None of my tenth graders showed uppp today. I have my first class with them and I sat there waiting like a moron for twenty minutes till two of them came to tell me that they weren't coming. The sports teacher planned a soccer match during my hour. I was pissed but more than mad I was a bit dissapointed in them and myself. In that class we are reading To Kill A Mockingbird and though I know that it isn't terrible exciting all the time, still it's school. You should have to show up for school. Truancy is such a huge problem here. One lady told me that truancy is the teacher's fault. If they are skipping your class than you must be more interesting. I do agree that teachers must be interesting but they should be puppets for students entertainment. We are not there to entertain the kids but teach them. We shouldn't have to sing and dance (or in my case only play English games ) to beg them to come to class. COMING TO CLASS IS THEIR JOB! My blood is beginning to boil. These kids are so lazy. They don't have afterschool jobs or extracurricular activities, they have nothing to do but school! My eleventh graders were studying for a test in English called the Cambridge exam so for the past few weeks, actually months they have been excused from class to go home and study. EXCUSED FROM ALL CLASSES, even mine which is ENGLISH! It makes me insane. Okay enough bitching...

I hiked up Cozia mountain on saturday and I thought I was going to die. I have hiked up Cozia on two previous occasions but this time...this time nearly killed me. "Springtime in the mountains," Janice informs me halfway to the top, "means snow." Mounds of snow, mini mountains of snow and we had to break trail and trudge through it. I am not being overdramatic. I would take one step and sink into the snow up to my knees. I felt like a weeblo those little plastic people that can't stand up or walk straight. At one point Glen (Janice's financee) fell in up to his shoulders and he is six feet tall. Every step of the five hours up "i hate hiking" played on repeat in my head. But, "Hiking," wise Janice says, "is just like childbirth, you hate the up but when you're going down you can't hardly remember it." I don't know about childbirth but she was quite right about the short memory, it was an easy downhill trek. After a refreshing lunch and tea at the cabana on top when headed down, but not before a 70 year old man came into the cabin. He also had hiked up Cozia that morning and next to him I felt like a big baby. Apparently this guy hikes up cozia nearly every weekend in every season. Mare branza (big deal in Romanian or big cheese) so i am not the big outdoorswoman that I like to imagine myself to be. We came home 12 hours later dead tired and sore. Boy did my back hurt the next day and today I am still a little worse for wear.

I come home in less than two weeks and I can hardly wait. I have started packing already.