Recovering perfectionist

It's March. Which means that, theoretically, I am leaving for Moldova in 3 months. I'm still waiting for it to be official before I tell the world, but given the duration of the time I will be away, I've had to start making arrangements and that means that some people around me have been finding out about my upcoming move. A pastor at my church found out the other day, and I was surprised how enthusiastic he was. He said he doesn't know much about Moldova, and tasked me with this assignment: tell him an interesting "fact of the week" about Moldova each week until I leave. A fantastic idea! And a brilliant series for blog posts. I am a recovering perfectionist, and aspiring writer. Not a great combo. This blog is my attempt to overcome the writer's block I have suffered from most of my life by embracing the imperfect and just writing. Posting a "fact of the week" will not only help me learn and share about Moldova, but will give me a way to be consistent about writing.

So this week's fact: Both Romanian and Russian Languages are spoken in Moldova

The first thing I learned about Moldova, other than its location, is the fact that Moldovan people speak both Russian and Romanian. I mentioned before that I have been to Romania and Ukraine, so I knew a little bit about Moldova. I knew that Romanian is spoken in Moldova, and that there is a separatist region (Transnistria). I knew that Moldova had been part of the USSR, and knew of some coworkers at a past job who were from Moldova and had Russian-sounding names. That was basically the extent of my knowledge of Moldova before I found out I would be going there.

As I have been preparing, I have learned that it is most likely that I - and most of my training class - will learn Romanian in our language classes. But it's possible that a few people will learn Russian, too, depending on where they will be posted. Initially, I had requested to go to Eastern Europe so I could continue to learn a Slavic language. I wasn't actually expecting to go to Moldova. Part of me hopes I will get to learn Russian. But the more rational part of me knows that I'd probably have a better time learning Romanian, given my past experience studying French and Spanish (and even a bit of Italian, if we're counting the words I know from music classes!). Russian is not an easy language to learn, but I'm enticed by the challenge and the prospect of gaining access to people, literature, and cultural understanding that have been out of reach to me without ability to speak or read Russian language. In any case, one of my primary goals of moving to Europe is to learn a language other than English well enough to be able to communicate. Whichever language I learn, I will be glad to be able to talk to people and understand people in a language other than my native English.

For further reading about the languages spoken in Moldova, I found this post (and comments) on the blog Chisinau, seriously? very interesting:

What language do they speak in Moldova?