two years, three languages

I got myself a notebook and started making notes about Silja's management of several languages. I'm not one (yet) to make a lot of parental notes, but having grown up in a monolingual environment myself it's fascinating to see how all these languages affect her linguistic development. Probably this will be of interest to her too one day. I thought I would share some of it here.
Her vocabulary has exploded over the last half a year or so. She continues to speak mostly Danish, but is mixing in Icelandic words and expressions.

Sýna far klistermærkerne (show dad the stickers)

Tiger búrningur (tiger costume)

Hvor biða? (wait where?) 

Some of the words I don't always understand, and I'm trying to make sense of what she is trying to say. Hvor er der biler?! Tiger børn?! Hvad snakker du om...? So I'm slowly expanding my Icelandic vocabulary as well, although she is clearly already ahead of me (to my defense I'm not read to in Icelandic).

After she started daycare, English words are also popping up daily, and are thrown into sentences. Wash your hands, cow, jumping, let's go, sit down, please. Almost every time she returns, she will say something new. Today was the word tissue. She doesn't always get it completely right, as it is with words in Danish and Icelandic, and it sometimes takes time for us to figure out what she is trying to say. She came home a few weeks back and was singing the same sentence over and over again Shalom, how are you? Shalom, how are you? Shalom, how are you? It was extended a couple of days later to How are you TODAY? One day when I was making dinner, she was playing daycare with her stuffed animals, her current favorite role play game. She had organized a little pretend circle-time and was singing over and over again I fain, hahlaba-tju, I fain, hahlaba-tju. And, of course, I realized after hearing it repeated again and again, it was the next line in the song. Shalom, how are you, how are you today? I'm fine, how about you? We still don't know how the rest of the song goes...

This clip has horrible light, but as you can see we continue to hear and occasionally participate in pretend circle time and the daycare song. See video here.

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hurricane and halloween

We made it safely through the hurricane. Thankfully it didn't turn out to be too bad here, although it was incredibly stormy. The whole city was more or less shut down so the three of us stayed in following the news, cooking, playing, and looking out the window. I thought Alex' comment in the previous post about nothing better than sitting around the house, watching wild weather exploding safely outside, and confidently knowing you've got plenty of pie, was excellent advice, so we woke up and made apple pie! We were afraid power would go out, but luckily that didn't happen. It's fun how such out of the ordinary events bring you closer to the people that live around you. We had neighbors knocking on our door to check if we owned the car that was stuck underneath the fallen tree that was dangling on top of some power lines (we didn't), and another neighbor came to borrow an egg. Everybody was stuck at home and had plenty of time to chat.

Today we've been celebrating Halloween, or I guess it's been building up over the last couple of days with monster cup cakes and jack o'lanterns. I couldn't figure out the trick or treating part though. I didn't know if Silja was too young, so I ended up sending an email to the organizers of a local city-organized event explaining we are these Halloween-clueless Europeans and would it be appropriate for a toddler? I got a long email back explaining it would be everything between tiny babies in costumes to grand parents partaking in the event, and we should please show up and join the fun. So we went trick or treating with lots of other big and small kids and parents and dogs down the local main street, and the highlight was clearly the police station that had someone dressed up as dogs. Silja kept petting and following the bull dog and didn't want to leave him. I guess the highlight for the rest of us has been eating some of all that candy she got...
Happy Halloween!

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head of the charles

We went to see the Head of the Charles Regatta last weekend with rowing boats going up and down the Charles River. It had been raining and lightning like it was the end of the world during the night, but then it cleared up in the morning and was such a pretty day with fall colors and rowing boats on the river. 

At the moment we are trying to figure out to what degree to prepare for hurricane Sandy. Massachusetts has declared a state of emergency, and our electricity company and Harvard have sent emails about the importance of stocking up on water, flash lights, food, and medicine if needed. Apparently the power might go out for several days. The whole scenario is completely foreign to a Dane and an Icelander, and I suppose quite unusual for the locals here too. Fingers crossed it won't be too bad for this region or for all those further south.

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the cape

When you live in Boston, you hear a lot about "the Cape", which seems to be the desired vacation spot for the Bostonians. A couple of weekends ago we finally made it to the long sandy beaches and the little New England villages, and I totally get the hype of Cape Cod. It was such a neat place, and we MUST go back next summer, although I can only imagine it is then jampacked with overheated city people.

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foliage and pumpkins

It seems like every other weather forecast at the moment brings the latest on the foliage situation around New England -- the region is famed for fall leaf viewing, and just about now is apparently the time to go on scenic drives around this corner of New England. We have slowly seen the transition from green to red, yellow and brown. There is still a lot of green, but still it's oh so pretty.

We spent the weekend walking through parts of downtown Boston and driving up to the Topsfield Fair to meet up with friends. The agricultural fair was very American with country music and fried food (including fried chocolate bars), but hot cider (much better than pumpkin spiced coffee!) lots of pumpkins plus a temperature drop of 10 degrees made it feel very fall'ish. Today I got the sore throat to prove my lack of appropriate fall clothing. 

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'happy yom kippur!'

I overheard the others saying it when leaving Silja's new daycare center yesterday and when the receptionist at the front desk answered the phone, and so we also left the place wishing the staff Happy Yom Kippur. Last week the daycare was closed two days for Rosh Hashanah -- the Jewish new year. Besides a lot of Boston College students our new neighborhood is influenced by a large Jewish community. The local supermarket has in addition to an extremely large selection of hummus and pickles, a section with Shabbat candles, gefilte fish, matzo bread, and so on. Some of it gives me flashback to the time I spent in Israel working in a kibbutz way back.

On Saturdays the streets are busy with families rushing to and from the many synagogues in the area.  Men in black suits and black hats, little boys in black suits, women in long skirts and girls in dresses.

The anthropologists in me can't help of taking mental notes of what I observe, and it really makes me want to understand the religion and the culture is encompasses it in much more detail. 

I had to go back to Cambridge tonight for a meeting, and when going back there I instantly miss it. It's just so nice, and I guess it still feels much like home compared to this place, but the Jewish trait that characterizes our new area, is a definitely on the plus side. I'm ready to learn more. 

Shalom and l'chaim (the kibbutz volunteer vocabulary...)

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fall weekend

The weekend started out with grey skies and alone time for me to get familiar with a new friend: a sewing machine. It was accompanied by a real fall treat: pumpkin spice latte, which unfortunately sounds much better than it actually is. Ew, I'm not a fan -- yet...  We took a walk around our neighborhood lake to visit Boston college, which old tower we can spot from our side of the lake. It ended with a lot of sunshine, apple picking and catching up with friends from both Los Angeles and Michigan. A good weekend indeed!

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