Welcome to Summer School

Hello to all. For those of you not Summer School students, understand that I will be writing some of these blogs specifically for the students at Portola School who are lucky enough to be going to summer school. Unlike me who has to travel half way around the world to Romania and do the hard things like take pictures of beautiful buildings and walk around interesting places. So if you are wondering what the children here do when it is hot out just take a look at the picture above. This is one of the many fountains at a place called Piata Unirii (Unification Plaza). There are many beautiful fountains here. As you can see, like in Livermore, when it is hot out you can always wade in the fountains.
Ok now a question to make you think. How can you tell just by looking at the above picture that this building is a government office building. The people working this building all work for the Romanian Government. Come on take a look and figure out how you can tell that this is a government building. Here is a hint..... most people in Romania do not have air conditioning. Yes do you see that each of the windows, each of the offices has its own air conditioner. No central air since it did not exist when the building was built but now each little government worked has his or her own air conditioner. Cool huh!
And last for today. This is the Triumphal Arch located in Bucharest. It is modeled after another Triumphal Arch located somewhere else in the world. If you know where this other arch is located go to the comment section and tell me where you think it is located.The comment button is right below this post. I am writing this post at 5:00 pm here in Bucharest but it is only 7:00am there in Livermore. That is all for today. Talk to you all later. Teachers take a look at the other posts as there are some other interesting pictures for my time here.

Mr. Johnson

Some more sightseeing

Here is a view of the apartment building I am staying in. Of the three windows on the right mine is the middle one. There is also a window in the other side of the building. It is a small studio but it is big enough for me.
Here you can see the outside of the building. The entrance is just to the right of the big Contrast sign. I managed to get to the Village Museum today. They have houses from all the different regions there. These are houses that they have actually moved from these areas to the museum. I will put in some pictures in a later post. I also on Saturday evening went to the Bucharest Film Music Festival. In this video you can hear an acappella choir singing some of Handl's work. Talk with you all soon and don't forget that you can comment at the bottom of the post.

Mark

Some sightseeing

Hi everyone, as you can see I got some sightseeing done today. I also exchanged some money so that I could pay for things. The Romanians use Lei as there currency. I took the subway (they call it the Metro) to get to the places I went today. The Metro is a great system with stops all over the place and very inexpensive. I took the Metro to Revolution Plaza. This is the place in Bucharest where the 1989 revolution began that overthrew the communist regime. The leader Nicolae Ceausescu made a speech on December 21st from the balcony that you can see in the picture above. There was a problem in one of the other Romanian cities and he was telling the people of Bucharest that it was no big deal and that they (the government) would soon put it down. Boy was he surprised when the crowd started to boo him. The army was called in and several thousand people were killed. Ceausecu was executed on Christmas Day 1989.
In this photo you can see (well actually you can not see very well) engraved on the plaques around this monument are the names of the Romanians who died in the Revolution. This looks a little like the Viet Nam Memorial in Washington D.C.
This is the monument to the Revolution. The people call it the big potato. This is right in the middle of Revolution Plaza. The names of the people who died are placed around the bottom of the monument.
This last picture shows the view from one of my windows. You can see that there are many apartment buildings (they call an apartment building a Bloc) around here. Most people in Bucharest live in these type of buildings. I am staying at Strada Mamulati 2, Bloc C1, Scara (entrance) 2, on the 5th floor. Of course we would consider this to be the sixth floor but here in Romania the ground floor is called the parter and the floor above it is the first floor. So to get to my apartment you have to go what we would consider the 6th floor. Fortunately there is an elevator. I also visited the former Royal Palace which now houses an museum of European art. I saw painting by Degas, Monet (not his well known ones) some painting from an art school that was run by Rembrant. There also were several sculptures by Rodin. So that is all for now from Bucharest. Talk with you all soon and please feel free to make comments, ask questions, or just say hi.

I made it back to Romania

Well I made it back to Romania and you know the saying "the third times the charm?", well the plane ride went without a hitch. There was a call for a doctor about half way though the flight from San Francisco to Amsterdam and I thought Oh no not again. But we never heard anything else about it so I don't know what that was about. Then my bags came off the conveyor belt almost last so I was having flashbacks to the first year. So, so far so good. It was a long day, about twenty two hours from leaving home to arriving at my apartment. I think I dozed off for about 20 minutes on the flight from Amsterdam to Bucharest. I am tired. Tomorrow I need to get a phone and figure out exactly what I want to do. So talk with you all later.

Mark

A New Adventure

Well here we are almost ready to go again. This year I will be teaching at a different place. The city this year is Roman, Romania. I will be spending time at the beginning of the trip in Bucharest. I plan to go to the camera that you can find here http://www.jurnalul.ro/webcam/piata-revolutiei-77.html

at some time and be there so that the students at my school who are in summer school can see me. I will set that all up here on the blog so keep your eye out. Not just the students can see me but anyone that is interested can log on and look. I will be there for a while and I will wave so that you will know that it is me. I leave on the 17th of June so we will talk more later.

Mark

At home

Hi all, I am now at home. On Monday I took a flight from Bucharest to Amsterdam and then flew from Amsterdam to San Francisco. I left Bucharest at 6:00am and arrived in San Francisco at 1:00pm. Sounds like a short flight but because of the 10 hour time difference it actually was 17 hours from start to finish. The guy in front of me on the plane kept his seat back the entire flight so that made it hard for me to lift my foot at all so it was not a fun flight. I did get a wheelchair ride from the check in counter at Bucharest to the gate, from the gate at Amsterdam, to a waiting area, from there to the gate and from the gate in San Francisco to pick up my luggage. So the airlines took care of me. Well other than in Amsterdam where they were late picking me up so the flight had already started boarding and I had to join the cattle line to get to my seat. On Tuesday I went to visit three doctors. Two for my ankle and one for my glasses. My glasses broke on the next to the last day I was in Bucharest, somehow it seemed a fitting end to my time there this year. The first doctor was my primary care physician who wanted to look at my ankle to see if there was any infection. She was a little concerned but sent me to the orthopedic doctor to have him look at it. The orthopedist was only a little concerned but started me on some antibiotics anyway. He took out the stitches and took some x-rays to see the work. He said that the  doctors in Bucharest did a very good job repairing my ankle. I got my first look at the damage too. I have a steel plate on the outside of my left ankle, held in place by three screws. The area where the leg joins the ankle is where I broke it and I apparently did a good job of breaking it. So the plate is holding all the bones together while they heal. I also have one long screw that goes all the way through my ankle holding the two leg bones together. Normally there is a ligament that perform this function but of course that was torn when I broke my ankle. On the inside of my ankle they repaired the tendon that was torn free during the accident. All in all he said that the repair was good. He said he is always worried when patients have surgery in foreign countries but that the Romanian doctors did good. He did change the amount of time that I have to be off my ankle. The doctors in Romanian said to immobilize my ankle for three weeks and no weight on it for six weeks. He said immobilized for 6 weeks and no weight on it for twelve weeks. He would have put it in a cast but he wants to be able to look at it because of the infection concern. He gave me a big boot to put it in. The boot looks like a ski boot and it immobilizes my ankle. I will take a picture and put it on my next input. So that means no weight on it until the first week of October. So I will have to figure out how to teach one-footed for a while, that should be fun since I like to walk around and write on the board. My foot looks better each day, almost all the swelling is gone now. I

want to take this opportunity to thank all the great people in Romania who went out of their way to help me during this time.  To do all that you did for a me says so much about you as wonderful people. When people ask me if I want to go back again next year, I say how can I not go back, the people in Vaslui are the greatest people in the world. So, thanks to all of you who helped me when I needed it, I can never repay you for your kindness and concern. 

Talk with you soon

Mark

My new home

Hi all from Sector 3 of Bucharest. The city is divided into 6 Sectors for administrative purposes and I am staying in an apartment that is in Sector 3. I took these pictures when I was out on my daily exercize, walking to the open air market up the street. It seems like many miles away but I am sure that if I had two good feet I could get there in like 3 minutes. In my current condition it takes me like 15 minutes to get there. I have three places that I have identified as resting places on the way there and while I am at the market. I get my Diet Coke, or Cola Light as they call it, there and some fruit. Although I can't get much at a time since I have to carry it all back with me. That can be a problem when your hands are busy helping you walk with the crutches. So, the first picture is of the apartment building, or block as it is called here, that I am staying in. I took it from across a parking lot on my way back from the market. The second picture is of the small park across the street where I spend some time sitting on the benches. The third picture is of the entrance to the building. My apartment is just to the right of the entrance, the rectangular window that you can see clearly is the window into my kitchen. Thankfully, the entrance does not have many steps to conquer. Many blocks here in Bucharest have seven or eight steps to climb to get inside, and the steps here are not disabled friendly. Inside the entrance there are four steps but they are not to hard to get up. Then just to the right is my door. So for the condition that I am in now, this apartment is perfect for me. I am feeling much better today, my foot does not ache and the swelling is almost all gone. Talk at you all later.
Mark