Satul Meu, in Drum Spre Scoala

This week has been a long one. We have been having school on Saturdays to make up for the week we had off during the swine flu scare. So this Saturday during my fourth form lesson, I noticed that a few of my students, who seem to be at lower levels of English, actually do really well with more one on one attention. I offered to give them an extra lesson on Sunday and any student interested who over heard my offer begged me to work with them on Sunday as well, so we agreed on a time and we met today at the school. Here are pictures of my town, my school, my classroom, my students and my walk home from school. Today was a great day for pictures because their central market runs on Sundays so the town was hoppin.

My school and some of my more devoted students.

And into my classroom....

These are the collages I did with my English club. Okay so it was just me, one of my co-workers and my one best 11th grade student who actually comes to my English club. But we had fun!

Some of my homemade materials. I will never claim to be do the best I can.

"Language is the key which unlocks the charm of the country and an understanding of the people"

"Village images from the vision of the children"

A project my host mom did with some of the kids at our school. She is the art teacher and she had her students paint big pictures of the town and they have arranged them along the road to my school. This is one of my favorite things about my town. Though some vandals keep knocking them down, they always just put them right back up.

Someones turkeys

Another orthodox icon. Every time they pass one they do the sign of the cross, and its done the inverse of the way Catholics do.

Primeria (Town Hall/Mayor's Office)

He must be selling something gooood.

And back to home sweet home,

cincizeci de grame, all the time

A Happy Thanksgiving With The Help of My Students

I want it to be known that I happen to have the most amazing 12th grade class ever. I could tell when I saw the beautiful celebration they organized for teachers' day. They can plan so well together and create anything they put their minds to I swear. It’s so interesting to me because the same students will be together from the first grade till they graduate high school here in Moldova, so they become so close, almost like a family. They know everything about each other and have been through so much together. I guess that's probably what makes them so good at working together.

The reason I am so motivated to speak of them today is because they helped me to re-create a Thanksgiving with them at the school. Each student brought something, and the boys that didn't, gave me a little money for the chicken and macaroni and cheese I made.

One girl made this huge, and fabulous cake, another made the traditional rice and cabbage rolls in grape leaves, and another made their traditional fried "placenta" (plachenta), which is thin bread wrapped around either cabbage, goat cheese or pumpkin and fried. They eat a lot of plachenta in Moldova, fortunately it is very delicious, especially the pumpkin one. Anyway, there was a lot of food and we had a great time, and just like Thanksgiving back home we all stuffed ourselves, just with different types of food. Oh, and one boy brought in Raspberry juice or "compot" which is a traditional conserved juice here, it had tons of raspberries in it, soooo good.

And there was much much more, I mean, just take a look at the pictures and see. They are such sweet kids!

Helping Host Mom

Yeah, thats right, i'm makin moonshine.

No really my host mom is making it, and they call it 'racheu' round these parts.

I did add wood to the fire for a while, it was fun.

A Fun and Delicious Day with the Host Fam

The fam eating the delicious 'roletas' that my host mamma baked. They are baked rolls of bread stuffed with cheese and potatoes, or cabbage and carrots, or apples. We had two of each kind, and lots of good 'ol house wine as well.

My host mom coming into my room to light my 'soba'. The soba is the small fireplace in that keeps me warm in these cold Moldovan nights.

Moving around or adding wood to the soba.

Thats me next to the soba.... "ok enough with the soba pictures already" you say? Okay, okay, i just really love my soba, and I'm proud that now i just go out, get wood, and start up my own soba fire when i get cold. I'm all growns up in Moldova.

Time to Pick the Grapes and Make the Wine

Me and my host bro after a hard days work. Ok, not that hard, this was actually a short day for them, but it was just enough for me.

That's some beautiful Moldovan landscape there. My host mom on the right. Love her!

My awesome neighbor Nastea with the basket of grapes we were gonna take home to eat. The other thirty huge bags we picked were already on a truck headed home to be made into wine.

Host bro, displaying the gorgeous apples I eat everyday.

Look at all this cabbage. Yes! Now thats good eatin'. Right in my backyard.

There's a glare, but I'm holding a giant pear. Soooo good.

An abundance of giant pears.

These are filled with only a small fraction of the grapes my host family and I picked from their grape fields.

Soon to be delicious (ok, so-so) white house wine. Nice and tare though.

My host bro crankin away for hours. The beginning stages of wine.

Tatel meu (My Moldovan Dad) workin on his wine.

This is the dance we kept doing while we picked big dark purple grapes all day. So sweet and good, and even sweeter when we finished work.