reluctant fire

When I come home from school, my room is still warm from last night's fire, although chilly. I make some tea and read, snuggled under a blanket in the afternoon light, allowing myself to drift. As the dimming light makes reading more difficult, I start to feel the chill even under the blanket.
I put back on the layers to go outside and pile a load of wood on my arms. During January and February, the climb up the stairs with the pile of wood becomes easier than in November. I sweep last night's gray fine ashes down through the grate in my soba and place two kindling pieces a few inches apart, crumple up some pages from a romanian language manual I used when I first arrived in the country for training, and place the crumpled pieces between the wood. After stacking more kindling perpendicular to the first two pieces, on top of the paper, I light a match. Today, the paper burned quickly, before properly lighting the kindling. I sat crouched next to the soba's mouth, feeding more paper, watching my kindling fall on top of each other, extinguishing what little flames had begun, amazed at how fire can engulf thousands of acres of California forest and yet catches onto my kindling so reluctantly.
Now the fire is noisily lapping up 3 logs behind the closed door to the soba's mouth. But it has transmitted its reluctance to me as I consider the rest of the week's schedule, summer plans, commitments.
Hopefully I will catch on to something soon.
Final

white blanket

This week it snowed lightly for three days. I went on a walk with some colleagues and friends for a couple of those afternoons.
So much white and more coming.
Looking at general uncertainty coming up in a few months, the whiteness over everything was nice. And the numb feeling toes... :)
It is perfect weather for Simon and Garfunkel's hazy shade of winter

Iggy's Christmas

One of my peace corps colleagues received a bag of Ty stuffed animals last year.
I pilfered a few from the bag and use them as classroom props. The first time my students showed interest in forming the future tense was when I introduced Iggy the Iguana and the class had to create a story for what Iggy would do next summer.
As a past tense review to a sixth grade class today, I pulled Iggy out from under my sleeping bag in the bag of my closet and took him to school today. I started the fictitious story on the board "Iggy had a great Christmas." And invited the students to elaborate while asking questions to encourage their sleepy creativity. This is the story of Iggy's Christmas.
Iggy had a great Christmas. Where did Iggy spend Christmas? Iggy celebrated Christmas in the jungle Who did he celebrate Christmas with? with his friends. What did he eat for Christmas? He ate flies and bananas for Christmas dinner. What did he do after Christmas dinner? After dinner he opened gifts. What was his favorite gift? His favorite gift was a pink girlfriend.

Yes. a pink girlfriend. I was thinking more on the lines of a computer game or a basketball, but a pink girlfriend (Iggy is green). Not a bad Christmas for Iggy.

Christmas Vacation

A wonderful, wintery week in Dresden


Decorating an outside Christmas tree. Putting lights up with a stick is NOT a simple task.


Dancing New Years away with colleagues and friends from Vama.

2nd graders

in conclusion.

Romania is looking at 5 more years of Basescu and an even lower opinion of their country's political system after the conclusion of the recent elections.
Supporters on both sides speculate about vote-stealings, which would theoretically even out the two parties, if both groups stole an equal number of votes. The Economist even commented that the "The campaign was exceptionally dirty." As Christmas approaches and my fellow teachers are more concerned about the extra week of unpaid vacation they are receiving as a "gift" from the government's struggling budget, talk has died down about the election results.
And life keeps happening.

and the next president will be...

Today is the second and final day for Romanian voters to decide their president for the next five years.
The first day of voting narrowed the pool of candidates (many) to two, and today was the decision day.The two candidates are
Basescu, who has been the president for the last five years
Geoana, formerly the foreign minister, and who many believe will bring stability

At 9 o'clock tonight, the exit polls from across the country were counted up and televised. I sat in the living room with Gabi and Ciprian.
One station said Geoana had 51.4%, while Basescu had 48.6% percent.
Another said they both had 50%.
Milica thinks Basescu doesn't have a chance anymore.
ne vedem.