#ghimbav

From the ticketing website: A New Beginning. After over 10 years, Rockstadt Extreme Fest has a new home. Join us in Ghimbav, just 5 km from the amazing city of Brasov and 10 km from the old site in Rasnov, as we make history together. A new festival site—much larger and better suited for all of us. Bigger, bolder! Eastern Europe’s most loved rock and metal festival will now take it to a new…

Primul deputat român în Dieta de la Budapesta. Lista parlamentarilor de Brașov 1848-1919

Comitatul Brașov a cunoscut și ca Varmeghia Brașovului (în maghiară Brassó vármegye, în germană Komitat Kronstadt), a fost o unitate administrativă a Regatului Ungariei, care a funcționat în perioada 1876-1920. Acesta nu era nici pe departe la fel de mare ca actualul județ Brașov, ci cuprindea un teritoriu intre Apața și Timișul de Sus de la Nord la Sud, iar de la Est la Vest limita intre Prejmer…

VIDEO: Noul elicopter Airbus fabricat la Ghimbav își face apariția în SUA

Noul model de elicopter care va fi fabricat la Ghimbav de către concernul Airbus și-a făcut pe 1 martie apariția la un salon aeronautic din Louisville, Kentucky. Construit de la platforma elicopterului Super Puma AS322 C1e/L1e, de 8,6 tone, noul elicopter se numește Airbus H215, fiind refăcut și regândit pentru a răspunde necesităților civile și militare din prezent. După cum descrie site-ul de…

So I haven't been blogging about my placements, partly because when I get back from them I am too tired and brain-dead to write a lot, and partly because it would just be me ranting about cute kids. Probably not super interesting for you to read. Today though I am going to write a bit about what we do at Dominos and what it is like!

To recap, Dominos is a 2 storey half-way house for abandoned children and young offenders in a town called Ghimbav, about 45 minutes by bus out of Brasov. Dominos is the first place the kids will be sent to before they find a more permanent placement, like a foster home or maybe some relatives. As it the first port of call, there is an isolation room up on the second floor where all kids spend their first day or so (to make sure that they don't have any contagious diseases) and it's where all of their hair is shaved off so lice doesn't spread throughout the house.

The house itself is pretty nice with a front and back yard, rooms with bunk beds for all of the kids and toys. The staff members take shifts so that there is always a staff member present, and these may just be supervisors or they may be educators, social workers, psychologists etc. There is also a security guard who unlocks the gate to let you in and out, and fills in a guest book whenever we arrive. When I first started my placement there were probably over thirty kids, but since then maybe seven or more of them have left to go live with family or to move on to other placements.

Most of my interaction is with the little ones, as the teenagers tend to keep to themselves, either doing homework and chores or listening to music. We are usually at Dominos from 9.30am - 1.30pm or 4.00pm - 7.00pm, and for the first few hours we try to occupy the kids with an activity. This could be drawing, paper aeroplanes, painting, friendship bracelets, pompom animals, chalk drawings... we try to think of ideas in the Creative Workshop, but it is hard to keep coming up with new ideas and supplies are limited!

While our activity is going on we have to do our best to keep the chaos contained. Mostly, our hands are full looking after the 3 - 5 year olds, as they are the ones old enough to want to participate but not old enough to use the scizzors safely, to not paste glue on themselves or just grab all of the pencils and run with them. In particular Andra (4yo), Mia (3yo), Ioana (5yo?) and Codruţa (5yo) are usually in the middle of a loud and noisy mess.

Andra is super fussy about putting things in particular order or having particular coloured pencils, and will shriek like a banshee if you give her the wrong thing/mess up her order. She never listens to what you tell her, so if you tell Andra she can only have one piece of paper she will spend the next two hours trying every way possible to get another piece; whether this means crawling over the table, under the table, stealing paper from other kids or throwing a tantrum with the full waterworks. That being said, Andra also really likes to sit in your lap and be tickled, though this can be scary as she really throws herself around wiggling so you have to be careful not to drop her!

Mia (pronounced Maya) looks like a Romanian Madeleine McCann; she is sooo cute! Her hair is rather long compared to the other kids and is a dark blonde, and she has big green/brown eyes. From what we have gathered Mia and her older brothers Valentin and Catalin were living with their family in a field somewhere before they were taken to Dominos. So yes Mia is very cute, however she definitely knows it! She will just clamber up onto your lap whenever, and then sits there lecturing us in Romanian, making us pretend the highlighter is a mobile phone or a thermometer, or that the texta lid is a cup of tea...but she is so cute that you play along with her confusing games anyway!

Ioana is possibly my favourite, as she is very good value and always entertains me in some way; she is a little Romanian Diva! It also doesn't hurt that Ioana is very cuddly and is always hugging us or lying over our backs, holding our hands or stroking our hair. She especially likes hair, and sometimes shoves her head behind mine to pretend she's wearing my hair! If, however, something little goes wrong (another kid takes her pencil, she doesn't get the scizzors quickly enough) Ioana bursts into very convincing, very loud, very fake tears. She will bawl and bawl as if the world is over, until Mia asks her for a blue texta. Suddenly, as if by magic, the tears disappear and Ioana is chattering away. Once the texta has been passed over and she sees you watching, however, the tears are back in full force!

Codruţa is always wearing a cheeky smile, and spouting off a million things in Romanian at high speed. She is very bright and is always trying to teach us numbers and colours in Romanian. Codruţa also takes great joy in having us write down our names on a piece of paper, and then going around to show it to all of the other kids.

I could go on forever about all of the kids, like Catalin who always calls me 'Kate Middleton' or Ionuţ who only ever wants to tickle me, but those four girls are definitely the ones who take up the bulk of our attention when we visit. Believe it or not but the boys are low maintenance, because they are happy to go off by themselves playing football or flying paper aeroplanes. (Though if they ever manage to rope you into playing 'football' it is mostly them kicking the ball into your shins or stomach...)

Once our activity has finished up and we have managed to tidy a bit, we usually have about an hour to kill before the kids have dinner or lunch. By this point (depending on how tired we are) we will either collapse and let the kids yank at our hair and climb all over us, or we will play piggy in the middle, tag, football or whatever game the kids have managed to think up. 

Most of the time the kids are all smiles and everything is fun and games; only occasionally do we get reminders that Dominos is a half-way house and that for them life is not always sunshine and roses.

Currently there has been a bit of drama with the older kids, because Dominos is going through a transition phase and the teenagers are the only ones who really understand what is going on. All of the younger kids are going to move to Albina in a month, in order for Dominos to focus more on the young offenders and become a sort of rehabilitation centre. This has upset some of the kids who have realised that they are going to be separated from friends or younger siblings, which has resulted in a fair bit of crying, shouting, and a bit of hitting going on. One boy in particular, Moisie, got really upset and started biting at his arms. It is times when the security guard has to come in to break it up that reminds you that, while on the surface these kids are all bright and bubbly, they come from difficult backgrounds and that the lives they live are pretty unstable.

I also remember one day watching on as a mother came to take back her kids from Dominos, but the paperwork hadn't been processed for one of the two brothers so he had to be left behind. Watching the little boys crying because they couldn't both go home together was so sad, and the rest of the extended family kept hovering outside the locked gates looking in at them for some time.