Paying it forward

16 years. Or maybe 17, depending on how you count. That's how long I've lived in France. I've been married to a Frenchman for 10 years and been a French citizen for 6 years. And I'm still paying forward all the people and contacts that helped me get to this life I'm living.

I still give credit to the friend of the friend who let me sleep on his couch for 5 months, the family from back home who let me be their "family appendage"' for a few years, the friend of the friend who told me how to get working papers and of course the friend of the friend of the friend who eventually introduced me to my husband.

As another school year comes to a close, I once again brought my American babysitters to my favorite place around Lille- Mosaic-  for a goodbye outing. And as we talked about what happens next, I did something I usually don't do : I gave them a piece of advice. When you get back to school for your senior year, don't freak out even if everyone around you knows what's they're doing and where they're headed. Because things always have a way of working out.

As I went on to tell them that if they ever want to come back to France, the door was always open, I realized that even after all this time, I'm still paying it forward. Without the help of others - and of course my own perseverance - I'd be somewhere else, doing something else, living some other life. But who wants to think about that!

Accents, etc

As I type these words, my mother is on the plane back to NJ. Or at least I hope so after a 24 hour delay at CDG! Better her than me and my 2 kids is what I say!

Three weeks is a long time. But it's also a short time. As with previous visits from my parents, I like to try to pick up on some of the linguistic challenges and changes that I see in my kids and in myself.

1) community language - both of my kids have understood the OPOL rule from the start. while Suzanne has always understood that English=Mom, her friends and her environment, Max had a lot of trouble understanding that the community language was not always French. Last summer it took him 2 weeks to speak English to people in stores in NJ. But while we were in England a couple weeks ago, I only heard merci once or twice. Go Max!

2) literacy - A couple days ago, we got word that Suzanne would continue on to second grade next year (CE1 - classe élémentaire 1). Compétences aquises. My daughter can read in French, although she has yet to take a book and read it for pleasure. But what she does love is writing. She writes all the time.  She writes in French. She writes in English which is pretty incredible because she's taught herself (as I've said before, I decided not to teach her reading or writing in English until she'd learned French). Yay Suz! (Max is also starting to write a little).

3) accent - While Suzanne's accent is purely New Jersey, Max continues to speak with a slightly gutteral almost Germanic accent in both French and English. His consanants are a bit too harsh and his vowels are a bit too open. His kindergarten speech evaluation noted "leger accent compte tenu de sa mère américaine". What the teach doesn't know though is that Max also has an accent in English. I wonder what the teacher would make of that? As for my accent, I noticed that it became more American while my parents were here but became more English when we went to English. Strange.

4) sentence structure - the kids continue to use French structure in their English at times. The main problem seems to be with prepositions and irregular verbs. All in all though, you'd never know they were not native English speakers.

So, let's just pat me and my husband on the back for a job well done. And thank my parents for a nice visit.

Bilingual reading

It's been a while...but not for lack of substance. Just lack of time and motivation which I'm sure has something to do with the sub-arctic temperatures we're having...

For the past few months, I've been thinking about Suzanne's reading. Before she started to learn to read, I wondered a lot about how I could help her to read in French. Did it mean that I'd have to speak French to her? That she'd stop speaking English to me? That'd I'd compromise all the bilingual work we've done over the past almost 7 years?

She's now 3/4 of the way through her first year of CP (first grade) and the answer to all of the above questions is "no". I have compromised nothing of my daughter's bilingualism and she's reading in French !

The first question I asked myself was : how will I help her with her homework? Somehow, the answer came naturally. Of course, I have some trouble explaining the difference between an open and closed "u", etc. At first, I felt a little funny speaking to her in French, but then she also felt funny about it. so we settled into a comfortable routine of the work in French and the explanation in English. Quite simply...

The second thing that I was worried about was how I could help her learn to read in French if I only read English books to her. After reading a lot on the subject and talking to other bilingual parents, I decided not to teach her to read in English until she knows how to read in French. Since she's a bit hesitant about actually reading in French - only looking at pictures - I began to wonder if our evening English book reading was more of a hindrance. So I came up with a plan : I read a book to her in English and then we read a book in French together, sharing the dialogue. Reading to Suzanne in French is a sore point for me, but it's the only way I could think of to motivate her to read on her own. We also came across the Captain Underpants series which I read to her in English and then gave to her in French to read on her own before she turns out her light.

Rest assured, bilingual parents. Her English has not suffered. And I continue to be ultra strict in speaking only English to her. But come on, the kid is almost 7. She knows I speak French even if she is constantly correcting me.

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My kids continue to speak English together which still makes me so incredibly happy ! They interpose French grammar on their English. Specific examples are :

what are you looking? - (qu'est-ce que tu regardes)
Lola has some black hair and some green eyes - Suzanne (Lola a des poils noirs et des yeux verts)

But they also continue to interpose English grammar in their French
Papa, il est temps de manager - Suzanne (it's time to eat)
Je vois une bleue voiture  - Max (I see a blue car)

Eating my way across Europe: Rotterdam

Now don't laugh. But I love Dutch food and I love going to the Netherlands for work.

My love for Dutch food goes beyond the famous fries in a paper cone served with mayo. My love of Dutch cuisine is a deep love of fusion food...and great service, since the Dutch are the kings (and queens) of trade which seems to have carried through into their service-oriented ways.

Last week, I went to Rotterdam with three things in mind: cheese, pie and rijstafel. I guess I also had some professional stuff mixed in there, but it was definitely secondary.

When we got there, we had lunch at Café Sijf, a nice little café in the center of the city. The sandwich was nice, the bar was very cool and the pie was decent.

After our meeting the second day, I dragged my co-worker to Café Dudok for the best apple pie in the world (my husband calls it the kick ass apple pie). I promise to share my recipe for it in my new food blog (coming soon!).
Anyway, the restaurant has a cool industrial style and the most amazing pie. And don't forget the slagroom (whipped cream).

I then dragged him to Indonesia Restaurant for rijstafel, the original fusion food and my absolute favorite thing to eat. EVER. We had an assortment of 23 dishes, a mix of Dutch and Indonesian. It was delicious, spicy and just plain amazing.

We rolled ourselves back to the Hotel Emma (decent, central and good breakfast).

After our meeting the next day, we hit the cheese shop. The French are too proud of their cheese to admit that their northern neighbors also have an amazing cheese tradition. I brought back a chunk of goat cheese with nettles and aged cheese with cumin. Normally, I would have bought more, but I already had some italian and english cheese in my fridge...a girl has to be reasonable sometimes!

Before boarding the train, I managed to grab a few packs of stroopwafels and hagelslaag (which the Dutch put on their buttered toast in the morning) for the kids.

The one thing I didn't manage to escape was the bad lunch replete with skimpy sandwiches and the traditional glass of buttermilk. I can tell you that when you're having that kind of lunch at an international meeting - English, Irish, French, etc - every one is a bit shocked and concerned by the pitcher of milk placed in the center of the table.

And here I am, sitting in the snow back in Lille looking forward to a big steak with stinky cheese for lunch. Yum.

Avions, treno en auto

After all this time in Europe, I still get so excited about country hopping. Last week, we drove to Belgium to take a plane to Italy where we spent 4 amazing days with a childhood friend who's there with her family for a year. On Sunday, we flew back over four countries - Italy, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium - and drove back to France. And on Monday morning, I got on a train coming from Southern France, got off in Brussels, changed tracks and got on a train to Rotterdam.

And although I'm tired and totally stuffed from eating pizza, pasta, rijstaffel and the most amazing apple pie in the world, I am happy.

During our time in Italy, words kept coming to me in Dutch when I wanted to speak Italian (which I don't  do but I speak some Spanish); now that I'm in the Netherlands, I keep looking for words in Italian (which I still don't speak). Language is a funny thing. My kids were a little thrown by the 4 days of being very American with an American family in Italy. Max tried to speak French to everyone outside the house, but Suzanne seems to understand that people speak different languages in different countries.

But neither of them quite grasps geography yet. Suzanne asked if we were Belgium as we stepped off he plane in Pisa. And Max asked if we were in New York.

And now, here I am in a hotel room in Rotterdam where I've spent the past two days with a project partially funded by Europe.

So tomorrow, I head back home to France with a couple slices of apple pie in my bag and an extra kilo or two on my bones.

Selective Correction Syndrome (or when to correct your kids' mistakes)

"Listening to Max speak English gives insight into how bilingual kids use language." Our dear American babysitter has a point : Max's English is very French.

It's true that as they kids have gotten older and the whole One Parent One Language thing has become old hat, we've become slightly immune to their language faults. And I have to admit that I have become lax when it comes to speaking perfect English since my own English is very tainted. for most of the past 9 years, I've been the only native English speaker in an office with people from a dozen country where the working language is English. So I suffer from selective correction syndrome in which I no longer hear things like "can we play at cards?" or "they spent five hundreds of euro."

Some of the mistakes my kids make will work themselves out in time, if they spend enough time with other native speakers. But most of the mistakes they continue to make - despite being perfectly bilingual - have to do with French grammatical structure. But what reassures me as the minority language speaker in the house, is that there is similar cross-over from English to French.

When I think about my own approach to learning language and to teaching it (in my previous life), I always put emphasis on understanding and being understood. that may be one of the reasons I don't correct my kids as much as I should. But for kids, maybe it is important to be corrected to avoid fossilisation of their mistakes. Just as Suzanne humiliates me in front of her classmates by saying "ma maman dit le quand c'est la". But then again, it's probably best NOT to disgust them by correcting them constantly...

I'm curious about how other parents handle the sensitive issue of correcting their kids' language mistakes...any advice?

Reading, Writing and Arithmetic

Learning to read and write for a bilingual kid may be one of the most stressful experiences ever for the minority language parent. But we are here and I'm happy to say that we are all surviving.

 

Suzanne has made it through her first half of CP (1st grade in France) and is decoding slowly but steadily, as her teacher said. she also said that Suzanne is an élève agréable (a nice student) which makes me one very proud Mommy.  She is still reversing her B and D; and she is still confusing the S and Z in her name. But I remember doing the same thing with the B and R in my name at her age. She is apparently good with math and her penmanship is good (very important in a country where graphology is a respected science).

Max is also learning something at school. The temptation of a big cardboard box in our living room took over. Both kids just couldn't resist drawing on it. Suzanne drew a princess and her name. Max wrote a wiggly M and drew a tadpole looking person, the first time I've seen either of them. Max recognizes almost all the letters of the alphabet and can sound most of them out (thanks to super Why). 

They are both doing more interlanguage than when we got back from the US this summer, but nothing to be concerned about. Suzanne's thing at the moment is, "what like flavor is it?" while Max adds "that" into his sentences as he would use the conjunction in French. All I can do is make them repeat the correct sentence back to me.

Although Max is dying to have the power to read, just like Super Why, he knows he'll have to wait a while longer. He's been asking Suzanne to read to him. The other day, as they sat side by side reading magazines on the toilet/potty, he handed a National Geographic Little Kids to his big sister. As she flipped through it, I heard her say, "ok, I can read it to you but only in French." So I guess it will be a little while before she understands that it's even more complicated than it seems.

All in all, I'd say the bilingual experiment (ie my children) is still going strong. I remain a strong proponent of OPOL but have become a little less rigid as time goes by. I even said an entire sentence to Suzanne in French last night when we had a guest over from diner...so I guess we're all making progress.