You’re such an “animal”

My sister and I have always had a weird/funny relationship. To be fair, I’m sure everyone says this about their sister and or siblings. When we were little, she used to ask me to put on a ‘funny show,’ where I’d sing, dance, make up a story and act it out, dress up strangely, etc. I’m still 90% certain that I’m going to make it in Hollywood… just waiting to be discovered 😉

What makes my sister so funny is that nobody can come up with silly games like her. She has the best insults in the world, such as: “You’re a lopsided Oreo!” and “Stop being a pig, you llama!” I’d tell you more, but I don’t want to give away her secrets 😉 One of the games she came up with when we were little was the Animal Game. Honestly, I’m still not sure if that’s the official name, but the sake of this blog, I will name it thus. The rules of the game are simple: insult each other by calling them different animals. However, if I call you a snake, you cannot then call me a python as I’ve covered snakes. Likewise, if she calls me a fish, I cannot call her a tuna.

The level of insult of each animal changes in each game. For instance, in one game, anteater can be the biggest insult, yet the biggest source of laughter in the next. There is no real consistency; you have to play according to the setting. The game ends when one of us repeats an animal and loses. Seriously, it’s the funnest game, and we’ve gone super hardcore. My sister has sat with a dictionary next to her and texted me the first 20 animals she found that began with “W.” I in turn had to text back the same number of animals plus one, but having it in text made it easier to be sure I wasn’t repeating any animal. While our verbal games can go on upwards on 5 minutes, our last texting game went on for a good hour, haha. What can I say? We’re special 🙂

So, in honor of my sister who rarely ever reads this, I give to you the best animal pictures that I was able to find in 15 minutes:)

So what obscure animals can you think of? 

Language limitations

** I apologize for the false post!**

This past weekend, my family hosted 4 French women associated with the L’Arche organization, a group founded in France by Jean Vanier in 1964, and is geared towards aiding adults with learning and physical disabilities. As none of them spoke English, it was a perfect time for me and my mother to use our French. To be fair, my mother did put in our application that we could host French-speaking women, so it just so happened that all four of our guests were French.

What struck me the most was that one of the ladies is a woman with Down Syndrome. She was highly functioning, but still needed to occasional help from one of the ladies. She was happy and truly excited to be here in the US. She lamented how she was missing France’s version of Mother’s Day, and wanted to buy her tickets to a concert in America (we had to explain that concert tickets in America was a beautiful idea, but not entirely practical).

It was an amazing weekend, and I felt truly blessed to be able to be a part of such an effort. We met with the organization again on Wednesday night for an interfaith session on learning and physically handicapped people. My mother spoke on the Islamic perspective, adding a few personal touches, and we were able to meet with 3/4 of the ladies who stayed with us over the weekend. 

When I first met the group of ladies, they were all impressed with my French and couldn’t believe that I’ve never been to France. They couldn’t believe that I spoke with no accent (aside from French, of course) without having studied in France. That was a definite boost to my ego 😉 However, what really struck me was listening to the woman with Down Syndrome and marveling at her ability to speak a ‘foreign language.’ It took me a bit before I could appreciate that she wasn’t speaking a foreign language.. she was speaking her own. This woman with Down Syndrome spoke better French than me, and her language skills are probably better than mine will ever be. It was something that really made me appreciate how limited I can be by not being open to the fact that just because something is foreign for me,  it’s not for others. I had to struggle a bit to get my message across, as it’s been a while since I’ve spoken French, but I was able to convey everything I wished to say. It was funny for me to see how my mom would go from speaking French to the ladies to speaking to me in Arabic (she usually only speaks to me in English) and how I would accidentally speak to my sister in French, even though she doesn’t understand.

Seriously, the organization is a great one and they’re going to be opening their doors to a new branch in Decatur, GA on July 1st. Here is their website again, so be sure to check them out!