Dave's Swedish relatives stopped by today during their Chicago trip, and I learned a couple new things. His little 10 year old cousin was a hoot to hang out with. I wanted to keep him talking just to listen to his accent.

Tried to do my 'how to get a 10 year old talking' trick, but with the language barrier, it was a little harder. However, once he found out that we had cable he was ecstatic. "Do you have the Cartoon Network?" he asked in his cool Swedish accent. When I said yes he immediately said, "Great! Teen Titans is on!"

Funny. The kid's only been here a little over a week and he already knows the TV schedule! So I put it on, and then he sadly said, 'Aww! I've seen this one already!" Wow, doesn't that suck? You're on vacation in a foreign country, find an awesome television show, and when you catch it on, you've already seen it!

We talked about Sweden for a bit, and he said that most homes only have several TV channels, and there weren't cartoons there like on the cartoon network. The best they had was Tom and Jerry. Wasn't that, like, 100 years ago? No wonder they have so much time to build cheap furniture. (just kidding)

Once all the TV was done (I did find out that they do have the Simpsons out there, which he watched and enjoyed) I gave him our limited movie collection. Unfortunately, we didn't have much that could cater to a 10 year-old's tastes. But when he saw I had the extended edition of 'The Twin Towers' he wanted to see it. He only had the regular version at home and really wanted to see the extended scenes. So we watched it and every time there was an extended scene he would exclaim, 'Wow! That one's new!' It was so cute.

We also discussed a lot of the workings of Middle Earth, like how his favorite character was Gimli, but that the rest of Sweden loved Legolas. (I informed him that the rest of the world, did, too, at least the feminine half) I felt a little bad for him because I knew he'd strain for some English words but sometimes couldn't fully express what he wanted to say. But he enjoyed the movie. However, we had to stop halfway because the night episode of 'Teen Titans' was on.

So we had fun. He was a really cute kid, too, half Swedish and half Filipino. As his aunt, who had stopped by to say hello, was leaving, she remarked, 'You're so good looking! I bet the girls say you're hot!!!' To which he turned red and replied, 'Please! I'm watching TV!' Poor little Swede. Probably traumatized now!

Posted by Yano at July 29, 2004 11:18 PM

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