Elisabeth and Max sing the Hebrew Alefbet.
When we left the United States in June neither Max nor Elisabeth were speaking Slovak. Elisabeth was able to spit out a few ideas, but hardly ever a full sentence without getting help from Jana or me. Max couldn’t say any more than a single word at a time. In fact, when we got to Slovakia I was a little worried because Max was speaking English with his cousins and friends as if everyone in the world knew English.
On June 7 my dad and I packed our boxes of belongings into his horse trailer (power washed) and dropped them off at Perfect Express by the airport in Chicago. So far, so good.
We’ve now been in Slovakia for a little more than one week. It’s been quite an adventure so far with our main adjustments coming in the area of the kids’ school, my visa arrangements, and Jana’s Music Together project. In this post I’ll stick to talking about the kids’ adjustments to Slovakia.
The end of the school year brings with it end of the year recitals. We don’t have any gymnastics videos this year but we do have a video of Elisabeth playing with the Bannockburn Elementary School Symphonetta. The symphonetta is made up almost entirely of third graders, which is the first year of orchestra at Bannockburn. In the clip below they play “Calypso.” At the end you can watch a related video in which they play “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”
People are all the time asking us if Elisabeth and Max are excited about the move to Slovakia and all I usually have to say is the standard, “Uhhh, yes and no.” So I thought I’d do a short interview with them so you can hear just how they would answer themselves.
It’s hard to believe we’ve been in the States for more than five years now. We’re looking forward to going back to Slovakia, but it’s nice to look back at some of the memories we’ve made. I don’t know how I got so lucky, but I happened to have the video camera out one night when I had the kids to myself. This is a funny video buy of Elisabeth (3) and Max (2) talking about Dora and the Wiggles.
On New Year’s Eve I spent 45 minutes conducting delicate surgery on a miniDV cassette in hopes of recovering our lost video clips from our 2005 vacation in Croatia. Was it worth it? From all of us to all of you with heartfelt thanks for your friendship: I hope you enjoy our video rendition of the annual family Christmas letter.
At Bannockburn Elementary School third grade is the year kids can start working with the school orchestra. Elisabeth decided she wanted to learn violin and this is her first performance. It was an extra special treat that Grandma and Grandpa were willing to drive over two hours to watch her play in the Winter Concert. |   |
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