Training Again

But this time i'm the other side of things. So I made it down to Ploiesti last Sunday after moving the rest of my stuff to Codlea. Radu and Oana stayed in Codlea with us on Saturday and left on Sunday. I'm staying in a true two-star Romanian hotel, the Hotel Nord, in a not so interesting part of town (I'm being very politically correct here). Romania's petroleum industry is primarily located in Ploiesti, and the first oil well in the world was started here. Walking around town, I had to wonder where all the oil money had gone....

After I arrived, I took a stroll down an avenue of neverending blocs and found the center of the city, which has a population of about 300,000. There I had some McDonalds (mmm) and then headed back home for the evening. My fellow volunteer and friend Mandy picked me up at the hotel Monday morning and we went to the school to start day one of 10 of our teaching practicum observations. Man, it was like looking in the mirror. I remember how clueles and nervous we all were last summer. However, by the end of the week I saw some substantial progress and improvement on their part.

All in all, in was a fun and productive week. I was able to meet a lot of the new volunteers, got the hang of evaluating them, hung out with some of my old language teachers and fellow group members, etc. I'm looking forward to next week, although it will be busier as I have to submit individual reports for each TEFL trainee, participate in a site placement meeting, and conduct a safety and security technical session with the entire group of trainees. That last task should be interesting. I'm sure they'll all be riveted. I'll try to keep it short. Normally, our Safety and Security Director would conduct such a session, but he asked me to do him a favor because he couldn't be there. Also, I'm a new member of the Safety and Security Committee, but I'm not sure if this makes me qualified or not. So, I'll just show a power point presentation and use the notes he provided me.

Ploiesti kind of grew on me. I like it there. Lots of beer gardens. Although I'm not sure how I'd feel if there weren't a bunch of Americans and PC staff around all of the time. Next Friday should be fun, as the TEFL trainees will probably all be ready to party after they finish the teaching practicum. I'll take a train to Bucharest next Saturday afternoon and stay at a pensiune near the airport. I've got to be at the airport at 4am next Sunday. I think that I'm scheduled to land in Houston around 2pm CST.

I'm in Codlea right now. I got here last night around 6:15. Got up this morning and realized I left my speakers and MP3 player at the hotel. Nice. Luckily, I called and they found the items and will hold them until I return tomorrow night. Very surprising, as I thought for sure the items would be in some bazaar by now. I tried to do some laundry this morning in preparation for next week and the trip home, but alas, the whole town is without water right now. I hope that it's working when I go back the house. I really need to get my laundry done before I leave tomorrow afternoon. Hard to believe that I'll be in the U.S. in 8 days. It's kind of freaking me out a bit, as I've got a lot of traveling and things to do in a short period of time.