Bilingual Birthday

I traveled up to Rockville this afternoon to join my second cousin, Maggie, and her husband, David, as they celebrated the first birthday of their son, Nicholas. They had a massive barbeque and I'm not sure how many people were actually there, as there seemed to be someone new every time I turned around.

Maggie met David in Europe when she was studying abroad in Germany. During a weekend trip to Prague, she met David, an Australian. (Now isn't that just the epitome of the female fantasy -- meeting a dark stranger while abroad?) They moved to the DC area where Maggie has a job that, until her pregnancy, required her to travel to Russia and the Ukraine and all of those -istan countries. David is a computer programmer and is a member of the Washington Cricket League (a game that I will never understand, even after a thirty minute lecture from my British History professor in college).

So you can just imagine the amazing variety of people at this party. There were Ukrainians, Germans, Haitians, Indians, West Indians, Jamaicans, French, and more! It was absolutely fascinating.

The most amazing thing, to me, were the children of all of the guests. There were quite a few, and if they were old enough to speak, they were bilingual. There was something oddly mesmerizing about watching a four-year-old girl speak beautiful French with her mother, and witness a twelve-year-old girl move flawlessly between Russian and English. I know that children have an innate ability to pick up languages -- it's much easier for children to learn languages than adults when immersed -- but it still sort of blew my mind. It was just so... cool.

Then there were the adults, struggling. Though he's lived here for almost ten years, David still has trouble here and there with the way things work. Maggie wanted to unwrap presents before cutting the cake (mostly because all of the kids were getting antsy), and he asked, "Oh, I dunno. Is that the custom, then?" Of course, he's never celebrated his son's birthday before, so we can't be too hard on him, can we?

I can now say that I've traveled to the end of the red line - and the Glenmont station was quite lovely. They had a "Kiss 'n' Ride" where people get dropped off. Adorable! It was a great end to a wonderful weekend.