they get categorized as American since I made them. 

I shared the recipe with her after she asked for it, but when I tried to explain cutting in the butter in Romanian it just confused her, as most baked goods here are made with oil.  Thus we set a date for me to come over and show her how to make them.  She was amazed at how quick and easy it was. When we were done my landlord came into judge our creations and toasted us with wine.  It was a fun afternoon.

Doamna Bintu and the scones

Filling the scones with raspberry jam

Doamna and Domule Bintu

Bakers!

My Morning in Photos

7:45 - making coffee

8:30 - more coffee and breakfast

9:30 - teaching English to the mothers group at the foundation

11:30 - charades in 10C (Cosmina acting out "to pray")

12:30 - group charades in 10A (being "super")

The Marathon of Peace Corps

If Peace Corps service was a marathon, I would be in mile 24.  I am a few days away from my second year anniversary in Romania and two months away from heading back to the United States.  

Last month my Peace Corps group (Romania - group 27) had our close of service conference.  Of our original group of 45 volunteers, we are down to 32.  We received information about what we are responsible for in terms of documenting our service, tying up financial matters in Romania and medical check-out.  We also were given advice about applying for jobs, healthcare stateside and warnings about reverse culture shock.  It was an informative, if a bit stressful, conference.  

Now I am back at my site to teach my last month and a half of classes.  I told my friend Julie about my marathon running theory and she agreed, say, "Yeah, it's like mile 24 is really steep hill."  Yesterday, I had dinner with two fellow volunteers, Julie and Brad, who are both in group 27.  We talked a lot about how exhausted we are and ready to be done.  For me personally, I am exhausted with the cheating and corruption that I witness and am unable to change.  I believe this feeling is somewhat common for Peace Corps volunteers as our service is so individual; especially those of us serving alone in communities.