My Father and Yao Ming
My second grader participated in the Japanese speech contest organized by Chicago Japan cultural center. He won the 3rd place in his group!
He went to a Japanese immersion Montessori school for preschool and kindergarten, that’s where he learned Japanese. Yoko sensei is fantastic. A good teacher makes all the difference.
His Chinese is lagging behind his Japanese. When he was 3, there was no good Chinese school around our area, so we started him with the Japanese immersion program. In a strange way, this actually worked out for us. He learned some kanji, which are Chinese characters. Now he goes to weekend Chinese school, with my tutoring during the week. Teaching him Chinese can be fun and a struggle at the same time. I may blog about it in a separate post.
The title of his speech is My Father and Yao Ming. Below is the English translation provided by Yoko sensei.
I’m going to talk about my father and Yao Ming because both of them came from China.
Yao Ming is a basketball player. His mother used to be a captain of the Chinese National basketball team. When Yao Ming was 9 years old, he became very tall but he was very thin, so people used to call him a ‘chopstick’. Nobody imagined he would be a basketball player. However after he was enrolled in the Sports Academy at age 12, he became very good at basketball. In 1997, he could play for the Shanghai Sharks as a Chinese professional basketball player. He also contributed a lot to the Chinese National team at 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. He now plays for the Huston Rockets in the United States.
My father came to the US when he was 24 years old. He was almost the same age as Yao Ming when he came to the US. What he missed most when he came here was his family in China. The second thing he missed was Chinese food. When he misses his family and food, he goes to a good Chinese restaurant. I imagine Yao Ming also missed his family and Chinese food when he came to America.
My father and Yao Ming both came from China and they are working very hard in the US. Both of them miss their family and food, but they work really hard. I also like to do my best and work as hard as my father and Yao Ming.
Thanks Yoko sensei and Benjamin. You are both very kind to me in this speech. I have to say I got a little emotional during the speech.
Here are some pictures from the speech:
Here is the award certificate. He also got 50 dollars. He chose to spend on Pokemon and Mario Brothers gameboy cartridges.
