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.

Some of the stories told in the murals painted on the monasteries

 Here is one of the sides of the church at Suceavita. This side tells the story of how one gets in to Heaven. In the middle of the mural are the scales of Heaven. All of the good things you do in life are in one scale and all of the bad things are in the other. If you can enlarge this you will see that the devils are sitting on top of the scale on their side trying to make it even heavier. Those darn devils will do whatever they can to get more recruits. If you are good then you go down the left side of the mural and enter into Heaven, if you are bad you go down the right side in to Hell.

 Here is a close-up of one part of that mural. Here is Saint Peter opening the gates of Heaven. As you can see there is a long line of people waiting behind him to get in. On the right of this picture you can see an angel taking the soul of a person who had been good in life.

In this one if you look at the part in the upper right you can see the story of the Garden if Eden. They are the pictures with the white background. The first shows Adam in the garden alone. The next he is with all the animals, then Eve is brought in. The fourth is when they discover the tree of knowledge. After that is when the serpent shows up to tempt them. Then they are shown covered with fig leaves and being banished from the garden. In this way regular people who could not read or write could access the stories that were in the Bible. So these monasteries are like giant picture books for non-readers.

Four of the World Famous Painted Monasteries of Bucovina

 In the area around the city of Suceava, Romania there are some world famous painted monasteries. Painted on the outside and the inside. These monasteries were all built after battles won by Stefan Cel Mare, the first ruler to bring together what is not Romania. The monasteries are painted on the outside with scenes from the bible. This was important in the 1500's since most people could not read. Thw first one here is the monastery at Suceavita.

 This one is the monastery at Moldovita. It is amazing that the paintings on the outside have survived for over 400 years. The paintings on the north side of the monasteries are mostly faded and degraded but the south side, protected from the weather has survived remarkably well. Also the round end of the church, like you see here always faces east.

 This one is the most famous of the group of painted monasteries. This is the one at Vornet. It is most famous because of the blue color that can be found on the walls. It is a blue that they are not sure how the painters of the day were able to make. Since this was almost 500 years ago, they did not write down the formula of what they added to make the color.

The last one is the smallest of the monasteries the monastery Humorului. So on Monday I took a tour around the area and was able to see these 4 monasteries. I visited them all on a whirlwind trip in 2007, so it was nice to be able to spend some more time enjoying and marveling at how old they are and how well they have held up against the weather. I have more pictures of the pictures on the outside of these monasteries if any one is interested. Tomorrow, Wednesday, I will be heading back to Bucharest for my last week of this year's adventure, doing a little sight-seeing and resting up from my adventures before heading home.

In Suceava, Romania

 I am in Suceava, Romania for a few days. In Suceava there is a fortress that was built by Stefan Cel Mare in 1508. They are currently restoring it, a fact I wish I had known before paying to go inside. Anyway, here is the sign outside the fortress. Cetatea, means fortress.

 Here is the fortress showing the outside of the fortress, the main defensive wall. You can see some of the inside walls also.

 This view shows the three entryways into the fortress. Each of these entries is located on another defensive wall. So there are three defensive walls in the fortress. If you breach the first wall, you find the second wall and so on.

This picture shows some of the restoration going on. Unfortunately, the restoration is going on everywhere in the fortress and therefore you can not actually go anywhere. I am sure that it will be a great place to visit once it is finished.

My last class in Varna

 Here is my class hard at work on the last day. We were finishing the U.S. History class that I taught for three weeks in Varna. Their final assignment was to create a poster about what we had learned. I envisioned a paper with some cute pictures drawn on it with little captions for each picture. I guess that is why i am the teacher and not the student. What they came up with you can see below. They went on their own and looked up more information on what they had learned and created this poster.

As you can see I gave them a lot of information over the 18 hours of class. We started with the first inhabitants of the America's and how they got here and continued from there. They were great students, not only was all of the information presented in English, but they even took their class notes in English. I was impressed. Now it is back to Romania and a visit to the painted monasteries of Bucovina. Stay tuned for some impressive pictures.

Hanging with the Vista Language School Day Campers

 I had a lovely morning and afternoon today. I was at the Varna Library in the American Corner. There is a part of the library that is dedicated to an American section, with American books and reference material. It is supported by the American Embassy here in Bulgaria. This was my second trip there with with Vista campers. The first day I presented a lesson on the similarities and difference of life in Bulgaria and America. Today there was a short lesson on Native Americans and then some arts and crafts. The campers made a teepee and a totem pole. Here you can see one of the examples of the work they did. The cut out the pattern for the teepee and then decorated it. The totem poles were also a lot of fun for them.

 Here is another example of a personalized teepee. This one he made for the tribe's chief. We showed them some examples of the kinds of things that would be drawn on a teepee and they then used their imagination. We spent a couple of hours working at this, and they all had a blast.

Here is the work of the group, along with the campers. I want to especially thank the Varna Library and the American Embassy for helping to make this day possible. I had a great time.

A Visit to Nessebar, Bulgaria

 Yesterday, Saturday July 13th, I had the great experience of visiting the old town of Nessebar. Nessebar is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is referred to as a city-museum. There have been people living in Nessebar for thousands of years. In the 6th century it became a Greek city. It was inhabited by rich sea merchants. They made their money by making and selling fig wine. It was a big seller all over the area. One way that the locals would show just how rich they were was to build a family church. The more beautiful the better. Here I am standing in front of what is left of one of these churches. Note the brickwork and intricate design. Also note I am wearing my Dodger shirt (Go Dodgers lol). At one time there were more than 40 churches in this small town. Only a few remain but those that do are beautiful.

 This is what remains of the town defensive wall. The town is actually a small island that has been joined to the land by a small road way. This is part of the original fortification of the town. When you have something valuable you want to protect it. The people who lived in this town were rich enough that when the Ottoman Empire defeated them, they were able to pay tribute and not have their town and churches torn down. The Ottomans did not mind Christian churches as long as the roof was no higher that a man on horse back. The churches in this town are much taller but because they had money the Turks left the churches alone. So even though you had a great defensive wall like this one must have been it was no guarantee that you would survive an attack.

Here is a view up one of the streets in Nessebar. As you can see the streets are still lines with cobblestones, nice to look at but not the best to walk on. The house have wood siding because it is the best for this seaside location. Also as you can see, and this is not even the most crowded street, every nook and cranny is filled with a vendor trying to sell you something. Interestingly enough, many of the vendors were selling Jack Daniels Tee-Shirts. Go figure. As my host and friend Miss Tony said "Jack is probably rolling over in his grave."  I hope you enjoyed this small view. I have some more pictures of some of the churches, if I hear from enough of you I will post them too.

Ruins from Roman Times

 Varna has been an important seaport on the Black Sea for thousands of years. The Greeks were here and so were the Romans. What you see here are the ruins of a Roman Bath House In the center of this picture is what is left of the large dome. They believe the dome would have stood around 60 feet high. The baths are from the 1st century, so see Varna has been around for a long time, Livermore is proud of our almost 150 years, Varna has been around more than 10 times longer.

 In this picture you can see some of the large community rooms that would have been used in the bathhouse. Public bathing houses were very important to the Romans. This particular one is the 4th largest bathhouse found. The size gives you and indication of the importance of Varna to the Roman Empire.

Here is another view. I included this one because as I was taking this picture a man came by and wagged his finger at me and said something. From his tone of voice I am sure he was not saying,  "nice day to take some pictures." It was more like, "you are not supposed to take pictures from outside like this." There is an entrance fee to get in but I figured why pay to go inside when you can see all of it from out here. So, oops here I am getting in trouble in ancient Varna. Thank goodness it is not ancient Rome, or I might have been put in the arena with a gladiator or wild animal. lol