Hittin' the Wall

We've now reached the point where basic communication skills in English are fairly well established. We knew we rounded the corner the first time Kate yelled at David in English. Now, hearing one yell at the other in English is now a very common occurrence, but we still have a loooong way to go for fullest comprehension.

It's also interesting to observe how the communication tide has turned in the past couple months. Since Kate didn't have much of a background in English to start with, David had to do a lot of translating for her, at least in the beginning. However, she started learning new words more quickly and now does the same for him on occasion.

Our Franklin translator and pocket Russian-English dictionary still get a lot of use (and will for a long time), but what happens when the words start getting bigger and either a) the Russian-English dictionary doesn't have a direct transliteration or, b) you don't know the Russian word that it translates to?

Google translator does an outstanding job and Wikipedia has many articles in Russian, but we're occasionally running into completely new subjects with big and unfamiliar words... (we had a telescope project for Kate two weeks ago which ended up being quite a challenge!) Perhaps Homer Simpson put it best with his, "Doh!" 8-D

Both children are meeting the challenges with positive attitudes, and it's hard to believe we've been home just four months. Kate is now picking up English faster than David (granted, third grade doesn't have many big words, unlike fifth grade!) and David hates to see the big dictionary coming out because it means that "Pops" is going to start asking questions and he won't wiggle off the hook easily, especially if he has been trying to take a shortcut or two by guessing at words/meanings rather than looking them up.

While their vocabularies have been growing, so have their bodies. Since our first height measurements in October, David has grown a full 2 inches and Kate 1 1/2 inches (we've started marking the kitchen doorframe to keep track of "progress"). Thank goodness for children's clothing and uniform sales at church! Only a few items have worn out before being "retired," and those were due to rough and tumble play. The sad part is that the really nice court outfit and boots we got for Kate just four months ago no longer even comes close to fitting!

The good new is that the flowers and trees are all budding, the temperatures are heading back up and spring is just around the corner. We even noticed that daytime temperatures in Petropavlovsk even reached the 40's this past week! Soon it will be spring time there too.