Romanian lessons

Ok, I know I'm crazy for wanting to take Romanian lessons when I can get by with Russian pretty much 100% of the time, I should probably be working to improve my Russian more than anything, and Romanian isn't the most useful language on the face of the planet, but whatever. I'm doing it. The staff meetings at Winrock are in Romanian and the people in the office speak Romanian most of the time so it would be nice to be able to eavesdrop on them and stuff.

So I want to the Casa Limbii Romane, recommended by a previous Fulbrighter, to ask about lessons. I spoke to the director in Russian and he was a bit confused as to why I would want to learn Romanian if I speak Russian and I'm going to be in Moldova for less than a year. I kind of got a feeling of judgment like when my Bulgarian teacher at the embassy last summer basically told me and Hillary that we were crazy for studying Bulgarian because it would completely mess up our Russian. Romanian is a romance language though so there's nothing to worry bout there. Anyway, after our discussion the director invited me to sit in on a class to see how the group lessons are taught. On Monday I went to the evening class and I'm pretty sure the students were all ethnic Russians. Observing the class was like studying two languages at once because it was a mixture of Russian and Romanian the whole time. I actually saw one of the girls from that class sitting outside my apartment building last night, which isn't because I'm pretty sure I happen to be in an area where only Russians live. I haven't heard anyone speaking Romanian around the apartment complex in the month I've been here.

The class seemed like it would be ok, but the director also said that there's the option to take private lessons and I could try an hour for free to see if I would like that better. So that's what I did today. I got to choose the time and the instructor came right to my apartment so that was convenient. I feel like I made a lot of progress in an hour and I really like the teacher. She said it's up to me to decide how often I want to have lessons and for how long, and she also said that once we master the verbs I'll probably have enough to get by. I think at that point I would stop having lessons and just teach myself while getting conversational practice with my host family and people at work.

I'm probably being too defensive about this decision, but there are actually practical reasons for me to study Romanian. I can already understand about 75% of what I read because of the similarities to French and English, so if I learn to read and write the language then I can help out at work with Romanian-English translations instead of just Russian-English. It'll also help with my research because a lot of documents are only in Romanian.

Not to mention, I assume that learning Romanian will significantly increase my chances of finding a Moldovan husband. And we all know that's why I'm really here.