Balo Bobocilor

Last night I had the pleasure of being a judge at the Fall 2010 Balo Bobocilor. Balo, while similar to an American school dance, has a flavor all its own. One difference, which I can still smell on my clothes, is that many of my students were smoking all evening, inside nonetheless. I have become quite accustomed to my high school students smoking. In fact it was the first thing I learned about many of them since "I like to smoke" is the only English a number of them know. However, when I see my 7th graders smoking some maternal side of me is awakened and I find my self waving my finger in their faces saying "bad, bad" before I can stop myself.

On a similar note, Unlike the dances I went to in high school, all of which were either in the cafeteria (we don't have one of those here) ,or the villa, the event was held at a bar, meaning the kids were free to purchase alcohol though only a a small number did, and unlike my high school dances, pre-breathalyzer days, nobody really appeared to be drunk. Generally Europeans seem to have a healthier relationship with alcohol than Americans.

The thing that really makes Balo, Balo, is that rather than determining the king and queen of the dance with a popularity contest, at Balo the 9th graders get the opportunity to compete in a number of contests in order to determine the Miss and Mister or the event.

While I wasn't particularly involved in the organization of the event I was invited to be on the jury. The day of I helped make gogosi (doughnuts) and appetizer platters and went to one of my students houses to get my hair done, a real school dance tradition.

It has been six months since I have touched my hair with anything more than a brush, and even that is rare, so a little hair straightening action is all it really took to make me feel ready for my debut as judge.

The students competed in pairs. Each pair had to introduce themselves, sing karaoke to a song of their choice, dance, and answer some trivia questions. Additionally the boys had to make a love statement for their female partner using some funny words that were written on a piece of paper, and knock an orange across a finish line using a bottle of water that was tied around their necks.

As you might imagine being a judge was a bit of a challenge for me considering that Romanian is my third language, and nervous ninth graders don't enunciate particularly well, so my scores were definitely based more on how things were said as opposed to what was said. The winners of the contest, Vasile and Ioana were quite adorable. Despite the fact that Vasile is three or four inches shorter than Ioana, he sure knows how to dance.

After the contest the judges were served with the food that we had prepared earlier that day. I had been wondering what it was for. It seemed like a pretty sweet deal for us, but it seemed a bit unfair that the judges got to indulge in the food when the kids did all of the work. They did however get some doughnuts when we were done. After the eating the bar turned into a club and the dancing commenced. I will probably be ready to join a Romanian traditional dance ensemble by the time my two years since Romanians seem to like to dance about as much as I do.