women's day

Urime 8 marsi!
Happy Women's Day!

Today is International Women's day (like Mother's day in the states, but all women are included) and yesterday was Teacher's day here. It is tradition to give women plastic flowers today, for Women's day. So following tradition and being the wonderful students that they are, many of my students gave me a flower today. It was a bit awkward as many students (ok, just five, but it seemed like a lot) kept coming up to me at the beginning of class and handing me a plastic flower. This is the first time students have given me flowers. I also received some perfume and a plastic clock. Those are also very common gifts. My students also enjoyed it being women's day today, as I started class and said, "since its women's day I didn't want to work hard, so we will play a game during class." I played the same game yesterday in my class, as it was teacher's day. Okay, the game made them use lots of English and talk, so I consider it a learning experience for them, but I usually don't allow it to last for the whole class. It worked out well for me as yesterday and today I was a bit busy and didn't really have time to plan a lesson.

Today also marked one year of me being here in this city, on this term. One year ago today I landed back in Europe after spending a couple months in the states. Its strange to me to think I have only been here in this city, teaching these classes, friends with these students, for one year. It seems like much longer than a year, in good ways and bad. As I think back on the past year I am amazed at how much I have done and how many new people I have gotten to know. I can think back on my first couple months here as I struggled to get my classes started up and students interested. Now we have over 100 students involved in our classes and a constant flow of new students coming in. In the beginning I struggled to break into the circle of friends that was already established here, and now I often find myself overwhelmed with too many coffee visits. Overall it has been a good year.