Chinese characters

I snuggled Reni until he fell asleep last night, and when I went into Anika's room, she and Armando were bent over a notebook, working diligently. "I'm teaching daddy how to write in Chinese," she announced.

I'm sorry, what?

"Richard taught me. He and I were the only ones - the ONLY ones, just two of us - on the yellow table. One day he taught me some letters."

On the paper were six or seven distinct characters. "I think this one means tree," Ani said, pointing to one that looked like a capital R with a cross through it.

I'd heard about Richard before, as Anika spent an entire Saturday afternoon a few months ago making paper hats that, she said, "Richard makes me." And one of the moms who volunteers in the classroom told me a week before graduation that Richard had repeated kindergarten, and would be going into second grade next year, because he moved to Miami from China via a one-year hiatus in Venezuela. Seven years old and three languages. Wowza.

Despite my complaints about the Miami public school system, I'm quite thankful for all of the diversity that the city offers.