So on my first week, we get a visitor coming into the office... He is about 12 years old. At first he acts shy and he talks to my colleague, says hi, banal stuff.
I start realizing he is the son of one of our colleagues and since we're in the World Cup craze, my colleague starts teasing him about who he supports. He seems to be for the US first of all as he is an American citizen (many Haitian mothers go to Miami to give birth so that their children can have the nationality and thus much more mobility in their future). Then he is slightly supportive of France. Must be the weight of history.
But my colleague makes it really hard for him... she tells him Belgium will will against Argentina. For your information: my colleague obviously comes from chocolate land otherwise who would ever believe so :), and most Haitians tend to support Argentina and Brazil, probably due to the geographical closeness.
I think he cared more about playing football - or even coming to check up on what we were doing - than on the World Cup thing, so he smiled without reacting much to the provocation.
He gained some courage and came a bit closer, already smiling. He asked me where I was from and I said Portugal. I added that it was the country of Cristiano Ronaldo. Hopefully that would help. It did. But the second day he came, a bit closer, a bigger smile, he asked: "tu connais Cristiano Ronaldo?" (do you know Cristiano Ronaldo?). I even bragged I was his age and born on the same day (I think); but no, sadly I don't know him.
He asked a more difficult question next: "Pourquoi tu ne le connais pas?" (how come you don't know him?) and so I did a 3 minute cultural presentation of Portugal with the help of GoogleMaps, where I showed him my home city and then... far away... somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic the archipelago of Madeira, where CR7 was born. Where I've never even been (yet!) And then we wondered off in the map to the UK because I heard the guy plays for one team over there.
Pretty good topic to start a cultural sharing considering my complete ignorance on football history. Haha.
He continued talking and between the low tone of voice and perhaps a bit of creole mixed, I felt silly asking him to repeat what he said about 3 times, so I was only following about 60% of what he actually said. I hope this gets better and easier soon.
We had to leave for lunch break and I felt like taking the kid along with us. His mother was not there at the moment so maybe next time. We invited him to come over to our house on the weekend. I could tell he wouldn't mind at all. Both me and my colleague are sort of in love with the cute boy.
Before leaving with his mom in the afternoon, he left us each a slice of pizza
Good thing school holidays are on, would be nice to have this kind of interruption every now and then :)
PS: this is not him - I still don't know how and when it is appropriate to take pictures of people.
I start realizing he is the son of one of our colleagues and since we're in the World Cup craze, my colleague starts teasing him about who he supports. He seems to be for the US first of all as he is an American citizen (many Haitian mothers go to Miami to give birth so that their children can have the nationality and thus much more mobility in their future). Then he is slightly supportive of France. Must be the weight of history.
But my colleague makes it really hard for him... she tells him Belgium will will against Argentina. For your information: my colleague obviously comes from chocolate land otherwise who would ever believe so :), and most Haitians tend to support Argentina and Brazil, probably due to the geographical closeness.
I think he cared more about playing football - or even coming to check up on what we were doing - than on the World Cup thing, so he smiled without reacting much to the provocation.
He gained some courage and came a bit closer, already smiling. He asked me where I was from and I said Portugal. I added that it was the country of Cristiano Ronaldo. Hopefully that would help. It did. But the second day he came, a bit closer, a bigger smile, he asked: "tu connais Cristiano Ronaldo?" (do you know Cristiano Ronaldo?). I even bragged I was his age and born on the same day (I think); but no, sadly I don't know him.
He asked a more difficult question next: "Pourquoi tu ne le connais pas?" (how come you don't know him?) and so I did a 3 minute cultural presentation of Portugal with the help of GoogleMaps, where I showed him my home city and then... far away... somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic the archipelago of Madeira, where CR7 was born. Where I've never even been (yet!) And then we wondered off in the map to the UK because I heard the guy plays for one team over there.
Pretty good topic to start a cultural sharing considering my complete ignorance on football history. Haha.
He continued talking and between the low tone of voice and perhaps a bit of creole mixed, I felt silly asking him to repeat what he said about 3 times, so I was only following about 60% of what he actually said. I hope this gets better and easier soon.
We had to leave for lunch break and I felt like taking the kid along with us. His mother was not there at the moment so maybe next time. We invited him to come over to our house on the weekend. I could tell he wouldn't mind at all. Both me and my colleague are sort of in love with the cute boy.
Before leaving with his mom in the afternoon, he left us each a slice of pizza
Good thing school holidays are on, would be nice to have this kind of interruption every now and then :)
PS: this is not him - I still don't know how and when it is appropriate to take pictures of people.
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