Class C's questions answered:

Where do you do your food shopping?
-I do most of my food shopping at a supermarket, like back home. Or, for fresh fruits and veggies I go to an open-air market called a piaţă. I like the piaţă more than the market because things are cheaper, and it's fun to haggle with the venders. Shopping is different than what we know back in the States too. Almost everything has to be made from scratch, including pasta sauces. There's also not really a variety of food available here. No Mexican, no Chinese, no Italian-just Romanian. My sister sent me a package of Taco Bell packets-the “Mild”, “Hot” and “Fire” ones found near the napkins-so I decided to make some TexMex. Making tostada shells was an adventure for sure! But, in general, I'm not a great cook, I eat a lot of rice and popcorn.

What language do you use when talking to your Romanian host parents?
-When I speak to my host parents, and just about everyone in town, I use Romanian. I have to, they don't know any English! My host father spent some time in Germany and so he knows some German words. If I don't know a word in Romanian, he might say it in German. Most adults learned Russian in school, because English was not allowed. So, it wasn’t until Communism ended here, 16 years ago, that people started to learn English. But, I like speaking Romanian; the better it gets, the more friends I make so I try to study at least an hour every day.

How do you get around your city?
-Getting around my city is really easy; I use my feet. It's against the law for me to drive over here, and I left my car back in Michigan, so I really don't have much of a choice. Zalău is a very walk-able city, as most are, just because most people have to walk. I'd guess I walk about three miles everyday. The supermarket is about a mile away, as are most of my friends' houses. If I have to go to a different city, I usually take a train. But getting to the train station is an adventure itself. The train station in Zalău isn’t very good, so I take a Maxi-taxi or bus to the neighboring city Cluj-Napoca and catch a train from there. (Maxi-taxis are just 15 passenger vans that run between two cities. They don’t have a schedule, they just sit in one town until all the seats are full. When they get to the destination, they sit there until there are 15 new people who want to go back to the original town.) Sometimes I hitch-hike, but it’s really safe here. I would never hitch-hike back in America and here it’s a very common mode of transportation. Even grandma’s hitch-hike. When I hitch-hike I always meet new, interesting and often funny people. Plus I have to practice my Romanian.

Do you think your class challanges your students?
-I hope my class challenges my students. Most of my students have been studying English since second grade, so they know a lot of the grammar but they've never used it in conversation before. I do a lot of work with pronunciation. The tasks that we do aren't that hard, but just talking in English for a full hour can be. But it's paying off. When I see students around town, with their parents or whatever, they make it a point to speak in English with me even though they know I speak Romanian. My class is very different from most of their classes just because I try and get everyone involved in the conversation or project. In other classes they have a lot of lectures and memorization. I've seen some real improvement in my students and that's awesome.