Romania, part 3

Previously: part 1, part 2
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“Come boys! We go to cut the pig!”

Florin’s announcement came one morning a few weeks after we started living there. How could we resist an invitation like that? Yes, it was butchering day at Florin’s brother-in-law’s house and Florin was being called in as the man with the plan… or in this case, the knife. We city boys were quite excited to be witness to the most gruesome event of farm life. We were not disappointed. Florin did his work masterfully, but the real excitement was mostly in the first 10 minutes. I would go into it, but this blog is rated PG. The rest of the day was spent “processing”. Which, I have to say, was somewhat interesting too. I mean, you see it shrinkwrapped at Harris Teeter, but you rarely think of how it got there. We also got to learn a few traditions that surround this event. After the pig is killed, the men go to the house for a glass of palinka, which is the homemade plum brandy known well in that region. Later in the afternoon, after the meat is mostly taken off, the traditional meal is tocana, which is like pork and sauerkraut. It was excellent; I think that was the best meal I had all week.

Although we continued to experience tidbits of farm life, our main occupation was teaching. Working with the pastor at the local Baptist church, we set up classes after school for junior high and high school students. I taught French, Guitar, and Advanced English. Justin taught German and the Beginner and Intermediate English classes. Our students were most of the kids in the church youth group as well as a handful of kids from other churches in Vad and other villages nearby.

I really enjoyed teaching, especially teaching English. Guitar was nice, but I couldn’t really get the dedication from them that was needed to make much advancement. It’s also harder to teach a class than a single student. Teaching French…well, it was fine at first, but apparently my brain only has room to handle two languages at a time. When I first started teaching the class, I would teach the lesson in French and only speak to the kids in French. As my fluency in Romanian increased, I began to have more and more difficulty with French. I started making mistakes where I would substitute a Romanian word and just say it with a French accent. When this happened, I realized that I was probably making the same kind of mistakes that the Romanians would make! I quit teaching a formal class after that and just promised that I’d help them with their homework if they needed it. Teaching English was a blast though. It’s my opinion that English is the best language in the world, and I loved teaching it to these students. Here’s a picture of my Advanced English class in our tiny little classroom upstairs in the church.



(About the beard…when your house has no running water and you only shower once a week at the neighbors’ house, you make certain adjustments. Growing a beard and getting a buzz cut makes it much easier to look decent during the week.)

Anyway, being an English teacher was great, and I hope the guys and girls learned some from it – especially the accent, which I thought was the most valuable thing I could teach them. Maybe I’ll elaborate on some more farm life experiences with the next blog installment. I promise it won’t be as gruesome. Well…no I don’t.