5.19.2008

Language just gets in the way

Some family friends from Macedonia were in town recently for a couple weeks. They stayed at my parents place, but we spent a good amount of time with them. Their son, G, is 5 days older than BigBrother. I was curious to see how they would get along, seeing as they couldn't really talk to each other.

Last Saturday, they came up for the day, and watched BigBrother's piano recital (wow, my 5 year old had a piano recital). And after he was done, BigBrother sat patiently for a while, and then got bored. He then started looking back and smiling at G.

Afterward, we hung out and BigBrother and LittleBrother introduced him to the land of 1,000,000 dinosaurs also known as the play area in our house. for the entire two weeks, they hung out together. G's mom did translate a little, but not much. G got the humor of 101 Dalmations. He knew how to play monster with my Dad.

It was just kinda cool to see the boys really hanging out together and enjoying each other's company.

Talking to G's mom is really good if you want a dose of perspective. Here, there is an impending(?) recession, $4 gas, and the abomination that is the Democratic Primary race (but i digress). Over there, the big concern is that the government might not be stable. As in, it might just collapse under the weight of immigrants from a neighboring country that wants more space. I can't imaging how it would feel to live in a country where I didn't think the leadership had control of it's own destiny.

And yet, in many places, that's exactly the case.