Re-entering the Blogosphere

Sapte mane! This is my new favourite Romanian greeting, it means 'Kiss your hand' and apparently it has the ability to make Romanian mothers swoon.

Its been a while since I have blogged and I thought it was about time I got my nerd on. Its been a very good week indeed. Last weekend involved a very trendy band with a ridiculous name, 'We Have Band'. Despite being electro-ish,very NME and not normally my cup of tea, I actually thought they were very good. There are three members, two guys and a girl whose only job was to shake maracas, like a prettier version of Bez. Heres a clip:

uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LCet7l4-VgU

The video has been made on a budget of 4 to 5 pounds, 5.50 at most and is rubbish, but the song is good. I'm looking forward to being able to out-indie people, "Don't you know We Have Band? I saw them in a club in Bucharest, don't you know." Mmmm, pretentious. Maybe I could go to Po Na Na and be embraced like a brother, I could belong! Somehow I doubt I ever will.

This is Dan Fagg (stop giggling), a true Manc, who hates United, spends his working days looking at technical diagrams of toilet cubicles and is an all round good apple. He's also a co-owner of the a grey hound with a hundred percent record; go on, put your mortgage on her. After the band, he began talking to a "chunky" (not my description) Swede and her Romanian friend. He convinced them both back to his flat. We started to play what Dan calls as musical tennis. The Swede put on Britney Spears, Dan put on some indie, I played my noise, a good time was being had, until the Romanian girl stepped up and put on some really depressing acoustic business, you know the sort, some guy with dreadlocks crying. I'll stick to emo crying thank you very much. It killed the mood a bit. Dan tried his best with the Swede, but alas to no result. I've also just played him at Brian Lara cricket, my joy at scuttling him for 120 odd was soon subdued as I battled to a valiant 84 all out. Had a nice drink on Sunday with a work friend in a cafe that was owned by a famous Romanian actor. The whole place is a vanity project, pictures of him cover every inch of wall space and other big players on the Romanian theater scene have wrote messages saying how wonderful he is.

I was introduced to Dan (and most other people I know here) by Saira, who I am very grateful too and I thought I should say. In writing as well!

The official observation went pretty well despite my best efforts to mess it up. I left the plan I had worked on for hours on the desk at school. The CD didn't work so I had to read out the script with the person who was supposed to be observing me. Despite this I managed to get rated as 'Very Good' which I was delighted with. I spent the day strutting around like the prettiest girl at the dance. However, the very next lesson I was brought straight back to earth as I drew on a white board in what turned out to be a permanent marker. Now Petrom's conference room will have a line diagram of the Present Perfect Tense forever with them. They never did say thank you.

Now I have bored you for a while, let me know how you are getting on, which is much more important and interesting.

much love x

It Turns Out TEFL is a Job

I was up at 6 this morning, as I am every morning (check me out). I left the house at 7, I got home at half past nine. Lessons were finished by 10.00 so the rest of the day was solid, unadulterated lesson planning. This is mainly, but not solely, due to my formal observation tomorrow, which is drawing close. I'm nervous as I don't know what the standards are. The observer is an English lady called Serina. She is a big fan of getting the students up and making them move around. So my students are in for a shock when they arrive and are told that there are various slips of coloured paper stuck around the room for them to find. I'll be glad when it's all over. Thanks to being in the office until late, I think at least a few people, now think I'm a sad workaholic who avoids going home as he would only sit around in his underwear, eating shit and dreaming of another full day in the office. Which I suppose from the workaholic and dreaming stuff isn't to far from the truth.

Staying late has its advantages. I got to see Robert which is always a joy. With in minutes he was mouthing obscenity about various female members of staff and was throughly enjoying telling me how weak English swear words were. He was a former teacher at the school and he is returning solely to teach one student, a friend of his. Robert claims the only reason his friend wants him as a teacher is so he can tell Robert to 'suck it'.

Weekend was good. Involved something called a bucket bong, which involves (unsurprisingly) a bucket half filled with water and a 2l bottle of water with the base cut off. The science behind it was incredible. Played some poker, did shockingly badly, didn't win a single hand.

Had some more Romanian lessons (more coming later) and its going ok. It has made me worry about my memory, It's unbelievable how quickly I can forget something.

I hope everything is rosey with you. I'm off to watch Obama's inauguration day, you can't help but feel inspired.

love love love

One More of Lifes Little Dreams Fulfilled

What's that you're holding Mark? I'm surprised you can't guess but well, I tell you. It is my business card. Yeah, you heard. Having my social class rise this quickly over the space of one afternoon has been frankly dizzying.

Bucharest has had a bit of snow. The surrounding area is deeply snowed in and tv even claimed its been -30C in some parts, though pollution has ensured we have missed the worst of it. Lessons have been fine. I managed to include charlton legend, Carl Leaburn (my blog profile picture is of big Carl) into one lesson, this will mark the humble start of missionary work. I get officially observed next week which I'm actually pretty scared about. Been out a few times. One night ended in a bloody mess when a friend, who will remain nameless, managed while dancing on a table to teenage kicks to slice up his hand on a number of glasses, rock and f*cking roll. Met a colleague of mine to go to the cinema. We met by a statue. She was curious who the statue was for. Unfortunately the name was covered by a wreath, so she attempted to pull it back to read it. The wreath didn't move so when attempting to move it, she came away holding the centre of the wreath in her hand. After quickly discarding it, we made a quick get away. Can't the war dead rest in peace?

This is the sort of tomfoolery that the citizens of Bucharest indulge in to celebrate christmas.
uk.youtube.com/watch?v=uz9QN9zP24Q

I hope everything in your worlds are happy and dandy.

i dragoste tu x

Back In Bucharest

After a lovely Christmas break I have made my return to Bucharest and it's nice to be back. The flight was uneventful but you can normally rely on a Bucharest taxi driver to liven up your day. He was a massive guy who didn't speak as much English as he thought, since starting this job I know how he feels. He shouted abuse about his ex-wife, the hussy now lives in Italy, and then asked me if I liked "wesslink". He knew I was confused when I just laughed and said 'yes, very nice'. Turns out he meant wrestling. He demonstrated what he meant by, pointing to his cauliflower ears and then by flexing his arms and insisting that I felt his muscles. He repeated this at every red light we stopped at. I tried to stop this but he was very insistent. I made a joke about how small my arms are and he just looked at me with contempt. I might have to go and beef up and then hang around the airport. After establishing that he could destroy me at will he virtually threw me out of the door.

Went to meet a few people in the evening which was good, ended up being out much later than I thought, and with the early start for the flight, it meant being awake for 24 hours which I paid for on Sunday.

Slipped back into work without to much difficulty. On Monday it was great to see people again, though it was clear that mentally we were all still on holiday. I've learnt that Romanian Christmas isn't too far separated from ours, it also involves eating an obscene amount, though its all boiled and wrapped in vine leaves, apparently. Its warmer here than at home and the Russians haven't cut off my gas so happy days indeed. This is just a quick post as my internet connection has died, so forgive me if it takes longer to reply to any message. I'm back in the internet cafe, they have switched the music from gangster rap to mtv. Songs are released a bit later here than at home, Katy Perry is still kissing girls, but don't worry its innnaaaaaccceeennnnntttttt.

Happy new year

The Sights of Bucharest

The Palace of the Parliament (#1 in a collectible series)
This picture doesn't do the sheer scale of this building justice. Its massive, 270m by 240m to be exact. It stands 12 stories tall (86m) with another 92m underground and contains 1,100 rooms. It is also the heaviest building in world, who and how they work that out blows my tiny mind. Its the largest building in Europe, and the second largest administrative in the world after the Pentagon. Its made solely of Romanian materials and is 10% bigger than the Great Pyramid at Giza, wicked cool.

It was intended to be a prestige project. Building starting in 1983 and it was hated as a symbol of decadence (it cost billions to construct) when the Romanian people were suffering food and fuel shortages. It was still unfinished at the time of the revolution and despite talk of dynamiting it and even turning into a casino, construction was finished so it could be used as the parliament for the new democracy. It is the largest parliament building in the world. A guy who works in the administrative side of things at the school, who was actually a conscript in Bucharest during the revolution, told me that they couldn't blow it up, there weren't enough explosives. A lot of historic Bucharest was destroyed to make room for it and Unirii Boulevard that leads upto it.

Now you can wow your friends in the pub.

Christmas Frolics

Last night was the Christmas party, it was weird. Not speaking Romanian I needed Serj to act as translator but at one point I'm sure the proceedings led him to lose the will to live so at these points I was left to wonder what the devil was going on.

Getting there was an adventure in itself, the taxi had a spoiler and racing stripes, and the driver actually shouted at me for doing something as ridiculous as to look for a seatbelt in his car. However, I did arrive in one piece. One of the first people I saw was Leo, this was my second dealing with him where he gave me a glass of whiskey, my first dealing with him was when he gave me money from the finance office to pay my bills so only good things happen when you speak to Leo.

Before carrying on with this bit, its important to point out that you can be confident of seeing certain people in certain areas. For example there is a kid who walks around Unirii with a lamb in his jacket and you give him some money and you can touch it, which supposedly brings good luck. Another group are some native Americans who dance on Unirii. Well the guy who runs the school was there dressed as an American Indian, he had given himself a name like running bear or something. We all had to vote on who we felt was the most enthusiastic member of staff was during the week, he brought up the candidates and made them sing a song in Apache. He then probably introduces them, but not knowing what he was saying it came as a surprise to me, the American Indians come dancing down the room in fully wear and dance for the next fifteen minutes, why people tried to copy. Haven' t these people suffered enough? One of them was Romanian and you do wonder how she fell into this. Why they were dancing another Indian who was just in jeans and a shirt was in the DJ booth shouting the Romanian version of 'Shubba'.

They disappeared as soon as they arrived and then it was time for the teams to vie for the title of most enthusiastic. There was a play about Santa being sent away by Mrs. Clause until he learnt to speak English, but Santa had the last laugh, not only did he learn English but he also met a new women, the sly dog. There was a puppet show, a mock news programme, people enacting cartoon characters (Bogdan's roadrunner being a highlight), the guys from fast track kids sang a song, one group did accent impersonations and then danced in the style of that country, there were more but I can't remember. Ana become convinced we weren't going to win as 'we don't dance around enough', we had gone for the different approach of IF YOU DON'T STOP USING SO MUCH PAPER THE WORLD WILL OVERHEAT AND DIE. The film started with pictures of pretty trees etc and then we ran on and pretended to fight for seats on the stage. After 30 seconds we took our seat and pretended to read a paper before the video voice over starts at which point we look around wondering where it is coming from. Eniko then comes on as an air steward and goes through the routine while the voice over talks about global warming we then all run off. The film then cuts to the foliage planting with 'Big Yellow Taxi' being played (I chose the song so don't knock it). Then we had boards shoved into our hands and one by one we had to prance across the stage holding the damn things, my boards read save resources. With both hands full all I could do was some kind of funky walk, which I will demonstrate when I'm home as it was banging.

We didn't win, but we did come a very respectable third. The group doing all the different nationalities won, I think the girl belly dancing and another doing a full splits is what clinched it. The puppet show was second. I think Ana's hard work has been fully justified. We were pulled on stage and again as it was in Romanian so I didn't know what was going on until we came off and Serj filled me in like Craig David. What I've been led to believe is that we have won a camping trip in the mountains, but I don't have a tent so I'm left to dream.

It then progressed into what was in effect a wedding disco. There was 90's disco, a small scuffle and I preceded to humiliate myself in front of my new employers by attempting to dance in public, the Botswana did not make an appearance however, that would have probably got me deported.

They will be giving me a DVD with pictures and a bit of film and jazz, so hopefully it will be on here soon.

Enthusiasm

I am relying on Serj not to re-tell this story as it may lead to me being beaten up by the lady who employed me.

Its our schools Christmas party on Thursday and unlike Waitrose where we just got drunk and didn't speak to each other, its a big deal here. Every year the staff are divided into teams and a theme is announced, this year it's enthusiasm. I can't think of a theme that I'm less cut out for. So the teams have to prepare something that will prove that it is they who are the most enthusiastic. I don't know if you win anything but some take it very seriously, including our team leader Ana who is also the person that employed me, God bless her! She has compiled a small show (short in length not in ambition or sheer sense of theater) about enthusiasm for environmental protection.

As far as I'm away no one in the group is a particular eco warrior and the amount of paper we get through is pretty staggering. So we turned out in the bitter cold, I even had to cancel lessons to do this, to go to Mr. Bricolage (the Romanian equivalent of B&Q) to buy a tree. Well I say tree, it was meant to be a tree but this is the best we came up with. Its certainly not a tree, a shrub at best, and personally I'm pretty unwilling to declare it as anything more than foliage. It doesn't come up much beyond the ankle. We than had to drive (yes I know) to a group member's flat block to plant the damn thing. Surprisingly and maybe worryingly despite living in an urban flat block she produced a shovel which appears to have had plenty of use. It was filmed and we all (including a pregnant women) had to dig a bit of the hole and look enthusiastic while doing it. Though Addy did most of it with all the aplomb of a mobster. The finished product is underneath, see if you can spot it. It was freezing, people were looking and the whole group were a little bemused. It was a filmed and Addy through techno wizzery is going to edit it with the blue man group (??) and bits of films of stuff that is bad for the environment n' that. Hopefully I will get a copy when he's finished.

While this film is being shown the group members will act out a short scene of being on a plane, so laden with metaphor that Shakespeare himself would be jealous. Then we have to strut around with bits of card with words like 'nurture' written on. Once the final decisions are made I'll know more, though with my acting experience (Inn Keeper number 2, spooky train driver, acting as if I know about grammar) I'm confident of stealing the show.

I have to pack for the flight I'm taking this weekend.... think the foliage balances it out? I won't stop until people in St Albans can go to work in shorts and sip drinks with little umbrellas in.