Football - American and Romanian

My attempt to organize football games between schools.


Kids came to me, and made a beautiful poster...I took a picture, but I can't find it. Announcing the time and place where we would play American football.

I inherited a bag of flag belts from another volunteer and we put them to good use.

One school has played football with me like 5 times, so they won. 19 pts to 0 pts. The kids understood the rules had fun.

I'm not a football player, so I tried my best to get the rules straight.

9am on a cold Saturday morning. That's how devoted we were.

That kid in the checkered jacket took my bike (I had told him to go away several times because he was being a dickhead/ass while we were trying to play) and f*ed with it until he twisted the tire and messed it up so that I had to walk the bike home. I'm sorry if I'm still bitter, but...

Kitten picture to sooth my anger.

Here was the Sunday (the next day). It was an European football game between the same schools and more students came. One school's color was red and the other yellow.

I made them score cards. They're waving around 5's but no one scored 5 points.

I gave up trying to limit the number of kids that could play. I had talked to: the mayor, the vice-mayor, the chief of police and 3 other cops about having some other adult supervision during that game.....

Most of the kids were good kids that just wanted to have fun.

Some kids helped me out by volunteering to be referees.

Some kids didn't want to get their leather jackets dirty while playing...


We agreed on 20min halves, with a 5 min break in between. I brought 6 bottles of water for the kids from my house, and I bought them a box of cookies.

During our 5 min break, some of the obnoxious boys ran off with the ball I had purchased because no one had brought one. That ended the game. I went with some kids to tell the cops (whom were standing at the other side of the market).

This was the final score. The bad kids all go to the school that had earned 3 points. Kids are kids. I'm sure I'm much more upset at the authorities than the children here, but I think I gave it my best. There's not much more I could have done.

I would like to try this again, but I can't without more community support. I feel bad for the kids that were having fun. It was fun while it lasted.

This took place 2 weeks ago.

Teen magazines: Romania

So I was in the teacher's lounge waiting for the break to talk to one of them, and I saw this magazine so I flipped through it.

What age group do you think the audience is?


So in this magazine I found lots of fun stuff, just like in our pre-teen magazines, but wow, I was pretty...erm...impressed? awkwarded? shocked? speechless after reading the kind of questions I would not see in our pre-teen magazines.

The writers who submitted stories were 12-14 = pre-teens. I guess they're just less conservative here...or it's a patriatical society. Who knows.


Here, I'll translate-ish:

3. How long is a penis during an erection: a.) 30cm, b.)10cm, c.)15cm

4. Brand of female condom...

5. Can you use vasaline to lubricate your condom?

6. When you lose your virginity, your blood smells.

11. A female can't have an orgasm unless you stimulate her clitoris.

Oh my!
(If you want to know the answers the answers are in Romanian and upside down).
Oh my!
12-14 year olds! I'm a conservative old lady I guess!

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.