Language

What amazes me is how quickly kids make friends with other kids regardless. Regardless of age, language, gender. Of course it’s when they have choices that it all gets complicated and they start to get choosy, but right now the only little people our kids have contact with in the world are three French speaking Swiss kids who love to wrestle and stand outside our window every morning yelling “Eet-en! Matt-ee! Aaa-leksa!” And, apparently, it’s all going swimmingly. Right now they’re raking up a huge pile of leaves, jumping in, burying each other, throwing the leaves up in the air and knocking the whole pile down. Somehow they’ve organized this without a common language (I saw Ethan demonstrating and doing a lot of pointing, but that’s as sophisticated as it gets.) They play huge hide and seek matches and tag, Ethan goes fishing with the boys in the pond while Maddie happily watches, Lex plays Barbies with the little girl (although I’m not sure how exactly that works, it seems to me Barbie has a lot to say) and they do a lot of basic running around screaming type stuff.

When they want to call on each other they just knock on the doors and smile and when they get mad at each other they all know the most powerful word, no. Our kids always say bonjour and they always say hello, so they are trying, but it really doesn’t seem to matter that much to them, this language barrier thing. It’s quite refreshing to watch.

John and I want to invite their parents over for cake. We found the tastiest most beautiful little tiny cakes in Sarlat which apparently have won awards all over the world (this makes me picture some kind of Cake Idol, which I think would be the best show ever) and they’re only around $3, so this is very bad news for me. Anyway, I’m slightly nervous that it won’t run as smoothly as it does with the kids. Even with the cake/bribe/ice breaker. I’m sure I can’t just point at them and grunt or yell NO when they don’t understand. I can’t grab their arm and guide it to the cake to communicate a friendly help yourself. Pointing and laughing and gently shoving each other wouldn’t be appropriate, but somehow kids let themselves get away with these things. It may be a little awkward, but they do seem nice so we’ll give it a shot.

Angie