Some of the stars from English Camp

 First up is Bianca, she was in both of my classes, the one at the school and the one at camp. She was my buddy and translator for the younger group.

 Next up is Meda and Teodora. Meda was also at both classes. These two were always smiling and having a great time.

 Lucas was also at both classes and his mom, Cristina, was also the other English teacher at camp. Even though his mom was there Lucas still managed to have a good time. When he was not at English classes, he could be found on the football (soccer) field or in bed (but not sleeping).

 Behind Teodora are Madalena and Flori. They were some of the better students always willing to try any new thing I managed to come up with. Victor is also in the picture, you can tell how interested he was in what we were doing lol. This was one of the last days and I think he was looking longingly at the cabin, where he might get some much needed sleep.

Last here is Teodora. She was in the older group and full of fun. Here she grabbed my camera and took a selfie with me. You can see how happy I am that she took my camera.

LA Tabera (At Camp)

 This is a view of the camp where I spent the last week. The buildings in the background were where the students and the teachers slept. I did not sleep there, I was lucky enough to have a room to myself on the other side of camp, so at night I slept well. As opposed to the teachers who were up most of the night telling the students to be quiet. It was fun teaching tired students! We had four hours of English each day. There were 19 students and they were divided into 2 groups by English ability. The other English teacher from the school, Cristina, and I taught each group once a day for 2 hours. In the morning I had the younger students and in the afternoon I got the older group. In addition the students had other activities and also a chance for free activities each day. The outdoor auditorium that you see here was where the last night activities were held. We had a Talent Spectacular. It is amazing how much talent the students had. The week went by quickly and I had a great time.

This is a picture of 3 of the older students, Andreea, Aria, and Teodora. They are sitting in the dining hall where we had all of our meals. Breakfast was at 8:30, lunch usually at 1pm and dinner at 7pm. The food was delicious and way more than I should have eaten. I do not remember which meal this was and the basket of bread on the table does not help. In Romania they have bread with every meal. We all sat together at a long table big enough for the 19 students, 4 teachers, the nurse, and for some of the times when she could get free from her other duties, the principal of the school. The camp was located in a forest area about half way between Lugoj and Timisoara. I got back into Lugoj this morning (Tuesday) and back to to where I had internet, in case you were wondering what had happened to me. I will post more about the camp as time permits.

My Students (the first group)

 The first group is the younger students. By the end of the week there were 8 students left. We sang song and played, "What is this?" They were a great group, always fun and willing to try whatever I asked.

The next group is the older students. These students had a better understanding of English. We did things like Verb Tense Study, Morph House, and Repeat After Me. They had the most fun with trying to count the words in a long sentence that I would read to them. They were always very excited when they got it right. In case you were wondering the purpose of counting the words, it is that it improves their listening skills. The older student in front was not part of the class, he was there to give an interview with the newspaper and television reporters who came by to see us. You can see the newspaper interview here http://redesteptarea.ro/profesorul-american-mark-johnson-a-venit-la-lugoj-ca-ambasador-al-limbii-engleze_1838504.html Be warned it is in Romanian. lol

Out and about in Lugoj

 This is a view of the Timis River. This river runs through the middle of Lugoj. This picture is taken from the Iron Bridge. The river is very low right now, the other day I saw a girl and her dog walking in the middle of the river and the water was just up to her knees. In the middle if the river you can see some pipes and things. This is a fountain that was working the night that I arrived in Lugoj. It is lit up and very pretty at night.

 The building in the center of the town is the Police Station. A beautiful building but I think I will just enjoy it from the outside. I have had a view of the inside of many of the buildings here in Lugoj. The people here are warm, friendly, and welcoming.

This steeple is all that is left of an Orthodox church here in Lugoj that was first built in 1402. It is amazing to me to think that there were enough people here in Lugoj 700 years ago to need to build a church. That was 90 years before Christopher Colombus sailed west to find India and ran into the Americas. The steeple was rebuilt in 1726, still 50 years before The United States of America started.

OK finally some pictures

 Here is one of the main areas in Lugoj. They have closed the street to cars and made it into a nice walkway. At the end of this walkway there is a bridge. It is called the Iron Bridge and is over 100 years old. It crosses over the Timis River which divides the town of Lugoj into two parts. In the old days the side I am standing on was the German side, while across the river was the Romanian side. This part of Romania has a heavy German tradition as the Austrian-Hungarian Empire came this far out.

 Here is the Lugoj Town Hall. As you can see it has the look of a German building. It is quite a beautiful building.

One last piece of information. On the street that I showed in the first picture is a cinema named after one of Lugoj's famous citizens, Bela Lugosi. He took his stage name from the city. For Mrs. Nunes' class perhaps you would like to look up and find out who Bela Lugosi is. I have one more day of teaching here in Lugoj and then I have 4 days off and then I am off to camp. I will spend the off days in Timisoara a larger city near here. I will do some sight-seeing there.

Teaching in Lugoj

I would post some pictures today but as I took my first picture of this beautiful church across from the school my battery died. No problem I have a back up, oops it was dead too. Well I did bring my charger but of course it is in the house where I am staying. So no pictures.

Today in class the first group, the early learners, sang the abc song and the days of the week song. We also named many of the things on the room like desk, chair, book and so forth. It was fun as they were interested even when I could see that their heads were hurting from thinking so hard. We practiced answering in complete sentences. Like "This is a book."

The second group are more advanced. We did several exercises today. We did a verb tense study where they create sentences based on a picture that I showed them. We worked on expanding the sentences to make them more interesting. We also did an exercise called This or That where they have to choose one thing and tell you two reasons why. So now they say "I prefer Coke to Pepsi because Coke has more ....... you get the idea. So I am going to a bbq tonight and I promise to charge my batteries so that I can take some pictures tomorrow. If you want a challenge, go and find Lugoj on a map of Romania. I am going on Saturday to Sibiu so look for that one too. Have fun looking. Until later, la revedere (goodbye)

Getting to Lugoj

I was going to post a video from the train ride from Bucharest to Lugoj but it was taking too long to upload the video so just imagine you are looking out of the train window and seeing countryside passing by. There are fields of corn, fields of sunflowers, fields being cut down for hay. Oh look there is a farmer out in his field with his horse and wagon (really on the video you could see one). The train was a comfortable train which is good since the train ride took 9 hours. I told the people in Lugoj that my flight from San Francisco to Amsterdam to the same amount of time. Maybe it is good that the video would not load since it was taken during the only time that the train was traveling fast. Some  of the time it felt like I could walk faster. It was 457 Kilometers from Bucharest to Lugoj, how many miles is that?

Today my students for the first part of this school came to class. There were 30 of them. After the first two hours I separated them into two groups. The are grouped by English language skills. This way we can accomplish more things without waiting for some of the ones with less English skills to catch up. This section will be for one week, so we will see what we can accomplish in 4 more day.
Today I went out to see some of the town of Lugoj. It was some very beautiful buildings. I forgot to take my camera with me so there are no pictures yet. I will take some tomorrow and post them on the blog. The only place I have internet access is at the school where I am teaching.

It is hot here today 43 degrees C. Here is another conversion for you to make, how many degrees is that in degrees F? I will look for answers from Ms. Nunes' class.