Since my blog is normally in German but I have had people ask for an English post, I decided to write one. I have been in Romania for two months now and it feels like a lifetime. Right in my first week, I went to a seminar in Mediaș. Oh by the way: This reminds me of a video I’ve wanted to tell you about. It was created by the „kulturwei“-volunteers from 2011. Everytime I feel a bit down, I watch the video and somehow it makes me feel better. It makes me realize that volunteers in the whole world are going through the same thing as me. It’s amazing!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQDWlR_RoR0

Ok, so I went to Mediaș, which is in Central Romania and got to meet the other „kulturweit“-volunteers that are situated in Romania. Back in Reșița, I started building up my field of work: a theatre club for the kids was my first go at building up an afterschool-programm. At the beginning I had a lot of children participate, but with time there was less and less commitment. Now I have two girls coming every week and some who come from time to time. Not a perfect situation for working on a play. Especially since I had initially selected a play with 13 characters. This week I decided that it doesn’t make sense to run after the kids and force them to do a play that isn’t really ideal anyway. So now we are trying to write a piece of our own: the story of Hänsel &Gretel from the perspective of the poor old witch who gets tricked by two naughty children who destroy her house, push her into the oven and on top of that, steal her jewelry. I’m excited how it will turn out to be.

When my parents came to visit, we went to see the village my mother grew up in.

My time in Resita has so far been good and bad. I have enough free time, but there is not a whole lot to do. I have a lot of ideas for my volunteer work, but people don’t seem to be ready for them. It’s hard to get to know people of my age group. First of all because I feel like there simply aren’t a whole lot of young people in the city. There are school children, then there’s a generation gap and then there are older grown-ups (40+). That’s probably because Resita doesn’t have anything to offer for young people. There’s a university, but everyone tells me you can hardly call it a university. The people who are 18 like me are in their last year of school. And I am something like their teacher. Not really, because I am not a teacher. But I held class in front of them before. So it would be weird to walk up to them and ask: „Hey, do you want to go out tonight?“.

I managed to get a membership at the local swimming pool. I go swimming every morning now and that’s really great. At 11am I arrive at the school. My day is always different. Sometimes there’s absolutely nothing to do. Actually, this sometimes happens pretty often. That’s what I’m trying to change. This week I am replacing a German teacher and that’s a whole lot of work. I am teaching grades 5, 6 and 7. Yesterday, the kids from year 5 asked me exitedly if I was going to be a teacher at their school. My definite NO disappointed them.

This is Timisoara by night. To get to the city takes about 2.5 hours from here. But it’s worth it!

I went on a holiday last week. I meet with two other volunteers in Constanta. That’s pretty much at the other end of Romania and it’s at the seaside. We also went to Vama Veche, a punk-hippie-village a few hours from Constanta. It was absolutely worth going! Vama Veche and Resita are like day and night, that’s for sure.

The beach at Vama Veche was supreme.

Supreme, I say.

What else is there to tell? I am going to Belgrad, Serbia next week for my seminar. I hope, I will arrive in one piece. It’s always a bit of a challenge to plan a trip. No one knows anything. No one speaks English. Or French. Or German. The ticket office is never responsible, I have to go to another one because here they only sell regional tickets. No, of course they can’t tell me at what time I’ll be back in Resita. They only know at what time I’ll arrive at the station where I have to switch trains. Well, well. I just try to keep calm and carry on.