Guus Bosman

Tonight Nora will travel to Bulgaria to spend the summer with her grandparents. She is traveling with Lelya Snezha from Washington tonight, and with a layover in Munich she'll arrive in Sofia around 6.00 pm local time.

Last year she spent a few days without us in Middenmeer and she did very well. This time is much longer -- 8 weeks in total -- but she will be in excellent hands. It is very special that she can spend time with her grandparents in Perushtitsa.

We will miss her terribly, and I'm counting the days (56 to go) but it will be a great experience for her. It will also allow us to spend some more time with Leo and Adrian.

Last night we went to the barbecue of the YMCA across the street. We met Eric, Lori and Eric there and saw several people we knew.

Nora and Eli spent some time in the bouncy castle, but then it started raining with thunder and lightning so most activities were halted. We went to the pavilion in the back where the food was and had a nice hamburger and hotdog. A taste of summer.

I spoke with several people from Y itself, including someone who is working on the redesign of the building. They hope to have a plan by the end of the year, which is exciting.

Sasha and Nora were sitting at the table and I wanted to show Sasha something. All of a sudden Nora says: "I also wanna see!" -- in perfect English.

We pretended that we didn't understand -- never mind the fact that Sasha and I mostly speak English together, haha. Clearly, her English is getting better and starting to creep in her regular life. Obviously we want her to be fluent in English, but her speaking Bulgarian and Dutch well is also very important to us and the only way to make that happen is have her speak those two languages exclusively when she talks with us.

Her Dutch is very good though. Here are some of the things she just said:

"op maandag als baba Snezha komt ga ik een taart maken want Meneer Prascho wordt weer jarig"
"in die koffer, in die tas, zit nog meer Duplo. Ja. In die tas zit nog meer eten. Er zit[ten] ook nog aarbeien voor taart.

(I guess it is time for her breakfast, haha). She makes jokes in Dutch too. Asides from saying "maar weetje wat het is baby", she made her own joke words: sneeuwpoepje and hagelslak

We started reading to the boys. They enjoy it.

Nora wouldn't want to miss it either!

Nora started swimming lessons last week. Sasha is taking her four times per week to the YMCA across 13th Street.

The lessons are in a small group of four kids and Nora is the youngest. She really enjoys it.