Rush-Lish

Visiting with Sveta (and Jessi and Barry of course) has been a complete joy. I've already mentioned my heart turns to mush any time I'm with her. Watching her adapt in the 8 short weeks she's been here has been incredible. The most amazing aspect has been her language skills. In the short time she's been in the States, Sveta has learned a staggering amount of English. Right now her language seems to straddle Russian and English. I just call it Rush-Lish. When talking with her I pick out a lot of English words, some words that I recognize as Russian and yet other times I have no idea what she's saying and I think it may be gibberish or the aforementioned Rush-Lish.

Here are a few of my favorite language moments with Sveta:

When you do something for her, she says, "O Fanks" (Oh thanks!)

She was sitting on my lap and was curiously running her finger over my mustache. I asked her to say mustache, but she didn't. She said, "Mouth. Tickle!"

At a restaurant there was a 3 foot wooden fork decorating the wall. She said, "Fork, big! Heavy!"

Shortly before hunting Easter Eggs at our house she must have been telling me she was ready to begin the hunt. I heard a long string of what sounded like gibberish ending with the word eggs. It sounded a bit like this, "Tsmcn chjfh dmjdjdfjfdbn eydhdmjdmcdncnc mndnnmxnx EGGS!"

She's also very polite. After a trip to the restroom, Grandma told her to wash her hands. She said, "No fank you. Tizer" (rather than washing she prefers hand sanitizer). It's not ideal, but not a battle her Mama is willing to fight. I can't blame her.

We brought out a ball and asked if she wanted to play soccer. She replied, "Yeah, sucker! Candy!" Maybe we should join the rest of the world and call it football. Football doesn't sound anything like sucker.

And my most favorite of all... as we were interacting she suddenly lunged forward and hugged me and said, "God loves you!" A genius at 4. I sure am a proud Goppa :-)