learning Bosnian...

For the first time since they started their Bosnian nursery there were no crying from the boys this morning. They weren't exactly leaping with joy, but went to their teachers without a tear.

A couple of people have emailed me about children and a foreign language environment. The consensus appears to be that although brutal, the best route to settling the children quickly is to throw them in at the deep end by attending a local school and letting them play with the other children in the street. The other prevailing piece of advice is to be patient and not to push them. Adam is likely to say virtually nothing for months and when he does start to speak will be fairly fluent. Luke will almost certainly get the languages confused which will affect his English speaking development for a while.

We are seeing the first signs that they are picking up Bosnian. Non-English speaking friends have mentioned that Adam appears to be understanding more, despite saying very little. Luke is a parrot and will repeat anything that is said to him. D and I are just hopeless and are still trying to arrange lessons so that we can progress from our current 'I'd like 2 beers please' level.