Update from Life at Site

Hi everyone!  So I finally made it!  I am officially a volunteer and not just a trainee anymore.  I had an exhausting last 4 weeks of PST.  Practice school is a really wonderful, really draining experience with more emotions involved then I would have thought possible.  There was great achievements in the class room, soaring high!  Then there would be some small disaster, fell back down to earth, hard.  And of course it was 100 degrees or round abouts there which made it hard to want to plan or site at the school for hours on end doing materials development but it had to be done and in the end I feel way more prepared for what is coming next.  The start of school at site.  Bum bum bum!  Our swearing in ceremony was great, we had really good speakers such as Margaret the heading of the language training, Jeffery our country direct and a great pubic speaker, 2 volunteers that MC'd in English and Romanian, and of course two people from our group Ben (Russian speech) and Zach (Romanian speech) that blew the crowd away with their well prepared speeches and snazzy suits.  After that it was say goodbye to the people you just spend 10 weeks with and hello to your new host families.  A whirlwind day that really seems like 3 or 4 seperate days all together.

Since then I have been on sort of a mini-vacation because of a group of holidays here that fall all together meaning multiple days off.  The first was Gagauzian day which was great.  There was a concert in the center that I got to go see that lasted until like 2 in the morning, I wimped out and was home by 12:30, said isn't it?  That same day, I think, was my host-grandmother's birthday which meant I got to meet  a lot of family members and try a lot of good food.  Soon after that it was the Day of the founding of Comrat, which meant I got to march with all the other teachers to the center and each school got called out to walk across an open area.  Then it was the day of the victory of the soviets over the fascists, I think I may not have gotten it all when I thought I did, where we placed flowers on a monument.  Recently it was also the indepence day of Moldova.  And coming up is Limba Noastra or day or our language.  It has been a lot of fun and a much needed break.  I have also atteneded several conferences.  I attended the conference for all teachers in Gagauzia and then I attended a conference about the new curriculum and long term plans.  Lots of Russian, some understanding on my part.  But being surrounded by Russian has been great.  I feel like my comprehension has jumped 3 or 4 places from where it was.  Now I just have to get started on Romanian and not backtrack with Russian and I am set!

School starts in about 2 days.  I will be finally getting started!