"The Pasty" - by Theo

The photo, I feel speaks for itself. It was Rosie's first ever pasty and thus, as far as she was concerned, 'the' pasty.

Rosie has, quite hilariously, discovered the definite article. "The", accompanying practically every noun, English or Spanish, is now a common feature of Rosie's burgeoning vocabulary. It also does strange things to the following word, making the vowel longer and drawn out, and thus increasing the comedy value. So whereas before she would have just pointed at her bed and chirped out a clipped, terse, short-voweled "Cot" (or "Cuna") now it becomes a plaintive, urgent, portentous "THE CO-OT!" In this particular instance she is of course grammatically correct, but versions such as "The Papa" or "The Fork" or even "The Mano" ("no, Rosie, tienes que decir 'La Mano'") are also regularly produced.

Nothing, though, is quite so hilarious as when she wails, like one in terror of a dreaded and yet inevitable doom, "The Poo!"

(Non-)Christening(s) - by Theo

Kate and I have on several occasions had idle conversations about which of our friends and relatives we would ask to be godparents to Rosie, weighing up the pros and cons of asking family members vs friends, those resident nearby to those further away, and so on. I guess it's a good thing that we don't so much have a shortlist of potential candidates as a very, very long one. All this, of course, presupposes that we will actually have a christening for Rosie, something which is by no means certain.

Last weekend once again raised the topic in our minds as we attended two very different baby-related events. Firstly, on Saturday, we headed over the Second Severn Crossing to Wales, and the haven from the world that is Rocks Cottage, the home of the Bullock clan. It was to be the introduction of the latest member of that illustrious family, baby Jessica, to the wider world. Karri, Jessica's mum, hadn't wanted to do a Christening, but at the same time had wanted to have some kind of event for her, and so a summer garden party was the solution.

Embarrassingly however Kate and I forgot that Karri had told us this back in July; we simply thought the weekend get to together was because Poppy (Jessica's aunt and my best woman) was coming back from Brussels for the weekend. Of course if we'd managed to rub our sleep-scrambled brain cells together we might have wondered why Poppy was coming back that particular weekend.

As ever, we had a lovely time. Su, Allan, Amy and Karri put on a fabulous spread (Poppy just wafted around really), while eldest Bullock grandchild Harii supervised the various visiting children and Rosie commandeered first the baby walker then the hammock.

The following day - Sunday - saw us up very early thanks to Rosie, although this was just as well as we had a Christening to get to at 9.45am. Lateness definitely wasn't on the cards as Kate was to be named a Godmother to Liz and Al's cheerful little boy Damian Beren. A cranky Rosie was taken for a brisk nap around St Andrews park, then we snuck into the back of St Bart's church for the last 10 minute of a very modern and very child-friendly service, that included bubbles for the kids and a rubber duck in the font.

Kate's new Godchild Damian was angelically behaved, both in the church and back at Liz and Al's for the Christening party. Rosie also enjoyed herself, amazingly not being too overwhelmed by the mass of new people as Kate and I tried to engage in a whirl of catch-up with old friends before we headed down to Cornwall (see next blog).

Rosie chomped her way through a veggie sausage, then was treated to one of S's outstanding cakes before deciding to spill the whole of tub of bubble-blowing fluid down Mummy's legs. Still, we all had a great time, and the weekend has got us thinking again about what, if anything, to do for Rosie in terms of socio-cultural quasi-superstituous naming-ritual(s).

TEFL no more - by Theo

Today marks something like the end of an era for me; not only was it my last day at the Clifton language school where I've been working these last two months (more on that later), but also my last day for the foreseeable future as an EFL teacher. No longer will I be teaching English as a foreign language to foreign students; from now on I'll be teaching it to native speakers.

It's been quite a journey. It was 3 years ago that Kate and I decided we wanted the amazing adventure of our honeymoon travels in Sheena to continue and that we weren't going to return to Bristol or indeed the UK. So casting around for some means of supporting ourselves while living overseas, we enrolled on a CELTA course in Barcelona. We loved it, both of us really enjoying the reality of the classroom and the challenge of meeting the learners' needs. So when I found a job in Madrid, we headed back to the UK for Christmas to fill up the van with more of our things for the move to Spain.

Things have changed dramatically since then; Sheena's long since gone to a new home, Rosie has arrived and we've moved back to Bristol - but my job as an English Teacher has stayed a constant. I've really loved it. Sure there have been days when I haven't exactly bounced into the class full of enthusiasm, but generally I've been lucky enough to have keen, motivated students willing to participate in whatever crazy activity or bizarre discussion I've concocted for them. Some have even had the decency to laugh at my jokes!

My Spanish students in Madrid were always lovely and I remember them fondly. However, my experience these past two months teaching at a language school in Clifton on their summer program is that Spanish students, along with Turkish ones, are the absolute worst at slipping into their native tongue at the earliest opportunity. It's been quite the Tower of Babel in my classes at times, with a new intake every Tuesday and students staying for anything from 2 weeks to 7 months, but at one stage I had a class with one student each from: Germany, Hungary, Italy, Kazakhstan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Switzerland, Taiwan and Turkey. Not much opportunity there for them to chat in languages other than English! But allow two Spanish or Turkish students to sit next to each other and they would slip into their mother tongue as soon as your back was turned. The Swiss (especially the German speaking ones) were by far and away the best at keeping to English - one pair, who were in an optional class on British Life & Culture I was running, were best friends from back home, yet when I passed them in the street one day I was amazed to hear them speaking to each other in English. That's dedication!

My main class - which also had a lot of Swiss - was also pretty good and we celebrated the last morning (all but one were also leaving that day too) by carrying out a survey of Clifton cafes (English in use), debating their relative merits and then testing our conclusions with breakfast in the Primrose Cafe - which was just as good as I remembered. They were a lovely bunch of students with a real drive to learn, and while I didn't get to know them like some of my students in Madrid (well, most had only been here for a month or less) I'll miss them.


Naturally, I don't expect to get students with quite such high levels of motivation in the next stage of my teaching career, my PGCE, which starts in 3 weeks. Hell, I'll probably be pleading for a class of Spaniards come October...

Reading - by Theo

We've been a bit quiet on the blog of late and one of the reasons is the mountain of reading I've got to get through before my PGCE course starts in earnest in mid-September. A couple of books by David Crystal on the English language have been enlightening, entertaining and occasionally hilarious. Bennett and Royle's Introduction to Literary Criticism, which was on my undergraduate reading list, and Shepherd and Wallis's Studying Plays have made it clear to me why I only got a class 2:1 bachelor's degree. Meanwhile the reading I've been doing on Literacy (Beard (ed) & Garton) has been fascinating and not just from a teaching perspective. It's been amazing to discover how Rosie is acquiring language and what exactly we can do (and shouldn't do) to help her.

Plus it didn't help that we finally got 6 boxes of books down from my parents' attic - so naturally I've had to spend ages arranging and then rearranging them!

balloons - by Theo

It's the Balloon Fiesta at the moment, an annual event in Bristol that sees hundreds of balloonists and many more enthusiasts descend on Ashton Court. The English Language College where I'm teaching this month has been very good at organising a summer social programme for the students, so it was only natural that the Balloon Fiesta would feature. So on Thursday night I and five other teachers found ourselves leading around 100 foreign students on a trek from Clifton to Bower Ashton. I was at the front, initially with a bunch of Turkish students, which was very dull for me, but then later with a group of Spaniards, which was fine. The students aren't meant to speak in their own languages at all, and by and large then don't as they hang out in mixed groups. The Turks and Spanish however, don't and are notorious for this. Well, they are all adults, so there's not much we can do about it - and at least I got to practice my Spanish!

We were taking the students to see the Nightglow, which entails grounded balloons lighting up in synch to music. I'd heard it was spectacular but had actually never been before. Actually I found it quite dull. At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly, I thought the choice of music was abysmal (movie soundtracks - Celine Dion and Aerosmith), the balloons out of time, and there was too much ambient light from the fairground and food stalls for it to be really impressive. Far more impressive are the ascents, which happen daily, weather permitting, at 6am and 6pm throughout the weekend. Walking to work on Friday morning down Church Road offered a spectacular view of them as they drifted overhead from Ashton Court, while this evening we've been offered a great show from our bedroom window, with all Berry Salisbury family members leaning out to get the best view.

Rosie's talk - by Theo (chanelling Pat Hutchins)

Rosie the toddler went for a walk.

She walked through the "parque". Around the "agua". Over the "ball". Past the "doggle-oggle". Through the "door". Under the "bees" and got back in time to shout "dame!"

Rosie's speech is coming along rapidly, in both English and Spanish, from maybe only 10 words at the beginning of July to more than 50 now. She still expresses herself in single words, which are not always used correctly, as can be seen in this video from the morning we left Madrid.

"Dame" ("give me" in Spanish) gets used as a general expression of desire (e.g. "open", "take", "lift") rather than its more specific meaning. Meanwhile, pretty much anything with floppy ears and a tail is a "doggle-oggle" or a "oof-oof" (except for cats which are "miaow-miaows"). It's interesting which language she chooses - for example she says "agua" rather than "water" and "mas" rather than "more" but "please" rather than "por fa'" and "glasses" rather than "gafas". Some words could go either way - "yo-go" could just as easily be "yoghurt" as "yogur". Other words only get used in certain situations - for example, when pretending to answer the phone Rosie will say "si, si, si" but otherwise never comes out with the Spanish for "yes". There doesn't seem to be a pattern however, and so far she hasn't learned many equivalent words in both languages (except Mama/Mummy; Papa/Daddy and usefully, pi-pi/wee-wee and poo-poo/ka-ka). It's funny what words she picks up though - she says "cool" a lot, something she obviously gets from Kate and I, while earlier this evening she clearly articulated something that she definitely hadn't heard us say (ahem): "f*ck it!"