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| Sunday, February 18, 2007 |
| Hoping to Preserve Culture and Language |
The bwins are doing so well with their English. They speak in complete sentences and their vocabulary is ever-growing. However, their Russian is completely all but gone. This saddens us. We had hoped that they would continue to dialogue amongst themselves in Russian. This has not been the case.
Therefore, we have been looking for some kind of opportunity to get them some Russian. Recently, with J starting on the boys' preteam at gymnastics and H wanting to start doing it again, we've had a need for a babysitter a few days a week for the boys for about an hour or so. D decided to see if he could find a Russian community and see if anyone would be interested in the job. We have found a Russian lady who is probably in her 50s who is interested.
She and her husband came to the U.S. 2 years ago to live with their daughters who worked and studied here. She washes dishes at a little cafe during the lunch hour, but liked the idea of being with the kids. We met with her last week, her daughter translated. She came for the first time on Tuesday. H stayed home to help her out the first day. Then on Thursday, we left her for the first time with the boys.
We wanted someone who would only speak Russian to them. As soon as she left after first meeting her, D commented that he didn't think we had any threat of her speaking English to them instead of Russian. She doesn't speak much English at all. She seems to understand quite a bit, but just can't speak it. The boys were fearful at first. We had anticipated this and had talked to them about it ahead of time. We were afraid that they would think that we were preparing them to go back to Russia. We assured them that they were going to stay with us forever and we were never sending them back to the orphanage. They were tense at first, but now they really like her and think she is so much fun. They ask when she is coming back.
She has a Russian driver's license, but doesn't know enough English to take the test here. Therefore, I have to go pick her up each time. This proves to be a mental challenge to me as the conversation flows non-stop. She is rattling off in Russian with an English word or two every once in a while that I try to figure out. It's very interesting and very mind challenging. D has a master's degree in Linguistics with a TEFOL emphasis. He has offered to help her learn whatever she wants to learn. She wants to be able to pass the driving test. That would be great for me too!
Anyway, during our drive last Thursday, I mentioned Maslenitsa that I have read about on Debbie and Kate's blogs. She proceeded to discuss it at length( in Russian, of course). Then, this afternoon, she shows up at our door with a massive stack of blini and 5 different jams to put on it. We had given her some of our Valentine cookies we made last week, so maybe she wanted to return the favor. Maybe she just wanted to help us instill some Russian customs in our sons, since that is what our desire is with the language help. The kids tore into them. We still have several left, but they made a huge dent in the enormous stack.
We're really excited to provide this opportunity to our boys. We think it is such a gift to be bilingual at a young age. We don't want them to lose this or any of their heritage. We have found out that our babysitter and her family attend a Russian Orthodox church in the big city not too far from us. We are thinking about attending Orthodox Easter with them. Maybe we will invite them to our Easter service. I think this will prove to be an invaluable link for our sons to have. I'm so glad that we found G, our new Russian friend. |
posted by 6blessings @ 7:25 PM  |
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| 7 Comments: |
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How wonderful! I wish I could have found someone like that. It is such a gift to be multilingual.
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What a neat thing you are doing for the boys! You have gone above and beyond the call of duty as adoptive parents. yay!! For you and Damon! Since we never adopted internationally I never thought about preserving their language. I would hope that it would have crossed our minds. It shows again the compassion you have for your little guys. So proud of you all!!
Lorrie
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we are thinking about doing the same thing ... there are alot of russian students in our area.
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Oh, how fantastic for all of you! That will be so neat for the boys. And such a valuable resource, not just for the one hour of language, but for recipes, customs, ritual, etc.
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That's wonderful! Being bilingual is such a benefit and preserving some of the bwins culture is important. I know I was planning on doing everything I could to help Peanut keep his Russian and continue studying German. (Peanut was learning German in school in Russia.) The translator that helped during hosting holds Russian classes for kids that were adopted. But she lives and hour and a half away from me, so I knew I'd need to find another option. It's not easy to find! I'm so glad you found such a good solution.
p.s. Isn't talking to an adult much, much harder than communicating with kids? I had a terrible time talking to Peanut's escort. Peanut ended up translating most of the time.
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Wow Kim,
That is awesome! Im so glad you found someone who can help the boys re-learn Russian. I love the language and I hope to be able to use as much of it as I can with our children.
-Penny
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What a fantastic gift you've given your boys. (And I'm tickled that my blog entry sparked off your own Maslenitsa celebration.)
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How wonderful! I wish I could have found someone like that. It is such a gift to be multilingual.