I'm now on the train to Budapest (Hungary). Last week, I said goodbye to all my colleage-teachers and to the pupils. I visited Salina-Turda and went to some restaurants in Cluj, that I hadn't visited yet. Tomorrow I will visit Budapest and On thursday morning, I fly from Budapest back to Belgium. I'm driving threw the fantastic Romanian countryside and I will miss this country very hard.

See you soon, Romania!!

Today, it was the graduation of the 12th grade. It's very different than in Belgium. The whole day they walk around the school and they enter every class to sing the graduation song. On the playground, there's a whole ceremony with baloons and speeches. The whole school comes to look at that ceremony. In the evening, there's a banchet in a hotel. A graduation in Romania is like a wedding in Belgium Ö. The pupils and the teachers eat and drink together and afterwards they dance. The pupils also invited me to come to the banchet (I think they liked me :D).

This week I've visited some other parts of Romania. I wanted to go to the salt-mine of Praid with a friend, but the last bus to the mine had already left when we arrived. We also visited Tîrgu Mureş and Sigişoara. Transilvania is a great place to do an assistantship :D.

Today it's easter. A day that we remember the resurrection of Jezus.

In Romania, Easter is the day that everybody says 'Cristos a înviat' (Jesus is resurrected).

Easter is a very big holiday in Romania and there are many different traditions. Like the boys go to together their friends (the girls), to perfume them and to eat cakes and to drink something.

Today it's sunday, the end of the week. It means that we're already halfway in the easter-holidays.

This week I went playing football with some friends and I also visited some cities in Romania.

Sinaia -   Buşteni (Carpathians)

On thursday, I've visited Buşteni. I was there with a Romanian and a Dutch friend. We took a funicular to the top of a mountain. There we saw some natural sculptures. They were formed by wind, rain, snow and erosion. It was very windy there and the snow wasn't gone yet.

In the afternoon, we visited the Peleş-castle in Sinaia. It was built at the end of the 19th century and finished in 1914 for the Romanian king and his family. In my eyes, it is a fantastic castle :D. At the one hand, you see the wealth of a castle, but at the other hand, there are so many modern things like electricity, a central heating and even a central vacuum cleaner. I was impressed by the many secret doors and the big number of different rooms. I really felt like a king there.

Mediaş

On wednesday, we visited Mediaş, a small city in Transilvania. The weather was very good and a lot of historical buildings were restaurated. The city is very old. The historical centre still contains some elements from the 12th century. There was a big tower, which was used as a lookout tower, as a defense against enemies. We had a personal guide for free. we went to an italian restaurant, and I felt like I really was in Italy.

The 'săptămâna altfel' is an excellent opportunity for doing school trips.
Today I went to Sibiu with the 6th and the 10th grade.
Starting in Cluj-Napoca, we drive about 160km to the South. There we find a city, which is called Hermannstadt or in Romanian Sibiu.

The bus driver parks the bus, just outside the authentic medieval wall of Sibiu. From there, we go by feet to the Piaţa Mare (The Big Square).
Once we're inside the city centre, I forget I'm in Romania. All the buildings are renovated and it feels like we're in a wealthy city from the middle Ages.
For the first time, I see many tourists from outside Romania, especially people that speaks German.

After the Piaţa Mare, we visit the Bruckenthal museum. It's a museum that takes us through time. From the very beginning, when we were troglodytes, over the first civilizations to the wars from the New Time.

Some sunbathing sessions and group-pictures later, we go to the Clock tower. This tower is situated between the Piaţa Mare and the Piaţa Mică (Small Square). On the top, we have a great view over Sibiu and the surrounding area.

Afterwards, we ate an ice-cream and we went back to the bus.
In the afternoon, we've visited the zoo of Sibiu and the Astra-museum. The museum was outside and contained buildings of medieval villages.

The second day of the 'săptămâna altfel' starts on the same way as the first one...
The pupils from the Comenius-project really amazed me. Some of them can barely read a text in Romanian and they can play in an English role-play, just by imitating the things I tell them.

After practicing the role-play, I go on a cultural trip with XI-A.
First, we visit the art-museum from Cluj. My impression is that the different styles of art are the same as in West-Europe, only about 75 years later.

Then, we're going to one of the biggest botanical gardens from Romania. It's the first time I come in a botanical garden and I'm quite impressed by some huge plants and by the diversity of flowers in the garden.
The garden is situated in Cluj, but when I'm walking around in the garden, I forget about all the hustle and bustle of a city.

This week, it's the 'săptămâna altfel', that means that in every school in Romania the lessons will be replaced by extracurricular activities, such as workshops, role-plays, trips...

Today I helped the pupils from the primary school to learn the prononciation of the english sentences in the Spanish role-play of the Comenius project.

Afterwards, I went to highschool, to assist the teacher of Chemistry. She uses the beta-version of the Let's play chemistry game from the Leonardo da Vinci project. I'm really improving in chemistry also :D.

My host-school is also involved in another project, the English Environment Europe. It's a project for pupils of the primary school in which they will learn about other European cultures in an English environment. In this project, there are schools from 7 different countries involved (Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Spain, Romania and Turkey).

As a Comenius-assistent, I'll help the pupils from 2nd and 4th grade to learn a Spannish role-play in English. Next week, during the 'săptămână altfel', I'll be helping them with the prononciation of the English sentences.

An assistant doesn't need to teach by his own, but he can teach if he wants so. My mentor asked me if I would like to teach one lesson of economics about the labour market (Piaţa Muncii). I agreed and I prepared everything in Romanian. I've made my own worksheet and prepared the lesson like I would prepare it in Belgium. I gave the lesson 3 times this week, in the 11th grade. Depending on the class I gave the lesson mainly in English or in Romanian.

The pupils and my mentor were very enthousiastic and I had the feeling that I really learnt them something about economics :D.

From the 7th to the 12th of March, our school was the host-school for The Leonardo da Vinci project: Let's play chemistry.

The Leonardo project is a project between 3 different schools: HTL Wels, Patrik Lajos Budapest and Col. Tehnic Ana Aslan Cluj-Napoca.

This project started in October 2010 and will end in June 2012. The goal of the project is to make a computergame about chemistry. About every 4 months, the delegations of the different schools meet each other to work for the project and to learn about the culture of the other countries in Europe. This was a very interesting project for me. The most important language was English, so I could really help actively in debugging and in writing the exact scenario of the game.

The project was over 5 days, so I'll try to give you a survey of the different days...

Day 1 (Wednesday)

9.00: The different schools give a presentation about their schools. After that, the members of every delegation stand up and explain briefly who they are and what they expect from the project. At the end of the formal part, there is tea and cake. This is for me a moment to meet new people and to test my knowledge of German.

11.00: When there was no cake left, the delegations of Hungary and Austria received a guided tour on our school.

12.00: The real work starts... Severin and Andreas has worked at home for the project. They present their work and they explain what we'll need to do during the next 5 days.

14.00: Together with the delegations and some teachers from our school, we're going to eat in a restaurant (Capricio, the same as on my first evening).

16.00: One of our pupils, Tudor, gives us a guided tour in Cluj. We see the ancient Roman ruins and the Catholic church, we also see the Babes Bolyai University, the Piața Unirii with the statue of King Matthias and the Piața Mihai Viteazul.

19.00: In the evening, we went to a traditional Romanian restaurant, Hanul Dacilor. I ate for the first time as a real Romanian. The waitress brought some big planks (yes, no plates but planks :P ) and we could take the food from the planks. There was a mix of vegetables and potatoes, a lot of meat and bread. It looked a bit strange to me, but it was terrific.

The Hungarian team was quite hungry.

Day 2 (Thursday)

9.00: The different riddles in the game still contained some bugs. On the 2nd day of the project, we try to make a clear overview of all the bugs in the riddles.

13.30: After 4 hours of playing chemistry-games, it's time to fill our stomachs, we go back to the Capricio restaurant, where we ate yesterday.

15.00: The delegations go shopping in Iulius Mall, but I need to go home because I still have to iron a lot of clothes for this weekend. Being independent is nice, but you also have to do everything for your own.

20.00: Learning about other cultures also means that there needs to be time to relax... I go with an Austrian teacher and some pupils from all the delegations to Solas, a music bar near the student complex of Hasdeu in Cluj.

Day 3 (Friday)

9.00: Nine o'clock feels a bit earlier every day. I'm already at school and waiting for the others to come, meanwhile I'll talk to a Romanian illustrator. She was hired by our school to design some parts of the game. We hope that she can give the game a really professional look.

9.15: When everybody is at the school, we split up in different groups. I'm helping by writing the scenario together with Andreas and Alina. In my eyes it's a very nice story, I'm really looking forward to play the game when it's completely finished.

13.00: The game is ready for his final destination. 3 pupils from Austria and Romania will finish it and on the next meeting in June they will present the result to the group.

17.00: Making a video-game is only one part of the project, the other part is learning about other cultures. We're going to play bowling with some members of the delegation, so we can learn from each other. Afterwards I ate with the teachers from Austria and some members from the delegations at McDonalds.

Day 4 (Saturday)

8.30: I just arrived at school to load the bus for the excursion we're going to make this weekend. The plan is to make a trip in the North of Romania and to eat the typically Romanian food.

11.30: The first stop we make, is to eat clătită cu brânză, it's a kind of pancake with cheese, ham or jam in and typically for the region of   Maramureș  . The recipe is secret and even the Romanian teachers don't really know how to make it. The cheese/ham or jam is really baked inside the pancake, it's not laying on top of it.

13.00: We arrived in Baia Mare, Baia Mare litterally means 'the big bath' and they call it because it's like a big bath, surrounded by cliffs.
Hundreds of thousand years ago, there was a sea in Baia Mare. That was the moment that the cliffs were created. Now there are still a lot of minerals, minerals that were created by undersea volcanic activity. Over an area of 3 000 km², there were found a lot of beautiful stones. We are going to visit a museum where all these stones are exhibited. While I'm walking around in the museum I'm starting to feel very small in this world. These stones are so beautiful but however so different from each other, I realize how many secrets that the nature has. Unfortunately we were not allowed to make photographs in the museum, but I've found this one on the website of the museum:

14.00: Lunch in Baia Mare. We're very hungry, however nobody succeed to eat everything he received. I ate Mămăligă cu brânză, a very heavy dish with cheese.

Mămăligă cu brânză

16.00: After we ate our meal, we visited a museum about the medieval way of life in the Romanian villages around Baia Mare. We see some rooms of an ordinary house in a village and some tools that are used by the villagers.

17.30: We arrive in hotel 'Secret Garden', about 50km from Baia Mare, we go for a swim in the pool and we eat again. We also learn about a famous Romanian drink, called Palincă. It's a very strong drink of which I can only drink one shot.

We also received a diploma for our presence in the Leonardo project, it was a very official moment.

Day 5 (Sunday)

7.00: We have to wake up early for the last day of our project. We're having breakfast and we make fast a picture of the group. At 8.15 we're already back on our way to a cemetery and a monastery.

10.30: Our first stop today is in Săpânţa, a village in Maramureș. It's a famous touristic attraction because of his cemetery, Cimitirul Vesel. On this cemetery every person was painted by the painter of the village, Stan Ioan Pătraş. He wrote a poem about the life of every person that died. So if you walk on the cemetery, you can still feel how the personality was of the body where you're standing on. The only condition is that you talk Romanian, but I'm improving everyday and I can understand quite a lot of the texts that are on the graves. We also have some time to buy some souvenirs.

13.00: In Romania, there are many monasteries. We have visited one of them. I really had a strange feeling. Since the day I'm in Romania I feel like I'm coming somewhere that I've been before. I have the feeling that I know this place, I actually cannot describe how it feels but there's something special in this monastery. It's situated on a mountain, it's peaceful and quite. This place breathes religion, it breathes life. It's the first time since the beginning of the project that I really chose to walk alone and to let the awareness of something much bigger flow through me. While I'm walking on that holy place, it starts to snow but it doesn’t bother me. Romania has impressed me in many ways, but this is the most mysterious one.

16.00: We're eating in a restaurant not far from the monastery. However I swore yesterday that I would never drink palincă again, we get another shot to warm ourselfs in the snowstorm. On the way back I have a conversation with David, one of the pupils from Hungary, strange enough he starts talking about life, about following your heart and about the way how we can get the best out of ourselfs. This was a very special afternoon for me.

20.30: We're back on the school, I say goodbye to the delegations and the projects ends here for me, time to get some sleep.