My name is Zahra Halakhe and my Chinese name is 何雅薇。我十二岁。我是美国人。我住在 Washington D.C. I’m in seventh grade at the Washington International School (WIS), but I started Chinese at Oyster Adams. I am writing about the impact of Chinese culture on my growth.
At Oyster, we started Chinese in fourth grade because that’s the year you go into the Middle School building. We learned once a week in fourth and fifth grade, but we didn’t learn anything. Then, in sixth grade, we got an amazing teacher and we learned Chinese every day! So technically, I’ve been learning Chinese for three years, but really only one.
Last year at my old school, for Chinese New Year, everyone who took Chinese went to Karaoke at the East Dumpling House. It was so fun! We got boba or a smoothie (I got a mango smoothie) and we made dumplings! I’m vegetarian, so I didn’t eat the dumplings, but they had this delicious bread called Chinese Sesame Scallion bread.
We first got a room to sing in, separated by grade, with a ton of microphones. We were then told we could order drinks. Afterward, we had more singing time, but we had to stop for a bit to make dumplings! It was really fun being taught to make the dumplings. After that, we sang again and then we ate. Then we had an hour of singing time before every grade came out and we all sang “Let It Go” from Frozen. Then we took the metro back to school, and at that point, we had to go home.
It was an overall really fun experience. It was so fun that parents of kids in the other Chinese classes complained until that class got to go too! I would love to do it again if given the chance.
