I woke: Snow Surprise! and last day of school!!

Tuesday morning I awoke to snow. It was snowing; soft bits of dust.

All over...

That morning, was the beginning of a long but festive day.
The day before, I went and saw a class give a Christmas presentation to their parents. They dressed in the appropriate Christmas apparel and presented about the history of Christmas in Romania and sang carols.

Then I went to another school and saw more caroling, and dancing goats dancing to the beat of a drum...and they were tall and were made of trash bags...or they can be made of hay.

The next day! That LAST DAY OF SCHOOL! (okay, not my last day, but the kids')
I saw little kindergartners sing and dance!! So cute! and they had to say a poem too but some can't speak well yet, so it was way cute. P.S. That little girl is a goat, and she was a sad sad little goat who wanted out of the costume. Awww. I give her credit for keeping it on (a brave face) until the very end.



Then scary Santa was bashing on the window from outside and came in to give all the kiddies their gift from Santa. In Romania, there's Saint Nicolas who comes and leaves a gift in your boot on the 6th of December, and then there's Santa Clause who comes and leaves a gift under the Christmas tree on the night of the 24th. Ergo, you need a Christmas tree. In general, people here have sobas/ceramic stoves or a heating unit in apartments (no chimneys).

Those were the small kindergartners ages: 3-4.
THEN: I went to Mastacani and I watched 8th graders read an epic poem about Christmas, and I took lots of pictures. More like I gave "trained" students my camera so I could be in the pictures =)


Muahahahah

Then we were playing in the snow =)

I don't even know if the kids had class...maybe it was recess, maybe not, but oh well, I'm not their teacher.


See! Not the photographer! I'm being photographed!


When it got too cold: Run to the Soba! Warmth warmth!

Pictures pictures with all. What would we do without my digital camera?
,

Kapow! In the head! But I still love the kids.

To top it all off:
The teacher's van slid backwards when at the intersection to the highway.

Instead of lending then a hand, I decided to take pictures. Watching teachers and school principles push a van is funny. I'm terrible.

Let the good times begin! -11C tonight! But there's snow!! Hurray!

A Surprise for ME =)

AWWWWW!!
I was told to go to work on Friday at 1pm to help with an activity. It was a secret though...and since sometimes..lots of times, I have a miniscue more than no idea of what's going on (I've got an amusing example in a following entry) I was like "Sure! See you at 1pm Friday!" (This took place at the end of January)

I show up and vola! It was the Unification of portions of Moldova (the region I live in). I live in the Moldovean part of Romania, NOT to be confused with the Country: Republic of Moldova.

The colors of Romania's flag is Blue, Yellow and Red.
Look!! Read the writing:
"De la Inima la Inima" = From heart to heart =)

It was a rum cake with cocoa cream and pineapples.
The brains behind the operation. The professors (subject teachers of grades 5-8th).
The curly haired history teacher, said she baked it herself from scratch...but I have my doubts.
Lili, the English teacher. said it was just something in thanks for my work with their school. It was an unexpected gesture and I love sweet surprises!. I was touched. I ate the blue section of the cake: the region I live in. It was fun to identify the geographical marks as I was dishing out the cake. =)

I am a lucky ducky volunteer.

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.