More in common than we think

A funny coincidence happened today. My sister and I were chatting in YM, and she reminded me that I had posted some songs from childhood on the blog several weeks ago, and she was looking for that post to write down the words. As we chatted she reminded me of other songs we sang as kids, one of our favourites was

One elephant began to play

Upon a spider's web one day

He thought it was delightful fun

So he called upon another elephant to come

Two elephants began to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They thought it was delightful fun

So they called upon another elephant to come

And so on and so forth until as many elephants as you like are playng on the web.

Well I love to sing these kind of songs to Lucas, because of course he grew up with different songs in France. Plus it gives me great pleasure to see his facial expressions, he thinks I'm crazy (and cute) when I walk around singing silly songs all the time.

So as predicted, I sang the song and he got a weird expression on his face. But not for the reason I expected. Turns out that there's a similar song in French, about an elephant playing on a web. He only knew the first line but thanks to the wonders of the internet I found all the lyrics.

Un éléphant qui se balançait

Sur une toile toile, toile d'araignée

C'était un jeu tellement, tellement amusant

Que tout d'un coup

Ba-da-boum dans la ga-dou!

Deux éléphants...

The tune isn't the same and the words are slighty different (in this version the elephant falls in the mud) but I love when I discover stuff like this. Just another thing that reinforces how we are really all the same people. It always makes me feel more at home in this foreign country.