Romanian Lessons

This week I started learning Romanian. I’ve always been somewhat of a language dork but I’m already enjoying more (and doing significantly better) than my foray into Chinese a few years ago. The way Peace Corps teaches language is through conversation. Our teachers, who are all extremely talented and knowledgeable Romanian natives, do not use any English to teach our lessons. We learn through pictures, activities and exaggerated pantomime. A lot of their lessons will be useful when I’m planning my own lessons for next year. I even enjoy the homework, even if I haven’t done a worksheet since high school. Today we learned some classroom words like chair (scoun) and paper (hârtie). The most entertaining moment was when another volunteer said she remembers thank you (cu plăcere) as “cup of cherries.”

Obviously, I’m having a lot of fun learning the language. I’m more concerned with the actual teaching component of this whole situation. There are a lot of volunteers that have experience teaching, and even experience teaching English as a foreign for second language. I’m not sure how my tutoring skills with help me with this, but the Peace Corps seems well equipped to prepare well, as long as I take initiative.

Every time I shower in Romania I get better at actually washing all the shampoo out of my hair. Bathing requires my gazda mom to boil pots of water to put in a bowl in the bathroom. Then I stand in the tub and use a large plastic mug to wash. Needless to say, my hair has looked relatively greasy the past few days. I think I’m finally getting the hang of it. I have absolutely no problem bathing this way (although I’m not sure how the boiled water stays so scalding hot for so long). I’m thinking of this as practice for next winter when the water turns freezing right after I take it off the stove.