Counterpart Conference

This entry was written yesterday but i didn't get to post it until today, saturday.

Today I met my counterpart--well one of them, at least. My counterpart is basically my mentor during my volunteer process; the counterpart for TEFL volunteers is usually a fellow teacher in the volunteer’s school and they help to get the volunteer acclimated to the school’s schedule and basic everyday life. They also help the volunteer to network within the community and they’re just supposed to be a really good resource both professionally and personally. So my counterpart, Christina, is really cool and I like her a lot. She came to Ploiesti today for our “Counterpart Conference” where everybody met their counterpart and she’s young and funny and very smart and her English is pretty good so that was nice. She teaches Romanian at my highschool but she told me that my other counterpart is an English teacher at our school.

Oddly enough, Liz’s counterpart is also named Christina so me, Liz and our Christinas spent the evening just talking and sharing info about Onesti, Romania, and the USA. Both Christinas are nice and I’m glad that I’ve got them to help me get integrated into the city of Onesti.

Tomorrow is the 2nd and final day of the conference and I’m sure it will be just as boring and drawn out as today was but I’m looking forward to just learning more about my new city. Then on Sunday I leave for my sit visit!!!!!! I’m really excited and I promise that I’ll go buy batteries and put them in my camera so I can finally start taking pictures again. I think the thing I’m looking forward to the most is looking at apartments. I sort of got the impression that my apartment had not already been selected for me and that I would have the chance to go apartment shopping which will be cool.

Other than the counterpart conference, there’s not much else to update. The weather has gotten a bit better. I still like the food and pretty much eat any and everything that’s put in front of me. A Volunteer whose service is done in like two weeks came to visit us Trainees and he was from CINCINNATI and it was SOOOOO nice to talk to somebody who knew exactly what I was talking about and we had things in common that we liked and missed about home and he went to UC so we had lots to talk about since I pretty much spent the last 6 months on UC’s campus with Chris haha. So it was really cool to get a piece of home. Also, this week has been the best week of communication that I’ve had in the past 2 months!! Thanks to all those who emailed, texted, skyped, facebooked, AIM Instant Messaged this week! It was really cool to hear and/or see you and it really helped for this week to fly by; I mean, this week was the fasted week I’ve had so far. So thanks. It means a lot.