Joc, white chocolate, English conversation groups

I'll start backwards with the last few days. Last night I went to see a performance by "Joc," a famous Moldovan national/folk dance group, with a couple of ladies who work at the US embassy. Since it was the 65th anniversary of the group and they were honoring the director there were speeches in Romanian for about an hour before the performance actually started. It was intense and involved many, many flowers. It was worth sitting through all the repetitive praising of the director though because the show was pretty impressive. I took some short videos that I've been trying to upload without success. The place was completely packed and reporters were interviewing people in the audience during the show so it was kind of a big deal.

A couple days earlier Melissa was visiting because she had to give a presentation on teaching English grammar at the Pedagogical University in Chisinau. There were about 10 English teachers present from different schools and Melissa gave a very good, interactive lecture. I'm glad that I went because I offered to lead English conversation groups for students and the teachers were really excited about that. I've already committed to leading a weekly discussion group at the Educational Advising Center in Chisinau too. I think these groups will be a good opportunity for me to meet new people and give something back to the community as well since students are always more eager to practice their language skills if a native speaker is present. I figure I can also use these sessions as a way to raise awareness about human trafficking and see what the students already know about the issue. We can have one day dedicated to discussing migration/travel and they can talk about whether they have been abroad before, where they would want to go, how they would get information about traveling safely, what stories they have heard from friends and family and so on.

Melissa and I also went out to Grill House after her presentation and had a great dinner. Dessert was probably the highlight. I've been really into pears lately and I saw that they had a dessert of pear in a white chocolate sauce. If you've ever met me you probably know that I've had a slight to moderate white chocolate addiction in the past so you can imagine how excited I was about that. The waiter said it would take 30-40 minutes to prepare but we weren't in a hurry so we waited it out and it was very delicious.