parle-ing francais in the north woods

Saturday afternoon, small town in northern Minnesota, gas station.  My friendly mother smiles and says "merci" to the lady who holds the door for her.

Sunday morning, small town in northern Wisconsin, my "hopelessly monolingual" (his words!) husband nods at the stranger passing him in the hallway and says "bonjour."  And then a minute later, exclaims, "Did I just say bonjour?!"

Nearly every evening since then, as we continue our family vacation, our children ask to sing "Bonsoir les loups" at bedtime.

Why?  Because for the previous five days, all five of us were immersed in the French language at Lac du Bois Family Week, near Hackensack, MN, and it's hard to kick the habit.  The mercis and bonjours just keep slipping out on their own!

Can't wait to write more about this amazing experience at one of the Concordia Language Villages.  Stay tuned...

losing hats and gaining fluency

Six and a half years of speaking exclusively French with Griffin really is working, and I can prove it: a week after our 12-day, three-generation family trip to France for the first time (August 2014), Griffin went back to school.  His Spanish immersion school.  His third year there.  And in half an hour at the back-to-school-meet-the-teachers event, I counted five different instances in which he answered a teacher's questions in Spanish with words in French!  He was "oui"ing all over the place!

Gwyneth, Griffin, Grammy in Paris

Since I had never observed him doing that before, I feel safe attributing it to our having spent nearly two weeks in a French immersion environment.  Hourrah!

If I had written this blog post sooner after our return from Alsace and Paris, it would have begun quite differently.  I would have bemoaned the fact that Griffin's fluency in French didn't improve in great leaps.  I would have expressed my disappointment that our trip didn't have the same effect as my fellow bilingual parent bloggers' experiences--it seems as if when they take their families to a country where the minority language is spoken, or when relatives who speak that language stay with them for a week or more, it is a revelation.  These parents (and also the mamans in French playgroup) are rapturous about how comfortable their kids get in the minority language in such a short time.

And, well, it wasn't really like that for us.  Nothing major went wrong, and Griffin did have lots of chances to interact with native speakers--but I can only think of three extended conversations he had with them, and he kept speaking in English to me otherwise, as usual.  No revelations, no magical transformations, no sudden desire to use only French with me.

Gwyneth continued to do her own thing, which is basically the opposite of whatever her parents want.

I had so hoped that our travels would recharge his French brain batteries!  But 12 days isn't enough, clearly, at least when he's still spending each day with our anglophone family in the rental car and lodgings.

But instead of dwelling on my belief that he didn't speak enough French on our trip, let me focus on what he did do!  Here are his linguistic highlights:

We participated in a tour of the Chateau Haut-Konigsbourg specifically for children, in which a man dressed as a medieval minstrel led us through the castle looking for his musical instruments which went missing after the previous evening's feast for the king.  Over an hour of listening to a stranger speak French in a strange place with cannons and towers and a fascinatingly deep well--that's a record!  (And it made an impression on Gwyneth, too; she keeps telling people about how we couldn't find the instruments in the castle.)

During our week in Alsace, we never encountered another American tourist, and the owners of our rental house spoke only French.  And as they lived right next door, we chatted with them regularly.  They even invited us over for drinks one night!  Plus, they were curious about us, and also wanted to make sure that we liked their house, so the landlady peppered me with questions every time she saw us.

(The only awkward moments came when she stuck her head through the open window as I walked out of the shower, and then when we had to admit that we didn't know how to operate the washing machine.  Oh, and when Griffin threw a basketball so hard it cracked a plastic lawn chair.  Oops.)

His other two noteworthy conversations came about because of public transportation.  On the bus, I started chatting with a grandmother accompanying her two young grandsons and called him over to join in.  One of the boys, a six-year-old just like him, told us that "Griffin" (which they pronounced "griffeen)" sounded like a girl's name.  But Griff defended himself and said that was okay, that it's a boy's name in English.  (Interestingly, he also ended up meeting a French boy named Sasha on a playground, and his reaction was shock that the boy had what he considered a girl's name!)  We ended up exchanging addresses and promising to send the French boys a postcard from Colorado.  (Wouldn't it be cool if they turn out to be penpals?!)

The people we spoke with in France seemed surprised and impressed that we're raising our children bilingually and asked us lots of questions about it, but none more so than two young workers at Charles de Gaulle airport who overheard me speaking to the kids in French with my American accent.  Ultimately we spent about ten minutes watching them barrage Griffin with questions, which he handled beautifully.  He even told them about how he's learning Spanish at school!

Then there were lots of little interactions that turned out to me more important than I realized at the time--opportunities for Griffin to read and speak French because he wanted or needed something.  For example, my husband took him out on a Sunday to look for a bakery that was open; they got completely lost and encountered bakeries that were closed for the day (or for the season).  Since Ed doesn't speak French, he was entirely dependent on our six-year-old to translate the signs and ask strangers for directions!

My children have an unfortunate habit of leaving their hats behind, and true to form, they lost one apiece on the trip.  Ed and Griffin retraced our steps in Colmar, looking for Gwyneth's errant chapeau, which meant that Griff had to do things like ask the carousel operator if he had seen it.  And when Griff's cap went missing at a museum in Paris--and he was really mad about that--he took two separate trips to the lost-and-found desk to try to track it down.

before her hat disappeared

When Griffin wanted a map of the charming village of Riquewihr, I accompanied him to the tourist office and watched proudly as he obtained two of them--one in French for us and one in English for Daddy.  He also read menus and ordered his own food in restaurants, paid attention to signs all around him (traffic signs, lists of bus stops, directional indicators in the metro), and refused to leave a bookstore until he had paged through an entire Tintin comic book.

(And it was so reassuring to have strangers compliment my own French as well as the fact that the kids are bilingual.  Maybe they were just being polite, but I'll take it.)

I'd like to think that we aided in the efforts of international diplomacy, that the folks we met have better opinions of Americans than they used to!  And while it probably won't take long for Spanish to regain its position as Griffin's second most familiar language, I now know that French is in there firmly enough that it will come back out after another immersion experience.

Oh, and Griffin also exchanged rubber band bracelets with this boy I made him talk to when I noticed him watching us  from his ground-floor dining room window.

Now I just have to break the news to my husband that we'll have to go to another Francophone country next summer....

you're taking your family to France!

Don’t think about the money--five overseas plane tickets!  Gulp.   (Plus twelve nights’ lodging!  The rental car, the trains, the restaurant meals, the unavoidable souvenirs!)  Don’t stress about how to juggle two children, two car seats, a monolingual husband, a smart and feisty but hard-of-hearing and hard-of-walking grandmother, and all your luggage (which will, you admit to yourself, probably double after you visit a couple of used bookstores).

Instead, revel in the fact that you are returning to France for the first time in nine years.  Nine years!  Nine years in which you have kept speaking French whenever you can, even after you left your teaching job to raise your family.  Six and a half years of speaking French to your baby boy--who is now, astonishingly, a first grader--and your baby girl, growing up so fast and so slowly at the same time.  Nine years of a tiny Francophone bubble in your home in the big American world.

All those years of only speaking French, your hard-won non-native tongue, with your dear ones, even though English would have been so. much. simpler.

Now you can finally immerse your family in the language!  Your children will see that more people than maman, their playgroup friends, and T’choupi speak and play and cajole and question and explain and argue and whine in French.  You will sit on a bench in the Jardin de Luxembourg and eavesdrop as they play tag with their new pals, and your mother will sigh contentedly and laugh at their antics, and your husband will tell you he’s proud of you for teaching your children another language.

And then your children will ask you for a few more euros so they can take another ride on the carousel, and your husband will suggest that you stop by that fromagerie on the way back to the apartment, and your mom will greet every passerby with a big American “Bonjour!” as she writes postcards to her friends back in the midwest.

And you will know that the expense is worth it, and that you won’t wait nine years to come back again.

Besides, Griffin and Gwyneth already have a natural affinity for frogs.

summertime slide

No, not that kind of slide.  That's the fun kind!

I've been volunteering at our public library's Homework Center since 2005, tutoring kids on a drop-in basis in whatever subjects they need help with, which means lots of math, lots of language arts, and occasionally everything else--even Spanish!  Very few students come in for French, unfortunately, though that's my favorite class to tutor.

However, a boy whom I have known for years now told me something that delighted me: he decided to take French in middle school because of me!  So now whenever he sees me around the library or the neighborhood, he greets me with a "Bonjour" and a "Ca va," and he even makes an effort to speak French to Griffin, too.  At the Homework Center this past school year, we reviewed vocabulary and played games and did worksheets in French together.

We even played a few games in French on my iPad!

His mother recently asked me for some suggestions of what he can do during summer vacation so as not to forget what he worked so hard during the school year to learn.  This phenomenon, known as the "summer slide," exists in all school subjects, but especially math, reading, and languages.  Use it or lose it, right?

And since getting a solid understanding of the basics the first year or so of language learning--as well as developing confidence and a genuine interest in the language--is so crucial to your success if you're hoping to continue with it, I want to help my young friend and all other language students find ways to have fun with it and keep practicing over the summer!

Griffin on his last day of preschool

(Hmmm....as I type this post, I recognize my hypocrisy: Griffin just completed nine months of Spanish immersion preschool, and other than taking him to the occasional Spanish storytime or helping him get through an Easy Reader book in Spanish, I have done nothing to help him review what he has learned. But our French time together is so precious, I don't want to replace any of it with Spanish right now, and his dad doesn't speak any Spanish!  Maybe my husband should start playing Spanish music for kids when Griffin's in the car with him.  We should find some Spanish lullabies for bedtime, too.)

So as long as I'm preparing a list for my favorite middle school French student, I may as well share it here on the blog.  Your suggestions, ideas, and questions, as always, are very welcome!  This post will provide some general advice for children (or adults!) learning any language but on vacation for a few months; my next post will offer specific resources for young students of French.

What, you're not here either?

If money is no object (ha!  if that were true you'd probably be reading this while yachting off St. Bart's and would roll your eyes and say "duhhh" when I suggest that you travel with your kids):

• Hire a nanny or au pair who is a native speaker who will live with you and interact with the whole family in the target language for the summer
• Engage a private tutor who can spend an hour or two a day with your children
• Travel to a country where the language is spoken and sign your children up for summer camps, music lessons, and similar activities
• Send your children to the Concordia Language Villages (Minnesota) or Middlebury College (Vermont), where they can attend residential immersion camps (or day camps) in over a dozen languages; Concordia even offers camps and classes for the entire family!

campers at Concordia's Russian village

If any of the following are available in your area:

• Sign your children up for day camps in the language (such as this one at a private school near us in Boulder or these at the Denver International School).
• Sign your children up for classes that meet weekly during the summer (such as this one offered at a children's museum in Lafayette or these at the Alliance Francaise in Denver).
• Take your children to language-specific storytimes at libraries (such as these ones in French in Boulder County or this onehttp://www.francedc.org/events/?id=71 at the Alliance Francaise in Washington, DC).
• Host an exchange student who speaks the language.

For example, the Alliance Francaise in Denver offers art classes for kids in French!

If your children are more or less beginners (after a year of middle or high school language study, a semester of college, or some exposure via camps, travel, or family members), encourage them to try the following:

• Play games in the language on a computer, tablet, or smart phone (such as these apps for games and interactive books in French).
• Modify games that you already know or own so that they are in the target language (such as writing a letter of the alphabet on each square of Chutes and Ladders, prompting the players to say a word that begins with that letter; hangman; Go Fish).
• Read and reread a little every day--the stories and articles and dialogues from your textbook, song lyrics, kids' books, comic strips.
• Watch videos (songs, cartoons, movie clips) in the language on YouTube, especially those with the words onscreen (such as these easy tunes in French).
• Watch familiar movies with the soundtrack and/or subtitles in the target language.
• Borrow language-learning videos from the library and see if any of them appeal to you; it's probably not worth purchasing them unless the child is fairly young and will tolerate multiple viewings that don't bring anything new.
• Borrow language-learning CDs, DVDs, and books from the library; purchase the one you like best to listen to in the car and at bedtime.
• Try out Rosetta Stone or Mango Languages software.

one of my Pinterest playlists of French music videos

If your children are at an intermediate or advanced level, encourage them to do all of the above, plus:

• Write letters or emails to teachers, classmates, friends, or family in other countries, then read their replies.  
• Try to find a new kid "keypal" (email penpal) who speaks the language!
• Sign up with LiveMocha to do conversational language exchanges online for free.
• Watch unfamiliar movies and television shows in the target language, with or without English subtitles, depending on the student's level.
• Stream radio stations, news reports, and podcasts to develop listening comprehension skills (we like Radio Ouistiti for French).

the LiveMocha logo

And, of course, read:

• Read, read, read, and then read some more!  
• Read books for children and magazines for adults and simplified stories for students and short stories and plays and essays and newspapers and restaurant menus and comic strips.
• Reread the stories and articles and dialogues from your textbook.  
• Read the French translation of a favorite, familiar book in English.  
• Listen to a story online and read along with the words.  
• Read lyrics while listening to music.  
• Read websites on any topic that interests you (skateboarding? politics? art?  Justin Bieber?) and online newspapers and blogs.
• Then reread the ones you liked best--you'll always understand more and read more fluently on subsequent readings.

Moreover, to increase familiarity with and interest in the cultures and countries where the language is spoken, your child could:

• Read books in English (fiction and nonfiction) about or set in the country.
• Watch movies in English that take place in the country.
• Watch documentaries and travel shows in English about the country (check your public library and Netflix's streaming service).
• Visit websites about the country, its history, its art and architecture, and other cultural aspects.
• Read cookbooks focusing on the country and then prepare some traditional foods.
• Interview (or simply chat with) people who have visited or lived in the country.
• Take virtual tours of museums and cities via websites and apps.
• Research a singer or musical group in a genre that interests you--find out how they got famous, what characterizes their music, which songs they are best known for, what the critics have to say, and which other musical acts are similar.
• Using travel guides from the library and online research, plan your dream trip--what places would you visit and why?  What would you do there?  What would you eat?  Where would you stay?
• Go on a virtual shopping spree via websites for department stores, supermarkets, and other shops in the country--decorate your dorm room, update your wardrobe, buy a scooter, furnish your home, do the grocery shopping for a fancy party.

So what are you waiting for!  School starts back up soon--don't let yourself lose more of that language!

for when you're not leaving on a jet plane

When told to put a couple of toys for the plane in his carry-on bag, Griffin, age 3, filled his suitcase with stuffed animals.

French playgroup always empties out over the summer: many of the families spend as long as two or three months back in Europe once their kids are out on vacation.  Some of the kids can even enroll in summer school over there, very inexpensively, and they all come back with renewed fluency in French, new books, new music, new favorite foods, new slang, new friends.  Those weeks or months of 24/7 immersion and attention from the extended family seem to make the challenges of traveling overseas with young children--and paying for it--entirely worthwhile.

But my husband and I don't have relatives in France whose homes we can visit.  Without French citizenship, our kids wouldn't be allowed in the state-supported daycare or schools.  And even if we did, we don't have enough vacation days to go to Europe for weeks at a time!

But while I'm certainly envious of those who can, we've managed so far to help our son hang onto his bilingualism without ever having visited a francophone country.  Maybe next summer, when I'll be celebrating a milestone birthday and our younger child, Gwyneth, will be almost three and (hopefully) more independent and less shrieky....

But in the meantime, here are some ideas of what those of us who can't travel abroad regularly can do to help keep our kids in the target language at home:

1.  Regular video chats (such as Skype) with families whose children are approximately the same age as yours.  As long as they speak the target language, it doesn't matter what country they call home!

(We don't do this yet, because Griffin can only Skype for two minutes without getting antsy and wanting to go play.  Soon, perhaps.)

2.  Hosting a foreign exchange student from a country where the language is spoken.

(We haven't done this yet, as most of the agencies that organize exchange programs prefer that the visiting student stay with a family whose child is around the visitor's age.  No one sends toddlers and preschoolers overseas to stay with strangers!)  (Not to say that we haven't been tempted....)

Or, if a commitment of a semester or more is too big--and your home isn't too small--why not invite another family to visit for a week or two?  For example, if your American friend's French husband's cousin and her kids are touring the US, but your friend lives in a one-bedroom apartment, maybe they could stay with you.

Or, if you can afford it, how about hiring a nanny who is a native speaker of the target language?

I have also been tempted by "home exchange" programs, especially since traditional hotel rooms tend to be awful for young children--constantly squeezing past the crib which takes up most of the available floor space, nothing is babyproofed, the indoor pool (when there is one) is always too cold for the youngest child (and also my husband), you can't cook anything for your picky eaters, and you have to turn out the lights and go to bed when the kids do (or else hang out in the bathroom or hope the baby monitor works in the lobby bar).

When told to unpack his suitcase on a trip earlier this year, Griffin laid out his five books, one pair of shoes, and Pooh Bear.  He doesn't care about the clothes.

How great would it be to take a toddler to another country and stay in a house with age-appropriate toys, dishes, and books, whose upholstery is stained enough that no one can prove that it was your kid who was fingerpainting with pureed carrots, whose mattresses boast waterproof covers in case a child wets the bed, whose vehicles already have car seats installed?!  Now that sounds like a low-stress vacation to me.

Has anyone with young children ever tried home swapping?  I'd love to hear more about it.  (Here's an article about a retiree's positive experience in Paris, by the way.)

3.  Attend a residential immersion camp, like the phenomenal Concordia Language Villages in Minnesota.  I'm a proud alumna of Sjolunden (spent two weeks at the Swedish village) and Lac du Bois (a month at French camp allowed me to skip the entire year of French 2 at my high school).

Concordia has also recently started offering day camps for children as young as six (Griffin could attend next summer!), plus week-long and weekend camps for the entire family!  In fact, the latter would actually be possible for us, especially since my parents live within a day's drive of the French camp sites.  I could see us flying to Minneapolis, renting a car, doing a camp, driving to spend time with the family, and then flying back out of Minneapolis.  If we could coordinate it with time off work and during school vacations, that is!

Oooh, and Griffin could do Spanish camp, too, to reinforce what he's learning at his immersion school....

Renowned school Middlebury College (Vermont) also offers summer programs for children: day camps in three languages for 5th-8th graders and residential camps in five languages for 8th-12th graders.

I imagine that other similar programs exist in the US and abroad--recommendations?

4.  And, of course, don't forget about all the things that we do on a (semi) regular basis in hopes of raising multilingual children:  target-language songs, books, interactive computer games and apps, movies and TV, and other materials, plus playgroups, playdates, storytimes, classes, and babysitters who speak (or are studying) the language, along with (of course, and most importantly) input from you!

Would it be ideal for our would-be bilingual kiddos to spend lots of time in a country where people speak the target language?  Sure.  Is that an impossibility for some families?  Yes.  Should they despair if they can't get there?  Mais non!

Your thoughts and advice?

francais au bord des grands lacs*: 1e jour

Mme Ann Sunderland, President of the American Association of Teachers of French (AATF), peering at my name badge at the exhibit hall opening reception: Have we met?  Your name sounds so familiar to me!
Me: No, I don't believe so, but I certainly recognize your name.  It's nice to meet you.
Mme Sunderland: Oh, I know!  You're from the library.  We sure don't get many librarians at this conference!
Me, to myself: And I bet that when you do, they haven't dragged their whole family along.  6:00 already? Oh, I'd better chug this wine--it's time to go feed Gwyneth!

Oui, here I am attending my first teachers' conference in a year and a half, the first national one since before Griffin was born (I'm not counting ACTFL in Denver in November, where I put in an appearance for an hour to give a last-minute presentation and then left without seeing anything else).

Since we spend Fourth of July with my extended family every year in Wisconsin, when I learned that the AATF convention would be in Chicago this year, I talked my husband into concluding our trip with a couple of days in the Windy City.  "You can take the kids to museums!  The hotel pool!  Chicago-style pizzerias!  Chicago-style, um, hot-dog-erias!  It would be sooooo helpful for my French and my efforts to teach it to our children if I could spend a few days speaking French with other grown-ups--and a whole lot easier and cheaper than taking the family to Europe!  Or even Quebec!"
After I promised not to fill up an entire suitcase with purchases from the exhibits hall, we decided to fly from Denver to Chicago, rent a car, drive to Green Bay, spend the week with my parents, and then return to Chicago, where we are now after a challenging day traveling with two little ones.

While I ended up missing the sessions this afternoon, I so enjoyed roaming the exhibits hall this evening, glass of wine in hand, looking at materials that I never even knew existed, like a board game reminiscent of Chutes and Ladders but set in Paris.  (Links to come later.)

And to my surprise (and perhaps Mme Sunderland's), I ended up meeting a man who works at a library in Queens (New York City) who is in charge of their programming for immigrants and acquisitions (purchases) in 30 languages!  Turns out that his library even offers a Reading Buddies program similar to the one I coordinate back home.

We're probably the only two library employees here, though.

I did like being able to tell people that I helped create and run our library's first French storytime!  The approval-from-strangers rate is quite high at a French teachers' conference.

I will also mention that it was a relief to be able to walk past the booths selling middle and high school textbooks or study abroad and class trips programs, things that I simply don't need to know about any more.

Vendor 1: Excuse me!  What level do you teach?
Moi: Preschoolers.  Do you have any materials for children who don't read yet?
Vendor 1: Quoi? Non!

Vendor 2: Excuse me!  Are you interested in taking your students to Morocco?
Moi: Oui!
Vendor 2: Fantastique!
Moi: Do you have programs for preschoolers?
Vendor 2: Quoi? Non!

I got a few funny looks, but it's more efficient not to have to engage in small talk and then walk away with brochures that I end up toting home from the conference since there's never a place to recyle paper at hotels.

Tomorrow morning: my presentation, Francais a la maison!

*The conference theme is "French on the shores of the Great Lakes": we're in Chicago on Lake Michigan.  I'll post about the second and third days when I get a chance to catch my breath and catch up on work now that we're back home.

rendez-vous a Chicago!

Hello dear readers!  Are any of you planning to attend the American Association of Teachers of French (AATF) convention in Chicago next week?  I'll be there Thursday afternoon through Saturday night, with my presentation on Friday:

S228: Français à la maison: Strategies, Challenges, and Resources

You teach French at school all day—but when you come home, do you speak English with your family? The presenter will discuss how, when, and why to share a second language with your children. We will look at concerns and challenges as well as what works and what doesn't, and the presenter will provide an annotated list of resources for parents raising kids in English and in French.

nouveaux livres pour Griffin (et moi!)

My parents just returned from a river cruise between Paris and Normandy during which they visited historic sites, ate authentic meals (including one at a French lady's home), and went shopping for their bilingual grandson!  I had given them a wish list of books that would appeal to Griffin (and me), like specific collections of comptines with CDs, fairy tales appropriate for preschoolers (nothing too gory), children's magazines, and some more Petit Ours Brun.  My maman speaks French, so she was able to hunt almost all of them down!  (And she reports that she enjoyed the chase.)  Merci mille fois, Maman!!!

Spring Break in Cancun is not a cliché when the party animal is a three-year-old!

Hola mis amigos! We're back from our trip to a family-friendly resort in Cancun, Mexico, where we spent five days relaxing on the beach.

Er, rather, five days chasing Griffin around the resort, which he saw as his own personal giant sandbox.

He enjoyed watching the sea birds and the ocean, but not actually swimming in it. (The wind was quite strong and the water pretty cold.)

(So was the pool water, for that matter.)

At 22 weeks pregnant, I wasn't able to partake of any exotic tropical mixed drinks (though I discovered that a virgin mojito is plenty tasty).

As for Griffin, he got comfortable ordering a leche at the bar.

Perhaps the best part of the trip, however, was watching Griffin develop an interest in speaking Spanish! He would hear the staff talking to each other in Spanish, watch my rudimentary efforts to ask and answer questions in Spanish, and try to read the Spanish words on the kids' placemats in the restaurants.Griffin would look around and ask me, "How do we say 'watermelon' in Spanish? How do we say 'bucket'? How do we say 'I want to take a bath'?" While I didn't know a lot of those words, I did at least teach him to say "Gracias" when a server brought us something and "adios" when we left a place. And we tried to get him to greet people with "hola," but for my bibliophile son, "hola" is inextricably linked to the book shown above, Hola Jalapeno by Amy Wilson Sanger. So whenever a staff member passed us and smiled and said "Buenos dias," Griffin would smile in return and call them a chile pepper!

multlingualism in the passport line at the post office

When we decided that we were ready to try to bring another child into this world, my husband and I discussed a few things that I'd like us to do before we plunge into a few more years where our lives will be ruled by a ten-pound dictator. He agreed. And while we decided that a trip to all the francophone countries in Europe wasn't a good use of our time and money this year, we are at least going to have five days at a family-oriented all-inclusive resort in Mexico at spring break! (I wanted a vacation where I could go swimming every day and not have to plan out activities and transportation and lodging. And it was too expensive to go all the way to the French-speaking islands in the Caribbean.)

This necessitated ordering a passport for Griffin--his first passport! Spending an hour in line at the post office yesterday waiting to turn in our paperwork meant that we had lots of time to chat with the people standing beside us. And it was so very interesting! One family was renewing the teenage daughter's passport so they could return to India this summer. Turns out that she is trilingual (English plus two Indian languages) and has studied Spanish extensively in school. As the garrulous, heavily-accented father pointed out, "If you're growing up in Colorado, you should learn Spanish." (He was also able to recommend to us the best Indian restaurant in the area.)

Behind us in line was another teenager, this one a student at a private Catholic high school (who now wants to volunteer with my Reading Buddies enrichment program at the library!). She was getting ready for a school trip to Italy. "Oh! Do you speak Italian?" I asked her. Turns out the only languages her school offers are Latin and French, so she's been studying Latin all along. (That's what I started with in ninth grade as well, as most North Carolina schools in the 1980s didn't teach foreign languages until high school.) And she says she loves her Latin class!

When these folks asked us if we spoke Spanish, since we had announced our plans to travel to Mexico, my husband and I had to look at each other sheepishly and say, "Not really." Now, I'm always suprised by how much I understand, thanks to several different first-year Spanish classes over the years, having to communicate with non-English-speaking families in my work at the library, and spending eight years of my professional life in a foreign language department, hearing the Spanish profs chatting constantly (even sharing an office with the Spanish TAs one year).

But being able to get the gist of conversations in familiar contexts does not make me a Spanish speaker! I'll be curious to see what I can understand and communicate in Mexico.

Anyway, it was just cool to meet teenagers for whom language learning was a given, and an enjoyable one at that.

an (accidental) vacation from French

Nine days in Wisconsin, a laid-back, friendly, midwestern state that offers myriad lakes, green plants everywhere you look, and lots of beer, dairy products, and deep-fried food. And lots of extended family members--my parents, several aunts and uncles, and cousins and second cousins galore--most of whom were quickly enchanted by Griffin's two-year-old antics.

(No wonder--this is the same boy who made complete strangers smile indulgently at 1:30 am on the train between concourses at Denver International Airport when he exclaimed "Wheeeee!" as the train started, continued with several "chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga choo choo"s, and then remarked with a grin "we going fast!")

Our trip to Green Bay, Three Lakes, and Madison was very relaxing in that lots of people offered to help keep an eye on Griffin. So I read and read, told and listened to stories, played games, exercised, helped cook, made my increasingly-popular white sangria, and even took a four-hour-nap one afternoon.

What I didn't do was make sure Griffin heard lots of French! Outside of our routine, away from most of our books and CDs, with less one-on-one contact with me, and surrounded by anglophones, he spoke more and more and more English, even when I made a point of carefully phrasing my questions and comments to him so that he could reply easily using a lot of the same vocabulary and grammar. (For example, to my "Est-ce que le bateau est grand ou petit?" he would respond, "That's a big boat" instead of "Le bateau est grand" or even simply "grand.")

I'm not worried that we've fallen down a slippery slope and it'll take weeks for him to start doing more French with me--but his increase in English is definitely noticeable, if temporary.

On the other hand, my mother has studied French, and we could see Griffin's surprise when he discovered that Grammy could read him the French books just as well as Maman could! That was fun.

And then in Madison, we visited with three other Francophile friends who have kids just a little younger than Griffin: Arielle, who is bilingual because her mom is French and who is using French with their son (while her husband understands very little, just like mine); and Molly and Bob, who met twenty years ago at French camp (and got married three years ago), who sing French songs to their daughter and speak French to each other when they don't want her to understand.

However, we spent much of our time with them at a very noisy bar-restaurant where the kids had fun dropping pool balls in holes and watching them roll, so I don't think Griffin even realized that most of the other adults were using French here and there.

But maybe in a couple of years we'll meet up again, and their kids and mine will sing French songs together! Now I've just got to work on my cousins....

vivent les "pommes frites" with "Monsieur"!

Griffin, Ed (my hubby), and I spent the weekend in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where we stayed in a bunkhouse on a working ranch while cattle lowed outside our bedroom window. Griffin frolicked in the grass, chased the cat, petted a baby kitten, and had a ball in the hot springs pool downtown and also up in the mountains.

We had lunch one day at the Epicurean, a cute and cozy restaurant run by a Frenchman, Marco. I was thrilled that someone besides me was speaking French to Griffin, and Marco seemed delighted when he brought two rubber duckies to Griffin, calling them "canards" (ducks), and Griffin corrected him to say "canetons" (ducklings). (Okay, I'll confess, that delighted me too.) Every time Marco appeared, Griffin would shout "Monsieur!" with joy.

Anyway, when Marco brought Ed's merguez sausages and French fries, he called the latter "pommes frites." All along, I've simply said "frites" for fries, so that's the word that Griffin learned and uses. But Griffin immediately started saying "pommes frites" just like Monsieur!

Griffin and I had fries yesterday, and he called them "pommes frites" then too. I am convinced that this is Marco's influence, a lasting impression made by a real live French person who spoke directly to Griffin about things he loves!

(By the way, the Epicurean's food was exquisite. Ed proclaimed the lobster bisque and the frites among the best he'd ever had, and I really enjoyed the chunky creaminess of the gratin d'artichauts. And Griffin ate his very first escargot! We almost went back for dinner before we left town.)

turns out that two years old isn't too young for the Smithsonian!

Griffin and I recently spent six days in the Washington, DC, area, where he got to do all sorts of exciting things like see dinosaur skeletons, have a great-aunt give him presents, ride trains, read books with his uncle, and hang out with a greyhound. I now know that it is exhausting to travel by myself with a toddler (especially when a snowstorm causes flight cancellations and you arrive at 9:30 pm without a suitcase!) and that I really, really don't care for dog hair on my underwear and that a house shared by five bachelors equals a bathtub that makes said toddler exclaim "yucky!"

(Fortunately, Griffin doesn't care about that sort of thing. Read him books--as his Tonton Matt is doing above--and he's happy. Here he's enjoying his favorite new book, Mo Willems' Knuffle Bunny.)

Or give him things to climb on; he loves that too. Here he is atop a very interesting rock in Falls Church, VA.

Or take him to the Potomac River in Alexandria, let him watch the boats bobbing up and down, give him bread to feed the ducks, and then refuse to let him go swimming despite his howls!

On the other hand, I also now realize that you're never too young for the Smithsonian museums, and since they don't charge admission, you don't feel like you have to drag a kid around with you for hours to get your money's worth. I took Griffin to three museums, and he found things to stare at in wonder in all three of them.

His favorite was probably the Museum of Natural History--he shrieked and exclaimed "dinosaure squelette!" (skeleton) when we entered the prehistory exhibit--but he also really enjoyed the Museum of African Art, which was full of colors and textures and sculptures and paintings. They even had one room where kids were encouraged to touch the art!

(And where their moms are allowed to wear it!)

The whole trip was also a good vocabulary boost for both of us. Griffin learned lots of new words in French and I was able to spend hours at a time talking about something other than food, diapers, or discipline! And especially in the African Art Museum, he could see that the world is a lot bigger than our little city in Colorado.

So, in conclusion, take your little kids to Washington. Just don't stay at my brother's house.

fais de beaux rêves, take two

For the past year, I've experienced stranger-than-normal dreams. And I've had some doozies in my life, even dreaming about punctuation in grad school. (Yes, I'm a nerd.) But I'm blaming the more recent weirdos on nine months of pregnancy and four months of sleep deprivation and postpartum hormonal craziness. Don't even ask me about my second trimester erotic dream about Homer Simpson. That one still gives me nightmares! Others have been disturbing, but in a whimsical way, like when I dreamed that Ed stuck a carrot in the soft spot on top of Griffin's head and said, "Now he's a unicorn."

But last night I had a detailed but fairly pedestrian dream, in content, at least: I was traveling through France with Griffin in his stroller, with two of my new friends from the "Survival for New Moms" class I attend at the hospital.

Oooh! Opportunity for another gratuitous Griffin photo! Here he is with his best friends, their daughters.

Anyway, the moms and I were doing normal touristy activities like shopping and flirting with cute guys and trying to figure out how to work foreign telephones. Griffin was being a baby and just hanging out watching.

It was only after I woke up that I realized that throughout the dream, I spoke to my friends in English but to Griffin in French, with the narration in my head in French as well. I even remember having a conversation all in French with myself about one of the cute guys I met--Pierre--pondering the irony of chatting up a man whose name Ed and I had considered for our baby before settling on Griffin.

This is the first time that I can recall a bilingual dream that involved my baby. It fascinates me that my linguistic interactions in my sleep mirrored those in my day-to-day life!

What language(s) do you dream in? Do the languages appear with the same frequency, the same interlocutors, and the same contexts as in your waking hours? What language(s) do your family members speak in your dreams?

not enough French

Well, we had an idyllic trip to the half-French, half-Dutch Caribbean island of St. Martin where we spent most of the time hopping in and out of the ocean when we weren't reading novels or eating decadent and/or tropical foods (see my co-authored food blog Three Tarts for pictures of the open-air market). I found a bookstore and stocked up on lots of new board books to read to my incipient francophone nephew Carl--even if he's not bored with the old ones, I am!--plus a few "facile" level French crossword books and several cooking magazines and a couple of novels by Caribbean writer Maryse Condé for me.

But here's what was most disappointing about the French-speaking island: I didn't speak much French. Or rather, I didn't have any meaningful conversations in French. Only one of our cab drivers spoke French; an American ran our hotel; the other guests there were Americans; most of the people we met on the beach were either Americans or French couples with a man in a Speedo-type swimsuit and a topless woman (conditions which made it hard to start chatting with them without staring). Yes, I spoke to waiters and shopkeepers in French, but that was only to convey what I wanted and to express thanks. I read signs in French, eavesdropped on other people's conversations, and watched French TV in the hotel, but I don't feel that linguistically I got what I wanted out of this vacation.

So now I'm especially motivated to keep working on my French during my summer off from teaching. I'll do my crosswords, watch French movies, read more, visit websites and try to download programs to watch or listen to in French. I've also been keeping a long list of words and expressions that I want to figure out how to say in idiomatic French, many of which are toddler-related, occurring to me as I take care of Carl and realize that I don't know a simple, natural-sounding way to say--"go for a ride" (in the stroller), for example.

Therefore, I'm pledging to the loyal readers of this blog that I will continue to improve my French, both for myself and for Carl. Hold me accountable!

bon voyage and happy shopping!

Bringing up Baby Bilingual will be on hiatus for a week and a half while my husband and I travel to St. Martin, the half-French, half-Dutch island in the Caribbean. It's funny--the guidebooks rave about the duty-free shopping possibilities for Chanel, Louis Vuitton handbags, booze, but what I really want to know is where the bookstores are! I'm hoping to come home with lots of new children's books and CDs in French to use with Carl. But at the very least, I'll be able to speak lots of French and eat lots of baguettes. Stay tuned!