A Month in Moldova

As of today, I've in Moldova for a month, and it's amazing how quickly it's become a second home for me. I have an amazing and incredibly generous host family who are really helping me to learn a lot of Russian. My host sister speakers English very well (although we almost always speak Russian together), and it's been really helpful having her to help me with homework and language learning in general. My host mom doesn't know any English, but she's really great at making sure I understand what she says, even with my limited language ability. My host sister's friends also know English fairly well, but we use Russian together, and they actively try to expand my vocabulary through games of charades. The American students all visited a cafe the other day where we played charades in Russian, and all of my practice certainly paid off.

Moldova is a beautiful and interesting place, and I've really enjoyed all of my time in Chisinau so far. A lot of my time is spent in Russian classes or studying Russian at home, and I think my language skills have come quite far. One interesting point about Moldova is that almost everyone is bilingual in both Romanian and Russian. From my experience, most people tend to be stronger in one language or another, but it also appears that almost everyone in Chisinau has fairly good knowledge of both. I'm exclusively studying Russian language while I'm here, and I have no knowledge of Romanian, but the languages seem to be very different, and it appears that Romanian uses a Latin-based alphabet while the Russian alphabet is Cyrillic. Overall, I'm extremely impressed with the bilingual nature of many of the people I meet, and the fact that many of the them also know a third language as well is incredible.

As I said, a lot of my time here is devoted to studying Russian, but I'm also doing a lot of cultural activities with my class and my host family. My class has visited the American embassy, many monasteries in other parts of the country, multiple museums, and done several art classes where we made traditional crafts. My host sister and I go to lots of parks together and play lots of games with her friends. I'm also preparing an oral presentation on Pushkin, as he spent some time in Moldova, and I've been to two Pushkin museums with my host family, which were extremely interesting.

Overall, I'm having an incredible experience in Moldova, and I can't wait to practice all of my Russian when I go home!

Chisinau, Moldova

What is Moldova? This is the first question I almost always get when I tell people where I'm going, so here are some easy facts about the country:

-Moldova is a small country to the West of Ukraine and East of Romania in Eastern Europe. It was a part of the USSR, but became an independent nation in 1991, and was recognized internationally in 1992.
-Moldovans normally speak Romanian, Russian, or both.
-Its capital is Chisinau. Chisinau was known as Kishinev, its Russian name, when Moldova was part of the USSR.
-Wine is one of Moldova's biggest exports, and is a very important part of the country's economy.
-Moldova is not part of the European Union, but is looking at working more closely with the EU. It does not use the Euro, but uses the leu, its own currency. While the EU discussions are happening, there are also many questions as to whether or not Moldova should have closer ties to Russia instead.

When I am in Moldova, I will be there to study Russian language through immersion. I will be living with a Russian-speaking family and taking Russian classes, as well as trying to speak Russian in Chisinau. I leave tomorrow for my trip orientation in Washington DC, and then I leave for Chisinau on Saturday. Overall, I am extremely excited to be going, and I cannot wait to improve my Russian!