Vineri - SUA

So this was the last day. Dan, who also teaches at a high school did the presentation. He's from all over North America, so he was a good rep. If you remember, I met him while helping at the Red Cross thing.

Here's the attentive audience.

Nancy, a woman who lives in a village and teaches English to 3rd graders to 8th graders came to help =) She has been wonderful help to me so far, in advising me on how to live in a village. She was Dan's clicker and supporter, and she came to visit my site.

The kids practiced an American country dance to show US. They tried to dress country too.



Here Dan prepared a game where kids had to stick the 50 states on the US map. We determined Romania is the size of Oregon and it takes over 4 Romanias to go across the US.

Lili (the English teacher) did a poetic thing at the end to symbolize that the world is small and we're alike, etc....a beautiful ending to the week.

Coordinators and guests picture.

Dan and Nancy with our kids =)

Dan is awesome and made 33 PB&J sandwiches with his stash of PB from the states!
As you can see, they loved it!
You can only buy PB in one store now. When I started living in Romania I found it in 2 different stores. I don't know why they don't sell more =(

Joi - Jamaica

We started Joi (Thursday) by having a webcam exchange with students in Japan. My buddy Lyle (a PCV alumi, and he was a committee member for Wildflower =) ), is a teacher for JET there right now. Lili the English teacher was in charge and I think she wants to continue after that exchange. There were bumps...installing internet in the school, getting computers to work, finding a webcam...a microphone, but it worked.

And here our local PCV, who was born in Jamaica, makes her presentation.

I am WAAAAAAAAY BEHIND ON BLOGGIng!! I am sorry!! I will try my best and I hope I can catch up with a reliable sturdy laptop. Anyway:
Jeanelle who's in group 25, she's stated to be an English teacher in a high school. She's actually the teacher to my neighbor Cosmina. We made chocolate chip cookies for Jeanelle about a month ago for extra credit.

Jeanelle has a totally different way of doing presentations. I envy her because I am more of a serious presenter...I am not that comfortable with my audience.
Look at them dancing up there!

Here is Jeanelle peer pressuring kids to come up and dance, which worked.

Me and Mihaela and Jeanelle. Co-coordinators and presenter.

Here is Jeanelle relaxing with the audience.

I think this is a wonderful picture.

Lili the English teacher helped translate because Jeanelle's Romanian isn't great, so here's a few teachers and Jeanelle, oh and me.




It was very interesting learning about the life, food, education system, and more about Jamaica. I found it very interesting and I hope the kids did too.

Miercuri - Romania

So the plan was this: I would find PCVs (Peace corps volunteers) to do a presentation the other days for the respectful countries, but the school: the students and teachers would be in charge of introducing Romania. Which we did on Wednesday and I tried to invite all the presenters and any PCVs in our vicinity.
Parents, grandparents, and family who didn't have work came too!!


Traditional food grandmothers had made: sarmalute (s-ahr-mah-loo-zeh), placinta (plah-chin-tah), and cozonac (koh-zone-nak). One is rice, meat, and other veggies mixed and slow boiled overnight, one is a pastry with milk and cheese with flaky pastry cover, and the last is sweet bread cake. All of it was great!! The best I'd tasted. The flowers weren't edible, they were Fall flowers.


The teachers made a power point presentation about Romania's tradition...and I tried to focus and understand really! Mihaela of Romanian, Geanina of History, and Lili of 2nd grade.
Look at the audience =) and we were guests of honor: The mayor, Emily, Myself, Dan and Nils. The 4 of us are PCVs and the other 3 live near me.

Kids in traditional costumes.

The kindergardeners got out and they came to watch.
Here's the mayor with his cute son.


Here's the mayor's daughter singing. She's the one on the right and the best English speaker in the school. She's also great at Romanian singing. They recited a long poem first, and then they sang about 6-7 songs, and danced the hora to a few of those songs, and later they just danced without singing.

Mihaela taught the poem, the Romanian teacher. The Biology teacher choreographed and taught the singing and dancing.

The biology teacher made me smile cause she's like a ballet teacher, like any that I've known. She has the right attitude and character, and I myself have been in studios and classes from when I was 5-through college, dancing.


Great performance!! Here's some short footage.




There's also the PE teacher, who loves to dance =)
I like this picture to the right =)

That's the director's arm and a few other teachers got in the picture.
The next one grandmothers and parents got in the picture too. Too bad I don't know how we'll get a copy to them.

Next, here is where we ate all that traditional food!
I'm glad the kids got to enjoy the food, and they enjoyed.
We were spoiled, look at our table! We had mamaliga too, which is corn meal boiled, that's the round cheese thing.

I ate only 5. I like these a lot, it has rice!

Here's a picture with the teachers really invovled, and I admire how into the project they got. Sometimes I hear about how teachers don't care, and so I was happy to see how each person ran off with their own ideas on how to make Mihaela's project better. From left to right: Director/4th grade teacher, Biology, Romanian, PE, English/French, Chemistry/Physics, History/Technology, 2nd grade teacher.
Here a teacher goes from 1st-4th grade with the same group of students, and the kids have subject classes from 5th-8th grade.