Last Sunday was March 8, which in Romania has always been celebrated as Women’s Day.
March 8 is actually International Women’s Day and it is a huge celebration in about 52 countries around the world.
Besides my mother, every year on March 8 I think of my former female teachers. Why? Because when I was a student in Romania, March 8 was a very, very important day for students and teachers alike. Students would come to school with presents and flowers – lots of flowers – for all of our female teachers.
Also, students would have their photograph taken by a professional photographer several weeks before March 8 and then use it to make a postcard for their mother.
photo by ana_iuga
This card brings back a lot of fond memories of my own March 8 cards that I gave my mother. Fun. Unfortunately, I don’t have any with me in the U.S.
My mother is a teacher, and every year she gets inundated with presents and flowers on March 8. As a child, I remember it was great fun to help her open her presents and put flowers in vases all over the house.
Question: Do you celebrate March 8 in your country/school?
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I’d never heard of International Women’s Day until 1996 when I was living in Magdeburg, Germany. On March 8, I arrived to teach my English class and found breakfast instead! My students — all women who had grown up in eastern Germany – had brought rolls, meat, cheese, butter, jam, coffee…I was co-teaching their intensive 40-hour/week course so at first I thought this was just a ploy to shorten our instruction. But they explained the holiday to me and we enjoyed a very nice breakfast together.
International Womans Day was devised in the Soviet Union and therefore never brought to the US. It morphed from a political day into more of a cultural celebration and has slowly spread into Europe. But the US already has Mother’s Day for almost 100 years and so the likelihood of it ever coming here is very slim.
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