Things you can tell just by looking at them

How the Uruguayans can tell we're not natives

*My funky rubber Airwalk shoes. They just don’t understand…

*The cool stroller that seats two children—totally an unknown quantity here.

*The way we AREN’T as bundled up as every other Uruguayan

*The backpack-leash contraption that we sometime use for Elijah—honestly, the Uruguayans are very perplexed about this one.

*We are sometimes in a hurry (some habits die hard, or don’t die at all)

*Two of my girls have comparably short hair (All, and I really mean ALL Uruguayan girls have long hair)

We’ve worked so hard to learn Uruguayan culture and speak Spanish and “fit in” here, but we are Americans, and despite our best efforts, people can tell that we aren’t from these parts. It’s not a problem, I’m happy to be what I am, but I think it is so funny to see and hear people’s reactions when they realize we’re extranjeros (foreigners). We constantly get comments and can see people discussing our presence. For them, it isn’t rude to talk about someone when they are right there, the way it would be in the US. So I chuckle along as I hear them making comments about our strange stroller or how weird it is that our rambunctious 3 year old is sometimes in a leash…even though it is a very cool one!

Penguins and Pinguinos

On Friday I took Elijah to see "Reyes de las Olas” which is the Spanish version of the movie “Surf’s Up!” It was a fun mommy-dude date. The movie was dubbed into Spanish, and as I was watching and laughing, it struck me what a difference it was from the last penguin movie we watched in South America. Our first week into our trip, we were in Chile and we went to see “Happy Feet.” It too, was dubbed into Spanish. It was such a different experience. I had understood the basic idea of “Happy Feet,” but most of the movie was lost on me and the kids, who were forever pestering Aaron to explain what was going on. I later saw the movie in the original English, and was shocked at how little I had really understood the movie.

Fast forward nine months, and all of us regularly go to see movies in Spanish, and understand them. Granted, we’re talking about movies like “Ratatouille” and “Shrek 3,” but we’ve come so very far in our comprehension of the language. It is like we can document our progress in learning Spanish by how much we understood each movie we’ve seen.

When we were preparing for our trip to Uruguay, we started going to a church that spoke Spanish so we could start getting the kids used to the sound of rhythms of the language. I asked the mothers (who were all immigrants) how their kids learned English and over and over I got the answer that the kids learned by watching American TV and also by going to school and just getting thrown into learning. I guess that is the definition of “total immersion” learning. I asked the kids myself, to see what they thought, and they all had the same answer, it was watching TV, movies and going to school.

We signed up for cable when we got here, and I let the kids watch the Discovery Kids channel for much more time per day than I would have ever allowed at home. The programming was aimed at kids, was inoffensive and somewhat educational. Let me tell you what! It has worked. The kids can communicate, and they had a little lead time of hearing and learning Spanish before they started school. Watching movies in Spanish was another way to get them to absorb the language.

I really really love both of these penguin movies. I love them even more because my kids, who only spoke English nine months ago, can laugh right along side me as we watch them in Spanish.