This week started off bizarrely. The nanny mom said to me Sunday afternoon, as the girls smiled shyly at me while we walked the neighbourhood, "Things might be a little awkward at first. The language, I mean."
I really wasn't sure how much English "not much" actually meant...and to be honest, I still don't really know! Monday morning before I went to work, I made three pages of "cheat sheets" for myself to look over when I needed to say something to the girls and inevitably went blank. I practiced the few phrases I thought I would need on our walk home from the school. "Hold my hand," "stay o the sidewalk," and "how was your day?"
I automatically said everything in English first, as a native speaker is wont to do, and received as my response a very, very confused look. I wasn't sure how much of it was my accent (which I largely try to mask but comes out when I am comfortable) and how much of it was that they just didn't know any English.
This first week was very quiet, with the kids doing a lot of drawing and coloring when we arrived at home while I cooked dinner. I feel pretty positive this will change by next week, considering their own parents described them as "boisterous."
Already by the end of this week I could see some of the novelty of a nanny was wearing off - they whispered to each other in French, realizing that my comprehension is somewhat limited, and giggled quietly when I spoke in French. At the beginning of the week, my English was met with inquisitive looks, by the end, it was "quoi? Quoi? QUOI?" followed by fits of laughter. Ohhhhhhh boy, I think I will have my hands full.
At any rate, it is great to be around constant French and I can honestly FEEL a difference in my pronunciation after only five days of daily contact. My tongue moves a little more freely around the R in livre, the nasally sound of bien, and I have learned some...very important vocabulary. Garbage, for example, as well as the phrases "really need to go to the bathroom," "how many more streets do we have," and "will you buy us a treat at the bakery?"
There has not been any English learning yet, other than the simple fact that they are being exposed to it because I literally have to say everything in English and then slooooooowly translate it for myself into French. So there's that.
Like I said, I am still a novelty, but that will wear off quickly and I have a feeling that the coming weeks will be very different. This is not at all what I thought I would be doing, but it is, and I am so far enjoying the bizarreness of it all.
