Learning Tagalog!

When we found out we were moving to the Philippines, I bought a ‘teach yourself Tagalog’ book. I was already up to chapter four before we even left NZ! Oh, the motivation that I had. Couldn’t wait to be fluent within a year of arriving…

And then we moved. And the book collected dust. The first week Jenalyn worked with us, I asked her to teach us and the children Tagalog. I think she taught us that first night how to say ‘we’re going to bed now’ and that was pretty much the extent of her educator role. (Oh, we also figured out ‘thank you’.)

Life happened. There seemed to be plenty on my plate. I was disappointed in myself for not making more of an effort with the language.

When back in NZ over Christmas, I caught up with my former boss, who is also a keen language learner and teacher. She totally understood my surprise at how little of the language I had learned in 4 whole months. She had spent several years in India as a young mother, and had exactly the same experience there. Despite the fact that we considered ourselves pretty good language learners, neither of us really had the time/opportunity/energy to devote to the large task. It made us appreciate the difficulties that our students (mostly adults) have when faced with not only learning another language, but living in a new country, and bringing up children at the same time. No wonder they struggled sometimes! And they were still doing much better than I had done!

So, we’re in Manila again, and we still want to learn Tagalog. This time, we’ve got ourselves a tutor! Once a week, Lisa comes to our apartment building and has a lesson with Nigel, me and another (language) teacher from the school. We’ve had two lessons so far, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s an evening of ‘adult time’ a week, we’re actually learning a bit of Tagalog. AND Lisa has an excellent knowledge of grammar! (This is not to be taken for granted, even when someone calls herself a language teacher!) Not only does Lisa know grammar, but she knows the linguistic terms appropriate for Austronesian grammar. i.e she’s not trying to ‘fit’ this language into the grammatical labels that are used for other languages. The others find some of the terms a bit tricky to get a hold of, but the linguist in me is absolutely delighted. She’s exactly what I want in a teacher!

So, Tuesday nights are becoming a highlight of the week. And my attitude is a bit more manageable. I don’t expect to be fluent after a year. I certainly don’t need to be. An insight into the language will do me for now. Language learning is one of my favourite activities, and I’m simply enjoying having the opportunity to do it.

Lovely weekend

Last Saturday was a good day. I had a meeting with the co-editor of the MADs magazine in the early morning. We all drove over, and while I met with my colleague, Nigel took the girls to a playground nearby her house. Afterwards, Nigel & the girls came into the house too, and all the adults had some morning tea, while the two lots of children played together. It was nice to get to know another family a bit better.

In the afternoon, after we had returned, had our lunch and naps, we went to the kids’ museum which is located down by the waterfront. Our girls loved it! They spent 2 hours easily experimenting with all sorts of things. Emily found the crawl through mouth/throat a bit scary, Zoe loved the fire-truck with the real lights!



As evening approached, we had dinner oustside in our favourite area by the waterfront, and enjoyed watching the sunset against the buildings in Manila Bay. The weather is lovely at this time of year – doesn’t quite make it up to 30, and with a bit of a breeze, it’s very comfortable! We relaxed in the conversation with the waitress, who doubled as a temporary nanny for the girls. As is often the case in restaurants, the girls were well-entertained by the staff, and got to look in the kitchen etc.

As we get to know our way around, and learn about more things to do, we are feeling much more comfortable in our new city.

Few pics from NZ holiday

Our 'home' in Orewa for a week. Check out the beautiful Pohutakawa trees in red bloom overhead!

Emily helps Nan and Grandad walk back up the hill after a long walk along the coast.

Building sand castles at the beach in Orewa. Where did the girls go?

All dressed up for the wedding - the day after we arrived home!

Here, the girls are helping Nan and great-grandad Jack pull some weeds in the garden.

We got some cool towels for christmas!

Return to Manila

It’s very nice to be back in our own place, with our own routines, etc, but I have to say, our 3 weeks in New Zealand definitely make it on our ‘faviourite holidays’ list!

Phase one was “hanging out at Grandma & Pop’s house”. That first week, while we were getting over our jetlag, we attended a wedding, had lots of get-togethers with people (including meeting our new nephew/cousin!), meetings with tentants (old and new), and getting our mail sorted. We were surprised with how cold the weather was, with temperatures sometimes in the low ‘teens. We were grateful for our winter clothes which we had stored there!

Phase two involved hanging out in the classic Kiwi ‘bach’ with Nan and Grandad and great-grandad Jack. This was a lovely, relaxing time, with lots of reading, and a few leisurely bike-rides, not to mention the late-night card games. The weather in the Coromandel was jus a bit warmer and drier- we enjoyed several outings to the sandy beach, and even enjoyed a swim in lagoon!

Phase three was a family camping trip. Our family tent (new last season) got good use, as we not only made it our own home, but had several lots of visitors throughout the week. One day had three different families at once! This week, the weather finally did its thing, and we all got a bit of a tan!

Our trip back went very well, with the girls showcasing their much-appreciated talent for sleeping on planes after meals.

Coming back to Manila was fantastic – it was so much easier than arriving here ‘new’ like last time. Now, we have our own place all set up, we know the traffic, the streets, we know where to go for shopping etc, and we’re not totally knackered. In fact, we’re all quite refreshed, and keen to get back into the swing of things. We are even loving the warm weather!.