One year later

Hello!

It was one year ago that the kids were going to their first day of school in La Paz! How time flies.

When I realized that, I thought I'd write a blog entry from a year out. Here's how our language immersion experience has played out over the last year:

May 2010: Arriving home from Bolivia, Foster spoke only Spanish for at least 2 weeks--with Grandparents, preschool teachers...everyone! Elliott had to interpret for him.

Summer 2010: The transition back to English was swift and complete. We had a summer of beach trips, always staying with friends/family and so always English speaking. I did not go the extra mile to keep Spanish going.

Fall 2010: Lazy mom continues...we resume all our school/farmers market/soccer/piano/drama/gymnastics activities and no Spanish is getting spoken.

December 19, 2010: Saved by the Silvas! Rosi, Sergio and kids arrive for a month-long visit. In the car on the way home from picking them up at the airport, Foster cries because he can't communicate. (Elliott is speaking spanish, Susana is following along and doesn't care; she's just happy to be with Alexia again).

Dec 29, 2010: Within a week, Foster and Susana are both putting sentences together again. All is not lost!

Jan 13, 2011: Rosi and family leave, Karen and family speak more Spanish!! Make no mistake, none of us sound like natives...but we can communicate and conjugate some verbs. A recent gem from Foster: "No hagas! Me vas a despeinar" (Don't do that! You're going to mess up my hair). Also interesting to me is that Susana and Foster can both go between English and Spanish better than they did before. Susana even tries to spontanesously translate songs to Spanish sometimes--this doesn't go very far, but it's a good effort!

Feb 1, 2011: It's only been a couple of weeks, but so far, I'm decently slipping spanish into daily conversation. Our Spanish Playgroup has resumed meeting twice a month which is a bonus. We have a little lesson together with other kids whose moms want them to learn Spanish. But it is now very clear: me no speak, they no speak! I'm going to do my very best so we don't lose ground again.

Tonight Susana and Foster and I played a game of Old Maid and had most of our conversation in Spanish. Excerpts from them:

"Tu no estas ganando" (You're not winning)
"Estoy haciendo eso con ojos cerrados" (I'm doing this with my eyes closed)
"No se cual es la viejita" (I don't know which is the old maid)
"Vas a ver que yo no voy a escoger la viejita" (You're gonna see that I'm not going to pick the old maid"
"Yo estoy ganando!" (I'm winning)

If we can keep this up, then yo estoy ganando tambien! Wish me luck!

Karen