Week #3 - Fu! Fingra! Ni!

Hm. I still have no idea what I'm doing, but I think I'm learning. (Oh, and by the way, after all that trouble of giving my people Karen-ish pseudonyms, I keep forgetting what they are. So I'm reverting to the tried and true descriptive-words-as-names method: Karen Dad, Karen Mom, Oldest Son, etc.)

So, yesterday, for the first time Senior-in-Highschool and Sophmore-in-Highschool greeted me with an English greeting: "Hi, how are you?" They're getting more confident, and that makes me happy. I must not be too scary.

However, about halfway through my time there, there was a lull. A borderline-painful stretch of silence during which I felt like I should have something to say, some sort of lesson or plan to help get things going again. Bah. The last half hour was great; I had to interrupt them to gather my books and catch my bus. Now I just need to find some way to move that enthusiasm and involvement up a half hour or so, so I won't have to leave just as things are picking up. Junior-High-Son asked me to bring him some picture storybooks next week, so he can try to read them. Maybe that will keep conversation going.

I think, actually, that the key is Karen Dad. He loves the picture dictionaries, but I have three of varying levels. When he gets stuck with the "advanced" one, he seems to get bogged down and doesn't even know what to ask. When he has one of the simpler ones, though, he has no shortage of pronunciation questions. I wish I knew what the parents were learning at their English classes during the day, so I could reinforce those lessons. Maybe I can find that information somehow. They're definitely very genuine beginner beginners. Even the boys--who all "know" quite a bit of English when it comes to rules and grammar--have such thick accents that it's hard to understand them (it makes me wonder what I must sound like when I try to speak Karen).

Karen Mom is great, though. She likes repeating words she hears me teaching to Karen Dad from the dictionary. Yesterday we were going over basic parts of the body, and I could hear her repeating to herself : "Fu. Fingra. Ni." ("Foot. Finger. Knee." The Karen language doesn't have words that end with consonants, so words like "foot" and "finger" are really hard to say.) When I was leaving, she grinned at me: "I have three English! Fu! Fingra! Ni!", pointing at each. We cheered, and laughed, and I found myself loving them all even more than I already did. They have such grace and good humor even with all the challenges they're facing. Crazy. Crazy and beautiful.