Living in Romania was very different than living in America.
Instead of being a ward of the state assigned to a public school, Elena was living in a giant castle in the countryside being home-schooled by the person who had essentially become her mother. And the castle was full of her new mother's extended family members so Elena was rarely on her own.
She was the only child in residence though, which was sometimes lonely.
Mrs. Jeepers kept her very busy with schoolwork. Outside of home-schooling Elena, there wasn't much to do in the deep countryside of Romania. Apparently her family had always been wealthy enough that she never actually needed to work. She just liked teaching children. And now Elena was her only student…. which meant she was pushing hard to have Elena learn as much as possible.
The first order of business was teaching Elena Romanian as quickly as possible. Mrs. Jeepers promised that all subjects going forward would be taught in Romanian, so the faster she learned the language, the quicker they could move on to something else.
It was quite the struggle for Elena and she went to bed each night with a pounding headache from listening so hard, trying to understand, since nobody around her ever spoke in English. Even in her sleep she couldn't escape it, all of her dreams happened in the fragments of Romanian she already knew, like her brain was busy rewiring itself while she slept.
Full immersion just sucked. But Mrs. Jeepers told her the process wouldn't take long given her very young age.
And she was right. Within just a few months, Elena could understand most of what was said to her and was able to reply without too much struggle. She certainly wasn't fluent yet, but she was well on her way to it.
They did finally begin to take small trips to a tiny village. There was a playground and a small amount of children that frequented it. She learned a lot more Romanian playing with those children than anything else.
Elena was so pleased with the playground that she forgot herself "mamă, m-am distrat. Când ne putem întoarce?"
Elena blushed and almost backed away.
"You're allowed to call me that." Mrs. Jeepers said and grabbed her hand to keep her walking.
"We will come back as often as we can. But you still have to focus on your schoolwork too."
Over the next few years, Elena learned how to hunt and feed for herself, aka how and when to do it and how to clean up after herself. Romania was more forgiving of these activities in that they were quite used to the existence of vampires, unlike the rest of the world. Their national hero of the 15th century who expelled the Turks was a vampire himself, so it made sense Romania had always been somewhat lukewarm towards their kind instead of hostile.
Elena also learned her family's little tricks for appearing more human when needed, such as learning to eat bread dipped in their secret red sauce when human guests needed to see them eating something at the table. Small amounts of bland human foods could be safely eaten so long as blood was involved. But if one was not careful enough and overdid it, one would end up puking everything up as the body rejected it.
Once she reached 15 years old, her mother explained the Fairy Stone she had seized from the Leprechauns hundreds of years ago and how vital it was to keep the stone in vampire hands at all costs.
I just needed a scene of a little red headed girl holding Mrs Jeepers hand while walking away from a playground. ALL THE FEELS!
Mrs. Jeepers is so lonely in the canon books. No husband or children, just a classroom full of snotty American brats lol. I think her social situation improves in the sequel book series Bailey City Monsters when her brother and his wife and child move into town.
For now, I'm going to move on and start writing my separate smut story about Mrs. Jeepers. I will leave this story open-ended, in case I want to add more in the future.