2-2018: Reading

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Christine (11) read one of the short stories from “Six Dreams” (六個夢) by famed author 瓊瑤. It starts out like this:

第一個夢　追尋

民國初年，北平。那一天，對婉君而言，真像是場大夢。一清早，家裡擠滿了姨姨姑姑，到處亂哄哄的。媽媽拿出一件繡滿了花的紅色緞子衣服，換掉了她平日穿慣的短襖長裙，七八個人圍著她，給她搽胭脂抹粉，戴上珠串珠花，遮上頭帔，然後媽媽抱了她一下，含著淚說：「小婉，離開了媽媽，別再鬧孩子脾氣了。到了那邊，就要像個大人一樣了，要聽話，要乖，要學著侍候公公婆婆，知道嗎？」婉君緊閉著嘴，呆呆的坐著，像個小洋娃娃。然後，她被硬塞進那個掛著簾子、垂著珠珞的花轎，在鞭炮和鼓樂齊鳴中，花轎被抬了起來。直到此刻，她才突然被一種恐怖和驚惶所征服，她緊緊的抓住轎桿，「哇」的一聲哭了起來，拚命叫媽媽。於是媽媽的臉在轎門口出現了，用非常柔和的聲音說：「小婉，好好的去吧，到那兒，大家都會喜歡你的。別哭了，當心把胭脂都哭掉了。」

2-2018: Music

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Since Atlanta has a large Chinese American community and we learned to play the guitar in North Carolina, we formed a family Chinese pop band “Tu & Only” or “杜ㄧ無二” in Chinese. Instead of only being consumers of Chinese content, we are now content producers and applying our Chinese language skills through entertainment and music to give back to the community.

7-2018: Public speaking & music

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Our dad and we (Caroline 15, Christine 12) were invited to give a presentation on heritage children in the US learning Chinese at a southeast Taiwanese American summer retreat. Our band was also invited to play a few songs late afternoon. It was a great opportunity for every one of us to sharpen our public speaking and Chinese linguistic skill.

We were so happy that a few families across the country were following our footsteps and learning Chinese by leaps and bounds. Here is a video we presented at the meeting.