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.

 When I posted the other day about getting around in Bucharest I forgot to mention the method that is the most used, even by me. When I am over here my shoes get a big workout. Here everyone walks, every day. If you look at the pictures you can see people on the street. There are people walking all the time.

If you look closely down the sidewalk you can see people, people, and people. Of course you can also see taxis. One other thing that you notice here is that you do not see lots of overweight people, hmmm do you think there might be a connection between these two things? Walking and not being overweight? Something to think about. On Sunday I will be traveling by train to Lugoj where I will be teaching this summer. While I am there I will post things about the school as well as pictures of Lugoj. I have heard great things about Lugoj so I am looking forward to seeing it for myself.

Out and about on Thursday

 The first picture today is of Piata Alba-Iulia. One of the many plazas in Bucharest. What you see in front of you is the kind of buildings you see all around. The bottom floor is occupied by businesses and the upper floors are housing. One thing you might find interesting is that here in Europe they number their floors differently. My apartment is on the second floor but when I enter the building I have to climb two flights of stairs. So according to how I count floors that makes it on the third floor. But here the ground floor is not called the first floor it is called the parter, or ground floor. Many of the piatas here in Bucharest have been turned into parking spaces as parking is in very short supply. When the city was built very few people owned cars so they did not provide parking, you might find a building with 100 apartments and 25 parking spaces. So as you walk on the sidewalks of Bucharest you have to move around the cars that are parked there.

Here is my lunch for today. Piept de Pui, gratar, cartofi prajiti, and of course o bere. Since you can see the picture you should be able to figure out which is which and what they translate to in English. Piept de Pui is chicken breast, gratar is bar-b-qued, cartofi prajiti of course are french fries and o bere is a beer. The beer is a Ciuc, which is a Romanian brand. It looks good and of course it tasted it even better.

A Post for Wednesday or how to get around in Bucharest

 In this picture you can see two of the many ways of transportation around Bucharest. You see taxis and if you look hard you can see a bus. There are also trams (like buses but they run on tracks like trains), the Metro (Bucharest's subway), and of course you could drive your own car. While many people here drive their own car many others use these forms of transportation. Today I went to Gara de Nord, the main train station in Bucharest. I could have used any of these forms of transportation (well except my car, I left it in Livermore). Which one do you think I used? Good guess, I used the Metro. One of the nice things about the Metro is that it does not matter how far you go, it all costs one price. So if you go one station or to the end of the line the cost is the same. Here is a math problem for you, I bought a Metro ticket that allows me to go on 10 trips on the Metro. It cost me 20 Lei (the name of the currency in Romania), if the exchange rate is 4 lei for every dollar, how much does each trip cost me? Oh come on the math is not that hard.
I bought my ticket to travel to Lugoj where I will be teaching. I leave here on Sunday and begin classes on Monday. Lugoj is about 285 miles from here and the ticket cost $25. So you can see that the country of Romania subsidizes the transportation systems quite a lot. For those of you who might want to know where this picture was taken, remember the one from yesterday that had the McDonald's logo on the top of the building? Well the building to the left is that building and although you can not see it in the picture the McDonald's is directly to my left.

This is a picture that I took in the area they call the Old Center, or Centru Vechi. It is the oldest partof Bucharest. When I first came to Bucharest in 2007 this street was all torn up and a huge mess. As you can see they have made it into a pedestrian friendly area, no cars are allowed into the Old Center. The replaces the streets with cobblestones, just like they would have had when nothing but horses and carriages rode on the street. Many of the side streets are so small that even a horse and carriage would not fit. It was hot here today and humid but not as hot as I hear it was in Livermore. For those of you who don't want to go to the comments section to see the answers I thought I would answer the questions from the previous day here. So, I asked what time it was in Livermore when it was 6pm here and the answer is 8am. I also asked what sport the local Dinamo team played and that is Soccer. Lastly I asked where the name Tuesday came from, what I have read about it the name comes from the German God of War Tiu. Kind of like Tuesday in Spanish and Romanian come from Mars, the Roman God of War. I hope you are enjoying the pictures and my commentary. Until next time.

It's two for Tuesday (this is the second, scroll back for the other)

 Since it is Tuesday I thought I would surprise you with 2 posts. So this first picture is of the Bucharest Mall, although it is referred to as Mall Vitan by the locals. Vitan is the name of the street you can see in the picture. This mall is right across the street from the apartment that I am staying in. So it is an easy walk to do any shopping, there is even a grocery store in the mall, so I can get my Coca Cola Zero, oh yea and some food too. One things for all of you in California to notice is the beautiful grass there in the median of Callea Vitan. Yep real grass and I checked, there is not sprinkler system to water that with. So you can tell that they get plenty of rain here.

 Also on our Tuesday special here is a beautiful building that you do not want to have to go inside. It is the Bucharest Justice Building where all of the criminal trials take place. So if you do have to go in there I hope you are a lawyer or a judge.

Our last Tuesday offering is a picture that any student who has been in my class will recognize. This is another mall in Bucharest, the mall at Piata Unirii. This is familiar because there is a traffic camera that points in this direction that I make the students look at all the time. We use it to show how parts of the Earth are in darkness while other parts are lit by the sun. I also show this to them because of the little red sign on the top of the building. They always get a kick out of seeing the McDonald's logo.
Now a bonus question for all inquiring minds. Since this is the Tuesday special, your question is "Where does the name Tuesday come from?" I will be looking for answers. So that is all from here in Bucharest on Tuesday.

A nice day to be out and about

 It was a nice day to be out and about, or just fishing. This photo is from one of the many lakes that surround Bucharest. I took this picture at around 6pm. Now the question of the day for Ms. Nunes class and anyone else who wants to join in; what time was it in Livermore when I took this picture?

If you look closely there are a lot of people out on the banks of the river. In the background there is a large park with lots of areas for playing. Also behind the trees is a sports stadium when the Bucharest Dinamo play. Anyone know what sport the Dinamos play? Answers to the above questions will earn you my undying gratitude as it means that there are people out there actually reading what I write. I will provide answers, along with some new questions tomorrow.

7th Time teaching English in Europe

Hi all, no pictures yet as I have just arrived here in Bucharest. I will be here for one week before going to Lugoj to teach English, like the title says, for the 7th time. When I first did this I thought it would be like a once in a life-time experience. Well obviously that was not the case. So here I am back again. To the students in Mrs. Nunes Summer School class I say hi, as well as hi to any other students who are lucky enough to be in Summer School. One of the things that I enjoy doing is posting pictures and asking questions (I guess that is just the teacher in me). Feel free to join in and answer the questions. You can reply to the posts. Thanks to all of you who read this, it is more fun writing knowing that out there someone is reading this.