Call Me Amma

So I don't want to make this blog all about my kid, Little D, which I could easily do, being the braggy besotted mommy that I am, but I know that not everyone in the world wants to hear about how many cheerios Little D had for breakfast today, so I promise not to let this blog devolve into that (although as a mommy, I like reading other mommy blogs!)  Anyway, one of the things I am really interested in has been learning about raising bilingual children.  M and I are really making an effort to raise Little D in a bilingual environment and I think there are a lot of benefits to it, but it can also be very confusing and there is a lot of conflicting information out on the web about raising bilingual kids.  Since Little D stays at home with M during the week, M and I are trying to make sure that M talks to him in Urdu as much as possible, because I figure that he will get plenty of exposure to English from me and my family and later from school and just generally being surrounded by English all the time.  I am not worried about it at all.  Both of my nieces, who are 7 and 5 now spoke only Urdu with their parents early on, and now are fluent in both Urdu and English with no accent in English whatsoever.  (I can't tell if they have an accent in Urdu, not being fluent in it myself). 

Little D as of now seems to be pretty much bilingual.  I try to speak to him in Urdu a lot too, mainly because it also helps me to keep learning at the same time.  For a while, I considered the one-parent, one language strategy, which is where each parent speaks only in their language to the child, but after speaking to some other people who have raised bilingual kids who didn't follow this method, I decided that it wasn't necessary.  I like being able to talk with Little D in both because it helps me to keep practicing my Urdu and it also follows the natural flow of language in our house pre-little D, which was a general mix of both languages (in an attempt to help me improve my Urdu).  M's English is pretty much perfect, and sometimes he corrects me, so he doesn't need any practice. 

So at 16, almost 17 months, here is Little D's progress so far: 

Of course, his first word was Baba (daddy in Urdu), followed closely by Amma (mommy), although for the longest time he would only cry Amma, as in AAAAMMMAA, when he was upset, he would never just come up to me and say Amma, like he would to his Baba.  Now he will look at our pictures and point and say Baba, Amma.

After that came dudu, which he still says uddu or uggu.  (Milk in Urdu), then ball, and then juice, which he says for everything that is wet that is not dudu.  So juice is juice, water is juice, coke is juice, even rain is juice!  He also says quack, for any bird, but especially ducks.  And nok, (nose in Urdu), sometimes nok and quack get confused.   

Then book, and now his favorite word for the last few days is juta (shoes in Urdu, don't know if I spelled that right).  Also lately added to the repertoire is choo choo.

So far seems like he is pretty even on English and Urdu.  As a language nerd, I am finding his language acquisition fascinating (and from a bragging mommy standpoint, I just like to talk about it, ha!)

Humpity Bumpity

When I went to Karachi in 2006, we went to the beach with M's friends one day.  The beach we went to was really far away from M's house.  Karachi is a port city, right on the water, so there are a lot of beaches relatively close to M's house, with the nearest probably being Clifton.  However, M and his friends wanted to go to a less crowded beach that would be more fun and where there would be less people to pay undue attention to me, so we drove about an hour to the other side of the city to go to the beach.  We spread a blanket, had a picnic and walked by the waves.  Some of M's friends' wives and I waded out a little bit into the water and then went for a walk on the beach.  As it started to get dark, a man came by with a camel offering camel rides for around 25 rupees.  So of course I jumped at the opportunity for my first (and hopefully last!) camel ride.  It was not very much fun at all in my opinion!  The camel's "saddle" seemed to be very precariously attached to it, and when it stood up with M and I on board I realized just how tall it was and how it was probably going to hurt if we fell off.  We humpity bumped down the beach and back.  The camel getting up and down is probably the scariest part.  So I can say that while I am glad that I had one camel ride in my life, I probably won't be sad if it I don't have to ride on one again!

At the beach with M's friends.

Our noble steed

Humpity Bumpity down the beach

I look much more confident than I was!

I have to be off next week to celebrate a holiday, I just don't know when...

Eid Mubarak to everyone!  Yesterday was Eid here in the States, it's today in Pakistan.  Because Muslims celebrate Eid based on the visualization of the new moon (there is a more technical explanation for this, but I don't know how to explain it), Eid can be on different days in different parts of the world.  In the U.S., because every mosque does their own thing, a lot of times Eid can be on different days for different groups within the U.S.  It gets pretty confusing and sometimes frustrating.  I don't know why, but we almost always celebrate Eid here in the U.S. a day after the Sunnis do.  This year was the first year since I converted that we have both celebrated it on the same day.  Every year on the night of the 29th, we start checking our mosque's website, seeing if they have declared Eid.  It can be quite suspenseful, and while it would be nice to know way ahead of time when Eid will be, it is kind of fun to have the anticipation of checking and checking and checking the website to see if the moon has been spotted.  Then there is a frantic dash to get everything ready for the next day.  Presents wrapped, house cleaned and decorated (this year we had adorable balloons and center pieces from NoorArt), gathering all the ingredients to make a big meal and the traditional Sheer Korma. 

Another thing about Eid being slightly unpredictable is that it makes things a little hard at work.  I always never know how to handle it.  I always feel kind of strange saying, "I need to be off one day next week.  Which day?  Well, I'm not really sure, could be Monday or Tuesday.  I won't really know until the night before.  Why?  Well, its like Muslim Christmas...yeah, we don't know what day our holiday is going to be on yet."  Lucky for me, I work in a place where people are rather understanding, and as an attorney, I have some flexibility in my job to take off whenever I feel like it, meaning there is no set amount of vacation or any schedule that I have to follow.  Initially I was going to take today off, but we are supposed to go to trial in a little more than a week, so it was either yesterday or today that I was going to have to work.  (The flip side to this flexible schedule is that if you have to work, you have to work, whether it's a weekend or late at night, if something has to get done now, you have to do it). 

So yesterday we had a great Eid.  We went to the masjid (mosque) for the Eid namaz (prayers).  The nice thing about our masjid is that they have two sessions of namaz, so M went for the first one, while I sat on the women's side with Little D and visited with my friends, then we listened to the Eid khutbah (sermon), and then I give Little D to M so that I could say the prayers at the second session.  Afterword there was a nice breakfast and a carnival with some food and bounce houses for the kids (although Little D is too little to go in them, and he was sad that he couldn't!)  While I was saying the second namaz, Little D played on the toddler playground with M.  He loves the slide!  After that we left the masjid, picked up some mithai (Indian style sweets) and went to my parents' house for lunch, which was nice.  Then we took family pictures all dressed up in our Eid clothes.  I told Little D to ask his grandfather for Eidi, so he held his hand out and my dad gave him five dollars, which I thought was really cute.  Even though my parents aren't Muslim, I think they had a fun time celebrating Eid with us.  Then we went home, and changed and went out to dinner at a delicious desi buffet down the street from our house.  Back again and opening presents, Little D got some Arabic Blocks and a really cute picture book about Ramadan called Under the Ramadan Moon.  I love the pictures in this book!

Because my gift from M hadn't arrived yet (or Little D's gifts from family), we have decided to have a traditional three days of Eid, just like in Muslim countries.  Tonight we will open more presents, and I am going to make a big dinner, and afterwards Sheer Korma, since we didn't get time yesterday (also because of another reason that I will explain in a different post).

So Eid Mubarak whichever day you are celebrating on, may you have a blessed day! 

Beach Trip to Karachi 2006

So I said I would pick up where I left off three years ago, which was leaving Chennai to go to Karachi for the first time.  I spent six weeks in Karachi, and had a blast.  Besides getting married (a post or more to come in the future), I went shopping at a bunch of great malls and bazaars.  I also went out to eat at all the places where I can't eat the food here, like KFC, Pizza Hut, had hamburgers.  KFC in Pakistan is sooo much better than it is here.  Two words--zinger burgers.  Anyway, one day we decided to go to the beach, all the way on the other side of Karachi, so I decided to document some of the interesting people and things that you may see on the streets of Karachi and thought I would share some of the pictures with you.

                         I have seen up to 7 members of a family on one 70cc motorbike, babies and all.  

This is a hijra (someone correct me on the spelling if I got it wrong, my Urdu transliteration skills are horrible).  They can be transvestites or transexuals, drag queens, in the rare instance actual eunuchs (although I don't know how common that is anymore).  They are usually working as beggars.  There were many of them on the street in 2006, and some even came door to door in M's neighborhood.  They will offer blessings for you if you give them money, or some people believe they can send the evil eye on you if you anger them or don't give them money.  Strangely, I did not see any when I was there this year, don't know why.  They will show up at weddings and offer to bless the couple.  In all, I think it is a very interesting cultural aspect for such a conservative country, and I think for the most part their lives must be very difficult, like all beggars on Karachi streets. 

This is a gadha guardi (donkey cart).  These cute little donkeys sometimes have to pull very heavy loads.  In the rainy season (like when I was there in 2006), their owners put plastic bags over their ears so that they don't get wet.  

Little donkey with a big load.  I also saw horse carts and camel carts, but those are less common.

 Rickshaw full of laundry, for some reason M thought this was really funny. 

Ok, next time I will actually do a post from when we got to the beach.  Maybe I should rename this Karachi Street Scenes 2006.   When we went this year, we took an actual video of the street as we were driving along, but you'll have to wait for that, as I am working my way forward (may take awhile, ha!)

Picking Back Up Where I Left Off

So I've given it some thought, and decided that I will just pick this thing back up where I left off and try to recount some of the more interesting stories from the last three years of my life that I probably would have been posting if I hadn't been doing the many many things I have been doing. Basically here is my excuse for not posting for the last three years. In the last three years I have...had two weddings, graduated from law school, moved to another state, bought a house, studied for and passed the bar, started my career as an attorney, gotten pregnant, had a baby, and gone back to work. Somewhere in between there I have traveled to Iceland, Pakistan (twice), and England. So as you can see I have been quite busy, and...ok enough excuses, next post picks up where we left off, leaving Chennai for Karachi, first time around. I am going to have to dig up some of those pics to stick on here too. Stay tuned!

Here Goes Nothing

Well, I've decided to give this thing another go.  Took me a while to figure out my password and pretty up the old blog.  I'm leaving my old posts from law school up for posterity, and let's see if I have come up with anything worth saying the last 3 years.  Wonder if anyone will even check this anymore.  Stay posted, I promise I will post something more substantive soon.