Friday, February 20, 2009

Only in Canada....

The weirdest thing happened at playgroup yesterday....
We sing "Hello and how are you?" in circle.
And it goes;
"Hello and how are you?
Hello and how are you?
Hello and how are you, how are you today?"
Then we go to the first child and sing it; singing hello in their language.
So "Nee-how and how are you? Nee-how and......"
(sorry I have no idea how to spell Nee-how properly so I spelled it phonetically)
And we go around the circle. The children know the drill and shout out "hello" in their language when it is their turn.
Yesterday there is a woman with her kids and she's not really with it, (first time) and the facilitator says "How do you say "hello" in your language?" because her children are silent at their turn.
and she's like "Uh, hello?"
and the facilitator says "Your other language."
And she says "Uh, .........We only speak English...."
And it was so very silent.
And everyone is either looking at her like she's a freak, or looking at her kids with real pity.....
There is a short pause (that feels very long) and then the facilitator says "Oooookay, um, well, how about Bon Jour?"
And the woman is like "Uh, okay?"
And we sing......
This is the first time this has EVER happened at my play group. Like ever. And believe me, I go pretty much everyday. And if for some reason I can't go, it usually means I'm sick in bed or something and Andrew is looking after Ben, in which case he goes.....So I would know if this had happened before. Granted the group is pretty new, we started in November so it's still early days. Also to be fair, we don't always sing "Hello and how are you?" We sometimes sing "Higgelty Piggelty Bumble Bee" or "The Good morning train is coming" Which are say your names type songs. Also It's possible that someone who only speaks English was hip to the game and said "Ola" or something even though they don't speak Spanish because they didn't want to say "I only speak English".
I suppose she could have just sung "Hello". It's not really a big deal.
(But you wouldn't know that from the reaction of the rest of the group.)
I hope she comes back........




1 comment:

  1. My word. You wouldn't get that here! You're lucky if people round here speak *any* language beyond grunting, let along a second language!

    ;-)

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