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As part of Foreign Fridays, we explore a different country each week through its most unusual, amusing and odd facts. If you want your country to appear, then simply get in contact with us either in the comments below or through Facebook or Twitter.

This week it is the turn of the Romania:

On February 24th in Romania during the holiday of Dragobete, if you step over your partner's foot it is believed you will have a dominant role in the relationship!

Recently, you may have had some romance as well as your fair share of pancakes, this foreign fridays fact has a hint of love and spring intertwined in the holiday of 'Dragobete'.

Tributes are being paid to the life and work of Charles Dickens on the 200th anniversary of the birth of the celebrated British author.

Today the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall will lay wreaths paying tribute to a British icon who captured a nation through his gripping literature.

Dickens' novels characterise 19th century industrial Britain, with close attention to the inner workings of Victorian society and city life. Up until the present day, his books are read by audiences from around the world.

Born into a modest family on February 7th 1812, Charles was noted to have a passion for reading and a photographic memory, later in 1814, his family moved to London where he had ample opportunity to brush shoulders with everyday folk whose lives would become echoed within his novels.

The true extent of his success as a literary figure can be observed by the way in which his novels have become household names; Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield and Great Expectations to name a few!

This weekend I had the pleasure of attending a conference on the future of education in Britain. It was an independently organised event arranged by TEDx London- a branch of the TED Talks network.

TED Talks is a platform that invites speakers from various fields and professions to share innovative ideas, and since the talks started being streamed online their popularity has been phenomenal.

The Current State of Education

The event was inspired by a famous TED Talk by Sir Ken Robinson in 2010, where he called for an ‘education revolution' and the need for educational institutions to fundamentally change the way they operate.

At the talk, participants were presented with three areas of discussion, and firstly, responding to Ken's analysis of education, speakers looked at education's current state.

Various speakers shared their views on how education fails to engage young people due to the curriculum's lack of relevance and the rigidness of educational models that are currently being used.