Mel Brooks Is My Grandfather

So week 1 is complete. Even though I have been here more than a week, according to the schedule, this was the first week of the 10-week training period. And I have officially completed it.

I was reviewing the Romanian I have learned since I have been here and a lot has been covered. One of which is the names of family members. Nadia made a family tree using pictures of people from magazines to represent the members of a family. So we practiced saying each members name while pointing the members on the family tree. She tried to not use anyone famous, but Mel Brooks was the grandfather. In addition to learning family members, we have learned numbers, months, days of the week, telling time, basic introduction of oneself, describing our family members, and definite and indefinite nouns. I have not mastered everything yet, but I can sometimes pick out a word my host family is saying to each other!

Last night, the Cojusna trainees were invited to a masă with Lauren’s host family. Masă literally means table, but it’s used for feast too. And a feast it was. The food was yummy, and the company was great. My favorite part of the whole experience was despite the fact there was difficulty in understanding each other sometimes due to language, there was still a lot of laughing and fun. For future reference, always say yes to an invitation to a masă.

At dinner today, I was actually starting to understand some of the Moldovan. At the beginning of my time with my host family, I felt awkward sitting at the dinner table with them without being able to contribute anything except if they were looking for an English word. Now, I do not feel that awkwardness. And I listen to what is being said to try to pick out any words I know. Sometimes, I’m very proud of myself cause I can figure out the topic of the conversation. Other times, I doubt my understanding of Moldovan, because there was a point tonight when I thought “monkey” and “aunt” were said in the same sentence. But maybe they have a phrase like “a monkey’s uncle”!