The beginning

Huh, where shall I start? It all began long, long time ago when I became obsessed with the English language as a teenager. Slowly I became an English teacher thanks to lots of great teachers, the support of my Mom, my persistance and love of the language and the connected English speaking cultural.

In 2012 my baby, E., was born, and while I was still pregnant with her I was wondering whether to raise her bilingual. As both my hubby and I are native Hungarians living in Hungary, it seemed out of place, a non-sense thing to do as the English input we have is very little, not to mention the fact that it is very difficult and pricey to ensure that our child will get enough English input under these circumstances. So I did research on the Net, bought books on bilingualism and tried to find people who do the same. And from time to time, my belief got stronger and stronger that raising E. bilingual IS a great idea, what's more, it's manageable.

When she was born, I was knackered even shocked by the coming of my baby, though I had been preparing for her for a long time. It was great and horrible at the same time. The first 6 months I couldn't concentrate on our bilingual project so much. Yes, it's true that even in my tummy she heard a lot of English as I was teaching till the end of my pregnancy. After her birth I sang a lot of English lullabies to her, however I did not speak to her in English as in Hungarian.

When our life got a little easier, when she turned 6 months old, I decided to speak to her in English when we are just the two of us, which meant most of the time during the weekdays as Daddy worked, and Grandmas' being around became less frequent.

When I'm starting this blog, E. is almost 11 months old now and we have a great balance between Hungarian and English. There will be posts about what we have done so far, what we have reached, what we have been doing to increase the English input in her life. Then I'll go on with a regular update on our status. I do not know how long I'll have time to post or how long we will last with our project, but I hope for years and years. I wish this blog would live until our second child is born, until we start picking up new languages. Or until my grand-daughter is born and will be raised bilingual as well. Wishful thinking... These are only hopes and wishes for the future and time will tell if we can manage to do so. Keep your fingers crossed for us!