Rosie's Pal.

Miss Rosie made a camp friend this summer... a sweet little pea named Yang Yang. 
Rosie and Yang Yang became good buddies in spite of the fact that Yang Yang speaks Chinese (Rosie does not) and like a lot of Americans, Rosie tends to GO LOUDER when she doesn't feel like she is being heard in exactly the way she hopes to be.

So my fear was that the adorable little Yang Yang will return to her home country of Taiwan with too many high volume memories of my little dear bossing her all over summertime.
And while bossiness is Rosie's strongest personality trait right now (we are hoping it's a stage) my hope was that Yang Yang's family might consider us (I mean the collective "us" of both our family and Americans in general) not to be a huge bunch of bossypants.
Although my Chinese is rather limited (read: nonexistent after ni hao) I knew that Yang Yang's family was really super kind and I was hoping to get to know them a bit better.

So...Rosie and I bought an "Instant Chinese" book and invited her cute friend and her family over for dinner.

And they graciously accepted.

 

Turns out "Instant Chinese" is more difficult then the book jacket suggests.

But Rosie persevered...

(not really...but she did pose for this photo, which is something)  

And she and Yang Yang had a blast... they laughed, played on the swing set and waved flags together.

It was a really wonderful evening for all of us, Yang Yang's family really seemed to enjoy themselves and I don't think we impressed them as being too weird or obnoxious. 

(Yay, for social successes!)

However, I think they found it pretty darn entertaining when I pulled out my "Instant Chinese" book to use as a reference.

Rosie is a lucky little girl to have such a sweet pal. 

At one point in the evening, the two of them were sitting in the double swing just yammering away. Rosie was doing most of the talking, but in a sing songy sort of way. I asked Yang Yang's mom if she was speaking Chinese... "No" was the answer... then she asked me if Yang Yang was speaking English.

I didn't think she was... It seemed more like Rosie and Yang Yang had come up with their own Chinese/English shorthand.

Later when I asked Rosie what they were talking about, she said 

"mostly pink stuff and baby cats."

I believe that pink baby cats might be the cornerstone of the language of three year old little girls worldwide.