Feeling hot, hot, hot!

So today was our second day of classes and it was a bit of a whirlwind. Well, actually, only the morning is a whirlwind and then when the afternoon comes and the sun is high in the sky, the hours seems to go in slow motion and the heat seems to get more and more unbearable with each passing second. But back to the morning...

We have 3 hours of language classes in the morning and it is...umm....VERY INTENSIVE. I think that in 6 hours of language class (3 today and 3 yesterday) we have probably covered what most entry level foreign language classes cover in 3 or 4 weeks. YEAH....IT’S THAT RIDICULOUSLY INTENSE!! Haha!! But I think that you will all be pleased to know that I’m doing quite well with the vocab and grammar that we’ve learned so far and I’m not having too much trouble....but we’ll see how I feel on Friday I guess.

In the afternoons we have 3.5 hours of classes that basically teach us about any and everything related to either Peace Corps, Romania, TEFL or some combination of the three. Needless to say it gets a bit daunting after two hours in an 80-degree room with 45 people in NO air conditioning and poor ventilation. But we get like two or three breaks during the afternoon and everybody goes across the street to the piata(pee-yacht-zuh) which is the outdoor market, and we all buy water, ice cream, candy, etc.

Our classes are held at a middle school that is still in session at the moment so every time we walk in and out of the building, children flock to stare at us, point at us and, on rare occasions, speak to us. Most of them yell “HELLO!!” and are very excited to see people who speak English. All of the boys are excited to see a black person and they talk about how they love hip hop, especially snoop dogg. They like to rap and dance and show how cool they are....it’s quite a show! The children here are all very friendly and energetic and when they have their breaks inbetween classes, it’s not at all uncommon to hear them running and screaming through the hallways and apparently the school administration has no problem with this. So today when they were on break I took a few snapshots of them, just to give you all an idea of what the school is like here.

Life with my gazda is going great; they make me lots of good food and they’re trying their best to teach me Romanian despite my brain’s inability to understand 95% of what they try to teach me haha. But from talking to other people in my group, I am very lucky to have a family that has a house, pets, a car and internet. So I’m definitely counting my blessings and thanking God everyday for taking such good care of me. Well that’s it for today I think. Oh!! And I was SUPER HAPPY today because I found my iPod!!!! it was inside a shoe(Yeah, don’t ask me how that happened, just be happy I found it ok)!!!! Liz gave me her USB cord and I’m charging it right now; I can’t explain to you how happy I was to find that thing....I really did think that it was lost forever.