Language Explosion!

Sunday marked "one month home."  It was also the day that Rudolfo said his first sentence.

"Mama, watch this!" 

How appropriate for an active 6 year old...  I wasn't sure if I should count it as a first true sentence, since it was essentially only two words. 

Later in the day, we went to the store.  On the drive over, he was involved in a book.  When I opened the van door, he said, "Can I stay here?"  Wow.  Now THAT is a sentence. (And the answer is, "No, you have to go into the store with me.  Sorry.")

The same day, we heard "What is that?" and "I am done." 

In the three days since then, we've heard more and more words, phrases, and sentences.  And when we went to Chinese tutoring yesterday.  Several times, the teacher asked him a question in Mandarin, and he answered in English.  Wow.  When he was naming animals, he was able to come up with the word "lion" quickly, but had to really think to come up with "shi zi,"  the Mandarin equivalent.

This is really fun and exciting to watch.  It is completely amazing to me how a child can start with absolutely no exposure to a language and 6 weeks later be able to communicate on a functional level.  Miraculous, really. 

The flip side of the whole thing is that it is apparent, even to me, that he is definitely losing some of his Mandarin fluency already.  I am much more bothered by it than he seems to be, but we'll keep doing what we can to encourage exposure and opportunities to use his first language.  Today, part of his "homework" was to watch one of his favorite Chinese shows on YouTube.  He thoroughly enjoyed Pleasant Goat and the Big Gray Wolf and Sweet One even got to watch a few minutes of it with him.  I'm sure he was thinking, "What kind of school is this?!?  I get to watch Chinese TV as an assignment?  This place rocks!"  Now, the question is, was he thinking that in English or Chinese???