Friday, February 20, 2009

"I am the king and I want my dumplings!"

I am waiting for spring more then ever as I look out my frosty classroom windows. Today it actually became warm enough to snow ending a short two day snow sabbatical colder then a wizard’s nipple, as my dad would say. Winter here has lingered on like a stale fart that just won’t clear the room and I can only pretend I don’t smell it for so long. To escape the winter’s stench I will be spending my weekend in Sibu, the Cultural Capital of Europe in 2007, and hopefully come back with some decent loafs of German bread.

Played European handball last night with some of the locals and not only is it completely different then the handball we have in the States, but its like 3 times as dangerous and fun as well. Instead of smacking around a little ball in a court you have two teams of seven who try to throw a ball the size of a kid’s soccer ball into a goal about twice the width of a normal doorway. Its like what happens when you combine ultimate Frisbee with basketball and football. Fouling is seen as good strategy for disrupting the opponents concentration and apparently you don’t have to skip the third helping of mamalega in order to be fit enough to play, half of the townspeople on my team could barely see their own feet let alone wear our teams blue colored singlet. This being my first time seeing or playing handball I wasn’t sure how I would fair, the opposing team looked pretty intimidating and hungry. But the feeling one gets after knocking over a 300 pound fat man with your throw just can’t be beat.

In the beginning of the school year I would pass out chocolates to the students who did all their work and participated in class but it turned out to not be as effective or healthy as my new method of bribery. Now for correct answers and class participation I pass out chewable one a day multivitamins as a reward and I have noticed a remarkable improvement in my more malnourished students. For the past week I have been focusing mainly on the wide world of adjectives and today when asking the students to throw out some adjectives they would associate with feeling, the first word is yelled out, “pain”, every time. We have very happy bunch here on Firdays.

If you ever come here to Abrud, Romania there will probably be a few things that might furrow your brow in puzzlement. Let’s start with the local shops. At the local market you will find all of your alcoholic beverages resting lazily inside a whole row of refrigerators, giving the impression that they are actually on and cooling said beverages. This is something that will take some getting used to because it is hard to accept the fact that they are just being used to hold and not cool, acting as very expensive shelves and nothing more, but this is Romania and this phenomenon is seen in nearly every city. Lets say you want a 3 liter bottle of Ciuc (beer) which will cost you around 5.40 lei, about 2 dollars. You would think that after giving the casher 6 lei for your purchase 60 bon is owed to you, but instead you receive two sticks of gum. This means that the store is out of change and now has reverted to trade; this too is universally accepted as payment. But collecting the sticks of gum that have accumulated over the months and trying to buy something of lesser or equal value will not work, so don’t even bother. Waiting in line with the elderly or derelict should be avoided since you will find yourself at the end of it anyway.

My ride is here so I hope you all have a good weekend.

2 comments:

Randall H. Sloot said...

Can you imagine what would happen if you were a clerk in america and handed someone a little Debbie cosmic brownie instead of change? You would have a serious situation on your hands. Unless, of course, you were serving a homeless or otherwise down-and-out person, in which case they probably wouldn't mind. I swear when I worked at the market in t-town people would come in and buy like ten of those things and make a meal out of them.

RYAN!!!! said...

They sell 3-liter beers their? That's like going down to Finholm's and casually picking up a mini keg. That's strange the multi-vitamins work, somehow I don't think that would work in American classrooms.