Whenever I go to pick up my daughters from school or their various cultural activities, they are screaming and laughing with their friends.
They are the only Asians in the group.
What can I do? Nothing. Friendship can't be forced.
They don't want to go to *culture camp. They want to stay at home and swim with their friends. Meredith isn't ready to spend a week away from home. It would cost $1600 to send 2 kids.
Maybe in a couple of years.
*a camp for internationally adopted kids
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2 comments:
I didn't even know culture camp existed.
The IA adoption community here in Portland, OR, is incredibly pushy about this. Lao-tzu forfend that you don't have your two-year-old daughter in Mandarin immersion preschool, your six-year-old doing traditional dancing, or your tween in a full-on Chinese immersion program.
The first year I attended the local Families With Children From China CNY event I looked out across the sea of Asian kiddos doing kung-fu, lion dances, pre-1949 songs, and other "traditional" Chinese activities, I asked the table full of other Caucasian parents "I wonder if a Chinese couple raising an American orphan would teach her square dancing and how to play the banjo?" I didn't get so much as a grin...
Our kiddo has some Asian friends, some black friends, and some white friends; if she wants to learn more about her Chinese heritage, there's lots of options for her, and we'll be happy to make that happen. But she'll always be an ABC, and no amount of Mandarin or lion dancing will change that.
Maybe if we can download some kick-ass Hong Kong hip-hop, tho...
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