2 thoughts

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

Since Mr. A and I started talking about moving, we spent a lot of time trying on different lives.  We would imagine what our lives would be like in different cities.  It was interesting to try to figure out how we could keep the good parts of our lives here and improve on the areas where we weren’t completely satisfied now.

In all that talking, one of the few areas I am not satisfied now is the lack of Chinese language instruction options for the girls.   We have cobbled together a passable arrangement of Chinese lessons in our home (1.5 hours per week for M), an hour of review with FIL, and Chinese preschool language class and Chinese dance class taught in Chinese at the local heritage Chinese school.  None of the classes are taught by professional teachers and it is extremely unlikely that the girls will becoming fluent with these efforts.

Another issue we hoped to address if we had to move is finding a more diverse neighborhood than the one we currently live in.  There is a surprising number of Asian/white families on our street, compared to the larger neighborhood (One family with a hapa dad & 2 hapa kids, One white mom with two adopted Asian kids, One mixed couple with a hapa kid, and our family out of maybe 10 houses.)  But the neighborhood is pretty white.  The neighborhood school is about 20% kids of color which probably means 3 kids per class of 20 kids on average.   This isn’t the best diversity percentage in the area’s suburban schools (the only schools Mr. A would consider) but it could be worse.

But even though these issues are at the top of my list if we move to a new city, there isn’t much we plan to do to change them if we live here.