New friends

I've said it here before, I think, but it bears repeating: I'm rich in friendship. When I was in my 20's it seemed difficult to make new friends, but now in my 40s it seems to be a regular occurrence in my life.

This  morning I'm meeting a new friend for coffee, a woman named Norma. I met her at the school last week when she stopped in to pick up her son early for an appointment. She's from Mexico and her English is still rudimentary, so she brought her older son along to help translate. Since I'm trying to learn Spanish, I made an effort to speak it as much as I could, and she tried to hold up her end in English. (The older brother finally grinned and stepped aside and left us to it). Norma speaks English about as well I speak Spanish, which isn't saying a lot (ha!) but we had fun. Before she left she got my whole name, and when I left work that afternoon she had sent me a Facebook friend request. Which led to an hour of messaging back and forth and we've decided to get to know each other and help each other with our language lessons! How cool is that?

I have two Starbucks gift cards so I suggested meet up there this morning and get free drinks. (I don't care for Starbucks, but I appreciate the gift cards which were end-of-the-year presents from a couple of students and their families). Besides learning a new language, we discovered that we share a love of cooking, and last night Norma sent me a picture of the dinner she was making and this sentence, "You will learn to speak Spanish and you will learn to cook Mexican!" which made me laugh right out loud.

I'm looking forward to this new friend! Lucky me.