A little Spanish friend

 Something happend on vacation in autumn that I had not anticipated:  Kabouter got a Spanish friend. 

I thought babies and toddlers just play with anybody who smiles at them and they don't need language to roll a ball, splash some water or ride a toy car.  But then they become aware of language and as soon as someone approaches them and asks them in an unknown face, they run back us with an scary face "I don't understand him". 

Last years they were in the face as described above.   And when this happened this year, the same scenario repeated at first. But this Spanish boy was persistent and after an hour or so they started to consider his stalkng as amusing.  A little later they were jumping crazily together on the balloon in the pool.  And they had a friend without sharing a language. 

Sign language helped, we sometimes said something in English to the parents to explain we were leaving or so and after a few days google translate on our phone was borrowed. 

At the end we got a postal card with his address in Spain pushed in our hands and a little gift. We've exchanged our e-mail addresses but have not had any digital response yet .  So a nice postal card from Leuven has been sent to Spain and I do hope for Kabouter that Christmas will bring a postal response.