I know I’m way behind with blogging. So much fantastic stuff has happened this month. I’ll just give y’all a short update. I promise a longer blog is coming soon. First of all, I spent 4 glorious days in Istanbul, Turkey with the fabulous Miss Sarah at the beginning of the month. The 4 days we spent roving and exploring Istanbul (not Constantinople) were totally worth the 42 hours we spent on a CFR train to get there and back. We stayed at the most groovy hostel, met tons of cool people, got the see the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia, the Grand Bazaar, the spice market, we took a cruise up the Bosphorous Straight, we stood on Asia, and even got squeaky clean at the Turkish bath. So that’s that. I will post a longer blog of our adventures and misadventures in Istanbul with some fantastic pictures. Istanbul is the most beautiful city I have ever seen.

On Valentine’s Day weekend, I headed to Babeni (27km from me) to meet up with the artistic Miss Tara. She had an awesome Valentine’s Day dance at her school and invited a bunch of volunteers to help out. I had a great time and finally got to know some of the members of group 27, which was rad. Her kids are great and we got to play with glitter, which always makes me happy! She has a groovy little café in town and I got to eat cake and drink vanilla flavored coffee with the girls in the morning and we all got to go out for pizza and beer after the dance. This was a treat for me! I never get to go out for pizza. I also hardly ever leave Horezu. I wonder if there is a correlation?

For the last few weeks Gilda and I have been coaching an English language speech team. We had a local tournament which I was on the jury for. All of our students advanced to the second round. The second round was the county competition held in Ramnicu Valcea last Friday. Our team did amazing! I was so proud of all our participants! And I am overjoyed to announce that all of our competitors are advancing to the regional competition! Although, unfortunately, one of our students who qualified will not be able to compete in the regional competition because of her age. So, my schedule over the next few weeks my schedule will be quite busy. Between speech team practice, regular classes, a 4-H art activity this Saturday, a trip to Petrosani, a presentation in Craiova (more on that later), grant writing, and the recent hours I picked up at the preschool/kindergarten, I’m quite content and quite frazzled. I like being busy so it’s all good.