Week 3

Well hello there boys and girls, and welcome to another week of insightful blogging. It has been an interesting week, though that is mostly on the teaching front, and I think I’ve discovered a bit more interesting Romanian culture.

On Monday after coming home from School 4 (the schools here don’t have names but are designated numbers, they also are built off the same set of blueprints, it is an aspect still left over from the Communist times when everyone had to be getting an equal education) I was surprised to discover that a Romanian Orthodox priest had come to our house to, what I think was, either bless the house or purge it of spirits. Anyway he also blessed the people in it, so I was still trying to get my bearings about the place when this heavy set guy came up to me and hit me on the head with a crucifix, before I had the chance to protest he then waved a ‘holy’ twig in my face that was either doused in holy water or Vodka. Anyway as it turned out the priest was an old friend of Rodica’s (my host mothers) oldest sons, so he stayed to talk, all was going well until he turned to myself and my room-mate and asked us our religious preference. So Josh said to him “I’m Jewish”, there was a slight pause before the priest omitted a saddened “Oh”, he then looked at me expectantly and asked the question again. Well I looked him and said “I’m not really a religious person”. Needless to say he didn’t hang around for too much longer.

On Tuesday and Wednesday we began the gruelling task of going to the care centre. Now there is nothing immediately bad about the care centre, it is just the fact that Jenny and I have been asked to prepare some pantomime pieces with the children there. Still not understanding why this is hard, well the kids there are around 5 and 6 years of age, even in Australia teaching children the basics of miming is hard enough, but the other hard thing about these kids is that they speak nearly no English. This isn’t like the schools where the kids speak little English but it is enough for them to understand me without a teacher, these ones need a translator in the room with us. I must say that I’m a little worried about the likelihood of us getting this done.

Another project we have started working on this week is the Plays with the Black Juice group, these are the 18/17 year old drama guys and girls. We are doing 4 plays with them, 3 two people plays and one for five people. It is a lot easier with this group because they can read any English script we give them and give input on their own blocking.

On Saturday we decided to go skiing, now before I start the story I would like to preface it with the fact that I have only been to the snow once in my life (with Cameron Hull) and I’ve never skied or sledded, So we all rugged ourselves up really tight and took the train out to !@#$%^&*( it was all really white and beautiful out there. Now while I was there I took a lot of video so that is where most of the story is going to be told, but this is what you won’t find there. After 3 hours and 34 and a half times falling over (the half time is from when I fell halfway down and caught myself on my poles, this resulted in 10 minutes of trying to leverage myself up), I still hadn’t got the hang of this skiing business, so I thought I’d give sledding a go, I found this easier with Jules’ yellow sled and at one point I went down on a piece of plastic tarp, that was a lot of fun, but also frightening as the tarp would spin you around and end you up facing the wrong way, anyway here is the video:

Okay so there isn’t one up yet, but I promise that by next week I’ll have fixed the problems with my computer and get it up. 

Well that is it for another week, for next week I would really like it if people would leave me any questions they have about Romania in the comments or message me on facebook, I will endeavour to have a fan mail session next week. Well I’m off to do some more writing and eat lunch, then... well who knows what.

Talk soon Jackson
P.s. Good job to everyone with their Uni placing

ROMANIAN WORD OF THE POST:
Gatta: this means stop, it becomes really useful to know as a teacher when you have been ditched by your co-teacher and your class is so loud that the principal is complaining… not that this ever happened to me ;)