A Surprise

Today Lori had two classes of intermediate students in the morning. Today the school was having an Open House and many parents and community members were about, as well as other children. Things were really humming. Between the two morning classes, a TV reporter came to interview Lori. She asked: “What is your project?” Lori explained that Global Volunteers come to help the host community achieve their goals; we don’t come to tell people what to do. And an interesting observation: This interview was totally conducted in English, and the camera man spoke very good English too.

A surprise arrived in the afternoon. Lori had been expecting groups of beginner students, but instead some were students from yesterday who are more advanced than beginners. It took a bit of modification to come with a different lesson using only the flash cards that were in Lori’s bag for beginner lessons. One thing is certain—what these kids know – they really know. They have not learned English by rote memory. They have real concepts attached to the words. And every class today did Hokey-Pokey! That’s a lot of Hokey-Pokey!

When Dan was returning Lori to the hotel, the heavens opened and Bârlad had an intense thunderstorm.  We tried to get the computer to attach to the internet, but discovered the hotel’s internet was down.  We gave up for a later try. Finally at 5:30 PM there was a successful connection to the internet on the first floor sitting area.  Mihaela arrived at 7 to take Lori to dinner, again at Restaurant Alona , and she shared  that the other volunteers were on the train coming from Bucharest.  At 9:00 PM Dan, Mihaela, and Lori  met the arriving volunteers at the train station, and we all returned to the hotel, where the arriving volunteers had a late supper, and plans were made for a team meeting after breakfast on Wednesday.  Then they asked if there was a trick to getting connected to the internet and that brought laughter considering the work done in the past two days to make a connection. However, before bedtime, all of the newly arriving volunteers were in the first floor sitting area of the hotel easily connected to the internet and assuring everyone they had arrived in Bârlad.