I am in Moldova!

I Love Moldova! I arrived last Monday at about noon and it has been non-stop swimming in Russian and Romanian ever since! I enjoyed three days of staying with my good friends and speaking and learning lots of good Russian. Then I moved to my apartment where my new landlady said, "You must learn Romanian" and gave me the contact info for Casa de Limbii Romana. I had to immediately buy groceries in Romanian and woke early to make lists of words and things I wanted to say in Romanian. Then my new landlord arrived to fix something and spoke only Russian with me. I find it hard to switch....... But fun!

I have met with a wonderful professor at the Academy of Music. She has helped me to organize some classes to attend and some special classes to offer while I am here. She will make it possible for me to borrow books at the library (the numbers cycle around and I ended up with library borrowing number 1). It seems like an excellent library, but all the books are in Romanian and Russian. So I must practice!

I will go now to the Embassy to deliver the correct (hopefully) type of photo for the visa. They must have a 3X4 cm non-glossy photo. AFter getting two sets in Laramie I found I needed to do it all again here. I actually had a hilarious time getting the photo taken, then having them crop my hair which seems to want to stick straight up in this climate, then realizing that the photo was too glossy, running into Vera who had to come to the second photo session to advise us all on various aspects of my appearance, then I bought a comb, then they cropped my hair again electronically, and then printed on the wrong type of paper again....

I hope you are all well! Thanks for reading my blog!