Dim Sum Lady

Chinese New Year started last week and I went to Sunshine's class to teach them about popular Chinese customs. None of the kids in her class are Chinese, so I felt like that holiday was fair game. I grew up with a lot of Asian friends, spent my summers in Hawaii around a lot of Pacific Islanders, and my dad screamed "WOO FAT" at the actor from Hawaii 5-0, so it's like the Chinese are my people right? Ya. And being African-American just doesnt hold the cache it used to. Now the Presdient is black. I mean, it's just not cool anymore. I am The Man now. I gotta find a new people. Anyways...

Sunshine met author Grace Lin a few months ago and has an autographed copy of her book Dim Sum for Everyone!. So I read that to the kidlets and taught them the about the beauty of dim sum. My parents used to take us to dim sum ALL of the time growing up. Still, when I go home to visit, I make sure that we fit in at least one trip to our favorite Chinese restaurant. When we go there, it's like the theme song of "Cheers" - everybody knows my dad. It's nice. So I made Sunshine's class fried rice and my favorite dim sum dish - little egg tarts. I'm for sure no baker, but they turned out so cute! I did cheat and sprinkle them with sugar so that the kids would find them appealing. Their teacher carried around a tray of little dishes of fried rice and I was their custard pie Dim Sum Lady. I was so incredibly impressed by how many tried the tarts and fried rice. A lot of them threw their little dishes away after they took a few bites, but they tried it and that's so awesome. Some of them even came back for third helpings of the fried rice. Too cute.



After storytime and Dim Sum, we made dragon kites to scare away the bad luck. There were sequins and glue involved, so the kids loved that. Their teacher played Chinese music over the speakers and it was just like being at home with my people. Before they left, Sunshine passed out red bags filled with worksheets about China and New Year, a mandarin orange, an almond cookie and a fortune cookie. I talked the kiddies about the significance of each item and wished them a Happy New Year.



It was cute and fun and I felt like a good mom for doing something with her class. It's the kind of volunteering that I like to do in the classroom. I dont like showing up on party days when everyone else is there. As a teacher, it was hard for me to control all of my students when there were lots of parents there and little siblings running around. So I hate to do that to my kids' teachers. Instead of going to the Christmas party at Sunshine's school, I went in the day before and helped all of the kids make presents to give to their parents. And because Don has to take time off work to watch the little kids while I go in, I dont get to do this often. I would rather the time that Don donates and the energy that I expend, be spent doing something really significant. I want Sunshine to remember that I was there. I think it's more meaningful to do things like this.

So I'll go back. Maybe I'll even do something for African-American history next month. But I dont want to shove my ethnicity down anyone's throat now that I'm a part of the ruling class. That would be gauche.