Hello, chicken!

"You have a necklace," I say, looking for a visual. She's learning the English names for clothing.

"Yes, a monkey."

"Oh, is it for luck?" I ask, grasping, knowing luck is probably outside the bounds.

"Um. . . Chinese. . . ."she looks for a word.

I catch one of the Marias brightening, figuring it out a step before me: Chinese horoscope! And the animals that correspond to the years. Li smiles at being understood on a word-by-word basis as we establish that Maria is also a monkey and that Chica's a snake, so I pull out the dictionary we've been using and point to a picture: I'm a rooster (and a teacher happy to find common ground).

"Chicken!" she says, with her most random vocabulary. What exactly did they teach in Nanning?

"Rooster," I shrug and start to say "in English, a boy chicken is a rooster," as if this is a priority, but then Rafa, who has pulled up a chair here at the end of the hour, pipes up with an alternate lesson plan:

"How you say chicken in Chinese?"

So suddenly the girl three weeks out of China is teaching the boy three months out of Brazil to say "ji" until he proclaims, "I speak four languages! Portuguese, Spanish, English, Chinese!"

I tick off the words she's taught us so far: wěi, nǐ hǎo, ji. "Rafa," I tease, "you can say, 'Yes, hello chicken!'"

And that's good for a laugh and yet another, "Oh my God," from Li. It's the only interjection she's brought along on her journey, but it's getting a workout as she gets to know us, becomes one of us here on the other side of the world. Seems a good sign to me. It's proof that we communicate, that she understands--a notion too many in that high school deny. "She doesn't understand one word I say." Oh, I know it ain't easy, but come on. Hello, chicken! See what happens when you try?