27 Luni

Upon settling into my site here in Valea Călugărească I was making regular trips into the center of town to buy supplies for the house and to do my grocery shopping.  Along the way, just a short walk from my home, on the main road is a small foldable table with three five-liter bottles of […]

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As part of the agreement between a host country school and the Peace Corps, a municipality must provide adequate housing for its Volunteer.  Being that this is the Peace Corps those requirements are for the bare essentials only; a safe and secure location away from locals bars, within a reasonable travel distance to the school, and […]

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Immediately following our conference in Sinaia I was convinced to delay returning to site by a couple of days to visit the nearby city of Brașov.  A few volunteers had wanted to make the most of their time in this part of the country and since it’s so close we figured ‘Why not?’  Brașov is […]

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Sinaia is probably the most beautiful location in which I have been required to attend a work related conference.  The small tourist town is nestled in the Bucegi Mountains in Prahova County, conveniently located (for me at least) about 60 kilometers north of Ploiești and Valea Călugărească.  Winding through the endless green mountains, travelers find […]

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During the final days of the English camp in Sangeorz-Bai, a colleague contacted me about a change to the next camp I was scheduled to attend.  Originally we were told that the camp would need two Peace Corps Volunteers at a time each week.  As a result, a total of four Volunteers had signed up […]

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Three weeks ago, before this recent run of back-to-back camps, I decided to buy a bicycle.  Like just about everything for a Peace Corps worker in Romania, this isn’t quite as easy as you might think.  In the US, if you want to buy something, just about anything, all you have to do is hop […]

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Today I returned from another weeklong summer camp focusing on English. The camp was coordinated by a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer through her high school and was held in northern Romania in the small town of Sangeorz-Bai. This camp had a very different pace than the last one I participated in, which was a welcome […]

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Throughout the remainder of the week at TOBE the campers participated in similar activities to those outlined in my previous blog post.  This final post in the series on TOBE will attempt to highlight those activities which I feel were the most relevant and beneficial.  The purpose of this post is perhaps more for cataloging […]

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Now on to the real topic at hand: after a long Saturday of traveling and a night literally sleeping in the hayloft, Sunday is when the fun and hard work really began, the day when the students arrived.  In the morning we woke shortly after sunrise and shook off the ‘fruit punch ice cream float’ […]

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Although I wish that I were clever enough to have conjured up this witty blog title on my own, the true credit goes to the smart young men of the week-long T.O.B.E. camp from which I just returned.  As a springboard for the upcoming semester and next two years of teaching English as a foreign […]

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