Hey there ... I know I know, Anthony, I thought you love to talk about yourself (no actually, I'm not so vain), why is blogging so difficult? Maybe settling into the routine of the school year has something to do with it. Ah yes, the routine.
After I covered Profesor Popa's classes for three weeks, I was given a new schedule. Whereas before I had 7 classes for 20 hours a week, I now have 17 classes for 17 hours a week, made up from grades 9-12. It is somewhat difficult still to be creative and interesting, especially because some students are out of reach to a large degree (their English is too poor); I hope this changes as my Romanian continues to improve. I do enjoy working with a huge body of students and I am sure it is helpful for many of them. The hours are actually excellent. I can keep some of my night-owl habits as most of the week my classes start after 10. I really haven't had any problems with students either, whether because they are scared to death of their teachers (whom I was told threatened their lives over their behavior towards me) or because they are good kids interested in English. I suspect both reasons share a role to differing degrees.
I also started getting myself organized administratively with homework assignments, semester plans, and projects. I admit, organizing 17 different classes, with different English abilities, and with different teachers teaching from different books is super challenging. Add to it my innate dislike for administration in general, and it has become my biggest challenge. My biggest need is probably a private printer as resources at my school are hard to come by and somewhat expensive. In fact as the winter approaches I have a number of purchases to make.
I still need a nice and warm winter coat along with some good boots. I'd also like to buy a cheap bass guitar while I am here. We will see how this all works out.
I also tried to light my soba recently which was ... a complete disaster. A soba is a ceramic wood furnace. My soba is in the center of my apartment and when I moved in I was told it was only slightly broken and would need minimal repair. Fair enough. I had some men from the school come to my apartment, install some pipes, mud up some cracks and voila. Or so I thought. When Florin came over that weekend and we tried to start a fire, we quickly realized the door wouldn't close, nor would it even seal. To make matters worse, there seemed to be no draft into the main chimney. Thus, my apartment adopted that role. The soba STILL leaks smoke, not to mention the pipes in the bathroom. Ugh. Very frustrating, especially because my apartment smelt like smoke for half a week. Florin's response for the first forty-five minutes: don't worry Anthony, this is normal, this is normal. Thankfully he changed his tune before I suffocated. I bought an electric radiator, but I hope to make this soba problem go away soon. Oh well, at least I am warm for now.
Other than all this nonsense, a few things have happened recently. I went to Iasi last weekend for Kelly's birthday celebration and met up with Matt, Brad, Juli, and my new buddy Ellis. There was some fiery palinca from Maramures, some atrocious "mexican" food (from a restaurant owned by Americans, no less!), many crazy awkward moments, some karaoke (to which Ellis absolutely tore it up!) and a few nice walks around the city.
I went to Vaslui recently to pick up my webcam (thanks, Dad) which works perfectly, so I am now available on Skype. Also, my schedule is such that I can pick up packages from Vaslui every monday, wednesday, and friday so feel free to send something directly to my address. If you didn't get my address, please email me for it (tonydejoseph@gmail.com).
A few nights ago I was at the Mr. and Mrs. show here in town put on by the highschool students. In fact, I was on the jury (and I should include, I got a big cheer when introduced ;) ). My favorites didn't win unfortunately, but it was still a good show. There were songs, dances, the reading of tongue twisters, skits, and challenges, with performances between each test segment. There were some excellent performers (and some shabby ones) that night. I went out a beer afterwards and listened to people speak Romanian, which I enjoy and is good for me.
There is something very interesting about being around people chatting in another language and only getting bits and pieces. I am at the point now that my brain separates all the words and I know most of them, it's just working on putting them altogether now and then making sense of them. One thing that I was intrigued by before I moved here was the idea of having to live with a certain level of ambiguity in everyday life. It sure has been interesting. I learn to fill voids of non-understanding with, "Yes", "Sure", *smile and nod*, or when I understand most of the sentence, I give an acceptably vague answer that I'm pretty sure will work in that circumstance. Don't get me wrong, I have had plenty of conversations in Romanian that I walk away from feeling great, but it entirely depends on the situation. For instance, my language ability increases 5 fold when I have a glass of wine in me and I am speaking with a non-English speaking Romanian. It decreases the same amount when I wake up and walk out my door and some strange old guy blabs some question to me super fast. I know I seem super obsessed about the language but communication is one of the most important things to me; most other things I value come directly from the ability to communicate well and successfully.
Ok, enough of that, the Paramore CD I'm listening to just ended so I'm done for now. La revedere, folks.
