universal language

ok, my spanish skills don't exactly even qualify as "remote". i can muster up things like basic greetings, the color yellow and "mi esposo es pisotear par torres" from watching spanish television (translation is something along the lines of a husband being trampled by bulls).

never mind that i grew up surrounded by cousins fluent in the lanugage or that we adopted my sister from nowhere other than bogota, colombia. yes, i remain a french anomoly in my family of origin.

so when my friend and i took our instruments to the park, we met a lovely young lady from south america whose english was, thankfully, flawless. she saw us playing music and happened to be carrying her violin with her. having only owned her instrument for a week, she was delighted to learn tuning, string names and basic postures. music being the universal language that it is, it didn't matter that we were from different countries having a chance meeting in the sun. and it saved me from having to say the only spanish sentence that i know--to which i can only had a hearty merci.