Not much new going on here. But, on my way home today on the train I thought about how I should write another blog when I get home, just discussing some reflection I’ve had since being here in Vienna. Maybe it’s just the two cups of strong Viennese coffee that I’ve had today, but here it goes!
Well the biggest “news” is that I got another nannying job for the duration of my time here (yay!) so now I will be working with 3 separate families Monday-Friday afternoons, and be getting an extra 30-70 Euro a week, depending on the week. This new family also has younger kids, a 3 and a 5 year old. Today I only got to meet the 3 year old, but man was he a cutie! And such a goofball. This family lived in London for the past few years (even though the Mother told me she’s actually Dutch, and her youngest son was actually born in Malaysia, so needless to say they’ve done a lot of traveling and moving around) and so their English is very good. The three year old has a precious (but faint) British accent when speaking English with an underlying Dutch accent. Seeing this 3 year old go from speaking one language with his mother to another language with me really reminded me of how I want to have my kids learn many different languages from a young age.
Ben and I were actually just talking about teaching our future children other languages this morning too. I told him how I had been looking into job possibilities for when we get back to Southern California, and how frustrating it was for me to find a job that looked like an amazing opportunity, a job I would be great at, a job working with kids in a non-profit setting, then just to scroll down further seeing that I MUST be bilingual in Spanish to even apply. Granted it’s my own fault that I never learned Spanish, it never interested me. I was always more in to “exotic” languages like French, or Italian, and eventually Sign Language (I’ve always been a speaker with my hands anyways, so it came much more automatic to me). We discussed how we want to be able to open those kinds of opportunities for our kids and teaching them other languages besides English. I’m not expecting my kids to be multi-lingual per say, but even just giving them tools and vocabulary in certain languages besides English I would imagine could be very beneficial.
Regarding the topic of “language”, I’ve noticed a bunch of little things that I just find interesting since arriving here back in September. For one, noticing the fact that the “context” of a word has more to do with when the child learns it vs. the actual ability to make the sounds. For example, in English, a child wouldn’t learn the word “nine” until maybe they were about 3 years old and begin to learn to count, learning all their numbers. In a German speaking country the word “nein” (pronounced “nine”) is one of the first words a child will learn, because it means “no”. The ability to say the sound “nine” is not difficult, but when the child will learn to say it all depends on the cultural context of the word. I know I’m kind of rambling, but stay with me. I remember in college learning about how in different cultures, a child’s first words (when translated into English) may not make much sense to us, and aren’t “typical” first words for a child. We discussed how in some cultures, the first words that a child will learn are the words to identify feelings, like “love” or “hurt” vs. the first words in our culture which are “labels” like “Mom”, “Dad”, “Ball”. This is all stuff that I had already known, but when actually living in a different culture, it makes it all stand out and it’s much more clear to me. It’s just really interesting to notice the cultural language differences.
Even though I’ve noticed many differences in language while here, there are similarities I have noticed as well. I was working with one of the 3 year olds I work with yesterday and it was so cute to see her try to tell a story in German. I obviously didn’t know everything that she was trying to say but I would understand when she would get “stuck” in her story and start saying “und, und, und, und, und” like how any American kid would do when “stuck” in a story, “and, and, and, and, and”. It was very cute.
Maybe this is all sticking out to me now because I just turned in my Loma Linda application for the Communication Sciences program, and I’m trying to get in the “Communication Sciences” mode.
Also, I find it fascinating that while I write this I’m watching two Austrians have a conversation in German (Our landlord and a “handy man” to fix our windows). Just from watching these two converse, I also noticed that they are talking simultaneously to each other, which I’ve noticed as well here. People having a conversation will talking at the same time, and I have no idea how they catch what the other person is saying when they are talking, but they do it. It looks way too complicated to even try, haha.
Besides my rambling, not much else is new. I’ve been baking a lot this week and want to try to make a Sacher Torte here sometime soon, which I want to “perfect” by the time I leave. Also, we just now bought ground coffee to make at our apartment, we were just buying all our coffee at the local quick coffee spots, Anker, Der Mann, Ströck, etc. But now we can make our own coffee at home, which is actually fairly dangerous. We bought the Julius Meinl coffee and have been making it fairly strong, leaving me jittery and energetic all day. Thus why I had this urge to write a random blog ;)
Liebe,
Katie
