This past weekend there were two separate, kind of, field trips that took place. One was with one of the math teachers and his freshman class and one of the Econ teachers and her 11th grade class along with some other students that went to Sibiu for two nights. The other was with the physics teachers and mainly the 11th and 10th grades. I went with the first group since my 11th graders were the first ones to ask me to go with them.
We headed out around noon on Friday with a total of four professors and about 50 teenagers. Paul, one of the math teachers and a good friend of mine and I sat in the back with the 11th grade while the other two profs manned the front of the bus and we had a great time. I forgot how fun bus trips were in high school and this was a great reminder. This is my first year teaching this specific 11th grade class so I was really happy to be able to get to know all of them much better throughout this trip. Our first stop was Sighisoara where we spent about 3 hours and made our way around the small but beautiful medieval city. We made it up to the citadel and the old Saxon cemetery that overlooks the entire city. At about 3pm we climbed back on the bus and headed for our final destination which was Sibiu. We got into town around 7pm and found where we were staying shortly after.
We were put up at the industrial high-school for food industries. We were in the student dorms that slept about 5 people per room. To say that our accommodations were sub par would be an understatement. We however knew that would wouldn’t spend much time in the rooms and we just hoped that there weren’t any forms of bed bugs. I shared a room with 4 of my 11th grade girls that were great roommates and I had fun hanging out with.
After we got settled in, we all headed into the center to find something to eat and then called it a night. At around 11pm, some of the boys wanted to go and find a 24 hour grocery store to get more food and I decided to chaperon them and good thing I did. After walking around for what felt like an hour, we finally found a shop across from the train station which is situated about 25 minutes away from where we were staying. When we were heading back to the school, we got pulled over by the police and the way they spoke with us annoyed me so I wasn’t the nicest to them either. The conversation went like this:
Police: What are you doing?
Me: We are walking back to our hotel. We were buying food.
Police: How old are you?
Me: I’m 26. I am their teacher. They are in high school.
Police: Why are you here?
Me: We are on a field trip. We are from Bistrita-Nasaud.
Police: Isn’t it a little late to be on a field trip? ( this annoyed me the most since they were obviously chaperoned and weren’t doing anything bad or being loud.)
Me: It is 12:30 and it is the weekend. Were we being loud or doing anything bad? No, we weren’t therefore goodnight.
And then I started walking away.
The second day was also a lot o fun. After only getting about 4 hours of sleep since everyone was running around and playing pranks on each other, we were headed off for a fun filled day. Our first stop was the Burkenthal Art Museum in the center of the city which was followed by a trip to to Dumbrava which is right outside the city and houses a beautiful nature preserve with village museum. We spent a large chunk of the day there touring the area and taking a crap ton of pictures.
When we got back to the school, we rested a little and then headed out to dinner and to hang out in the center. I had a great dinner with 3 11th graders and a 9th grader and we talked about everything and anything under the sun. The night was followed by all of us meeting up with the other group from our school and heading out to a billiards/karaoke bar. I reaffirmed the fact that I am absolutely terrible at pool and that I do not have any sort of a singing voice. I was not brave enough to go up and sing but when two of my students sang Otherside by RHCP I decided to sing along in a corner.
We made it back to the school around midnight and that is where things became interesting. Saturday night instead of having just the 50 students that came with us, we had both groups at the same place so that was over 100 students with 7 teachers. Paul and I were the only two awake after 1am so it was very interesting for us trying to keep everyone in check. Nothing crazy happened and we only confiscated one bottle of wine. The worst part of the trip came at about 2am. The clocks changed so we had 2 hours of 2am and they were the worst. I started getting very tired since I hadn’t slept much and had to wake up at 4am to leave on a bus for Bucharest to pick up my mom. Once again, the kids didn’t let me sleep and it was mainly the 9th graders. Some of the students from the other group brought their guitars and they were going around caroling Christmas carols which I stopped fairly quickly. They were running around knocking on peoples doors and even with the help of the older kids, there was no shutting them up. Finally, around 3am I lost it and screamed at everyone to get inside. They 9th graders are still skidish around all profs, even me, and when they heard me yell they all froze and ran inside their rooms and not a sound was heard after that.
I was not able to make the last leg of the trip with them since I had to go pick up my mom in Bucharest but the two days that I did spend with kids I had an absolute blast and just now realized how HUGE the maturity level is between 9th and 11th graders.
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