I was totally copying Kiersten's style of titling her blog posts yesterday. And today as well, I suppose.

I love children. The kids that go to my church are probably one of the things that I miss the most about Kalamazoo. So when I heard that my linguistics class was going to visit a psychologist (Ioulia Kovelman) who specialized in Bilingual acquisition in children, and that her three year old son, Ben, was going to be there, I was excited. We were going to do a few simple language experiments with him to examine his bilingualism (English and Russian). So we met up in our normal classroom, then walked over to the psychology building where we went to the lab, and waited for her and Ben to arrive. The hallways reminded me of a hospital, and the lab rooms reminded me of the waiting rooms for a pediatric practice, lots of toys and bright colors. There were three connecting rooms, made by dividing one large room into two, and then subdividing one of the half-rooms. The large room was the waiting room, of sorts. It was where the parents sat while their child was playing and being tested in the second room. The third room, one of the smaller ones, had a glass sliding window with the other small room, and was used as the observing room. It contained a tripod for recording the linguistic interactions between the children and adults in the next room. The two small rooms both had large glass windows opening into the large room.

We talked about bilingualism and a reading we were assigned until Ioulia Kovelman arrived with Ben in tow. Ben was adorable, and right at home. He immediately started playing and Ioulia talked to us about bilingualism, and fed him. Apparently it was his normal snack time, something Ioulia didn't know because he was always at his daycare at that time. When Ben was done with string cheese, three-fourths of a bagel, and a piece of chocolate, it was finally time to do some language stuff. Up till this point, Ben had only been speaking Russian, because he was only talking to his mother. It was time to test his english and his ability to change between the two.

One of us students got to go in and talk to him, and I was the chosen one, because he liked me (ie, had been looking at me and interacting with me a little). I was perfectly happy to go into the little room and play and talk to him. We did a little playing and talking about a toy phone using English. Then, his mom came in and explained a few linguistic tests. I held up a picture of an object, and asked him to identify it. Next, I held up some pictures of cats and told him that their names were fill-in-the-blank. Strange words, unusual names that don't actually exist. Apparently this was to test for language impediments or problems. He was able to switch between Russian and English really quickly, depending on whether it was me or his mother he was talking to. Anyway, it was fun playing with a little kid, and I pretty much ignored the fact that my linguistic class was watching me interact with a three-year-old. And at one point he was leaning on me, and I realized how much I missed all of the little kids at my church in Kalamazoo.

So that was my adventure of the day. I was originally going to post about something else today and actually got started on it, but then went to class and decided to write about that instead. The other topic can wait until tomorrow.