brief.

hey guys! thanks for all the comments. here's a brief update (along with some pics i managed to upload before the computer i was using crashed. most of these computers don't have mmc/sd card readers so it makes uploading things difficult)

school has gone incredibly well. i have 8 students at the moment: two french girls, one turkish boy, an american boy and girl, one hungarian boy, one korean girl, and one israeli girl. all of the staff get along incredibly well and i have a feeling it's going to be an excellent year. the first week of school was a bit bumpy, but i'm getting my sea legs.

looks like me and the other guys (micah and kim; did i introduce them?) will be going to budapest on the 22nd for a few days to see how they run the school there. i'll get to sit in on the 1st-2nd class and learn some things.

we're still looking for an apartment, but hopefully by the end of the week we'll have something. we've been staying with a wonderful jewish family from the church for the past week or so. costina (the mum) is an administrator at the school and she's been making us absolutely delicious food all week long.

the weather here is starting to get cold; we had the first rain for awhile on saturday and it's not looking like we'll have another warm day again. i'm obscenely excited about snow, but everyone here says that after 3 or 4 months of trudging through it everyday i won't be. we'll see!

(i'll try and get some more related pictures on the next post)



the narrowest street in europe!


wu-tang represent.


a crater lake we went to.

alright, it's 10.30 and i have to get up at 6...blegh.
coffee!

disconnected

sorry about the lack of updates. this week has been absolutely insane, and i haven't had access to the internet/a pc till now.
this city is beautiful, the people are wonderful, and i'm super stoked about this year. i'll be teaching first and second grade and school starts monday, so please pray that everything goes well because i'm (currently) a bit overwhelmed. i'll try and update this with some pics and a longer post later during the week (the school should have internet sometime then...)


don't forget me!

meet brasov.

"Brasov is situated in the central part of the the country being considered the second most important town in Romania. Located 160 km from Bucharest, Romania's capital, Brasov is surrounded like a halo by the Carpathians, being in the middle of the country at the crossroads of the the Eastern Carpathian and the Southern Carpathians. Across the mountains to the South and East there are Wallachia and Moldavia, to the West the Banat region and to the North the rolling hills of Northern Transylvania."




the black church.

"Biserica Neagră or Black Church (German: Schwarze Kirche; Romanian: Biserica Neagră; Hungarian: Fekete templom) is a cathedral in Braşov, a city in south-eastern Transylvania, Romania. It was built by the German community of the city and stands as the main Gothic style monument in the country, as well as being the largest and one of the most important Lutheran (Evangelical Church of Augustan Confession in Romania) places of worship in the region...Construction on it began during the late 14th century... The structure was partially destroyed during a great fire set by invading Habsburg forces on the April 21, 1689 (during the Great Turkish War).^[20] Afterward, it became known as the Black Church."
-wikipedia




rooftops of the old town.




some random street




wintry aerial view (see the black church on the leftish?).


[images (other than the map) are from flickr]