Trying to Complete the Cirle

As I mentioned in previous posts, I am coming to the end of the school year.  It feels odd to be winding down the school year with still a month left of service.  Next week my remaining classes will be taking tests so I won't be meeting with them.  I will have one final week with my 10th graders the following week and then I'll be done.  I am trying to make each day count and do a few new things with my students.  

A few weeks ago I assigned a project to one of my 10th grade classes.  I still needed to check their reading and speaking skills before giving them their final grades and I decided to try to be creative about the manner in which I would do this.  Over the course of my time here I have collected quite a few postcards to surround the United States map in my classroom (thank you to Mom and Dad, Aunt Ginny, Simone, Elizabeth, Vicki, Ona and everyone else for sending them). I let all my students choose one of those postcards and then asked them to prepare posters to present to the class about the subject of their postcard.

The class did a great job sharing a little bit about the US cities and states on their cards.  My favorite was the Chicago poster with drawings of hot dogs and deep-dish pizza on it.

So my classroom is now adorned with some lovely posters that I can enjoy for at least another week, but only after I assured them that I would give them back at the end of the year because they wanted to keep their postcards as an amintire, keepsake, of me. They kill me with their sweetness.

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!