Jeff: Learning English

I "borrowed" this from the Garrett's blog - thanks Matt! (Thanks for the Offender and Offendee post as well - I was in tears after remembering some Edits from my own loving wife. Can I help it if my version didn't always jive with the real events as seen by Sue?)


http://garrettadoption.blogspot.com/2008/10/god-bless-america.html


Last night we had to have a Russian speaking IT specialist come set-up the Internet in our flat. It was during this time that we discovered that, indeed, our precious 15 year old "daughter" DOES speak and understand English much better than we thought. She became frustrated with my inability to communicate with this guy so she, unwittingly, chimed in with her own translating services; interpreting all to well. It occurred to her what was happening and she went bonkers, laughing, running around yelling(of course, all in Russian with a lot of, "...nyet, no English..." and I'm sure some other choice Russian words as well)-too late!! Exposed. What a "twerp"!!!! I now call her,"..little intwerperter...". 


I've been pretty amused by our little sweetie since she's been here.She goes to great lengths to make sure she doesn't understand English - until she forgets:-) This is actually fading fairly quickly - Anastasia had really come a LONG way in comprehension in two weeks, but it was one of the more interesting things I noticed as part of the adjustment. It seemed like controlling how much understanding was in evidence was one of the coping techniques - maintaining some control!


The language and communication aspect is actually going much smoother than I expected. Nastiya showed very little interest in learning English the first time she stayed with us. I was a bit worried that this would continue once we had her here permanently. It hasn't - she continues to learn new words quickly and she's willing to use more of the words daily. For the first week she was a bit shy about speaking English words. That seems to be fading quickly. I have also continued to listen to some Russian language tapes, and I try to use some of the stuff I'm learning - pick a word or two to interject. I think Nastiya appreciates this - she also seems to have fun correcting my pronunciation. She's given up on Sue - unless she wants to have a laugh. Sue has fun with it. Last night we learned that "e-shoe-a" is "more". (Pardon my spelling, but that's as close as I can come to what Nastiya actually said). Sue looked at Nastiya with a smile and said "new shoes?" OK - so I made that part up, but that's about the way it goes with those two - then Nastiya collapses in a fit of giggles. Very cool.

While we were at Connor's band competition last weekend, Nastiya asked me for the electronic translator. I changed it to Russian to English translation, and she typed in a word, which she then showed me - "utensil". I looked at her quizzically, and she started over. This time, when she showed it to me, it said "depillatory". I of course completely lost it. I could not figure out how those two words would fit in a conversation or a request that she could possibly have. Pretty soon we were both laughing so hard we couldn't talk. When Sue asked me what we were laughing at, it just made it worse!


 One of the traditions in our house is watching the Macy's parade. Sue explained some of this to Nastiya using a web translator yesterday morning. The subject came up again at dinner, and I pulled out the R/E dictionary to look up parade. When I showed that word to Nastiya, I have enough Russian to understand that she gave my the typical "dad, you're silly" look as she told me quite clearly (in Russian), "Yeah, I get it - we're going to watch the parade on TV in the morning!" My son looked at her, looked at me, and said "she's diabolical". I guess the thing that pleases me as much as her speed in learning English is the fact that she's willing to speak to us in Russian in the mean time. For the first several days, we got a lot of pointing and grunts. We made it clear that we would speak together - in one language or the other, and now she does.


I must say that overall, the process is going quite smoothly for us. It has been extremely helpful to read some of the blogs of those ahead of us in the process, as well as talking to others who have been through this for a longer period of time. Thank you all for your kind words and your wisdom and your sharing of experiences. This has certainly helped set my expectations and my understanding of where we are and what would work at this stage.


This is not to say that we don't have a world-class pouter on our hands. Not having had a girl to raise, it's very interesting to watch the behavior when the princess doesn't get her way. I was made to pay last night - Nastiya wanted to break one of the minor rules in our house. I held my ground, even though it was minor for both of us, it was something that I had to pay for. I received the cold shoulder for the rest of the evening. Not as bad as some others, but clearly Dad had mis-behaved.