Bragging a bit

Even though Bogomila doesn't think so if you ask her, she has amazed us with how much English she has been absorbing over the seven weeks since we picked her up. Every single day we are hearing her use a word (or more!) that we haven't heard out of her before, and she's putting more and more combinations of words together.

We are also enjoying how much Bulgarian we are learning to understand, and, at least a little bit, to speak. Bogomila is a tough teacher. 😊 She will not stand for anything other that perfect pronunciation. Daddy and I are less than perfect. There's a <u> sound that we just can't make! Rinnah, however, nails it every time. 😋 Oh, to have young ears!

But here's what I want to brag about. Over the weekend someone at church mentioned Rosetta Stone, and another similar (but free!) program. Well, turns out the free one doesn't have English for Bulgarian learners, but the Rosetta Stone program looked like it could be just right. I purchased a six-month subscription this morning, and she's already put in nearly three hours! I'm not sure if the momentum will continue, but my goal for her (which I did not tell her) was to start with one hour a day, hopefully moving up to two hours. *Her* goal for herself is two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon!

She's shown great determination, and I've been really proud of the way she doesn't let getting one (or more) wrong stop her from pushing forward. The first time through the first lesson she got 70%. Decent, in my opinion. A passing grade. I praised her for her work, and told her she had the option of trying the second lesson or going back over the first to see if she could improve her score. She chose to go back, and raised it to 74%!

Then she wanted to attempt lesson 2, which ended up including words she'd had some exposure to with us, and got an 84% on the first round, and 87% on the second! When she got to lesson 3, she told me she was going for 97%. She didn't make it, but still landed in the 80s. It is absolutely delightful to see her applying herself so diligently to one of the most important things on her agenda for the upcoming months. She is one smart girl!

I haven't told her I'm posting about this, but I figure when she knows her English well enough to come back and read the blog, she hopefully won't mind too much that I took a few minutes to share with all of you how very proud I am of her!

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Back in September, our translator commented (with some surprise, I think), about her realization that although on paper Tsvetomira seemed like by far the more challenging child of the two, in reality, Bogomila was going to be more of a challenge. Just as we had anticipated, this has been the case. First of all, Tsvetomira has been SO much easier to care for than many of the scenarios we had played out in our heads. The routines they established at Gillette have done wonderful things for her physical well being, and she is thriving in many ways. Although I will not go into the challenges involved in bringing Bogomila into our family, they are there. She is much harder to parent than Tsvetomira - she takes more time, more energy, more brain power - but it's the same thing I tell my kids - the hard things are 1) not bad and 2) often the most worth while.

Bogomila has already brought so much joy to our household, and is without a doubt worth the work that it takes to be her parents!