School has never been cooler for these budding young pupils - even on a Saturday!
The Romanian community of Northern Ireland recently established a new school for Romanian children living in Belfast and beyond.
Every Saturday, the Chinese Resource Centre on the Stranmillis Road in South Belfast is a hive of activity as the Nicolae Iorga Romanian School gets underway, with five teachers offering education in Romanian for children aged 4-16 years old.
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It has been made possible with the help of the Romanian government's department for Romanians everywhere, the support of the Chinese Welfare Association NI and the goodwill of Belfast Intercultural Romanian Community (BIRC), to create an appropriate space for its children.
Belfast Live paid a visit to the new school on Saturday morning and found a friendly and welcoming space where Romanian children from Belfast and right across Northern Ireland can find their place.
The school, named after Nicolae Iorga, a Romanian historian and former prime minister, currently has an enrolment of 25 children but with 60 children registered to the school, plans are already afoot to open a second school in the Portadown area.
With the help of their teacher Nicoletta Tintea, those in junior class for 4-8 year olds enjoy love and warmth. The Romanian pre-schoolers have found a space in which they can meet, play, and connect with friends. The little ones were busy discovering autumn with all its colours and flavours, reading stories, and learning new words in Romanian.
In the senior room, Romanian teenagers were learning to express themselves in their native language in an online tutorial on personal development through literature and debate with Cristina Munteanu from Bucharest.
Also overseeing the running of the school each weekend are Ioana Stoica and Malina Virtejanu from the Belfast Intercultural Romanian Community.
BIRC founder, Malina, says she is hugely proud to see the school up and running at last.
"We wanted to create an informal school to bring the children together with a range of workshops covering grammar and literature, personal development through literature and debate, community integration and anti-bullying, journalism, musical education and dance, theatre and the art of storytelling in Romanian," she explained.
"We officially opened our doors for parents and children on September 10 but this has been planned since the beginning of the year. We applied for some funding from the Romanian government and were successful with that in April so that gave us time to plan for a September opening with the help of authorities in both Romania and Northern Ireland.
"Then it was a process of having conversations with parents, registering the children and getting all the documentation in order. Finding the location was the most difficult part but we are grateful to have secured such a central location in Belfast, which is easy for the parents to access."
Malina added: "The parents were very keen to see this happen and have been asking for a school for the past two years since we have already held many social events for the Romanian community here in Northern Ireland and established a football team too.
"The parents came to me and said they'd like to see a Romanian school so their children could learn the language. Because the majority of children are speaking English, they have found that they aren't able to have a conversation as a family in Romanian.
"Even though they are now living in Northern Ireland, many children have no idea about their identity and despite our integration into the community here, we need to keep that part of our culture alive.
"The requests from parents to send their children here has been so huge that we are looking at opening a second school in the Portadown area, where a large group of Romanians are also based.
"We are trying accommodate that need on a voluntary basis as we are still not a funded organisation so the majority of work is being done through our limited resources but a very open heart."
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