Wow! Who knew a month would go by so quickly? Things have been moving pretty fast around here and I guess I've been losing track of time. Seem like I owe y'all a few updates.
First of all things with Eli and I are going pretty well. We're going to be spending a week in Rome for New Years and we're really excited about that. This week my American friends and I will introduce her to Thanksgiving. I'm interested to see what she thinks of American pumpkin pie (the Romanian version is a bit different, more of a pastry). Once it starts snowing (December probably) Eli is going to teach me to ski and the week before Christmas we are going to her parents place for a Romanian pig slaughter/ BBQ.
Socially, we've been doing a bunch of stuff. Once a month I go to dinner with a bunch of other expat teachers living in Bucharest and Eli was able to join us the last time. We ended up meeting two Romanian jazz artists and went to one of their concerts a few days later. We've also been able to hang out a bunch with the Americans that work at my school. We've decided to try and go bowling every Friday after school and one of these days we're going to have a board game and beer night (one of the guys I work with brews awesome beer in his apartment). I've been thinking about starting to learn how to barbecue so maybe one day we'll throw a B&B&B party. We've also spent sometime hanging out with Eli's friends from work too (a couple of concerts, a birthday party, and the Opera).
Work has been keeping me pretty busy, as usual. Things have been kind of hectic and stressful trying to manage the Model UN team. It's mostly because I don't have time to meet with the students outside of their lunch breaks and because of scheduling problems with the MUNs we've been looking at. Aside from that though things are going pretty well. Some of my middle school students are going to participate in an international public speaking competition, and things are going smoothly with the debate team (we got invited to join in a tournament in Bratislava in April and I really hope we get to go). My regular classes are also going pretty well, but I know things are going to be a little messed up with hanukkah coming up. We also have a gala coming up in a few weeks so students have been in and out of classes trying to help prepare for it.
Aside from all that things are going pretty well for me. Well except for one thing. I seem to have developed Gamer's Thumb in my right hand. For those of you playing along at home but don't want to click that link, let me explain. I've basically given myself tendentious from playing computer games for long amounts of time which has caused the tendon that connects my thumb to my wrist to go a little pear shaped. While the pain is much better now (thanks to some cream and a brace), this weekend it felt as though I was tearing something in my thumb pretty much whenever I moved it.
I'm pretty much fine though. I just won't be hitching rides or killing giants anytime soon.
Monday, November 25, 2013
Friday, October 25, 2013
Well things sure have gotten busy around here
Looks like it's time for another update. I've gotten pretty busy at school so I haven't been updating as frequently as before, but it's Friday and I don't have any classes today so I've got the time.
Where to start? How about things in Bucharest?
Eli and I went to two film festivals. I forget the name of the first one but it was only showing short films. Most of the films were pretty interesting and for the price it couldn't be beat. Eli and I spent about $10 to watch an entire afternoon's worth of movies on a rainy Saturday. We also attended the Creepy animation night at the Animest film festival.The Animest film festival deals almost exclusively with animated films. The event we attended didn't quite live up to its name but it was pretty entertaining nonetheless. Bizarre would have been a better word to put in the title. You can find a list of some of the films shown here and if you want to watch some of them you can find them on Youtube.
Eli and I also managed to attend a couple concerts. Eli and I both like rock music and there are plenty of clubs with live music here in Bucharest. If one was inclined they could probably find a concert every night. The rock clubs are mostly underground and each of them have their own personality. We also saw some jazz at an outdoor concert on one of the squares. I'd really like to go into the jazz clubs to see how things are there but we haven't found the time yet.
We also attended the first show of the opera season at the national theatre. The opera seems to be a pretty big thing with Romanians, even the younger ones. I was surprised to see that lots of the attendees were under thirty. The venue itself was a pretty classy place, lots of marble and red carpet. It's an older building predating communism I think and while they've maintained it pretty well the age shows in certain ways. Many of the seats were a little broken and things were a bit dusty. Overall though a nice place. The show we were attending was Othello, which I didn't remember being an opera. I'd seen it once before as a student at Armstrong so I was familiar with the story which was good because it was sung in Italian with a Romanian translation projected above the stage. The performance went well and as usual Iago stole the show.
This week I was asked to help chaperone a school trip to an exhibit that was part of the Jewish Film Festival. It wasn't a film but an exhibit centered on the pogram in Iasi during WWII. It was entirely in Romanian but thanks to my students I was able to understand most of what happened. The next day a director of one of the films from that festival came to the school and gave a screening of her movie. It happened during one of my classes and so I got to sit in on it. I learned a couple interesting things about the politics of the Jews going to Israel after WWII but overall I thought the film was pretty boring. I think most of my students thought the same thing.
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
And then the rains came
So for the last three days the weather has been unseasonally bad across Romania. In Bucharest, there were downpours and blustering winds that caused problems all over town. Trees snapped, traffic slowed to a crawl, thousands of umbrellas were destroyed, and a metro station was shut down due to flooding.
It's also about 10 degrees ( in C not F) colder than normal. I've seen lots of people breaking out the winter coats and in the northern areas of the country it snowed. In fact, the road between my girlfriend's house and Brasov (a major city in Transylvania) was closed down due to the ice and snow. Pretty crazy for the beginning of October, huh?
Well that's it for context, let's move on to more personal developments. I'm liking the new apartment a lot but I'm realizing that there's a lot of stuff I'm going to need to buy to make it comfortable and homey. I've made a running list of things to find once my paychecks start rolling in. Some of them are more practical than others (like trashcans and powerstrips for instance) but I'm hoping that I'll be able to get most if not all of it bought within the next few weeks. It's funny looking at this list. It feels really weird knowing that I've bought everything on it at least once (others two or three times) before. I wonder how many more times I'm going to have write lists like this?
Things at school have been moving at a rather slow and jerky pace but I think they will even out soon enough. The schedule of classes has changed every week leaving the kids (and many teachers) in a distracted kind of state. Being that I only have high school classes that means that few if any of the students are taking much seriously at this point. But we'll get there. Eventually. I actually had all of my seniors show to Lit class for the first time this semester. They informed me that it was a fluke and would probably never happen again.
It's a funny situation with them. It's a group of six and they have a huge exam at the end of this year which determines their entrance into university. The test is broken down into three or four parts: Romanian, Math, and one or two optional tests which are subject related. This entire year is focus on preparation for this test which means they take double Math, double Romanian, and then double physics or chemistry (or whatever other subjects they are focusing on). The rest of their classes are pretty much blown off (but they announce it beforehand so it's ok). Lucky me I teach two of the blow off classes, right?
Wrong. I must have grown up or something because the fact that I'm basically babysitting these kids (if they show up) annoys the crap out of me. I've made a great program for this class, and I've worked pretty hard trying to find materials that I thought would interest them (we are reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Persepolis) but it's a discussion based class and it won't work if they won't do the reading. The second class is an American Culture and Civ class which relies much less on outside reading and it's a class I was really excited about but again if nobody shows up what's the point. I'm hoping things will get better as the semester goes on but right now it's pretty frustrating.
The rest of my classes are mostly Business English and one more hour of Culture and Civ (it's a mix of British and American for the 11th grade). The Business English is pretty interesting, although I've never taught it before. I also rewrote about half of the syllabus for those classes so it's like doing a long experiment. I hope it results in good things. It should be interesting at least. I'm partnering up with another teacher for the 9th grade section and I'm working with Junior Achievement in 9th and 10th grade.
Starting next I'll also be running two or three clubs. One of them is a public speaking course for kids in 5-7 grade. The school has a professional public speaker do things at the high school but they asked me to try an introductory thing with the middle school. Should be interesting. I'm also going to be in charge f the Model UN team and the debate team. There's not a whole lot of details for any of these groups because nobody is really sure how things are going to work out. But they will.
It's also about 10 degrees ( in C not F) colder than normal. I've seen lots of people breaking out the winter coats and in the northern areas of the country it snowed. In fact, the road between my girlfriend's house and Brasov (a major city in Transylvania) was closed down due to the ice and snow. Pretty crazy for the beginning of October, huh?
Well that's it for context, let's move on to more personal developments. I'm liking the new apartment a lot but I'm realizing that there's a lot of stuff I'm going to need to buy to make it comfortable and homey. I've made a running list of things to find once my paychecks start rolling in. Some of them are more practical than others (like trashcans and powerstrips for instance) but I'm hoping that I'll be able to get most if not all of it bought within the next few weeks. It's funny looking at this list. It feels really weird knowing that I've bought everything on it at least once (others two or three times) before. I wonder how many more times I'm going to have write lists like this?
Things at school have been moving at a rather slow and jerky pace but I think they will even out soon enough. The schedule of classes has changed every week leaving the kids (and many teachers) in a distracted kind of state. Being that I only have high school classes that means that few if any of the students are taking much seriously at this point. But we'll get there. Eventually. I actually had all of my seniors show to Lit class for the first time this semester. They informed me that it was a fluke and would probably never happen again.
It's a funny situation with them. It's a group of six and they have a huge exam at the end of this year which determines their entrance into university. The test is broken down into three or four parts: Romanian, Math, and one or two optional tests which are subject related. This entire year is focus on preparation for this test which means they take double Math, double Romanian, and then double physics or chemistry (or whatever other subjects they are focusing on). The rest of their classes are pretty much blown off (but they announce it beforehand so it's ok). Lucky me I teach two of the blow off classes, right?
Wrong. I must have grown up or something because the fact that I'm basically babysitting these kids (if they show up) annoys the crap out of me. I've made a great program for this class, and I've worked pretty hard trying to find materials that I thought would interest them (we are reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Persepolis) but it's a discussion based class and it won't work if they won't do the reading. The second class is an American Culture and Civ class which relies much less on outside reading and it's a class I was really excited about but again if nobody shows up what's the point. I'm hoping things will get better as the semester goes on but right now it's pretty frustrating.
The rest of my classes are mostly Business English and one more hour of Culture and Civ (it's a mix of British and American for the 11th grade). The Business English is pretty interesting, although I've never taught it before. I also rewrote about half of the syllabus for those classes so it's like doing a long experiment. I hope it results in good things. It should be interesting at least. I'm partnering up with another teacher for the 9th grade section and I'm working with Junior Achievement in 9th and 10th grade.
Starting next I'll also be running two or three clubs. One of them is a public speaking course for kids in 5-7 grade. The school has a professional public speaker do things at the high school but they asked me to try an introductory thing with the middle school. Should be interesting. I'm also going to be in charge f the Model UN team and the debate team. There's not a whole lot of details for any of these groups because nobody is really sure how things are going to work out. But they will.
Sunday, September 22, 2013
School Days, Protests, and Randomness
So I left y'all a couple weeks ago having just started working at the school. A fair amount has happened since then so I thought I'd write another post.
School officially started last Monday. There was lots of fanfare and more flowers than you could count (seriously one of the teachers had to take a taxi home because of all the flowers she got from her students), lots of singing, and of course speeches. Classes really didn't happen that day but I did manage to meet some of the students I'd be teaching. Tuesday and Wednesday we had classes, but things were still pretty chaotic. there were problems with the schedule for some people (one of my friends has a German class and our Business English class scheduled at the same time) and problems getting used to the school layout for others (I was constantly asking people where this or that classroom was). I was twenty minutes late for one of my classes because I didn't know that the high school classes change time slots after lunch, but things worked out ok in the end. Wednesday was a lot of the same although it seemed like the chaos was calming down a bit. And that's that for school. Being that the school is a Jewish one we had off the last two days of that week (and we get off the last two days of this week too) because of some religious holidays. It was kinda strange only having three days of work but I was busy with other things outside of work so it worked out fine for me.
So what are those other things you might ask? Well let's see I've been busy repacking my stuff so that I can finally move into my permanent apartment. This has been rather a long process but I should be all moved in by the end of this week. Friday was able to see my new place for the first time and drop about 95% of my stuff off in it. I didn't take any pictures because my camera was packed away but I can tell you that this place is huge. It's almost too big for me but I'm not complaining. They still need to fix somethings in the kitchen but aside from that the renovations are complete. It's in a much quieter part of town than where I was living before. My first apartment was six floors up right on the main boulevard in the center of Bucharest which meant that it was incredibly central and close to work but also was incredibly noisy because of all of the traffic. At my new place, the loudest thing I heard was the bell on a kids bicycle.
In the last few weeks I've also managed to get out the house quite a bit.
I attended a couple of the protests about the gold mine at Rosia Montana (that's the Mountain Tomato for all of you linguists at home). There have been protests all over the country for the last month or so. Every night people have been protesting at the university square (eventually the crowd gets big enough to block the street) and on Sunday there was a 15,000 person march through the city. I'm not really going to delve into the causes of these protests here but you can read about them all over the internet. I like this article quite a bit. The vote on this issue was planned for last week but I haven't heard anything about it so I can't tell you anything else about it. I did manage to take some pictures of one of the protests I attended. They aren't that great and there weren't that many people there because we were early but you can see them here.
I did manage to get a group together to try out the new board game cafe the center of town. Some of the other American teachers and I went out one evening last week and played some Settlers of Cataan. We had a good time and were able to meet the owner of the cafe. It was really cool to see a place like that in Romania. I hear there is another one in a different part of town. I'll have to check it out too.
On Monday Eli and I checked out part of the Italian cultural festival that was going on all week. We spent the night in Herastrau park listening to a jazz group from Milan. It was a beautiful night and the band was really good. There was a small Italian market at the festival and I ended up buying a jar of sweet and spicy sauce from one of the ladies there.
And of course I've spent a lot (well not that much by some standards) of time in Old Town Bucharest. It's the social district where you can find lots of good restaurants, bars, and clubs. I've managed to find some great (and cheap) Lebanese and Turkish places along with several British style pubs amid the numerous pretentious bars blasting their music way to loud in their efforts to get some poor souls to sit down and have a drink while their eardrums melt.
That's it for now. I'll write something else soon!
School officially started last Monday. There was lots of fanfare and more flowers than you could count (seriously one of the teachers had to take a taxi home because of all the flowers she got from her students), lots of singing, and of course speeches. Classes really didn't happen that day but I did manage to meet some of the students I'd be teaching. Tuesday and Wednesday we had classes, but things were still pretty chaotic. there were problems with the schedule for some people (one of my friends has a German class and our Business English class scheduled at the same time) and problems getting used to the school layout for others (I was constantly asking people where this or that classroom was). I was twenty minutes late for one of my classes because I didn't know that the high school classes change time slots after lunch, but things worked out ok in the end. Wednesday was a lot of the same although it seemed like the chaos was calming down a bit. And that's that for school. Being that the school is a Jewish one we had off the last two days of that week (and we get off the last two days of this week too) because of some religious holidays. It was kinda strange only having three days of work but I was busy with other things outside of work so it worked out fine for me.
So what are those other things you might ask? Well let's see I've been busy repacking my stuff so that I can finally move into my permanent apartment. This has been rather a long process but I should be all moved in by the end of this week. Friday was able to see my new place for the first time and drop about 95% of my stuff off in it. I didn't take any pictures because my camera was packed away but I can tell you that this place is huge. It's almost too big for me but I'm not complaining. They still need to fix somethings in the kitchen but aside from that the renovations are complete. It's in a much quieter part of town than where I was living before. My first apartment was six floors up right on the main boulevard in the center of Bucharest which meant that it was incredibly central and close to work but also was incredibly noisy because of all of the traffic. At my new place, the loudest thing I heard was the bell on a kids bicycle.
In the last few weeks I've also managed to get out the house quite a bit.
I attended a couple of the protests about the gold mine at Rosia Montana (that's the Mountain Tomato for all of you linguists at home). There have been protests all over the country for the last month or so. Every night people have been protesting at the university square (eventually the crowd gets big enough to block the street) and on Sunday there was a 15,000 person march through the city. I'm not really going to delve into the causes of these protests here but you can read about them all over the internet. I like this article quite a bit. The vote on this issue was planned for last week but I haven't heard anything about it so I can't tell you anything else about it. I did manage to take some pictures of one of the protests I attended. They aren't that great and there weren't that many people there because we were early but you can see them here.
I did manage to get a group together to try out the new board game cafe the center of town. Some of the other American teachers and I went out one evening last week and played some Settlers of Cataan. We had a good time and were able to meet the owner of the cafe. It was really cool to see a place like that in Romania. I hear there is another one in a different part of town. I'll have to check it out too.
On Monday Eli and I checked out part of the Italian cultural festival that was going on all week. We spent the night in Herastrau park listening to a jazz group from Milan. It was a beautiful night and the band was really good. There was a small Italian market at the festival and I ended up buying a jar of sweet and spicy sauce from one of the ladies there.
And of course I've spent a lot (well not that much by some standards) of time in Old Town Bucharest. It's the social district where you can find lots of good restaurants, bars, and clubs. I've managed to find some great (and cheap) Lebanese and Turkish places along with several British style pubs amid the numerous pretentious bars blasting their music way to loud in their efforts to get some poor souls to sit down and have a drink while their eardrums melt.
That's it for now. I'll write something else soon!
Sunday, September 8, 2013
Back to School
I've been assigned to teach three sets of classes in the high school this year. I'll be teaching Business English to 9th,10th, and 11th graders, British and American Culture and Civ to the 11th and 12th graders, and I'll also be teaching 12th grade Lit. It's been really interesting creating the syllabuses for these classes and bouncing ideas off the other teachers who have experiences with these subjects. Because these classes are in the high school, where standards are a bit looser, I have a lot of freedom when it comes to what I'll be doing with the students. I've already completed the semesterly plans for most of the classes, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how things will go once the students show up.
In other news, my girlfriend left for a weeklong business training in Austin, Texas yesterday morning which is pretty awesome. It's her first time in the States, and I can't wait to hear her impressions of it. Meanwhile, I took the weekend to just chill out on my own for a bit here. I looked up some information about language schools that offer Romanian classes, tried out the Japanese place around the corner from my house, and installed Skyrim to see what all the fuss is about. Later I think I might call up some friends and go down the the board game cafe that opened up just down the street and play some Settlers of Caatan.
Monday, September 2, 2013
Beep Beep Burp
So today I got called out by a cop walking back from work (yeah it was my first day but I'll talk about that later, maybe). What the hell were you doing, kid?!?
I get what you're thinking. I must have been doing something pretty horrible to be talked to by a Romanian police officer. Knowing me I was probably kicking babies or smoking crack right there on the sidewalk, maybe causing some light property damage. The usual things. However, this time was different.
You see I was jaywalking or pseudo jaywalking anyway. I (along with thousands of Romanians) do this on a regular basis but today I was informed by a very pleasant lady cop that not only should I pay attention to the red and green lights at the crosswalks for my safety but that also I would get a fine if she caught me doing it again.
Now normally I wouldn't be so happy about being warned by a cop but this instance was unique for me. It reminded me of the time when the Albanian Border guards pulled a guy off the bus to Greece because he wasn't related to the minor he was traveling with and they wanted to make sure he wasn't doing anything shady. It was an instance of cops doing there normal jobs in a region where, to the outside world anyway, cops aren't seen as competent or trustworthy. These were nice moments of normalcy in places not known for it.
These countries aren't the wild west or the European backwater. They're great places full of great people. I just wish more people around the world would see them that way instead of the way they are portrayed in Hollywood.
In other news, I visited some muddy volcanoes this weekend.
Burp!
I get what you're thinking. I must have been doing something pretty horrible to be talked to by a Romanian police officer. Knowing me I was probably kicking babies or smoking crack right there on the sidewalk, maybe causing some light property damage. The usual things. However, this time was different.
You see I was jaywalking or pseudo jaywalking anyway. I (along with thousands of Romanians) do this on a regular basis but today I was informed by a very pleasant lady cop that not only should I pay attention to the red and green lights at the crosswalks for my safety but that also I would get a fine if she caught me doing it again.
Now normally I wouldn't be so happy about being warned by a cop but this instance was unique for me. It reminded me of the time when the Albanian Border guards pulled a guy off the bus to Greece because he wasn't related to the minor he was traveling with and they wanted to make sure he wasn't doing anything shady. It was an instance of cops doing there normal jobs in a region where, to the outside world anyway, cops aren't seen as competent or trustworthy. These were nice moments of normalcy in places not known for it.
These countries aren't the wild west or the European backwater. They're great places full of great people. I just wish more people around the world would see them that way instead of the way they are portrayed in Hollywood.
In other news, I visited some muddy volcanoes this weekend.
Burp!
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
The Opener
Salut, ce face? Amo, c'kemi? Hey, how are ya?
So this is my new blog where I will be chronicling my adventures in Romania as well as recounting stories I should have written about in my Peace Corps blog but never got around to talking about. I'm sure this will also be full of random insights about living as an expat and working as a teacher in Bucharest as well. I'm pretty excited about doing making this new blog (it's something I've thought about for awhile now) and now that I'm fairly settle in here I hope to update it with some consistency.
For now though I'm off to a Roger Waters concert. He's playing in front of the Palace of Parliament tonight starting around 9pm. We don't have tickets but I doubt that will matter much considering the size of the stage.
I'm going to leave you with a picture of the clouds I flew through over the Atlantic on my way to Copenhagen. The clouds were amazing but I wasn't able to get many good shots.
For now though I'm off to a Roger Waters concert. He's playing in front of the Palace of Parliament tonight starting around 9pm. We don't have tickets but I doubt that will matter much considering the size of the stage.
I'm going to leave you with a picture of the clouds I flew through over the Atlantic on my way to Copenhagen. The clouds were amazing but I wasn't able to get many good shots.
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