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Romanian Summer Diary 5

Written by Chris Routledge, 3rd August 2007

Saturday 28th July--Busy days. The first British contingent taught their lessons, forged friendships, played their quick cricket in bewildered partnership with the Romanians, staged the customary talent show to the self-acclaim of beaming participants, said their goodbyes with swimming eyes and departed – some to the mountains, some to the seacoast for a deserved short holiday before returning to our rainy kingdom. The unusual this year was manifest in the confirmation of theft of handbag by bear for insurance purposes; the chosen (by the bear!) protagonist was Wirral Grammar Emma.

New forces arrived on Thursday – seventeen students and sixth formers for the school in town and eleven for the children’s home. The twenty-eight-strong group of volunteers going out in the evening is anything but inconspicuous. Welcome shouts of ‘hey, English!’, although a little irritating to our Welsh and Irish nationals, are received as such: warm welcome.

The volunteer ‘profesori’ have far more ideas than there is time to put into practice. They will learn much about the ideal and the practical by the end of the summer school. Some will find out that keeping it simple is the best policy. A few will realize that teaching others is the best way of learning. The only uncertain thing so far is the declamations favourite; ‘Brutus was an honourable man’ goes head to head with the girlie taking of tea chez Ernest’s Gwendolin.

Wednesday 1st August--I know from past experience that nothing draws the Brits and Romanians closer than twenty-four hours of supervisorial absence. Not reckoning that such extreme teambuilding efforts should be required, I decide to abscond for just a couple of hours and drive to the countryside.

Romanian Dream II

Locals only were allowed
To leave the tarmac road,
Cross the rickety bridge
And sink into the dust track
Around the lake.

Strategic route, we used to be told,
Secret in case of Western invasion.
Throughout my teenage years I had wished
To sit on the grassy banks and watch
The sun in the water.

Path at the bottom of orchards, gardens, cornfields,
Thinning under the feet of my teenage son:
Same hair, some of my dreams,
His gain, my lost lake, his to return to,
Mine now, only once.

Cristina Pascu-Tulbure.

British-Romanian Connections has been operating in Romania since 1991, and each year Cristina organizes the summer schools staffed with young British volunteers. She says the fascination lies in watching British and Romanians alike teaching and learning, as well as seeing the yearly changes in attitudes, the vernacular, and the home-grown notion of what it is to have achieved the Romanian Dream. It’s a heady mix of old culture, second-hand Western ideals, slight embarrassment about one’s history, and variations on a theme of European unity. Cristina is in Romania with a party of girls from Wirral Grammar School.

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