Back home

So for any of you that are still reading this I have returned to the United States of America. I got home on Thursday night after a long (20 hour) flight. I am at work now, having gotten the keys to my classroom, and have started to do the things necessary to get the new school year off to a good start. To all of you who have read this I want to say thanks. I enjoyed writing it again, but it is much more enjoyable knowing that I am not just writing it for myself but there are actually people out there reading it. I have not decided whether to keep blogging, maybe about my class this year, or not. Time will tell. During the summer there is more time for things like this. Talk with you all again.

Mark

At the Seaside

I got the chance to go to the seaside here in Romania. To the city of Constanta. I have been there without internet so that is why there have not been any posts lately. I stayed in a pensione (like a bed and breakfast without the breakfast) in an area called the Vacation Village. It was fun. Here is a picture from the beach at Mamaia. As far as you can see are beach chairs. These are rented by the day. When you walk out there, people are waiting for you. They will also set up an umbrella for you. This is the view from my beach chair.
Here is a picture from the water looking back at the beach. This beach is one of the prime vacation spots for Romanians, although many of them are beginning to travel to Turkey or Bulgaria for the beach. So here i am standing knee deep in the Black Sea.
Here is my set up on the beach. See the nice umbrella that they placed for me. It was a nice day and I managed to stay in the umbra (Romanian for shadow) most of the time. The guy who set up the umbrella was nice enough to take this picture.
And last, Captain Ahab was heard to scream from his grave when this image was sighted emerging from the water. If you heard on the news that the Great White Whale was spotted at Mamaia beach in Romania this is the image that sparked the rumors. But I do believe had there been sunflower planted on the beach they would have all turned their faces toward me instead of the sun. I will post more from the beach in the next few days. I am back in Bucharest and counting down the days until I return home. Talk with you all soon.

Mark

The people of Roman

I thought I would share with you one of the families that have taken me into their hearts and homes. This family has taken me on long car trips each of the weekends to show me some of their country. This is Viorel. He is the one who has done all of the driving, taking me to many wonderful places here in Romania. He is one of the students in my afternoon class, and is working hard to learn English. Here we are eating tochitura at Hanul Ancutea (not sure that is spelled right) but it means the Inn of Anucta. The food was delicious.
This is Corina, Viorel's wife. She is also one of my students who attend the afternoon class. Here we are in front of some of the souvenir shops at Bicaz Gorge( the place that reminds me of Yosemite). She is my English translator for the group and makes sure that I know what is going on and takes care and worries about me.

And last but not least this is their son Corin. He has come along on both of the trips. He is one of my students in the morning classes. Here we are inside the salt mine at Praid. We are standing on rock that is full of salt. If you look closely you can see the salt running through the rock. The floors are very smooth and slippery. I want to thank this family for taking me into their lives and taking the time to show me around their country.
Talk with you all later.

Weekend visits

During the trips that I took this weekend we saw some storks nesting on electric power poles. They build platforms on these poles for the birds. The birds then bring in all the other material. You could see the mother and the father and once in a while you could see a baby stork. There were many of these nests in this town.
We also visited an underground salt mine in Praid, Romania. They are mining salt from under the ground. The salt is in the rock. What you see her is on of the many huge caverns that have been dug out of the earth. They have turned this area into a health area. People come from all over to spend time here. The people who run it claim that it is very good for people with respiratory conditions. The air is different here underground then it is above the ground. We are almost one mile inside the mountain and more than 400 feet underground. We took a bus for part of the way and then had to walk down about 250 steps. That was not the hard part of course because if you walk down 250 steps to get to this place, you have to walk up 250 steps when you leave.
The last picture is taken from the bus that I took from Roman to Iasi (pronounced Yash). This view is typical of the countryside that you can see here in Romania. If you look closely you can see sunflowers and corn. They tend to plant these in alternating patterns, sunflower then corn then sunflower... The sunflower is used for cooking oil and the corn, among other things for mamaliga. The crops look very good this year, they have had plenty of rain. Well it is time for me to go teach my afternoon class ( even though right now as I type it is 6:10 am in Livermore). Talk with you all soon.

Mark

My classes

Ok first the quiz of the day. Since Mrs. Nunes' class did so well with figuring out the words on the front of the school, tell me what happens at the place in this picture. It is a spalatorie auto. So come on put on your thinking hats and figure it out. There is a special prize for everyone who figures it out.
Now what many of you have been waiting for, my classes. The first group here are the 7 and 8 years old. There were 22 of them in class today. They love to sing the itsy bitsy spider, and 1,2,3,4,5 once I caught a fish alive. These are the ones who will come to me and tell me all their problems in Romanian and then look at me like "of course you understand me you are a professor, you must understand." So take a good look everyone, yep they look and dress just like you Probably many of you looking at this right now are dressed just like this.
And now for the 9 and 10 years old. A smaller group and their English is much better. Again notice any differences? No they look just like you. We are having a great time, they are learning English and I am learning many more ways to make mysefl comprehensible to a non-English speaker. Talk with you all soon.

Mark

My classroom

This is the classroom that I am teaching in while I am here in Roman. Notice the high stage at the front of the room and the teacher's desk placed right in the middle of the stage. Also notice the chair that I have placed on the floor so that I can be with the students. In one of my classes I have 18 students so the semi-circle is rather large. It is very funny when the students need to tell me something, they will come to me and talk to me in Romanian like I understand them. I mean why not all the adults in their life understand them so why not me. Sometimes I can figure out what they want, and sometimes not. But there is at least one universal that I have found. They dance the same way when they really have to go to the bathroom.
This is the hallway outside my door. The area down there houses the computer labs. It is a nice school.
Look out everyone this is the stairway down to the entrance. The students today went running and laughing and talking loudly out the front door. I went down stairs after them and the Director was there. She said everything must be going well since the students were so enthusiastic when they left. I did not tell her that maybe they were just happy to get away from me. I have to go now and teach my afternoon class. Hope you all are enjoying these little pieces of Roman and Romania.

Mark

Teaching day 2

Ok class the quiz for today. Here is a Romanian traffic sign. Can you guess what you are supposed to do when you get to this sign??? Like many other things here they have just borowed it from English. They have "fast food" places. They have stores that are open non-stop. So I hope that you can figure out what that sign means.
Here is another fun one. Across the stree if you look carefully you will see a horse and cart. The villager has brought some things in from his place. But what I find the most intereting in this picture is the sign in front of the cart. You really can not see it but it is the highway sign. This guy with his horse and cart is traveling on European highway 85. A main highway through Romania. So not only do you see horses pulling carts on the road, you see them on the highway.
This is the name of the school that I am teaching at. It is a very nice school. My two classes in the morning are at this school. It is about two blocks from my apartment.
Here is an overall look at the school. It has students from the 1st grade to the 12th grade. There are 1,300 student who attend this school. Luckily I am not teaching all of them. It is located just off the main street in Roman. Well all I have to go and teach my afternoon class. More pics coming. Talk with you all soon.

Mark

Teaching in Roman

Hi all I thought I would post this while I have a minute. I just finished my first day of teaching. I had two classes in the morning and one in the afternoon. The morning classes were at 9 and 10:45 and the afternoon class was at 5. The early class is made up of students who are 9 and 10 years old (just like you third graders who might be reading this) and are very nice students. They have a basic knowledge of English and are very polite. I think maybe they were a little afraid of this teacher from America. When they were gathering before class started they were very shy and sat very quietly. Kind of like the way I wish my class would sit some of the time. When they talked to each other it was in a whisper. I told them that since it was before class it was ok for them to talk to each other. The only time they would talk is when I left the room to see if any other students were coming. It was very cute to watch. We had a good time in class, introducing ourselves and singing a few songs. They also wanted to see pictures of Livermore so I showed them pictures (yes you guys some pictures had you in them). They were very interested in you as you are interested in what they are like Let me tell you, other than the language you all would fit in nicely with this group. Except maybe you would be a little louder. So I guess students around the world are amost the same. My second class was younger students. They were 7 and 8 years old and much more shy and quiet. They was not sure what I was saying some of the time, but there are two twin girls who were born in Ireland who have a pretty good command of English and helped the other students out when they were lost. We sang the alphabet song and a song abouth the days of the week. They liked that a lot and sang along very well. I only had to tell them once that if they did not sing with the group they had to come up and sing alone. You guys who have been in my class will remember that. So again not very different than 1st and 2nd graders at Portola. The last group was made up of adults. We talked and I also had them sing the days of the week song. The were more embarassed that the children but eventually they sang too. I am trying to get internet into my apartment and my hosts have been most accomodating with this effort. I talk with my family in my morning at 6am, which is 8pm in Livermore. It is not much fun getting up at that time and then to add having to get dressed and walk down the street to get to the office where I am typing this now is even more trouble. My apartment is very nice and I guess I will send a couple of pictures showing what it looks like inside so you can see that it is not very different from what we have. The first picture is of my sleeping area and the second is my kitchen. So you can see I am being well taken care of. I will sign off now and promise to send some pics of the students that I am working with. Talk with you soon.

Mark

Welcome to Roman, Romania

Today a nice couple and their son from Roman took me on a tour of some of the local scenery. We went to a place called the Bicaz (sounds almost like because) Gorge. It is an area where there is a river that flows at the bottom of a gorge. As you can see from the pictures the sides are very steep. It reminds me a little of Yosemite Valley, except that it is not very wide, just really steep. In some places it is barely wide enough for two cars to get through. They call it the Romanian Grand Canyon. It is the only place like it in all of Europe, and I got to see it today. My hosts were very kind and spent a lot of time and did a lot of driving just for me. See how nice the people here are? My classes start on Monday. So when you log on Monday morning I should be through with the first day of class. I will have one class at 9, one at 10:45, and on at 5. Each of the classes is for 1 1/2 hours. So I will let you know how it goes.
We went also to a place called Piatra Neamt (with the last t the one that sounds like the ts in rats). This is the clock tower just outside of the church on the main town square. As you can see I am in the picture, so now you know I am really here and not just doing this from my bedroom where I am holed up with a book about Romania and a lot of Diet Coke.
And last but not least this is a picture of my new home. My apartment is the one right above the doorway. Here they say it is on the first floor, they call the ground floor the parter, but we would say it is on the second floor. The window just above the entrance is my kitchen window, on the right is the living room and to the left is the bedroom. It is a nice building, in a nice neighborhood and best it is like two blocks from the school where I will teach two of the classes and around the corner from where the other class will be held. So I will post some more from this trip, maybe tomorrow and I will let you know how the first day of classes goes. Talk to you all later.

Mark

Check out the weather and some local food

Ahhh a wonderful Romanian dish called tochitura. I had it for lunch today. It is mamaliga, which is cooked corn meal, a fried egg on top of the mamaliga, some cheese on top of the egg and then some meat and a sauce. It is actually delicious. I know many of you are thinking YUCK but it tastes very good. If you look across the table you will see part of another tochitura dish. This is the plate of my dining companion. I met her on the tour of the People's house. She is originally from Iran, living in Spain, and working in Afganistan as an intrepreter for the Spanish military. She was in Bucharest for the day and was trying to see as much as she could. After the tour of the people's house I went with her to a couple of other places she wanted to see and I knew where they were. So here I am half-way around the world in a strange country acting as a tour guide. Who would believe that?


So here is a video taken from my balcony on Monday night. As you can see it was raining quite hard. It actually rained even harder later. It has rained at least a little almost every day. Thankfully, I was inside not out in this. It may be a little hard to actually see the rain but if you listen you can certainly hear it.

So all tomorrow (Wednesday) I get to pack up everything and get ready to move my base of operation to the city of Roman. Then on next Monday I start my teaching assignment. Talk with you all later.

Mark

Some other views of Bucharest

Ok here is today's bonus round. Hands on your buzzers. First to buzz in with the correct answer wins a special bonus prize. After I get back they have to sit through all the pictures I have taken. (Ohh a special bonus to the person who can come closest to the actual number of pictures I have taken to date) The bust that you see in front of you is a famous Romanian, who can tell me who it is? I have mentioned his name in my blog before. This is a place called the old princely court. Until the 1880's Romania did not have a king, when it was united or parts of it were united they were run by a prince. There is not much remaining of this home and you can not get in to see it but it is not far from where I am staying.
All of you planning to go to a University after High School. Here is one that you might think about. This is the main building of the University of Bucharest. Of course you will have to become fluent in Romanian before you attend but that should not be too hard for many of you. I had one student this year who was already fluent in three languages English, French, and Spanish, right Maureen? The university is located at a place aptly called Piata Universitate, or University Square. Another great old building in downtown Bucharest.
And last for today, this is the outdoor market that is located near the apartment that I stayed in last year with my broken ankle. It took me a little while to find it as I never walked to it from the subway. I would walk down to this market with my crutches. It took me 15 minutes to get to this point last year. How long do you think it took for me to get there now with two good feet? Again you can post your answers here. Winner gets to watch my pictures. hehe ok now nobody will even post. Talk with you all soon. In a few days I will be moving to Roman and next week start my teaching assignment.

Mark

Getting around in Bucharest

Hello to all. I was going to be at the Black Sea this weekend but the people who were good enough to volunteer to host me (the People to People organization has been very helpful in this) have to work this weekend. What can you say when these people were willing to open their home to a stranger to help him get to know their country better. That is one thing that I have found the people here are very friendly. I thought I would give you a glimpse of how Bucharestians (I made that name up) get around. Of course I have talked about all the traffic but in this city the number of people using public transit far outnumbers the number of people who drive themselves. Here is on of the busses that they use here. This one runs on electricity but there are also one that run on diesel. You can see that the bus is full with people standing even though this picture was taken at 1:00pm. The busses run everywhere and the system is usually on time. Except during peak traffic time when everything comes to a stand still. In the background is one of the common apartment blocks. Most people in Bucharest live in one of these type of buildings.

Next up from the bus is the Tram. This is a tracked vehicle that runs on electricity. the tram tracks run down the middle of the street. So it has wheels like a train. They run on fewer routes than the buses but still can get you close to almost any place in the city. These also are almost always full with people standing at all hours of the day.
Next up is the taxi. Look carefully at the picture the taxis are lined up for a far as you can see. This is out in from of the Unirea Shopping Center at Piata Unirii. My apartment is behind the building to the left. There are always 10 to 20 taxis lined up here. This area is a big meeting area for people. People will say meet you at Unirea Center. The bus, tram, taxi and metro can get you here without too much of a walk. Notice the Vodaphone sign in the picture. Vodaphone is one of the big cell phone providers or as they are called here mobile phones. The place you see here is a self-serve place where you can buy more credit for your phone. Most people here still use a pay as you go phone plan, not a monthly plan. Although more and more are getting into contracts.
And last here is a subway car. Again notice that it is standing room only. One interesting thing about the system here is that there is only one fare to get into the system. Same price if you go one station or all the way to the end of the line. Also it is very inexpensive. You can buy a ticket for ten rides for 8 lei. Since there are 3 lei to a dollar who can do the math and caom up with a price per ride? Above the car you can see the route map. Not all of the stations have one of these right above the tracks but they all have one somewhere and if you pay attention you can get around. So there is a look at the ways that people of Bucharest get around. By the way the last way and the one that helps keep the Bucharestians in shape and thin is the feet. Most people walk a lot here. Talk with you later.

Mark

Its raining again today

Hi everyone. It is raining here again today so I am not sure if I am going to venture out or not. We will see how it is later. This picture is of the hotel where the webcam is located. I never could see it I just know it is up there somewhere. If you were able to see me yesterday make a comment on this post. If enough people want I can go there again and feel silly waving at the side of a hotel. This is the hotel where the Rolling Stones stayed when they were in Bucharest two years ago. I was staying at an apartment just down the street and walked past here all the time on my way to the subway.
I made it to the Muzeul Taranului Roman also yesterday. That is the Museum of the Romanian Peasant. They had a nice display of things collected from around the country. There was an actual house from a village, an old church reconstructed inside the museum as well as tools that were used by the peasants. In fact in some places here these type of tools are still being used. Now for a grammer lesson. The Romanian word for peasant is taran. The ul added to the end is the article "the" so taranul means the peasant. The lui added means of the peasant. Now they do not make a double l but it is understood. So muzeul taranului roman means Romanian museum of the peasant or as we would say the romanian peasant's museum. So we make the possessive by adding the apostrophe s while in Romanian they add lui. By the way taranului is pronounced tuh-ran-ool-oo with the oo sound like in the word school. Ok lesson over.
I did manage to get in a picture inside before one of the women came over to me and told me no pictures. I did not see a charge for pictures at the entry (yes they charge you to go in and then they charge you to take pictures). So this is one of the hand-made rug that were on display in the museum. Each area has a different design that they use so you can look at the rug and if you know enough about the designs you can tell what area the rug comes from. One big problem with this museum is that not many things are identified and those that are you will find the information only in Romanian. There were like three things that had English translations. My Romanian is good enough when it comes to reading. There are many words in English that have their roots in Latin. So when you see it you can figure out what it means. When I hear it now that is a different thing since they pronounce it differently than I would. The there are simple words like serious (ser ee os) which means "really" and perfect (pronounced almost exactly like we do) which means perfect. Then there are words like magazin which is what they call a store. Oops another lesson, sorry. I will talk to all of you later.
Mark

More from the weekend

Hi all just some follow-up from the weekend. This is a picture of the mountains. We stopped in the town of Bustemi. Which is a ski resort town at the base of the mountains. It rained a little each day I was out but never enough to make it impossible to get around. The nice thing was when it rained hard, and it did, it only lasted a few minutes and I was always somewhere to take refuge. So in this picture either the clouds are really low or the mountains are really high. Actually it is a little of both. Romania is about the size of New York State and they have packed in there flat lands, mountains, and coast. The people of Bucharest love the mountains and the road to the mountains on Friday and Sunday during the summer is packed with people trying to escape the city.
This is a view from the courtyard of Castle Bran. Remember it was the residence of the royal family so it had to look good inside. Outside I think they wanted it to look formidable so no one would bother them. So you can see there are 4 levels to the castle, with lots of rooms. Also, lots of places to look down on the courtyard.
This is a view of the courtyard form one of the levels above. Here you see one of the things every castle needed to withstand a siege. A well inside the walls. Since castles were so formidable often the enemy would just set up camp outside and try to wait the people out. They figured that sooner or later they would run out of water or food and have to come out. So, if you were living in a castle you needed to make sure that you always had plenty of food on hand because you never knew when the enemy would show up. The people sitting around the well was part of a group of tourists from Israel. I also saw a group from Japan. Romania is slowly becoming a tourist attraction. I also met a young man who was making his first trip back to Romania since he had been adopted as a young child. He had been to the village where he was born (it is near Vaslui, where I have gone the last two years) and actually met his birth mother.



Here is a view from the fortress at Rastov. Take a look at the video and then tell me why it was a good idea to build this fortress where it is. The fortress was built to protect the people of the village below it. They would retreat to the fortress when enemies attacked. The fortress was only breached once, and then only because the people did not have the well built yet and they had to go out for water. One time the Turks tried to defeat the fortress but had to eventually leave. They went to the next town north of here Brasov and burned it to the ground. I guess maybe they were a little mad that they could not defeat the fortress at Rastov. This morning Wednesday at 9am pacific standard time I will be going to one of the web cams here in Bucharest. Here is the web address http://www.jurnalul.ro/webcam/piata-revolutiei-77.html
If you can click on it it will take you to the camera. If not copy and paste it into the address of your browser. I will be by the big tree that is at the middle bottom of the picture. The camera is on a hotel looking on Revoultion plaza. You can see the "Big Potato" in the background. Talk with you all later.

Mark

My weekend trips

Hi everyone I am back from my whirlwind weekend trip. I went to Bran and Sinaia, with stops several other places. I had a great time and took some good pictures. The first one here is the castle at Bran. The castle controlled one of the only passes through the mountains. This made it a very important castle. Now it is world famous as Dracula's castle. It became Dracula's castle when Bram Stoker wrote the novel. The character of Dracula was based on a famous Romanian Prince Vlad Tepes. He was known as Vlad the Impaler. Who knows what an Impaler does? If you do comment on the bottom of this post. This picture was take from across a valley. As you can see the weather was less than perfect. But imagine you were an traveler, or maybe more importantly a conquerer and as you rounded the bend this is what waited for you. You might think twice about whether you wanted to try to attack this castle. The castle was give to Queen Mary, the wife of King Carol I the first King of Romania. The castle was confiscated by the communist government in the 1940's. Since the revolution many people including the heirs of Queen Mary have petitioned for return of their property. The heirs were successful this year and the castle in again owned by the Royal family.
This is a picture of Peles Castle. This castle was not built as a fortress but as the summer home of King Carol I. You can see the differences in the way the castle is built. The furniture inside is some of the original furniture that was used by the King in the early 1900's. This property was also recently returned to heirs of the royal family. They have decided to leave it as a tourist attraction but there is a smaller castle nearby that they have moved back in to, at least part-time.
This last photo is of a well at the fortress at Rasnov. This fortress is built on top of a hill and was used to protect the people who lived in the area. It was first built in 1334. The well that you see was dug by two Turkish prisoners. They were promised their freedom as soon as they finished the well. They had to dig almost 500 feet down to get water. Oh by the way maybe you can guess how many years (yes years) they had to work before the finished. Again post your comments at the end of the page or if you are a teacher looking at this you can send me an e-mail on my Livermore e-mail. I can access it from here. Talk with you all later, and I look forward to your comments.

Mark

Some follow up

Here are the plaster casts that were made from Trajan's column. Trajan, remember, is the Roman Emperor who defeated the dacians in the first century. The column was errected to commemorate the victory. It showed in the reliefs around the column the different highlights of the many battles in the war.
This is the CEC Bank building that I showed you the clock from yesterday. As you can see it is an amazing building.
And one last follow-up on the bicycle question. Here is a part of one of the roads here in Bucharest. How would you like to ride a bike on that? Kind of bumpy. Thunder and lightning here again tonight. There has not been much rain just a nice light and sound show. I tried to get a picture of the lightning last night but since lightning moves at the speed of light and my reactions are a little slower, it did not work so well. I will be going to Bran, where Dracula's castle is located on Saturday. Oh yes and one more thing. I have managed to not kick any soccer balls so far this trip. Talk later.
Mark

Wednesday's activities

This is the CEC Bank Building. I will show you a full picture of it later. I was near this today when I went to the museum. Here is the question for everyone. If it is 5 minutes after 10 am in Bucharest, Romania, what time is it in Livermore, California? I really love the intricate work that is around the clock. Just think of all the work, and how many people were required to make it.
This plaque is located out side the museum that I visited today. It says Museul National De Istorie A Romanie, or the National History Museum of Romania. Inside the museum was a replica of Trajan's Column. Trajan was the Roman Emperor who defeated the Dacians and brought the Latin language to the people of Romania. The column was designed to tell the history of Trajan's conquest. Going around the column from the bottom to the top was the story told in carvings. Again I will show these in a later post.
And last, here is one of the many churches in Bucharest. This one like many others is just jammed in between many tall buildings. When they rebuilt much of Bucharest they left many of the churches and just built around them.

Now to answer Dennis' question about whether they ride Bikes here. I have seen maybe one or two bikes in my time here. There is no where for them to be ridden safely. The roads are full of drivers who are only interested in getting where they need to go as quickly as they can and the sidewals are full of people and not well maintained. So riding a bike would be crazy. Most people get around on the bus, tram, and subway system. They have a good rapid transit system here in Bucharest. I rode on it today to get to the museum. Any other questions please feel free to ask.
Mark

Tuesday's Question

Ok everyone on top of the building is a red cube. It contains the logo of a world wide company. Can anyone guess what it is? By the way this is the view out of one of my windows. What you see is a parking structure and beyond it, where the cube is is a shopping center. The company advertised on the cube has a shop in the building.
Ok here is a different view of the same shopping center. Still see the red cube? Yes it is a little easier to identify. This picture is taken from Piata Unirii. My apartment building is behind the shopping center.

And now for some culture. See if you can identify the three instruments that are being played in this video. Again give your answers by clicking the comments box. The teacher can be the one who comments. Or you can answer to my livermore e-mail. I can access that here too.