Arabic "Camp"!

The girls have just gone back to school after their two-week long Herbstferien (Autumn holidays).

For the last ten days, I have been teaching BK1 (10.5 years old) and BK2 (7.5 years old) how to read and write in Arabic. We have been doing between 10 and 30 minutes every day, following the Algerian textbook for 6-year olds. I can already see a lot of progress: BK1's reading and writing are improving, and BK2 has started to read too!

Here you can hear both girls reading (deciphering) a sentence, without me first reading it to them.

You can hear BK4 babbling (shouting!) in the background. It's hard going, I was in my bathrobe, and BK3 was on the iPad. But hey it works somehow.

I hope we can keep the momentum now that the girls are back in school. We'll have to downscale the frequency and duration of lessons. Now that they have gained confidence in their skills though, I am hoping we will manage a weekly session, life permitting.

You know what the best thing is? BK1 said our daily lessons have been FUN!

Your family or mine?

Earth-shattering news: Prince William will spend Christmas with his wife's family!

One of the advantages of being from two different and distinct cultures is the absence of conflict on where to spend the holidays. No dilemma over whether to spend Christmas or Eid with the wife's or husband's family.
Also, when we are either in Algeria or Germany, there is no taking turns for the grandparents to see their grandchildren. We all stay in the same house, and have no rule over how often to visit the in-laws.

An Algerian friend of mine and her Algerian husband live in Canada with their young children. Every two years, they visit Algeria for a respectable six-week period. In order to satisfy everyone, the woman stays four days with her husband and his family, then takes her children and goes to stay with her own family for the remaining three days. And so on every week. She actually goes straight to her husband's family from the airport. I would personally find this hard, as the only thing I have in mind as soon as the plane lands is to see the faces of my beloved parents waiting for us at the airport.

There are some strong traditions in algeria, whereby a married woman "belongs" to her husband's family. It is not uncommon for a man to marry in Algeria, only to move abroad for work soon after the wedding, and the woman stay with his parent, even though her own family live nearby.

If Prince William had married someone from a completely different background, he would have totally avoided the dilemma of whether to spend Christmas with the Queen or with the Middletons. Mind you, I can think of worse dilemmas to have.

Paris

We spent our half term holidays in Paris, with my sister. her husband, her two children and my visiting parents. We had a great time with my family.

Ages ago, I lived in Paris for 8 months. I fled what I considered its dreary weather for sunny south of France.
Eight years and a half later in the North of England, and I now think Parisian weather is lovely...

Our week in Paris offered the girls a double immersion in Arabic and French. BK1 is increasingly confident while reading French books.
We also stocked up on French resources. I went to a brocante, and got loads of books and dvd's in French for a mere 40 euros.

I am glad we managed to fulfill BK1's wish to climb the Eiffel Tower. Paris, on a windy and sunny day, fabulous!

Less German

The Babelwife has been in Algeria for 3 weeks now with the Babelkids and I'm finally joining them later today.

Babelkids were obviously very excited yesterday evening when I called them. They even asked the Babelwife to give me another call when they went to bed, so they could say good night. Bless them.

I spoke with BK1 and BK2 briefly in the afternoon. It had be a long time, almost 2 weeks. (We kept our calls very brief because there is currently no landline phone where they are, stolen cable apparently, don't ask.)

I noticed that both BK1 and BK2 had lost some of their fluency in German, as they always do during the summer holidays when they're immersed completely into an Arabic-speaking environment.

Interestingly BK2 lost a lot more than BK1 this year, and now I'm wondering why that might be.

Does it help that BK1 has been speaking German for a lot longer than BK2? Probably. Maybe the time when she was the only child we had was crucial, too? I'm convinced BK1 had less English around her when she was little.

I reckon it is a combination of those two.

Whatever it is, I'm happy to see them later and I'm sure all kids will find back to their usual level of German quickly.

Lost German

The other day I when I was on the phone with the Babelmum, BK1 walked past and decided she wanted to speak with me. So BM passed the phone over.

It felt slightly weird after two and a half weeks to speak with my eldest daughter. I had almost forgotten her voice.

But for her, it was apparently even weirder!

For the first couple of minutes she wasn't really able to say anything but "Ja" ("yes"). I think it took about 3 minutes for her to muster all her German and produce a sentence.

Funny. Makes me wonder how it'll be when I see them on Monday.