The Challenge of Naming a Child Cross-Culturally

We don't know if the little one that will be born in November is a boy or a girl, but so far we've had more fun throwing around female names. We were pretty pleased with ourselves when all 3 of us seemed to like Sabina Gaia. Sabina is easy to pronounce in Romanian and I liked the nickname "Sabi" (what Briana calls the hot green paste, "wasabi", Daddy likes to mix with soy sauce) and Dana's read lovely theological books on the concept of "gaia", the greek earth goddess, but more recently an intellectual paradigm for the gorgeous unity of the cosmos. Well all that was shot through when we ran the names by our closest Romanian friend. Apparently "Sabina" is a peasant's name (in other words, it's hick), negatively associated with uneducated, insular village life. (Perhaps akin to Bubba or Thelma Lou in the States.) And "Gaia" is part of a popular expression which means, "I'm going to kick your a_ _!"
So it's back to the drawing board.
Granted it's just one person's humble opinion (we'd be glad for other Romanians' thoughts), but for now we've scratched "I'm going to kick your hick butt!" from the list.

Experiments in Social Entrepreneurship

Not to compare our daughter with our dog, but both Briana and Augustina (our husky that was with us from 2001-2005) have been able to do much more for us socially than the fact that we have offered the free Viata Program to over 1000's of young people in this town over the past 10 years. The Viata Program rarely gets us acknowledged in this small community, but both Augi and Briana have brought numerous pleasant social encounters: conversations on the street, well-wishes, unsolicited smiles and chit-chat, shared snacks in the park and free fruit at the vegetable market. We used to talk about driving Augi around on the top of our car, just to melt the social ice that can still chill between us foreigners and the locals, and we're certain it would've been successful. Briana's lemonade stand this weekend was successful in just the same way.

Though there's probably a kid-run lemonade stand on about every corner in North America , I am certain no one has ever seen one here. Or anything remotely like it. So it was with great interest that we helped Briana proudly hang her sign on our fence (Homemade Lemonade for Sale - 5cents a cup) on Saturday and arrange her table, cash register, and cups in the front of our yard. When the first passerby approached, one of our neighbors, I coaxed Briana into approaching him and asking him if he'd like a glass of lemonade. At first he said no, I'm sure he was confused, and then he saw the sign and her little table and cash register and he somehow understood. He didn't have a penny on him so he promised to bring the money tomorrow, and appreciatively emptied his glass. I won't say the rest of the afternoon was bustling, but I think only one passerby declined, and the rest of our neighbors were great sports. We had at-length conversations with 2 neighbors we've only ever saluted, and one neighbor who had hurried by earlier in the day made it a point to come back later, after the stand had closed, insisting on buying a glass. And Briana made a killing when our 9 international volunteers showed up for a 4th of July BBQ (we weren't going to set our daughter up for complete failure...we knew she'd at least sell 9 cups that day).

It was great fun, a great learning exercise for Briana (she made the shopping list, watched videos on how to make lemonade, squeezed lemons, poured, learned how to give back change, eventually, and practiced customer-service, sort of) but most of all it was a great experience of social warmth and openness between us and our neighbors, something we don't take for granted.

Dana was trying to teach Briana the age-old adage: "If life gives you lemons..." "Make a lemonade stand," she replied. I'll drink to that.

Summer So Far