Practice School

We just completed our first week of practice school. I worked with a Moldovan teacher, but taught the classes solo. She was great to work with and incredibly helpful. Students from our village volunteered to sit through two hours of class each day so we can practice our teaching skills (and I think they had fun learning from the Americans). The experience was great. There is a lot of prep (lesson plans, creating word charts and grammar charts) which can be very time consuming, but as the week went on, I was able to get through it all in less time. But the actual teaching is GREAT. I have really enjoyed it so far. I was teaching 6th form (6th grade) students. I had 14-16 students each day at various levels of english speaking ability. But they seemed to really enjoy the classes. On Monday I will give the "test" for the unit I taught, then we (all the volunteers in my side of the village) will be leading a game/activity day as a thank you to the students.

Next Thursday starts the second week of practice school. During this week, I will work with Elena, my partner teacher from Floresti. I am looking forward to the partner teaching structure and am interested to see how it will work. We will be teaching 11th form (11th grade) which will definitely be new for me since I am used to working with little kids. I guess that semester of english tutoring at Sac State will come in handy haha.

Our swear in date is August 18th. And so far, looks like I will be ok to swear in and become an official volunteer with the Peace Corps. I just have to pass my second langague assessment. But I think I will do well enough to get past it. Although we have all noticed our Romanian skills have slipped a bit since we started practice school. Its tough going from being a Romanian student to an English teacher. The brain doesn't like the transition!

Yesterday we went into Chisinau to meet with our new host families and sign the contract with them. It was nice to see my new host mother again. It was a good experience and she complimented me on how much better my language was from two weeks ago when I visited her for the first time haha.

Once I get to my permanent site, I will be getting USB internet for my computer so I will post more often and hopefully can get some pictures up. This is a really beaustiful country and I can't wait to share some of that with you.

One last couple of notes, I have become very attached to my current host family and they to me. They are now referring to me as their daughter and I to them as mama and tata (mom and dad). I really lucked out having such a warm and welcoming host family at the beginning of my experience. They definitely help make the transition easier. Also, the hill that was hell to walk up 6 weeks ago has actually started becoming my friend. I know it well and I can actually walk up it with only one break to catch my breath. I will try to get a picture of it so you can see what I'm working with. I will say that I am getting some really good looking calves haha!!

Please feel free to email or write me. It is the best feeling to get news from home no matter how boring you may think it is. Package day is one of the best days during training. Its like Christmas among the volunteers to see what we all got from home!