First Week

My first week in Romania has been full. I have had much to take in with a brain still fogged by jet-lag. I keep my relative state of sanity by reminding myself that I don't have to understand everything this minute, and that there are people to ask if I get lost or confused.

I had the pleasure of going to Brasov for a meeting of the English inspectors from each of the 40+ countries of the nation. The positive aspect of the journey was that I made contact with the five inspectors who I will be working with in establishing teacher training workshops this year.

The down side was that the meetings took place mainly in Romanian. Since my Romanian language skills are still in their infancy I felt like the dog from the Far-Side Cartoon. As her master spoke all she could understand was, "blah blah blah Ginger blah blah blah blah Ginger..." For me it was, "Blah blah blah English blah blah blah problem blah blah blah school blah blah...." This went on for hours as I sat in a hot room, sweat pouring down my face, suffering from a headache, and seated on a hard wooden chair. I would like to add that I had only slept 15 minutes the night before. Also, for those of you that know the dimensions of my gluteus maximus--you well know that hard wooden chairs are not my thing.

At one point the director asked a participant to speak in English. According to Cornelia's translation the inspector replied, "No, I do not want him to know what problems I am talking about."

Meetings around the world are the same. As each speaker stood to make their report (they went in alphabetical order by county--over 40 counties) they would begin by saying..."This will be brief...." This could only be considered true if "brief" is defined as the time it would take for a brain-damaged monkey to memorize the works of Shakespeare and recite them in 10 languages. As each speaker droned on about their particular concerns the rest of the inspectors would begin to chat among themselves out of boredom. Then the speaker would raise their voice over the din. This was echoed by a similar increase in volume by the chatters. Then the head inspector would begin to tap her pen on her desk--like a judge with a gavel--to call things to order. This was summarily ignored. "drone drone drone..chatter chatter chatter-tap tap tap==DRONE DRONE DRONE--CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER--TAP TAP TAP..."

Anyway, I was glad to meet the inspectors that will be my hosts this year. And if some of you are reading this, I wasn't referring to any of you in my description above. Your participation at the conference was quite interesting. : )

The pictures above are of Iasi. I have only been here a day, so I will write more later as I come to know this quite lovely city.