Momma Brag

WARNING: This post contains unabashed pride for my children, and little else. I'm just here today to share how awesome they are.

In the private British school the twins attend, they have Arabic class four out of five days a week. 

The teacher speaks very little English, and the entire class is taught in Arabic.

On Sister's first day of Arabic class, she cried, because she didn't understand anything and worried she'd get in trouble.

Bless her sweet little heart.

After her regular teacher explained to her later that she wouldn't be expected to understand everything, and that immersion was a fantastic way to learn, she was all for it =)

I'm so proud to say that after only four months of school, both our kids are "working at" the same level of Arabic expected of the rest of the class - who are nearly all native Arabic speakers.

They received their First Term reports in January, and of course I was incredibly proud of all their accomplishments, this portion made me smile the grandest...

I had a chance to speak with their Arabic teacher (via an interpreter) and she confirmed they are reading, writing, and speaking very well, and comprehending even better.

This has been proven to us a few times over...like when our Haras, whose English is very limited, was trying to ask David, whose Arabic is limited, a question, and David was not quite understanding fully what he wanted, and Sister was able to offer assistance and explain to David what Abdu was asking.

Let me tell you as a 35 year old who has tried over the last year and a half to pick up some Arabic; it is HARD. It's a language with many challenging sounds. I'm so proud of our kids for working so hard at this. 

And they are proud of it too, which makes it even better =)

We chose this season of our lives to live abroad for several reasons, but the twins' age and it's relation to their language retention was one of the largest reasons, and I'm so glad it's panned out like we'd hoped!

Now, I just have to catch up in my learning so they can't talk about me right in front of me without my knowing it...