Romanian Classes

Last week we finally begun our official Romanian classes, and I think it's going pretty good! We already know the basics since we been practicing with the host family, and now we are focusing on the grammar to try to get some structure on things... First week in Musetesti I felt like crying a little bit because Romanian is very hard, it is so different from Swedish, but I think I will manage. I actually think we are doing pretty good!

International Day of Tolerance

Yesterday was the International Day of Tolerance.

Tolerance can sometimes be a bit hard to understand, but for us it means that you don't have to approve of what other people are doing, but you have to accept it. This is a very important message to spread in Romania where there is a lot of tensions between people with different cultures. Of course we wanted to mark this day so we organized an activity in our school.

Our poster for the activity, designed by our own professional Luis.

First we watched the movie "The Visitor"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY0FEt3mBog

Then we had some discussions about Tolerance together with the students. It was quite a successful day!

Sick

I haven't updated for a while because I've been busy, but also because I've been sick. Last Wednesday I got some strange stomach pains but I didn't worry to much, I figured it was only nor malwhen you travel and eat a lot of different things in environments you're not used to. On Thursday the pain got worse, the pain came in sharp attacks lasted for about thirty seconds and then disappeared. On Friday it hurt so much I had to hold my breath and after each "attack" I felt like I had to throw up, in the night I also got some fever and next came the donderos donderos. On Saturday afternoon I was so exhausted from spending the night on the toilet and the pain was so bad that I had to go to the hospital. I was not so happy about this... I don't like to go to the hospital in Sweden and honestly I expected the worst from the Romanian one. But I was actually positively surprised! Sure you can't compare the standard to Sweden, but it was good and clean and the staff was nice and seamed to know what they were doing. The doctor thought I had some bacteria in my stomach, so I got antibiotics, some pills for the pain and some drip because I had lose so much liquid. I had to stay for two hours while the drip entered my body, together with some medicine against the bacteria. I am still not fully recovered, the pain comes from time to time, but I'm definitively getting better so I think I will be ok. I guess you have to be sick at least once when you move to live in a rural area in another country, it's part of the deal. 

This is the only picture I have of the hospital, but just so you get an idea!

The Halloween Party

Here's some pictures to summarize the Halloween Party!

Justine, Marina and Britta

Some of the girls from 10th grade

To the right is the winner Alex who dressed up as a Rroma woman

Our mentors Lucia & Violeta

Anna as an indian

Some of the girls

Team Dabuleni in matching colors

My dear IC classmates, this makes me think of JONATHAN! :D

The Doctor Justine, the Little Red Riding Hood and the Toilet Paper Man

Watching 28 Days Later,
and of course we had some technical problems just in time for the scene where the main character is naked because it's ok to show a movie of people getting eaten alive but not to show a naked guy...

Preparations for the Halloween Party

Ok, this was last week, but I've been busy.. This is pictures from preparing the Halloween Party for the 9th and 10th grade. The first pictures are from last Sunday, then some are from last Wednesday and the last ones are from Thursday when we were decorating the Gymnastic Hall.

Making garlands, posters and cutting baths together with some very hard-working 10th graders

Marion, as pretty as usually

Luminita making some not so scary posters

The box for "votes for the best costume", decorated with Luis' very cool recycled bath ;)

Wednesday: Makin some more garlands

Me cutting some paper to hang  in the door opening

Thursday afternoon and we were decorating the Gymnastic Hall, the girls was so helpful!

And some very big balloons!

This day was such a mess, my advice is not to plan a Halloween Party in Romania... The Romanian time is very difficult because it's never in time. They have an expression here going "Se Resolve" (det löser sig), and we really got to experience this during the planing of this event; everything was "it'll be ok", "I'll do it in an hour" or "I'll call someone who knows someone". It was exhausting! The same day as the party we also found out that the heating system in the Gymnastic Hall wasn't functioning, so the hall would be very cold... 

But we made it in the end and we got ourselves a pretty good party.

The office

Here is just some pictures of our office.
The office is located in the school where we work and it's a very good office, except for the fact that we have to share it with the school "therapist"... So we kind of have to adapt to her hours...
But hopefully we will have access to the office at the NGO that our mentors are starting.
And a good thing is that on Fridays the office is all ours

In the corner you can see the EVS board,
where we will post our activities and where students can write their ideas

A good office indeed, but we don't have any inc in our printer, the internet is slow and it's kind of cold... ;)

Congratulations again to our new collegue Luis on his 20th birthday this monday

>We had a smal suprize party for him at our office

Hollywood Boulevard, some new friends and decorations for the Halloween Party

We are back from Muetesti, internet is workning again and we have a new collegue here in Dabuleni. His name is Luis and he is from Portugal, his 20th birthday is tomorrow, he plays guitarr in a very loud punkrock band, reads Kafka and is very very nice! I think our group will be very good, no we are just crossing our fingers and hoping that the last group member will arrive soon.

Here is some pictures to summarize the week!

Party in Craiova, dressing out in the old clothes of the appartment

Fears, strenghts and expectations of the project on post-it

Our favorite Musetesti bar, the one in the living room

Some new arrivals, here is Yasmine from Turkey

Justine, Praise from Uganda and our new collegue Luis from Portugal

Closest to the camera is Sara, also from Portugal,
and in the background is Christi who is working in the project.
This is after some beers I think..!

Money, money, money
We were counting the money for the Halloween Party; a lot of bani

In school on a sunday, doing some decorations with the students of 10th grade
I think we did a pretty good job!

Luis was cold and kept his jacket on even indoors...

Marion cutting some bats

Luminita painting some posters