Mayken from Germany in Paris, France

I'm a junior keeper in my own little zoo, with a monolingual partner (a real Parisian!) and a currently 4-year-old girl in a suburb so close to Paris we have a great view of the Eiffel Tower from our bedroom windows.

Bilingualism has fascinated me for a long time. Languages even longer. My dad is the ultimate globe-trotter; as a child I had more postcards from the places where he was than days he was actually in the same town as me.

In middle school I started writing to pen pals. But they had to be abroad and speak a different language. Pen pals in my own country? Boring, if I wanted to write in my mother tongue, I had my family (especially my always-letter-writing granny).

And one day, in grade 8 or 9, our geography teacher showed us a film on Canada, or at least that mentioned Canada. All I remember is that it said Canada had two languages, English and French. I wanted to go there. And I went. I spent one school year as an exchange program in Quebec, attending a French-speaking high school. (I'd rather not say "French" because Quebec French is not the same as French from France, as attested to by my French teacher when I came back home!)

But I had the great fortune that my host family was anglophone. That's how I became fluent in both languages at once.

I continued my language studies at university in a bilingual and binational course and wrote a diploma thesis on (watch out, long title coming!) "The neighbour's language in kindergarten and pre-school in [the border region of] Sarre [Germany] and Moselle [France]".
Research for that thesis was great fun, I can tell you!

By then I had long resolved to raise my future children as bilinguals. I didn't have any clear plans, especially as I was back in my home country. But then, through the completely unrelated activity of inline skating, I ended up in Paris (without a view of the Eiffel Tower at first) and met "Monsieur le Parisien" (actually his family's roots go back to both Normandy and Martinique, but that's another story) who now shares that view of the Eiffel Tower with me and our daughter.

Now, our daughter. In day-to-day life, she's exposed to the minority language only through me. And working full time, I don't see her as much as I'd like. But, there's granny (my mom!), a former school teacher, who loves to read books with her during our twice a year visits and who has accepted modern technology in the form of a tablet with Skype into her home; grandpa who will also skype with her (when we can locate him in whatever time zone he is); and finally, DVDs of age-appropriate children's shows and CDs with children's stories (some featuring the same characters) and children's songs (phew - I can't sign to save my life). The latter two with moderation, of course.

I still have some faint hope that we will be able to enrol her in a bilingual school - because, believe it or not, even in Paris this is a scarcity.

I'm having trouble to envision sending my daughter off to a summer camp in Germany, or even off somewhere with grandpa, but I know that'll be the only real alternative if she doesn't get into a bilingual school. I can't do it all by myself, not even with the excellent tips and tricks provided by Adam here.

So yes, I'm looking forward to exchanging experiences, tips, advice and more here on this forum!

Mayken