Translated Meeting

I'd never thought I'd need a translator, but today I had a meeting with Scotty's bornehaven teacher... and we needed to schedule another teacher to translate for us. :) I'm totally serious when I say one of his teachers speak ZERO English, but I really really like her. (see proof that everyone here does NOT speak English)

Having a translator was odd. Who do you look at when talking? What do you do when the other person is talking? Do you laugh when they make a joke and laugh... they know you don't understand them...? I found my mind wandering off about these things and then feeling bad because I wasn't paying any attention to her... but I couldn't understand any of it anyways! I listed to the English part at least! :)

Scotty's teacher would talk, sometimes looking at me, sometimes looking at the translator... I'd just look at her and try to pick words out of whatever she was saying. Once I thought I heard the word for feet - "fa-lugal" or something like that; then I thought: "no, she wouldn't say feet, maybe she said bird, maybe Scotty saw a bird, oh no, maybe Scotty kicked a bird with his feet!" Turned out it had nothing to do with birds or feet.

Sometimes when we were talking the translator would stop us so she could catch up. :) That was funny. We did a lot of smiling and laughing to get us through hard parts; like when nobody could figure out the word for "room" and it turned into a charades game. "stu-a" I think...

Needless to say the meeting went on for twice as long, but I'm really happy with this school. It's so cute and the teachers are all very kind to Scotty. It's so calm and nice and "home-like". The teacher even said she will come to our house to visit and bring two of Scotty's friends at school because the kids like to show their teacher their toys and their room, etc... It's like a show and tell for Scotty, but he gets to show everything at once!

Scotty is doing great at school. He seems to like it and we've been sending him every day because little-monster is all about schedules! Our new plan is to send him Monday - Thursday and not on Friday. I still think five days a week is too much. I'm also just sending him from 8:30am to 12:30 pm. Here's my thinking: They go outside at 11:45ish to play, but it's 1 degree outside! That's cold!! I don't want Scotty to freeze to death so I pick him up at 12:30 if it's really cold or raining... and I'll leave him there longer if it's warmer... you know like 5 degrees. :)

He also said his first, unprompted Danish word!! Mad-pakken. His lunchbox! He has his "taska": (his huge, American, insulated, rocket-shaped lunchbox; and he has his "madpakken": his plastic, square Tupperware container, which is more similar to every other kids lunchbox. He also says bornehaven which is cute as well...

I wonder if there's a spot in his baby book for "First Danish Word" :)