Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Bi-Lingual 4.1

Eli 4.1 has elective classes that he can take at pre-school, believe it or not.

He already has a computer class, which he could practically teach, and Gloria wanted him to sign up for a Spanish class. "Eli," she said, "wouldn't it be great to be able to talk to people in another language? You can do that after you learn Spanish."

"But mommy," Eli said patiently. "I already know how to speak Spanish."

"You do?" Gloria asked.

"I can count in Spanish," he said. "Listen. "Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis, sieta, hola, adios."

That was one through seven in Spanish, with hello and goodbye thrown in as eight and nine.

Later that night, after Eli went to bed, I was watching the football game (Tivo'd) while Gloria was talking to me.

"I think I'd like to take a language course," she said.

"Uh-huh," I said. I'm double-speeding through a commercial break.

"Let me explain to you how this one online course works," she said.

"Sure," I said. Commercial, commercial, commercial...

"What you do is..."

"Holy crap!" I said as I paused the forwarding.

"What?" she asked, alarmed.

I pointed to the screen. "It's a commercial with chimpanzees." CareerBuilder.com has a series of commercial featuring chimps that are very funny.

"Oh," she said. "Like I was saying, how this works is--"

"We have to watch this," I said.

"It's paused," she said. "Now, the reason I want to take this course is--"

"Let me try this again," I said. "It's a commercial with chimpanzees. I can't wait to see a commercial with chimpanzees."

She sighed. She does that. I pressed "play."

"Look!" I shouted, delighted. He's holding a pen with his foot!"

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