Posts from the “Reflections” Category

In Google We Trust (Or Used To)

04/24/11

I have been accused in the past of sounding confident and convincing, even when I don’t know what I’m talking about (there are a few examples in a blog I write called “Love, Translated”). But Google has me beat. (Note to Google, the search engine: Please don’t take this personally and don’t lower my ranking as punishment for the criticism…you know I love you) With its new, ridiculously fast and user-friendly Google Translate app for the iPhone, Google seemed to bring our family into a new era of complete and uninterrupted language learning where the language gaps that I wrote about here and here and here would become a thing of the past. But would it hurt Google’s standing as the world’s preeminent maker…

Categories: Reflections, Trivial Occurrences

Juggling

04/20/11

The frequent reader might find a recurring ball theme running through this blog – lots of ball analogies, several mentions of my boys saying the word “ball” only in English initially, not to mention the fact that three out of the four protagonists of these stories are male (the oldest being the most juvenile). And here I go again: Raising bilingual children is a serious juggling act; a joyous challenge of commitment and focus where I nervously try not to drop any balls. Here’s the new ball I’ve been barely keeping in the air these days: In addition to feeling obligated to teach my children each and every one of the 88,431 words logged in Dictionary of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language,…

Categories: Reflections, Trivial Occurrences

Dinosaurs

02/15/11

Albertosaurus, I can manage. T-Rex, a slam dunk and pretty much the baddest of bad asses. Stegosaurus and Triceratops begin to push it a bit. Quetzalcoatlus? Forget it, I give up. I postulate (based solely on anecdotal evidence) that childhood obsession with dinosaurs is a quintessentially American thing. To a Colombian parent trying to raise his children bilingually, this obsession makes for hours of educational entertainment, but it’s also a huge linguistical challenge (“Hypsilophodon”, really? cut a guy some slack!). Not only do I have to read out loud these mouthfuls to my kid about a hundred times a day, but I have to pause and face this ethical dilemma: Do I bother to figure out the Spanish names for these creatures, beyond the…

Categories: Reflections, Trivial Occurrences

When You’re Strange (Faces Come Out of the Rain)

02/13/11

Being weird is cool and fashionable. By the way, I was into pretending I was weird waaaaay before it became cool. Is that weird? Good. The thing is: being stuck between cultures and languages will inevitably make you a bit weird or at least be perceived as such. When I first arrived in the US, one of the several jobs I was hired to do despite lacking qualifications was as a daycare teacher (scary, I know). Such was the exuberance of the mid 90’s. So with my foot fresh off the boat and my English language skills just a notch above adequate, I was put in a position where I needed to exert the confidence and authority that I lacked as an immature individual just learning the cultural…

Categories: Reflections, Trivial Occurrences

Enter Number Two

02/10/11

A year and a half ago, a kind nurse placed in my arms a perfect little baby boy who looked uncannily like his older brother. Wiping off tears of joy, I thought: I am a blessed man and my wife’s and my genes appear to combine in one and one way only – we have unwittingly perfected human cloning. But it only took a few days for this newly minted magical creature named Samuel to begin showing evidence of his individuality: his body appeared to be leaner and longer than that of his brother’s, his eyes larger, his head smaller, his last name the same. Eighteen months later, we have in our home two young brothers whose personalities are each a universe of its…

Categories: Reflections

Growing Up, Reaching Back

10/02/10

Carrie, from Tiki Tiki Blog interviewed me and other Latino parents for her great article in Café Magazine. Read the article at the Café Magazine website. And go to Tiki Tiki Blog (www.tikitikiblog.com) to see Carrie and team’s online magazine about Latino/bilingual lifestyle.

Categories: Reflections, Trivial Occurrences

Car Talk

09/30/10

Every car you see on the road is like a small, semi-private universe where people’s lives unfold, in motion. Some times that universe is not so small (if you drive a 25 ft tall SUV to haul firewood from the sequoias growing in your backyard) and some times not so private (if you’re someone who likes your radio’s bass cranked all the way to 11 and then need to roll down the windows so they don’t shatter in your face after your head explodes), but most Americans spend so much time in their cars that this Colombian-American feels obliged to make the most out of the experience. Now that I’ve changed my work schedule so I can leave work earlier, beat traffic, and pick…

Categories: Reflections, Tips, Trivial Occurrences

American Limbo

09/08/10

When I finally get around to posting something new, it’s not something originally mine, but this story is really touching and super relevant to everyone who has ever felt stuck between two worlds, two cultures, or two languages. I hope I don’t get in trouble with Ira Glass or Chicago Public Radio for posting this, though I wouldn’t mind getting a personal call from Ira Glass where I would let him know that he is awesome and that I contribute monetarily to the show. Click on the title below to listen. And don’t get depressed – there is a happy ending: This_American_Life-American_Limbo.mp3 And of course, subscribe to the This American Life podcast and contribute tons of cash to the show because a…

Categories: Reflections

Colombia 90210

08/26/10

Thanks to the ladies at Spanglishbaby.com for inviting me to contribute to their excellent website. Read my essay “The New Anglo-Latino Household, or Colombia 90210” at SpanglishBaby.com.

Categories: Reflections

Terminated

06/29/10

With increasing frequency, when I finish a blog post, I look back on it with amusement, then with shame, and then I realize that while my blog is supposed to be about bilingualism, what I’m learning and sharing with my audience of 4 is really a set of basic and universal principles of parenting. But I already paid a whole two years of web hosting in advance so I might as well keep writing. One of those basic and universal parenting principles (or facts, rather) is that, just when you think your child is on his or her way to mastering something, they throw you a curveball. You’ll be bragging to your friends about how your toddler has the sphincter and bowel control of…

Categories: Reflections, Trivial Occurrences