Language Classes Begin

The title of this blog should be "Language Classes Begin...Again."  We took many classes to learn the Hungarian language and are beginning again to learn a new language.  Romanian, we hope, should be a little bit easier to learn than Hungarian.

Romanian language beginner course in Cluj.  Left to right: Nancy, Mike, Lizzie, instructor Violeta

 Last Friday was our first class of a six-week Beginning Romanian course.  The class meets on Tuesdays and Fridays in Cluj, the major city 45 kilometers away from Gherla.  For our first meeting, we drove to Cluj and found a parking ramp with the help of GPS.  Then we walked a few blocks, looking for the building where classes are held.  We saw no sign for the school along the street, so we walked into a courtyard and looked around, still seeing no sign for the school.  As we were looking lost, a young lady stepped out into the courtyard and introduced herself.  It was Mariana, the receptionist who had seen us from her window and guessed we were the new students.  We found the place, or rather, the place found us.
We were introduced to the other student in our class (there are just the three of us), a young lady named Lizzie who is from Tennessee and the wife of a missionary working with high school and college students in Cluj.
Our teacher Violeta is an energetic 29-year-old who loves teaching foreigners.  In our first class, we worked on basic phrases and pronunciation.  Nancy earned an egg for mispronouncing the letter "o" as "o-uh" which sounds like the Romanian word for egg.  It was a fun start to a hopefully productive course.
Please keep us in prayer as we learn a new language so we can communicate with our neighbors, people on the street and our beloved church family.  Please pray also for our teacher and the receptionist that they may see Christ in us and in our classmate Lizzie.   La revedere! (Good-bye!)