The Christmas Tree is Up

Well, it’s actually been up for a week now but I am just now getting around to posting about it.

There’s something almost magical about putting up the tree each year and decorating it – it just really lifts my spirits and makes the holiday season real.

I love our tree. We got it a couple of years ago from a Thanksgiving sale, where you have to get up and be at the store at zero o’clock in order to get the deal. This is the only time I remember ever doing that but it was worth it to us. We had been talking about getting a normal-size tree for years but we were forever renovating our older home and had literally nowhere to put it, so when we were finally able to get a bigger tree, we were truly overjoyed.

And yes, our tree is fake but we happen to be the kind of people that feel fake trees are better for the environment than killing a tree each year and discarding it after the holidays are over. I know that Christmas trees are grown specifically to grace people’s homes around the holidays but I always feel so sad seeing all the dead Christmas trees after the holidays. I also know that fake trees are made mostly of plastics/fossil fuels, which is not very green but they are very reusable and to us that’s the lesser of the two evils. Ours is an LED tree, so at least it’s energy efficient.

We are also finding out that a fake Christmas tree makes sense for those in the Foreign Service because if you are posted to a country that doesn’t celebrate Christmas, you may be unable to find a Christmas tree (real or fake). It may not seem important but when you are far away from home in a different culture, something like a Christmas tree can really brighten the holiday season, especially if you have kids. Our tree will allow us to bring Christmas with us to New Delhi and wherever we end up after that and we are glad about that.

So, our tree is up and we are enjoying it and the magic of the Holiday Season. Here’s hoping you have a magical Holiday Season too!

The Most Fun Baby Shower Ever!

My sweet husband and his A-100 buddies Jason and Charlie put together a baby shower for Carrie, Sharon and I today. Our boys had never been to a baby shower but I have to say that this was the most fun baby shower I have ever been to. Boys apparently go about it differently. We had it in the party area of Carrie and Jason’s apartment building and had plenty of space, including a movie room, where the kids got to watch a movie, while we played games next door. The boys had decorated the place with a lot of pink and blue balloons (Carrie and Sharon are expecting girls on Jan. 1 and 5 respectively and I am expecting a boy on March 15). The food was delicious salads and pizza from the Mad Fox, Falls Church. But the best part was the games. I didn’t think our boys would want to do games and if they did, I would have thought they’d do things like drinking beer from baby bottles but I was pleasantly surprised.

Because we had three mommies-to-be, we had three teams. Each mommy-to-be was a captain of a team and competed against the other two teams. In the first game, we were handed a large Ziploc bag full of diapers and each of us had to guess how many diapers were in it. The second game involved five different types of candy bars, each melted in a diaper. Each team had to correctly identify what type of candy bar was in each diaper using smell, sight and taste.  In the third game the mommies-to-be had their feet diapered and then covered in chocolate syrup – messy! Then one member of each team had to clean up the mess with wipes and change the diapers. They had to do that wearing a blindfold, while another team member provided the blindfolded person with the necessary wipes and directions.

The fourth game we played was pin the baby on the mommy’s belly. In the fifth game we had to design the strongest diaper for each mom-to-be in 5 minutes using legal office paper and tape. The strength of each diaper was then tested by filling them with candy bars. In the sixth game we had to pass a pacifier from one team member to the other and back using candy canes in our mouths (no hands). In the seventh and last game each of us had to feed another team member a jar of baby food using their weaker hand in the least amount of time. We got a little messy in this one too (see video below). 

Messy Baby Shower Game

Each game was scored and the scores tallied. My team ended up second. Well, technically since the other two teams tied for first, we were really last but we didn’t care because we all had a blast and that’s all that matters. It was awesome to get together with good friends, celebrate our babies, eat great food and play silly games.

Thanksgiving Train Trip to Chicago

We spent Thanksgiving in Chicago this year. We are no fans of holiday travel because it tends to be unpleasant but we realized that this may be our last chance to visit Paul’s parents before we go to India, so our decision was made. We are not going to India until May of 2012, I know, but pretty soon, I will be too, ahem, huge pregnant, to travel, then the baby will come and be too young to travel and by the time the baby’s old enough to travel, Paul will be in training again, which means he can’t take any vacation and it may not happen.

To mix things up a bit, we decided to take the train. We had never done it but thought it would be interesting and it was. It was also less expensive. But it was long. It took 17 hours each way. Most of it was during the night but still, 17 hours is a long time. It had its plusses though - we didn’t have to endure huge lines, scanners, pat downs or any of the other unpleasantness you generally encounter when flying these days. We had roomy seats that reclined and had leg rests, so we could sleep overnight. It wasn’t like sleeping in your bed but it was way better than trying to sleep on an airplane. We got to get up and walk around, when we needed to stretch and could go to the observation car or the dining car, when we got bored at our seats. The train was a double-decker and our seats were on top both ways, which was fun too. So all in all, the train part wasn’t bad. Nia even made some friends and managed to lose another tooth right before we got on the train coming back. She was a little nervous that the Tooth Fairy may not be able to find us because the train was moving all night but amazing little creature that she is, the Tooth Fairy came through with flying colors and left Nia a buck in her train pillow case! How about that?!!!

Once we made it to Chicago, we spent time with Paul’s folks but also visited the Art Institute. We had wanted to go see it forever but it somehow ended up slipping off our plans every time we were in Chicago. This time, we set aside a day for it and just went. Unlike most museums in DC, the Chicago Art Institute is not free but it’s full of amazing art and it was a pure delight. Paul and I would have liked to stay longer but it’s big and you really can’t see everything in one day, especially with a 7-year old, so we were happy with the several hours we got.

The museum’s collection is really incredible and here’s a collage of my faves. No flash photography is allowed, of course, so my pictures aren’t great but this gives you an idea of how awesome it is, if you’ve never been there…

On to Thanksgiving Dinner. It was a relatively small affair this year – just Paul’s parents, Paul’s brother Chris and his family and us. Breaking with tradition, we did not cook the Thanksgiving feast this year. We were staying at Paul’s sister’s house (she was out of town for Thanksgiving with her family) and we didn’t want to go crazy in someone else’s house, so we ordered a turkey and ham dinner at a grocery store. The dinner was delicious but what we didn’t realize was that it was cold, so we had to (re)heat everything and that delayed things a bit. Everything was very tasty and we still managed to eat until we were blue in the face and enjoy each other’s company.  So overall, it was another wonderful family Thanksgiving and we were grateful for all the blessings, large and small, we are lucky to have.

Nia is 7!

On November 19, Her Cuteness turned 7.

I am still in denial that it’s been 7 years since she was born and she has somehow transformed from this…

into this…

but that’s my problem, right?

Anyway, we marked the occasion with a little cupcake shindig at her school on the day itself, a larger party for friends and family at the Falls Church Community Center the next day, complete with bouncing around in the gym and crafts, and again a couple of days later in Chicago with Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Sue and Uncle John.

Needless to day, she had a blast and got a ton of cool  gifts!

Beautiful Fall Weekend

After living in Florida for almost eight years, we were ready to experience the seasons changing again.

The weather was so gorgeous this past weekend that we decided to take advantage of it, go out and take pictures of the brilliant red, yellow, orange and brown leaves before they are gone. The colors are even more vibrant and stunning in person.  The pictures in the collage are from Turkey Run Park and our neighborhood in Falls Church, VA.

Learning Hindi with Rosetta Stone

(Warning: another longish post)

Let me just preface this post by saying that I don’t have to learn Hindi. I am not the Foreign Service employee and am not required to learn it. My husband is. In addition, Hindi is not spoken by everyone in India - far from it. As a matter of fact, according to my Indian neighbor, who’s from New Delhi, only 20% of the Indian population speaks Hindi. The rest speak other regional languages and English. But Hindi is the predominant language of in the northern parts of India, including in and around New Delhi, where we will be posted.

Can I live there without learning Hindi? Probably. But I want to learn it for a number of reasons, not the least of which is because I know it will make our lives in New Delhi easier.  I have wanted to take the classes at the Foreign Service Institute (the training arm of the Foreign Service) ever since we learned we are going to India. Of course, we are not going until May 2012, so the classes that I’d be eligible for (if there’s space available) start in the summer of 2011.

That’s all dandy but we are expecting a baby boy in March and I plan to breast feed him, which may make it impossible for me to take classes at FSI. So, I thought, why not start Hindi now, before the baby’s arrival. Makes sense, right? Well, yes but things are never as simple as we’d like them to be. You see, my husband has not been paneled (officially approved) for his New Delhi post yet, so when he asked his CDO if I could take Hindi classes now that question kinda landed on deaf ears. So, I decided to take things into my own hands and get chummy with Rosetta Stone before all hell breaks loose on/around March 15 (a.k.a. my due date). In case you didn’t know, Rosetta Stone is a famous online language instruction program, which was made available to both my husband and I as soon as we learned we are going to India.

I had read a couple of reviews of Rosetta Stone by other Foreign Service spouses (see here for one on learning Chinese and here for Spanish) and was feeling nervous because they didn’t exactly love it . But at this point, it’s the only tool I have available to learn Hindi, so about a month ago I started working with it spending on average about an hour a weekday (some days I spend two, three or even four hours on it but other days life just takes over and I don’t do any).

So how do I feel about Rosetta Stone Hindi after about a month of working with it?

Well, first of all, I must say that I am very thankful that the State Department provides this tool to spouses for free. If we had to buy the three levels ourselves, it would set us back about $600, so this is a nice perk. It’s also nice that it’s an online platform that I can use at my own time, which gives me a lot of flexibility.

That said, Rosetta Stone has a different approach to language instruction that may be difficult to get used to. If you’ve ever studied a language using the conventional classroom (textbook+instructor) method, you will more than likely find Rosetta Stone’s approach counterintuitive. The company itself describes its language instruction method as dynamic immersion, their words not mine. They define that as similar to the way a child learns a language – by observing what’s going on around them visually, listening to others speak and eventually imitating. I don’t entirely agree because immersion implies physically being in a country where the language is spoken and thus being forced having ample opportunities to practice and improve your language with native speakers. That’s not the case with Rosetta Stone. Plus, a child has a lot more time to learn a language. Let’s see, it took me a good 14 years to perfect Bulgarian and probably about 10 (maybe longer) to get to a equivalent level in English. I simply don’t have that kind of time with Hindi but I guess you have to start somewhere…

There are things about the way Rosetta Stone introduces simple words and concepts that I definitely like.  They use pictures and display them in a logical progression that helps you build visual associations. I am a visual person, so I like that. However, it gets complicated as more and more complex/abstract vocabulary and constructions are introduced because there are no explanations in English whatsoever(none in Bulgarian, either, duh!!!). Everything is in Hindi script and speech plus visuals (pictures). So while it’s easy to understand the words for “dog” and “green”, it was harder to grasp “wear”, for example. You end up doing a lot of guessing and you are never quite sure if you’ve guessed right because again, no explanations! (I have heard that if you buy the program yourself, you get a book with translations but we do not seem have access to that as far as I know.)

For example, there was this series of pictures showing people and cars. They were obviously trying to teach a verb related to cars but I still don’t know if that verb is drive, rent, steal, borrow, like, love or enjoy. It could be any of those, it’s just not clear. A dictionary would have helped but I didn’t have one at the time. Online dictionaries are available too but I have yet to figure out how to type in Hindi in order to use them.

There does generally seem to be a method to Rosetta Stone’s madness though because most things eventually do make sense. Not everything. I guess I am a little impatient.

Hindi is also particularly difficult for me because it uses the Devanagari script, which looks like this:

Beautiful indeed but nothing like the scripts I know (Latin and Cyrillic). Learning to read and write in Hindi is part of Rosetta Stone but it’s hard because you are introduced a couple of characters at a time and a ton of words and phrases in the meantime. At first, I wasn’t taking notes but it quickly became obvious that I simply won’t be able to remember all the words, so I finally started taking notes in this absurd mixture of English and Bulgarian because I only know a handful of Hindi (Devanagari) characters - not enough to write full words or sentences.

Another difficulty I have is the pronunciation. Rosetta Stone does have a speech recognition component, which helps you practice pronouncing all the new words and phrases. That aspect of the program can be a blessing and a curse. A blessing because you do a lot of repetition of words, an integral part of learning a new language. A curse because it sometimes makes you repeat a word hundreds of times, which means that you are not getting the pronunciation right but there’s no one to tell you how exactly to fix it (by showing you where your tongue should be, for example). I sometimes practice when my husband is around and he gets a big kick of listening to me repeat ad nauseum a simple word like bread, which is the same in Hindi but the pronunciation is different. So I guess the added benefit to my learning Hindi is that it provides entertainment to the family.

It’s not all bad though. There are several things about Hindi that I am happy about:

• it’s a phonetic language – characters are always pronounced the same ways. Yey for phonetic languages!
• it has no upper and lower case – what a relief, though the characters are hard enough to write without having to worry about lower and upper case.
• there are quite a few English words in Hindi, such as bread, sandwich, coffee, car, pants, shirt, skirt, dress, coat, so those are easy to remember, though I can’t pronounce them right to save my life.
• some aspects of Hindi that have no equivalents in English do have equivalents in Bulgarian (genders and formal and informal ways of addressing people).
• a couple of days after I started learning Hindi I told the moms at our school bus stop about it. Among them are an Indian lady from New Delhi, who speaks Hindi and a Pakistani lady from Islamabad, who speaks Urdu (a language very similar to Hindi). The two of them were very excited about my studies and immediately asked me what I had learned so far. Uuuuuh…. I blanked for a moment but then was able to say several things that they actually understood!!! I couldn’t believe it and neither could they. They were very encouraging, which was a tremendous confidence boost for me.
• in an effort to get as “immersed” in Hindi as I possibly can without being physically in India, I am also reading books on Indian history and culture. I go to the Falls Church pubic library and come home with huge stacks of books. My latest finds were a textbook on Elementary Hindi, a couple of Hindi-English/English-Hindi dictionaries (which are terrific complements to Rosetta Stone) and several Salman Rushdie books. I am really enjoying that part, so if you have any recommendations for things that will help me master Hindi, please let me know in the comments section below. Thanks!

So while Rosetta Stone is not ideal as a stand-alone language instruction tool, it can be useful especially if you have no other options and can get your hands on some textbooks and dictionaries. The makers of Rosetta Stone actually recommend you combine it with other language tools. But if you have the opportunity to take a class with a live instructor, by all means do so because it will make a world of difference.

And there you have it, my review of Rosetta Stone Hindi.

Our Halloween

This Halloween was so much fun!

There were pumpkins galore…

… parties with friends and a ton of candy…

… though no Twix whatsoever and Mommy loves Twix – wassup with that?