Lisa
Lisa describes one of the activities instrumental in her language learning: a journal shared by her and her daughter’s childcare facility. She wrote notes about her daughter’s activities in Dutch, sprinkled with English words, and the childcare facility attendants wrote back in Dutch:
They humored me. And they were very understanding. They would always write and they thought that they were helping me to learn, they would always write to me . . . totally in Dutch, and they insisted that I write back in Dutch.
Lisa describes the childcare agency as assisting with her language learning, and it was this kind of daily communication that helped, and even forced her, to learn the language:
It’s because of doing that kind of daily communication, of living, you know, um, living a Dutch life, being this non-Dutch mother but um, surrounded by Dutch family and culture that um, that I was stretched to learn the language. I mean, if, it was definitely the way that I um, I’m not sure that I would have learned a language the way that I did under different circumstances.
All three women describe educational institutions in their literacy narratives: Debleena mentions the standards and tests of school, and Cornelia sees herself as apart from the institution of school. But for Lisa, her interactions with this childcare facility were her gateway into the Dutch language, and into society and culture in Amsterdam.