Translated…
There is, a high percentage of newly migrated second generations in my daughter’s school, compared to other schools in the area. And so, during the summer, the school set up a free Vietnamese class for those interested in learning about the language and the culture, three days a week, the students were, introduced to Southeastern Asian languages and cultures.
“Mom, the cat is in the Vietnamese zodiac! Let me recite it or you, rat, ox, tiger, cat, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and hog.”, after class, my daughter shared with me, this new “finding” of hers excitedly. As she was growing up, in counting up the twelve zodiacs, she’d always, insisted on adding the cat as the thirteenth, seemed to have, found someone who’d, understand her, and, started, responding to the Vietnamese culture. Such an interesting cultural difference, it’s something I’d heard about, for the very first time!
the classroom as a miniature version of the world, not my photograph…
There’s the mix-age of students in the Vietnamese course, the instructor used videos, children’s books, the nursery rhymes, and conversation skills, to help this group of children from K through the higher grades of the elementary school years, to experience the Vietnamese culture, and the traditional phonetic spellings of the terms, the abilities of reading and writing, weren’t the focuses of this class.
And, the best way to know a culture is through foods, and the kids looked forward to the DIY cooking sessions that came once every week, after my daughter had her hands-on with Vietnamese spring roll and cooked the butterfly noodles herself, she’d experienced the methods of making the foods, as different than how it was done here in Taiwan, as she’d passed through a Vietnamese shop, she’d suggested, that we all go in for some food.
I’d still recalled, how as I tried explaining the concepts of “foreign spouse” to my daughter, she’d asked me, “what? iPad?” it’d made me laugh. The population of newly migrated people had risen to half a million in Taiwan already, and, the children only knew of iPad, but NOT those, foreign wedded brides, does this also showed, the lacking in the education of teaching the children about the various cultures too?
teaching kids about the various cultures should start earlier on in life, not my photo…
But, I feel, ashamed, that all I knew about Vietnam, were from my textbooks from way back when, and from my daughter’s heart experiences and her observations, her interactions with people from Vietnam, along with her classmates with Vietnamese mothers. “Why did the Vietnam War happen?”, she’d recalled how the footages shown in class had children who were killed during the war, she’d started discussing about it with me, and so, we’d started, looking online for the answers. As my daughter started showing her care and concern of how “So-and-So’s mom seems to be a foreign bride too, don’t know if she was also from Vietnam or not?”, I thought to myself, that the seed of accepting the various cultures had already, slowly, taken up root inside of her mind.
So, this, is getting to know a different culture by being educated on the subjects, and because of how the population makeup here is no longer of Asians from Taiwan, China, there are, those from Southeast Asia who’d become, part of the community, so, this program is, very vital, and by introducing the younger generations to the various cultures, they will become, more accepting to that everybody is NOT the same, and, becoming more tolerant toward people who are different than they are…so, this, is an EXCELLENT program that the school had, started.
Life, the Obstacle Course 