A portrait of Ioana Anton in 1974, when she was a 2nd-year student at Teacher Training College. After a three-year program, students could teach in Primary School. Despite the low wages, teaching was a highly respected profession. Since the '50s the Rumanian government made large investments in education: by the late '60s, illiteracy had been almost eradicated, and the number of teachers was three times higher than the pre-war figure.

A picture of Ioana and her friends returning from a trip from Ialomicioara Cave. The Cave, inside the monastery of Ialomicioara, in the Bucegi Mountains, was a popular tourist destination. At the time, many of their friends were tour guides. "Back then it was quite the fashion to attend guide school, make up a group and go to different places."

Ioana, her husband and a few friends on their way to a ski chalet they had rented. Ioana remembers the trip as being quite an adventure: to reach the chalet, "We took a bus carrying some pensioners, we walked, then we took a tractor and then, finally, we had to take a… concrete mixer, yes, the one which usually carries ballast."

Ioana and her husband with Andrea and Lorena, their daughters, at a wedding. While official propaganda depicted the period as "The Golden Age of Ceausescu", the economic situation was in fact dire. During the severely cold winter of 1984-85, people endured dramatic food shortages, military discipline was imposed on workers in the energy field, and heat and hot water were shut off.

Mr. Anton's 4th-grade group’s graduation. Both Ioana and her husband were primary-school teachers. Pupils received ideological training from kindergarten on. In primary school, the emphasis was placed on conformity and anti-individualism, and violations of the dress code were punished. Just a few years later, the education system began to fall apart, and by the end of the decade wearing the pioneer uniform was no longer compulsory.