This past weekend we had a family of one of Amynah’s co-workers over for dinner. They have two children, who were so ridiculously blond and charming I half expected the Archangel Gabriel to descend from the Heavens saying “There you two are. Get back upstairs immediately, you little monkeys.”

Anyway, the girl, who is about 6, is learning English in school. This evidently consists of the first line of “Do Re Mi” which she will sing, then “Hay, a drop of mumble mumble” and then let the adults finish the rest of the song by prompting us with the first word of each line: Me! Far! So! La! Ti!… before starting us all over again with “Do, a deer, a female deer, Hay…”

She also knows a kick-ass version of Happy Birthday, much better than the one we Anglos are familiar with. It starts the same as the classic version, but adds Euro-flair that I thinks really freshens the whole song: Happy Birthday to you – Boom! Boom! Chee! Chee! (the new bits come with hand motions roughly approximating “reach for the sky” disco moves).

At one point she was singing it while walking behind Amynah into our living room. She greatly added to my amusement factor by slapping Amynah’s butt to the rhythm of the “Chee! Chee!” part.

Speaking of music, I'm still looking for music input. Tara? You out there? Jocelyn? Anyone?