Smile game

When walking around Moldova I like to play this game called the "smile game", whether I'm in my village and most people know who I am or I'm in a city and no one knows who I am. It's a bigger challenge in the city because no one talks to one another in the streets unless they know each other (which is actually more frequent than you might assume).

So today I woke up on the wrong side of the bed again (reoccurring theme in my life right now). Due to our lack of planning in one class (again), I had a little disagreement with one of my partner teachers but decided to let it go by asking her to teach the lesson as she wanted (since we couldn't agree), and I'd get some work done. Problem solved (gotta pick your battles!), even though I still don't think it was done correctly. Then in another class we gave a test and, as usual, the students weren't prepared even though I'd basically given them some of the answers the class before. My other partner didn't want them to receive bad grades (because if they get bad grades then it is the fault of the teacher, not the student), so she allowed them to use their books about halfway through class. Again, I didn't agree but I let it go. Due to this (and waking up on the wrong side of the bed and the weather)I needed a pick-me-up.

I was walking to my student's house for tutoring lessons and saw an old woman I didn't know. I smiled, said buna ziua, and kept walking while still looking her in the eye. After a few seconds, just before I was going to look away, she smiled and said buna ziua back to me. There were two women standing at the gate near us and they told the woman that I'm the English teacher. Then they looked at me and said mulțumesc (thank you). My smile game not only made someone else smile, but in turn it made my day.