Two new-ish doors for relationships with my neighbors have opened recently that I am super excited about.

First, a 19-year-old down the street wants help with English conversation. She says she's at an intermediate level with reading and writing (good enough to read novels) but too shy to talk. I'm inviting her and a few of her friends over this Saturday morning to chat in English for a while. A couple of other women I know might come too. We'll see where it goes, but I'm particularly interested since it's a door she opened herself.

Second, our awesome neighbors with the two precious twin 2.5-yr-olds. You may recall that the basis for our relationship is a mutual love for good cheese (not necessarily accessible here). They're a Chilean-German couple working with an NGO teaching tribal communities about sustainable ways to harvest jungle wood.

Anyway, for some reason we haven't gotten to hang out with them tons (I'll blame Ellie and the fear factor), but in the last two months we've gone out to lunch twice and Tim has played chess with M a few times. Tonight they invited us over to their house (all four steps away) for a Saturday night of dinner and cards!

I'm excited on a number of levels and realizing too that this is the kind of community I want around me wherever we live. I don't know that I've ever had close neighbors who were also friends. I hope I can make that happen again when we come back to Charlotte.

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