Winnie the Pooh, in German, too!

I had my second night with Jan and Karoline yesterday. Considering that their mom warned me that Karoline was having a terrible day, I thought we did great. We put in a Winnie the Pooh and the Hunny Tree, in German, (Jan has to teach me the Rain Cloud song in German) and within 15 minutes we were all camped on the couch under a blanket, snug as can be. Karoline soon decided to serve "tea" and Jan talked a mile a minute about school and his favorite tv shows. It was good.

There was a brief misunderstanding between Karoline and myself. We'd already navigated several situations where my Danish vocabulary was lacking, but this last one set her off. We got through it, but I'll admit that I resorted to putting Winnie the Pooh in again.

I've learned a few things, and one is that I need to press Jan to ask her more questions in German for me, not just translate. The three year-old is very good at stating what she wants, and is willing to negociate if I catch her quickly. However, has figured out that since I know some Danish, and apparently no German, she speaks only Danish when I'm around.

She seems to know my Danish is lacking, since she throws in very obvious body language, illustrating one word at a time if necessary. (The poor kid probably thinks she's been left with the Village Idiot.) Technically, there is little to nothing for her big brother to translate, and since he speaks little Danish, he can't help. The dely in communication- even a few seconds- frustrates her. That's when I lose her. I think the trick is to make her switch back to German when we hit a roadblock and work things through that way. Jan enjoys being a helper that way, so I'm not putting him out.

It's all a process, I guess. We've been fine. I'm having fun. The kids seem to like me. But I think Karoline hit the nail on the head after our first night when she greeted her mom saying, "I guess this means I have to learn English, huh?" Smart kid!