Brightest Peace

Since December, Olivia has continued to learn English at an astonishing rate. Of interest is that she refuses to speak any Mandarin now, or recognize that anyone is speaking to her in mandarin. We thought it was because she had lost the language but several weeks ago the movie "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness" was on right before we went to church. This movie is based on the true story of Gladys Aylward, played by Ingrid Bergman. She is an English domestic servant who has dreamed all her life of travelling to China as a missionary. Olivia (she insists that she be called Olivia now) was walking through the den and caught the movie out of the corner of her eye. She stopped and said "That's China." I said yes it was. It was a very good movie about a woman who moved to China to live. There was some dialog in Mandarin on the screen. I took a shot and asked Olivia what they just said. "They said that her house was over there." AH HA! Caught! She still does understand her first language! I thanked her for telling me what was said and otherwise ignored the incident. Olivia went on her way.

Olivia never has had a silent period as we read that she would have as she assimilated her new language. She went from Mandarin exclusively with a lot of sign language to mixing Mandarin and English to using all English. At times she gets upset with us when we do not understand her but she (usually) patiently says what she wants to say again until we get it. Once, she looked at me as though to say "You know, if you were smarter you would get this faster." She the spoke very slowly as though to a child, forming her word slowly and carefully. What a hoot.

We have enjoyed the winter. It has been fairly snowy late in the season and several sledding outings were great successes. She loves her dogs, Carleton and Pumpkin. Pumpkin sleeps on her bed now until Olivia is asleep then comes downstairs to join us. We have a 3 AM guest now and again. She's pretty wiggley and is a hot body. Someone usually is driven from the bed to the floor in a sleeping bag. Sometimes it's Barb and sometimes it's John.... never the dogs or Olivia. Olivia is showing great interest in reading and made us go to the storage room to retrieve "chapter" books because she saw that that was level five on the back of a book she checked out of the school library (the checked out book was a level two book). "What's this?" she asked. "That's chapter books, Olivia," Barb said. "You are not old enough for those yet." Well.... that was it. "What do you mean I am not old enough?" So off we went to the storage shed. She is now the proud owner of several of the American Girl series as well as Goosebumps books. School continues to go well with the exception of her getting a timeout now and again. This is not a serious issue at all. We figure it's because she has two adults willing to do most anything with her at home so at school, why does she have to do what she does not want? We are now asking her every day if she has had a timeout that day, holding her a bit more accountable for her behavior. This has seemed to work just fine. She wants to please and is a hard worker. She loves to do her homework with Barb every evening. It's hard to tell who is having more fun sometimes, Barb or Olivia. Yellow is favorite color. We drive down the street calling out "Yellow car!" or "Yellow truck!" It's a contest to see who can spy them first.

Emily and Olivia are still very close although she seems to be letting Baba in a bit more. She goes to him for things now. The other day she and John were going into the store and he was holding her. She looked at him and out of the blue said "I love you Baba," and gave him a big kiss. Talk about a melted heart!

We think that she will be able to go on to 1st grade next year. We are planning to have her go to summer school in order to keep working on the language skills. She understands EVERYTHING we say to her. If she has a question about a word she asks "What's so and so" and we tell her.

Every now and then she says that she misses Na Na (now Lana). Lana went to Australia a month or so before Olivia. We have looked on the map and found Australia. If Lana's folks there read this, Olivia would like very much to write her a letter. They were apparently very good friends. Olivia misses her. The Courage family can contact us at jbell@siue.edu, which is our home e-mail address. We do understand if this is not something that one might not want to do, just thought we might ask.

All is well.

Here you go. This littel girl is quickly establishing herself in America. A hearty breakfast of macaroni and cheese with hot dogs, a princess dress for Halloween, some good snuggle time with Carleton after school and playing soccer. Regarding soccer, we arranged for her to play the last two weeks of the season. We tried to tell her about it and even kicked around a soccer ball in the driveway but she really stayed apprehensive. As I pulled up to the first practice I heard a little voice from the back seat say "OH! SOCCER!" As in "I get it! Soccer!"

Hui's English is improving every day. When I pick her up from school she asks, "Ish Mama home?" She says, no, yes, house, puppy, kitty cat, hungry, water, stop, go, counts to 20, some colors (yellow is her favorite....again from the back seat: "YEAHWO CAR!" and sure enough there is), I don't see it, there it is, etc. She mimics non-stop. We have to be a bit careful what we say around her.... if you know what I mean. I never believed that we could communicate so well without words. She seems to be enjoying school and has a best friend. Whenever she draws a picture of herself the face always has a huge smile on it. That, we know, is a very good sign.

We look at her and say, "How did this happen?" "Where have you been all our lives?" She has quickly made a place in our hearts and we can not imagine life without her.