Grow Blog

I really, really hope I didn’t look like a creepy old man.

There I sat outside the (awesomely sound trapping –I almost missed story time because I couldn’t hear it) little amphitheater, first with my phone and then with my laptop open. But the one little girl and father/uncle/brother/cousin/friend didn’t notice. She was rapt. A mother/auntie/neighbor lady and an older boy came next. A red-headed anglo girl came last with her dad/mom’s partner, but she didn’t have any stamina.

The story teller was awesome. He read only English books, and translated them really fast and fluently into Spanish. He added phrases and sentences too –the first book was dogs and puppies made out of fruits and vegetables. The words were simple sentences: sleepy puppy; happy dog; angry puppy. He knew the Spanish cold and constructed the sentences in exactly the same way. But then he described the pictures back and forth, English and Spanish, slipping effortlessly between: Banana dog. Broccoli poodle (ok, I don’t think he said poodle in English or Spanish). Cabbage dog. Chili perrito.

The books were carefully chosen–getting harder as the half hour progressed.  I wonder if there’s a rhythm every week and that’s why the older boy arrived ten minutes into it.  I think he even editorialized a bit in Spanish–but I totally couldn’t catch it (damn it–I’m a useless monolingual American).

He basically fled into the staff room immediately afterwards, so I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself.

Conclusions?  I need video of someone doing this in Chinese.  I continue to resist doing it bilingual–but obviously if I’m going to be involved at all there’s going to be some English going on.

(oh–and that fox totally should have convinced one of those chickens to jump into that stone soup pot.  Even little kids know that vegetarian stone soup sucks.)