Sunday, July 20, 2008

Welcome to BilingualPath!

I have been contemplating writing a blog for the past several months, and, in fact, set up this site about a week ago. Yet I've been paralyzed by the "first post". Since both the little guy and my husband are down for a nap, I figured I'd jump right in.

A little about me:
I am a 33 year old mother of Victor, wife to Oscar. We have another little boy on the way, due in November.

I had always thought of myself as a "typical American"...that is, until I decided to up and move to Spain. I'll get more into that later. Long story short, that trip changed my life. I now have a very international family--a now-bilingual Spanish husband, English speaking parents in Florida, and Spanish speaking in laws in Spain.

Upon returning to the US, I decided to open a Spanish Academy for adults and share my passion for the language. Heck, if I, an engineer, could become fluent after beginning studies at 25, I figured anyone could! It was a great experience, and it only further convinced me that we, as Americans, are missing out by being monolingual.

Becoming bilingual is a challenge: how do you maintain both languages (I started "losing" my English in Madrid, and the same is happening to my husband's native Spanish here in the US)? how do we effectively teach our children to embrace two languages? how can we encourage my father in law who now wants to learn English? and the list goes on....

In this blog, I would like explore answers to these and other challenges we face, to share our experiences, and provide a forum for others to share as well. If we come across any products, methods, or activities that do/do not work, I will post them as well.

Welcome to BilingualPath!

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