The first day of school.

Yesterday was the first day of school in Lupeni.  At church on Sunday night the kids were bemoaning the fact that it was their last night of freedom from homework -- but they seemed excited, too, at the prospect of returning to their friends and the rhythms of a new school year.  Fall has already hit Lupeni -- it's cool and cloudy, and the trees covering the mountains are rapidly changing from green to muted bronze and rust and yellow.  Summer is over.  It's time for school.

Apparently it's a Romanian tradition to buy flowers for your teacher on the first day of classes.  All weekend flower sellers were perched on sidewalks and street corners, selling bouquets in crunchy silver foil for 10 lei a piece.  They've disappeared now, just as abruptly as they came.  But yesterday the streets were full of kids walking to and from school buildings in their clean new uniforms, holding parents' hands and clutching tightly their bouquet of flowers.  Little girls wear blue-checked pinafores with white lacy collars; little boys wear tiny black suits and sometimes ties.  The older students don't have uniforms, but they were decked out too, everyone in their very best for the start of the year.

It made me nostalgic for my own first days of school -- lunchbox clutched in one hand, the obligatory picture by the front door, then walking off to explore my way through hallways and schedules and new teachers and old friends.  It's funny how some things are so universal.  So for all of you who are at the beginning of a new year:  Spor la şcoala!