I’ve started my Romanian classes and so far I am really enjoying them. They’re intensive, so some days it can be overwhelming, but I feel like I am learning so much. I also really enjoy my classmates. We’re a very diverse group, and I think it makes the learning experience so much better.

Our textbook is pretty fun, too.

useful!

Here is a writing that I did for class:

Sunt o fată și locuiesc in Brasov, România. Îmi place sa călătoresc, și vreau să merg la Roma. Sunt din Atlanta. Atlanta este un oraș foarte cald și umed. Vreau să văd zăpadă iarna.

Am un câine. Este foarte draguț. Mănancă urechi de porc. Urechiele sunt favoritele lui. Mergem la plimbare pe stradă amandoi. Suntem prieteni.

[forgive the weird font, the special character map on WordPress leaves a lot to be desired]

Most days I come home and I am excited to do my homework and study more.

Some days I come home and I think if I hear one more word of Romanian, I’ll have a stroke.

The language itself doesn’t seem so difficult to me. I struggle mostly with remembering the genders of things. A book that I read on language learning, Fluent Forever, recommended to imagine different actions happening to boy nouns and girl nouns. For example, make a mental image of a boy noun exploding into flames or a girl nouns shattering into a million pieces. Imagine a pisică (cat) shattering like mirror. It’s a powerful visual that you hopefully won’t forget.

Unfortunately, I’m still in that stage where I’m looking up every word in the dictionary for the gender or asking ridiculous questions like, “Is bread a boy or a girl?”