The Zike-Bike Diaries: Village Life part 6: Last Day of School

It seems our school district is the last in the world to finish this year. Today, June 17th, was the last official day although in true Romanian fashion, no one has consistently been attending for most of this past week.

Romanian grammar school is divided into 2 parts. First there is grădiniţă which is a sort of 3-year kindergarten. Children start around the age of 3 and move to the next grade by the time they are 6ish. Attendance appears to be based on the desire of the parent to be rid of their children for a few hours each day. When the weather is good and mom can send the kids outside, attendance drops. When its rainy and she faces the prospect of them being underfoot, attendance suddenly spikes.

First through fifth grades comprise scoala (school). After the fifth grade, kids go to a junior high school in the larger town of Breasta which is a few km down the road.

In Obedin the school house has three rooms: one for grădiniţă then the school kids are divided into the other two classes. Originally each of the three classes had scheduled a serbare, a celebration performance to take place at some unspecified time during the last week. Out of the 3 teachers, only Teo really organized anything so just the grădiniţă put on a performance.

My kids didn't actually graduate from grădiniţă; we're not sure what we'll do with them in the fall. It depends on how much progress they continue to make with their Romanian reading and writing over the summer and also how willing either of the school teachers are to accept them. They're friendly enough women but I'm not holding my breath on this.

I've been wanting to include a video of the local kids for some time now. Unfortunately, all of our software for dicing, splicing and making anything close to a decent presentation of a video is somewhere in the storage area of our attic waiting for the construction on the room to be done so we have a place to set it up.
I decided I just couldn't wait any longer and you must bear the burden of my impatience.
The first 60 seconds is nothing at all, the next minute or so is Teo, with the assistance of the local rooster, making the introduction and the rest is the members of the grădiniţă reciting the various poems they have been memorizing (or not) throughout the year.

Missing from the performance is Cristi who decided about a month ago that he was done with school for the year and his poor, beleaguered grandmother is helpless to control him.
Also absent is my beloved Emil who shares a step with me every day after school while he waits for his older sister and I wait for Alexandru to be released from the 4th grade class. He shares his various philosophies on life with me and I assume he is a sage-in-the-making but I really can't be certain as I don't understand most of what he says due to his very quiet voice, his tendency to look at his shoes and his lack of ability to complete sentences. Even Mihai is generally baffled. Still, we spend a very pleasant 10 minutes in each other's company and usually share a plum from the tree or some other snack with each other. I'm sorry you don't get to see him do his inaudible recitation.

I apologize about the poor quality. Uploading videos is not nearly as simple as I expected. Think I'll stick to photos from now on.