Perhaps You Are Gobsmacked...Or Perhaps You Saw This Coming

We are back in the USA and things are going well for all of us. But one of us is confused.

If you had to choose one of these two to be confused, which would you choose?
I know, it's a tough call. 

If you guessed Tehva, then you win the million dollar prize. As if I had a million dollars. Let's not go there.

Tehva is in a constant state of confusion but the girl is doing her darndest to catch up with everyone around her. Her greatest struggle seems to be that she lacks a common language with her classmates and with the schooling institution in general.

Period or Full Stop?

“Mom…every time my teacher says, ‘Period’ I just crack up.”

“Does she say it a lot?”

“All the time! It’s so funny!”

I appreciate that this particular visual is bilingual.
Tehva would appreciate that, too, if she could
stop laughing about the period thing.

In Tehva’s mind the woman is menstruating excessively, but I am sure that in Mrs. H’s mind, nothing of the sort is transpiring. “What would you have her say instead?”

“I don’t know. Not that.”

Tian, who is decidedly and very intentionally NOT having any communication issues with ANYONE in this tiny hamlet breaks in to lay down the law. “Tehva, you can’t think of it as a full stop anymore. It is a period.”

“I like full stop. And period sounds dumb. It sounds like someone is bleeding.”

“Well they’re not. So get over it. Speak American.”

We are trying hard to get Tehva to simply understand that speaking American and, well, speaking hybrid-been-overseas-in-a-British-dominant-expat-culture-for-my-early-formative-language-years-English are two different things. It is rough going, though.

Dress like this...

What Are the USA's Colors Again?

To make things even harder, yesterday was Patriot Day, meaning the kids were asked to wear red, white and blue to school in memory of 9/11, but I am not sure that anyone actually said that in Tehva's class. It might have been implicitly understood by everyone. Except for Tehva. 

Tehva came downstairs wearing yellow, black and orange. “Where is your red, white and blue? You look like you are dressed for Patriot Day in…maybe…Germany?” (is there a country whose national colors and yellow, black and orange?)

“Huh?”

“It’s Patriot Day. Red, white and blue.”

“Huh?”

“Nevermind.”

Football or Football?

“Mom, one of my teachers is selling tickets for something. Can we go?”

“What is the event?”

“Ummm, they keep saying it is football. But I think it is something else. Is it soccer?”

Silas, who is also, aside from the fact that he uses vocabulary better suited to a college professor and adamantly insisting that he does not follow sports, fitting in quite nicely here, breaks in to clarify things. “No, Tehva, it is called football but it is the one with the funny ball. American football. No one here would buy tickets to soccer.”

“Oh, you mean the one with the ball that kind of looks like a rugby ball?”

Tian then entertains everyone with a tale of watching boys run up and down the field with their football pads bouncing around their ears because the boys are so short. Everyone laughs, but I can see Tehva thinking, “Does this have anything to do with a period?”