My kids have now been in Canada for just over six months and they can really communicate well. When they first arrived my daughter could put together a few simple sentences, read but not understand what she read and my son could only say hello.
Six months later it’s a completely different story. My daughter is reading novels and comic books in english and doesn’t know how to stop talking in English. Her speaking isn’t perfect yet, but she has no trouble communicating and only really struggles with the occasional vocabulary word.
My son is also now talking very well. he’s still a little behind my daughter, but he’s catching up faster than she is. He also started from almost zero English. He’s also reading books at his age level with little difficulty. He struggles more with vocabulary and makes more grammar mistakes than my daughter but he also has no problem communicating what he wants to say.
Overall the move to Canada has been successful in getting their English skills to where we wanted them. Now we shift into maintaining Korean language skills. Thanks to the internet the kids are still able to watch their favorite Korean shows and keep up with things that they found interesting in Korea.
2012 has arrived much faster than I thought. Feels like time in Canada flies by much faster than it did for me living in Korea, but I’m sure it’s just me getting used to differences in routine and lifestyle here. Now that 2011 is laid to rest I can definitely say that it went well, actually smoother and better than expected.
The last couple of days I’ve been going through my photos for 2011 putting together a 2011 year in review photo book and it’s hard to believe everything we’ve done.
I’m not much for New Years Resolutions and in fact almost never set them, preferring to set goals when I come up with them. I’d rather do it that way than having to dust off gym memberships of yesteryear, promises to diet and make yet another pronouncement to start that project I’ve been meaning to start for the last 15 years. However this year coincidentally I’ve achieved all the goals I’ve made and it’s time to make some new ones so here goes.
- Push my web development skills to the next level. I’ve learned a lot since I started working full time at an agency in August, but I really need to take it up another notch.
- More time with the kids. We do a lot more together now that communication is no longer an issue. However I am now working 2 jobs and this is interfering in my time with the kids. Must find a little more time for the kids somewhere.
- Read more – my reading has seriously dropped off since I came to Canada. I blame it on my tablet and smart phone. Far too easy to check facebook, twitter and other internet distractions while on the bus/subway rather than reading a book.
- Get back into photography – photography died in November when I started working a second job. Must try to get back into it at least on the weekends.
Now that I’ve been back in Canada for 5 months, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on life as a returnee after 15 years abroad: what I like, what I don’ t like, things to do, things not to do and how things are different than expected.
If you are a short term expat, probably less than 5 years, then much of this will not apply to you to the same degree of someone who has lived abroad for longer than 5 years. The longer you’ve lived abroad the more this will apply – at least in my mind that’s how it works
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A couple of weeks ago I went to New York for a conference related to web development. The conference was excellent and I wrote up my thoughts on the conference on my company blog.
I really enjoyed my time there and found the city much easier to get around than Toronto. The subway in New York is very good, but not quite as good as that in Seoul. New York is really a great place for photography and I truly wish I had more than one day to roam around as I didn’t get enough shots in. I did upload two sets to flickr – one on general New York and the other on the Conference and venue.
And here are a few of the pics that I really like.
Manhatten from the Staten Island Ferry
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