A couple things have happened recently that have been reminders that we live in a very metropolitan area and made me laugh. First, I just can't seem to stop myself from volunteering. I need to learn to sit on my hands or something. But I was at the library with Henry for their free rhyme time and they announced that they will only be doing their program every other month since they are lacking volunteers. I had talked about having the few people with babies in my ward over to my house or the church and running something similar but this just sounded a lot simpler, so I signed up to volunteer and went to the first training meeting. A mother there said she would be willing to set up a yahoo group for the library volunteers. I said I had had more success with the google group I had set up and I liked using google docs and she said yahoo had something similar. So I asked if she worked at yahoo or something and she said yes. I thought that was very funny. I told her I really didn't care which one if that was the case, but she went ahead and set up the google group.
On Sunday we were at Erik's parents' house for dinner and I was telling them that I just bothered to take a look at Lael's classroom last week and see what the genetic makeup of the class was. I told them Lael was the only white child and there was one black child and the rest were all Hispanic (which is what you'd expect in a Spanish immersion class). And Oliver said, "No, mom. There is one black girl and all the rest of the kids are white." I think it's great that my kids are so integrated that they don't even notice, much less feel intimidated. I've come a long way from Utah, where it was 98 percent white through high school for me, although I doubt it would be quite that ratio now. I guess Oliver was right that Lael is the only one in the "non-Hispanic white" category. I really don't get the point in having to check this "politically correct" box, but it has popped up on many forms lately. Anyway, I think it's great we live in this culturally diverse area and I love that my kids are learning to speak Spanish, with a great accent to boot - although Lael just walks around talking gibberish with a Spanish accent right now. But it has worked out great for us and I know it will serve them well in the future. Now if I could just find the time to learn Spanish ...
3 comments:
I love the story about all the kids being white in her class but one. That is so funny. I miss the fact that my kids are learning Spanish some days. Oh I did not realize you actually volunteered for the library when you told me about that on the phone. You are one busy lady. FYI my blog is going private. Drop me an e-mail and I will send you an invite. Insane people read your blog. You should have read the comments the former home owner left on my blog. I deleted them, but man she went off. I felt a little bad, but hey a blog is a place to vent.
Too cool. I miss that urban life ...not much diversity around here. Way to embrace it!
Diversity is all over in my family. I love watching each of the children as they notice the "differences" between them and their cousins/brothers/sisters and get excited that they are all special just like we tell them they are. One of my sister's friends was married to a man that was 1/2 Korean and 1/2 German. She is 100% caucasian. When she registers her kids for school she checks the "other" box under ethnicity on her kids school forms and writes the word "human".
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