Tag Archives: scoala altfel

Apr15

Școala Altfel

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This year for scoala altfel my school did the same thing as last year which was to create various weeklong workshops that the students could attend. The new one that was added this year was the “tourism” workshop, aka a 5 day field trip, which I decided to chaperone.

After arriving home from COS conference I had a day long break to detox and then had to repack my bags and head out for another week. We all met in front of the high school at 8am sharp on Monday morning where we loaded up the busses and headed to our adventure. Here is a list, by day, of all of the places we visited.

Day 1:

  • Cluj city center
  • Turda salt mine
  • Turda Canyon
  • Alba Iulia Citadel
  • Deva

Day 2:

  • Hunedoara castle
  • Prislop Monastery
  • Targu Jiu (Kissing gate, Table of Silence, Infinity Column)
  • Tismana Monastery

Day 3:

  • Drobeta Turnu Severin
  • Iron gates outside of Orsova
  • Orsova (Danube boat cruise)
  • (we also spent the night at a high school dorm in Orsova. Said dorm has a capacity of 700 students and only has 11 students currently living in it. The conditions we stayed in were laughable. Without warm water or heat, we made the most of our time there and the 40 students crowded into 3 rooms for warmth.

Day 4:

  • Resita train museum
  • Dacian/Roman museum and ruins in Sarmizegetusa
  • Densus church which was constructed in the 3rd century
  • Deva
  • (We stayed at the gymnastics high school that trains all of Romania’s gymnasts and where Nadia Comaneci trained)

Day 5:

  • Deva Citadel
  • Monastery – can’t remember the name
  • Gold Museum in Brad
  • Dinner in Cluj
  • HOME!

We encountered some pretty bad weather at times, forgot a student after a stop, froze and almost got pneumonia, but all in all it was a fun trip and i’m happy I got to have a good time with my kids.

 

Apr4

Tuesday: Monuments, Monasteries, Waterfalls, and Dracula

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Tuesday I was lucky enough to accompany about 50 students and 2 professors to a fieldtrip to some pretty cool locations. This is the route we took:

Our first stop was Moisei, a little village just over the county border in Maramures. There we visited the monastery that was founded in the early 1600’s and I got to see one of the ever so famous wooden churches of Maramures. After we left the Monastery, we headed over to the WWII monument where we learned about the massacre that occurred on October 14th, 1944 where 44 people were killed by the Hungarian Army. The next leg of our trip was to Borsa, home of the Cascada Cailor. We took a ski lift up to the top of the mountain where the view was absolutely phenomenal. After about a 30 minute hike, we arrived at the waterfall only to find it completely frozen. The hike and trip was still worth it because the views were absolutely amazing and from that mountain I could see into my county and Ukraine as well. Around 2pm, we continued on our way and we made a quick pit stop where the counties of Maramures,Bistrita, and Suceava meet. There is a little monastery there as well and after a 20 minute snowball fight, got back on the road. After a 2 hour drive, we stopped in Vatra Dornei to grab a bite to eat and we were off again to our last stop for the day, the ever famous Dracula Castle. There are many various hotels and castles that claim to be the real deal and, although some of them are (the ones that belonged to Vlad the Impaler), this specific one was made famous by Bram Stoker. It was about this specific hotel located in the Tihuta Pass (Borgo Pass), that the author wrote about. I’m not gonna lie. I was fairly disappointed with the hotel since they have done an awful job trying to feed off of the “Dracula” hype but i’m happy I can check it off my list.