Reasons why Rachel is smart

In my last post, I casually mentioned that my friend Rachel is super smart. I wanted to expand on that in this post. This is by no means an exhaustive list. It is merely a few of my own personal observations after spending countless hours with her.
Rachel is the only person I know who owns a loom. She actually knows how to use it, too. Rachel weaves. As in, she can make fabric from scratch. No, you did not read that wrong; it was her major in college. Her blog name, textiler? That's because she actually makes textiles. I know.
When I told Rachel that we had planned on naming our 3rd child Ethan, she said something like "I really like that name, too, but John (her husband) wanted a name for our boys that had a more cacaphonous sound." Um, what?
The name she DID choose for her second son was Nicholas. When she told her grandparents this, her grandfather was concerned, because the name Nicholas was the name of a villian in a very classic, old novel. And Rachel new exactly what book her grandfather was talking about.
When Rachel's oldest child, Peter, was a baby just starting to say words, she didn't think he was talking very much. But then one day, she picked him up from the nursery at her church and the ladies there told her that Peter was talking in Chinese. (They attend a chinese church, since John is Chinese, but neither Rachel nor John actually speak Chinese. ) My point is that intelligence is obviously passed down, genetically. So Peter was just a product of brilliant gene placement.
There are many more reasons why Rachel is very intelligent, and I am sure one could write a whole book about it. But I will close with another Rachel-ism that is precious to my heart. Once when Rachel's mother was visiting her, (her mother lives on the East Coast, where Rachel is from; I'm convinced that this is one of the reasons she knows so much.) she told me that when Rachel was little, she would talk to everyone she saw. She would pass people on the street or in the store and say "Hello, Mrs. Lady! Hello, Mr. Man!" I love that story.