Welcome to our neighborhood

One thing I LOVE about being overseas with small children is that when they make awkward comments about strangers in public, you have a much better chance of that person not understanding what was said. 

Before our car came, we took taxis a lot, and there was one driver we got many times. He was an older man, probably in his seventies, and he had a hearing aid. (He also drove really slow-- always about 5 under... but that's not the point here.) My kids would ask me, "What's wrong with his ears?" "Why can't he hear very well?" "His ears are broken, aren't they?" and my personal favorite, "He can't hear because he's SO OLD!"

I shushed them or changed the subject, but it was comforting to me that in addition to his probably not speaking English, he apparently had hearing problems. Or maybe with his hearing aid he could hear clear as a bell. I'll never know.

Today we saw a man at the grocery store who was really tall. The girls were running ahead of me, and when they got to him, Naomi stopped dead in her tracks and yelled, "Aaaah, a giant!!!" Then she made sure Penny had seen him and that she knew he was a giant.

Once I caught up to them, Penny said, "Mom, do you see that guy? Is he as tall as you? or dad? He's really tall, isn't he!"

I assured the girls he was probably as tall as Grandpa, then I smiled at him. He smiled back. "How's it going?" he asked, in non-accented American English. I think his shirt said "Washington DC" across the front. 

Awesome.

Sometimes I ignore my kids. There's no proof they're mine anyway. For all he knows, they could just be the local, English-speaking urchins that run wild in grocery stores in Brazil. 

Welcome to Brasilia!