Hostel Story: Dinosaurs!

I'm beginning a series of Hostel Stories.  Here is one :)

Teddy and his baby brother Leo (not their real names) are two adorabe half-Dutch-half Chinese children. Teddy's papa is Dutch and met Teddy's Yunnanese mama when they were both living in Kunming, China. Teddy speaks Dutch, German, Mandarin and English.  He really likes dinosaurs. He is six years old. 

When I met Teddy in a medium-big size town in Thailand, he and I immediately become friends.  He tells me all about his love for snakes and T Rex!  The Hostel has an old snake-skin so we discuss the snake's process of transformation.  Teddy is afraid that the Snake will come back for his old snake-skin.  I say, "Teddy, a snake sheds his skin just like you shed your hair when you get a haircut!"   We watch The Land Before Time (one of my favourite dinosaur movies when I was a child) together.

Teddy's papa tells me that his job is to lead bicycle tours for German tourists in China.  The family recently spent 6 months living in Germany, and Teddy picked up German very quickly even though he did not know the language  (the papa speaks Dutch to him while mama speaks to him in southwestern mandarin). 

I think of my little Norwegian cousins - this little boy reminds me very much of them.  He, like the youngest Norwegian cousin (when I visited them in 2011), thinks it only natural that everyone should speak the same languages he does, and can't understand why I don't respond to his commentary in Mandarin.   Nonetheless, despite the language barrier, we bond over Dinosaur Lego.