I've just finished doing a bit of translation work for the Georgia ACLU. It seems that they are investigating the failure of state courts to provide translators for persons of limited English proficiency, as they are required to do by law. So the ACLU has created a document to inform people of their rights, and has asked for volunteers to ( Read more... )

Z has been resisting me speaking French to him lately, demanding "Eng-gish!" when I pull out one of the French books to read. I don't like to push it, and make him resentful, so I let him pick his language. Imagine my delight this morning when he presented me with a picture book and announced "Fench time!" :D

So this weekend I was singing "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" to Z, alternating between English, French and German while he did the motions. The second time I launched into "tête, épaules, genoux, et pieds," I got about halfway through when Z interrupted me:

"No! Ing-gish!"

*boggle* how does he *know*??

Z counting in French ( Read more... )

Our crib has been recalled. Apparently, the mechanism holding the drop-side together is prone to failure, thus emphasizing the "drop" part, while completely obviating the "side" part. The company is providing conversion kits to change the drop side to a stationary side, which will help with the whole crib-falling-apart problem, but won't help us ( Read more... )

Speaking of how cute my kid is...

Here he is playing in the ball crawl that his Baba made for him:

Click to view

Note how he looks up to make sure he still has an audience.

And here he is speaking some of his first French words!

Click to view

He can also say tête, chien, chat, oiseau, oeuf, pain, buerre, chapeau, en bas, encore, and fini.

We presented the final version of the video project on Tuesday, and it was very well received. I'm soooo glad this semester's over, though! It's been so stressful, I've decided to take the summer off. I never feel like I get my money's worth out of summer classes anyway, since they're so short and compressed. Besides, I'm in no particular hurry ( Read more... )

I took care of some of the sloppy transitions, and added more graphics and music to the intro. (Basically, padding. It has to be at least 15 minutes. It comes out at 14 and a half minutes, which I figure is close enough ( Read more... )

Z now reliably says "en bas" for going downstairs. It comes out more like "ah-bah," but it's recognizably the right words. Le woot!

Other words we got just yesterday are house, walk, ice, and pickle.

Yesterday we were going through a picture book, and Z started repeating words back to me in French. He said "beurre," "oeuf," and when we went downstairs, he repeated "en bas ( Read more... )