Category Archives: immersion

immersion, immigration, travel, Uncategorized

International experiment with my Frenchie

July 14, 2016 emmapalova 1 Comment

International experiment explores English immersion at St. Patrick’s School

Note: I will incorporate some of the current posts into the memoir “Greenwich Meridian.” The memoir is a living document in which I track the events of the past and present. It is the story of the family immigration saga spanning three generations.

By Emma Palova

EW Emma’s Writings

Lowell, MI- Thanks to my French family and a history class, I know that today is a holiday in France celebrating the Fall of Bastille in 1789. The French revolutionaries stormed the Bastille fort followed by a decade of chaos and executions, known as the French Revolution.

So, July 14th is a national holiday in France. The practical implications are that my daughter Emma Palova Chavent who is visiting with us in the USA can’t straighten out “stuff.” That’s what I call glitches in bureaucracy all over the world.

Ella Chavent in front of St. Pat;s School in Parnell, MI.

And now a few hours later since I’ve written this post, the tragedy in Nice, France which left so many people dead. This reminds us of the fact that nothing has changed since the French revolution. Dead and more dead. I’ve written about this before that violence breeds more violence.

I consider our family clan to be international. Our daughter Emma, who was born in former Czechoslovakia, married French husband Adrien.

Now, I fear more than ever the international fate as Emma & Adrien Chavent ready to fly out tomorrow to Paris and their daughter Ella is staying here for English immersion.

Our son Jake, also born in former Czechoslovakia, married American Maranda. All of us speak English, most of us speak Czech and some speak French. I think Emma Jr. is the only one who speaks all three languages fluently.

That’s why I put up a sign greeting our international wedding guests in 2014 in three languages: Welcome, bienvenue and vitejte.

The international experiment 2016 involves language immersion for 5-year-old Ella Chavent, our granddaughter for six weeks. In September, when she turns six she will go to first grade in the wine village of Fixin in Burgundy, France.

When Emma mentioned that over the phone, my heart ached. In six years we’ve only seen Ella six times.

“That’s the price you pay for immigration,” I always say when I tell the story.

My husband Ludek came up with the summer vacation/immersion idea.

Ella was born in Dijon, France in 2010. Her first language is French. However, daughter Emma speaks to her only in English.

So, Ella’s English is good. A grammar mistake here and there. The lack of vocabulary at her age is understandable.

When at a loss for an English word, Ella uses French. So, I get to brush up on my French that was fairly good when we lived in Montreal in the 1990s. I took French immersion classes. My son Jake went to a French kindergarten. Montreal is a fully bilingual cosmopolitan city.

We do have a history in language immersion. I teach English as a second language (ESL). There was a time in the 1980s when I knew Russian, although mostly passively.

Ella started her English immersion on Tuesday of this week. We enrolled her in St. Pat’s summer school program in Parnell, MI. If everything goes fine, she will be attending through Aug. 18^th. Her parents Emma & Adrien are leaving the country tomorrow July 15^th. The plan is that I will fly with Ella back to Paris on Aug. 20^th.

As we approach Emma & Adrien’s departure, I have butterflies in my stomach.

“Will she miss them so badly that either I’ll have to fly out with her early or Emma Jr. will have to come and get her?” I ask myself.

So, far she has whined here and there, “Where is my mami?”

Her mami and daddy were gone for four days to Arizona.

However, the whole immersion experiment hinged on St. Pat’s school. “How will Ella take it?”

When I picked her up after the first day, Ella was all excited. She immediately made friends.

“She will do fine,” her teacher assured me. “She’s great.”

That same evening Ella already started packing meticulously her things for the next day.

“We will make a jumbo pie, I want to take it to school to share it with my friends,” she said.

That warmed my heart after her video tirade that I called “Everything is mine.” Ella scripted that all by herself constantly repeating everything is mine: the books, the toys, the food.

Watch for more immersion/immigration posts to get a feel for the “Greenwich Meridian” memoir.

Contact me for your immersion needs in English and Czech. I do have two public facebook groups Immersion Czech and Immersion English.

I have summer immersion online camps available.

emmapalova@yahoo.com

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immersion, immigration, travel, Uncategorized

Our story 2- If I could turn back time

January 29, 2016 emmapalova 1 Comment

Turning back time to life in Canada

By Emma Palova

Note: This is the second part of a story series, “If I could turn back time” based on a prompt by the WordPress Daily Post that spurred my imagination.

The first story posted at https://emmapalova.com/2016/01/17/my-story-if-i-could-turn-back-time-2/ delved into an action packed time in my life spent on the ranch in Vizovice, Czech Republic with my grandparents.

As I start my second story, I look back at a transition time in the early 1990s as the family adjusted to life in North America. This time in Canada. It surprises me that I would like to turn back time to a difficult period in a foreign cold country, where initially I didn’t know anyone, I had no relatives there or any other bonds. I didn’t speak the language and I barely knew how to drive.

A lot of this theme “If I could turn back time” is reflected in my memoir about the three generation family immigration saga, “Greenwich Meridian.” ©

The beginnings

Montreal, CAN After immigrating first to the USA in 1989, our family ended up in Montreal the following year. I wanted to join my husband Ludek who got visa to Canada.

It was a long haul, both physically and mentally. The 10-hour drive on 401 through Toronto gave me a lot of time to think.

I haven’t had time to get used to the rural life in US and I was changing the path that would take me to a fully bilingual cosmopolitan city.

At first we lived in a one-bedroom apartment in LaSalle close to the Saint Lawrence River. My husband Ludek and I slept in the living room which was also the dining room separated by a bar top from the kitchen. We had an old green Chevy that my dad Vaclav gave us.

After living with my parents for six months in Big Rapids, MI I was happy I had my kitchen. I didn’t mind the smells coming from the kitchen. I love to cook. I remember the weekly trips to the grocery store. We examined each item twice before it got thrown into the cart. We retrieved some of them later in the next aisle and put them back on the shelf.

And it was chicken and chicken again; once roasted, at other times fried, curried or on paprika with sauce and dumplings. Ludek’s friends from Slovakia did the same.

“I’ve had enough of your chicken,” yelled Willi at his brother Joe. “Can’t you cook something else?”

“I could but it’s expensive,” said Joe puffing on his cigarette while he stirred the chicken on paprika.

We made many friends in Montreal. The province of Quebec welcomed immigrants from all over the world.

Days went by fast. I went to COFI, the French Immersion School sponsored by the Quebec government full-time. It was a six month-long intensive course with six hours of French daily. We didn’t have to pay a dime to learn a foreign language. On the other hand, we got paid to go to the French school.

It was a very social and productive time in life. I met Judith from Slovakia and Emil from Rumania, people from Bulgaria, Africa, Japanese and Russians as well as people from all walks of life.

We nurtured our immigrations dreams together side by side sitting in desks with doctors, surgeons, poets, writers, musicians, healers, programmers, factory workers, teachers and stay-at-home moms.

It was at this course that I learnt how to teach languages immersion style.

We were not allowed to speak any other language than French, which was for the better of it, because we wouldn’t be able to understand each other.

We had to act out little scenes from life. I remember I did not want to act in the doctor’s office scene, because I am afraid of doctors and the Rumanian guy Emil liked me way too much.

Ludek worked at a Czech chemical company called Anachemia. Actually, most Czech and Slovak immigrants worked there. I worked in their branch for a while packing medical supplies. This is where I met Liba from the same Walachia region that I came from in Czechoslovakia. We would have probably never met in our homeland and out of all the places in the world, we ran into each other at a factory in Montreal.

We had no mortgage, so we could go skiing in the Laurentian Mountains or drive to Toronto to see a lifelong acquaintance from Technical University of Brno, Dana Pastorcakova who was also from Walachia.

Only, now 20 years later I realize, that it was an advantage not to have a mortgage, because it is what it means.

“Mortgage is a death pledge,” said real estate instructor and broker for Westdale.

Times would prove him right during the mortgage/economic crisis in the mid to late 2000s. My artist friends lost their home on Long Lake.

We moved to a bigger apartment also in LaSalle close to an island in the St. Lawrence River.

“You’re living here like on a vacation,” said Liba during a visit.

“I can’t live and write any other way,” I said.

To be continued……

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