Yesterday was great; I took parting a webinar talking about how to home school for high school next year. My opinion was verified that my son Nate is a gifted child when I asked how to give credit for high school classes that he took earlier. Not to a brag too much, but he has always ALWAYS loved science and a co-op I joined had biology taught by scientist. I jumped at that class for him so in third grade he learned about cells, DNA and dissection. Okay so cutting up something isn’t his cup of tea but he learned lots and still talks about that class. He has done earth science and this year we did chemistry. His science requirements maybe complete for high school; unless he wants to take physics or chemistry II. He also excels in foreign languages and took years of conversational Spanish from Kindergarten to fourth grade.
Since he is gifted I think it would be a mistake to place him in a public school at this stage and I am super glad that Lee Benz is there to say how to write a transcript showing his talents. He took Introduction to Choral Conducting in sixth grade and that would be a college level course. Not sure how to put that on a transcript I feel an email to “Lee” coming!
Today was my Chinese lesson and I had a compliment for my teacher. I spoke to another Chinese friend who said my pronunciation of Chinese was very good, not good for a foreigner just good. Today’s lesson was some simple phrases to say and names of family members. We also talked about names like how in China you call your mother’s sister one name and your father’s sister another but because you are younger you I would never use their name only their title. This explains why Caro, Zhufang, can’t call me Toni or Ziyu easily, by doing so I am asking her to buck the traditions she known all her life. In China you show respect for a person by using the correct title where in America you show respect for people by how you behave toward them. Or like how my son calls my best friend Aunt Ellen. We aren’t biological sisters but that is how respect is shown in that case. When we lived in Tennessee our neighbor wanted Nate to just call her Donna, that wasn’t working for me a child calling an adult by her first name didn’t work for me so we compromised and he was able to call her Miss Donna. Perhaps our two cultures are so different after all; I can’t bring myself to call my parents anything but mom and dad although I know their names. I was raised to use titles for people older than me, instructors, or in a higher position at work and only after they asked me to call them something else could I do differently.
After my lesson I took the school bus back home and had lunch at KFC. As I walked back I was shocked of my reverie by someone across the street calling me. Cyrus, one of my teacher class students was saying hello! That was neat and the amazed looks from the passing people was too cool!!! It is nice having people to talk to and hopefully they will speak with other foreigners as well. I never thought about how lonely it can be to come to a land where you don’t speak the language and few people speak your language. It must be very hard so I urge every Chinese person who speaks even a little English to try at least to say hi or hello. Who knows you might just put a smile on the face of a foreigner who hears a familiar word.
Well until later, Toni aka Ziyu 紫玉