Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Back to school

Beasties are back in school and having a lovely time. I kept waiting and waiting for Douwe's teacher to call me in about some thing or another and she never did. Finally last week she asked if I wanted to make an appointment to talk about how the school day goes now that he is in the equivalent of first grade.

Uh huh, I thought. Here it comes.

So off I went all ready to give her some pointers in dealing with Mr. Difficult.

Turns out she just wanted to, um, tell me how the school day goes. She has had no issues, wanted no pointers. The only unusual thing she has noticed about Douwe is that he tosses in an occasional word in English now and again -- the funniest was when he was looking at his little reading workbook at the word "mier" which means "ant". He looked at the word and said "ant". She asked him again and he said (in Dutch) "you know, it's a bug, lives in the ground, digs holes, has a queen". (then in english) "you know, an ant". She said, "what is it in dutch?" He said (in dutch) "it's in the book, here, muh-ee-rr, that's what I said".

Uh huh.

Daan's teacher got a call from a woman in Israel who wanted to know about the school and how her kids would do given that they speak primarily english. The teacher was asking me what I thought and the other teacher said "you should have just put Daan on the line, he speaks better english than either of us, and he can translate, too,".

Which should be comforting to you all, he can at least speak english when he is in Holland. *ahem*.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

yes, I am sooo happy!

It is almost worth coming to work and opening the computer to read your messages. At least it makes it more fun!

Anonymous said...

Glad your still alive.

Ashley's first few weeks have gone well too. Although she has had two notes sent home so far about her not listening when they tell her to stop doing something that might harm herself/others. Oh and she sprained her ankle the second week of school and nobody noticed it until I picked her up.

Oh well, she bounced back quickly and had a story of going to the hospital to tell all her new friends.

Jenni

Glad to hear Daan speaks at home - other than "No" and "Go away"

Hee Hee