• Job in Brasov Thursday, April 28, 2005 - 4:46 am [1]

Students in instructor Dave Howard's Geography classes were paid a visit by Dave Lederman - a Peace Corps volunteer who has lived in Romania for the past year



Students in instructor Dave Howard's Geography classes were paid a visit by Dave Lederman - a Peace Corps volunteer who has lived in Romania for the past year

GEOGRAPHY CLASSES GET FIRST HAND ACCOUNT
OF LIFE IN ROMANIA

Lederman speaks in Rumania to one of the studentsOn Tuesday November 24th, students in instructor Dave Howard's Geography classes were paid a visit by Dave Lederman - a Peace Corps volunteer who has lived in Romania for the past year. Lederman who is currently teaching English at Independentca Technical High School in Sibiu, Romania was on a two week vacation in the United States to visit his family.

Students in Howard's classes have been communicating through e-mail with Lederman and his students for the past year so they were really happy to see him in person. Lederman began his presentation by talking to the students in Romanian. Through gestures and repetition students were able to understand what he was saying more or less. Lederman was trying to show what he had to go through when he first arrived in Romania. " Speaking another language is difficult but if people want to communicate, they usually find ways of doing it," said Lederman. He then went on to show slides and short videos of Romania, the school he was working at, and the students he was teaching.

Lederman said that Romanians love America. "They love American TV, movies and music and they aspire to have a similar standard of living that we have here." He also talked about Romanian customs and food which he said loved. Lederman also compared American and Romanian technical high schools. "They teach similar things such as Electronics and Auto Mechanics but they also have different courses such as one for working in the post office. The schools are also much bigger. The one I teach in has 1,600 students". At the end of the presentation, students thanked Lederman for coming and some even gave him handwritten letters to bring back with him to give to his students.

When this story was posted in December 2004, this was on the front page of PCOL:

Our debt to Bill Moyers Former Peace Corps Deputy Director Bill Moyers leaves PBS next week to begin writing his memoir of Lyndon Baines Johnson. Read what Moyers says about journalism under fire, the value of a free press, and the yearning for democracy. "We have got to nurture the spirit of independent journalism in this country," he warns, "or we'll not save capitalism from its own excesses, and we'll not save democracy from its own inertia."

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