Churches and Booze...

Well it’s been a little over 2 weeks … but before I fill you in on anything else, let’s start with the beer. First of all, it’s cheaper than water and usually sold in two liter plastic bottles. Oh, and it’s fantastic! The popular brand in our group is Urs which is Romanian for bear which leads one to hear the phrase “I feel like going bear hunting” in a much different context than I’m used to. There are a handful of other Romanian brands that do Eastern Europe justice as well as Holsten (from Germany and my personal favorite) and the solid standby Hienken both of which are usually on tap and no more than a dollar fifty. Beer is also something that is offered to me nightly with dinner by my host family, much like the French who will have a nightly glass of wine. The only problem I’ve encountered with the beer (and all beverages for that matter) is that they don’t drink it particularly cold. This is due to a fairly prominent belief that drinking cold things will make you sick. So ice cubes, much less the frosted glass, don’t exist in this country (expecting ice cubes trays in the next care package, mom). The other beverage that is offered to me nightly is Tuica (Soi-ka) which is a brandy made from plums. Because my host family gets it homemade it usually comes in a two liter soda bottle. This caused quite the comical scene the first time it was offered to me because I actually thought it was some kind of soda (and happened to be quite thirsty) and slurped down the strong liquor in two gulps. Apparently I made a lovely face. I have actually grown very fond of Tuica and will usually have a few nips with my host dad after dinner. I hope that satisfied your curiosity Dad ;).

But enough about the booze... I’m starting my third week of training and though the last 7 days haven’t been the easiest I can’t imagine being anywhere else. The language classes have been intense and at times stressful but for the first time in my life I feel like I’m actually learning a language (except when I feel like I’m not getting it at all). One of the great parts of training has been what they call Practicum, which is basically our student teaching. We were split into groups of five and sent to Romanian middle and high schools around the town to observe Romanian English teachers teach English then we progressively teach more and more of their class over the next few weeks (that was a weird sentence).  I have to say that our group got an awesome school. We got two amazing teachers to follow and I had an awesome time teaching my first English lesson. The best part about the whole experience happed today with a field trip one of our mentor teachers planed. She invited all her English classes and any of the volunteers who were interested to hike to a monastery on top of a hill outside of town. We left this morning at 10 am with a group of about 12 volunteers and maybe 30 students and had the absolute best time. I have a whole new group of 11-13 year old Romanian friends, we got to see some epic views of the city and saw some beautiful Orthodox artwork.

So all in all, Romania has been pretty fantastic so far, don’t get me wrong there have been some pretty hard days and there are probably more to come, but the good exponentially outweighs the bad.

Now, off to conjugate some verbs...