Back, briefly

We're back from our last visit to Prague before moving in, like, three weeks. Ask me if I've packed anything. Don't expect much of an answer.

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While I was away, I had an article published at Multilingual Mania! It's called The Language That Speaks to My Heart and talks about how language affects (my) identity. Take a look if you haven't read it already, and I hope you like it!

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We had a great week full of friends and somewhat cruddy weather that didn't manage to keep us from having fun. K was best friends over the weekend with a boy her age who only speaks Polish. It didn't stop them getting into mischief, giving each other hugs and to tell you the truth, it kind of looked like they were spooning once. I learned a little bit (more) Polish. Also Croatian and Hungarian. You don't get too much more multilingual than this past weekend!

I even made it to K's preschool informational meeting and introductory first day for new kids. My reservations about the school eased in some ways and intensified in others, leaving me firmly ambivalent. Pro: K's teachers seem nice. Con: I find it VERY, VERY DIFFICULT to overlook the mistakes they make in English. "Participating on" something or wanting "to enlight" someone my child might not notice, but "jinny pig" for "guinea pig" is a little more blatant. The lead teacher's Czech is better than her English, but she's not a native speaker. I'd say she speaks Czech approximately as well as I do, i.e. occasional mistakes and an occasionally noticeable (in her case Russian) accent. Not a deal-breaker, but they DO claim to have "native speakers" in each classroom, and I wouldn't consider myself or the teacher to be native speakers of Czech. However, the more important thing to me is that she is sweet and I think K will like her.

Also, they want to feed her seaweed. We'll see how it goes.