Sing It

I'm spending the week with a 5th grade class, and this morning one of
the students is celebrating her birthday. Mom brought cupcakes, and
the kids were of course quite excited about that; in standard birthday
form we sang "Happy Birthday". It's become customary in our two quick
years of living in Beijing, that the English rendition is followed by
the Chinese, "zhu ni sheng ri kuai le" - pretty cool!

Even cooler though was that just after the class sang in Mandarin,
Laila offered, "can I sing to her in Arabic?"

"Sure, that's awesome," I responded.

She sang.

"Hey, I can sing it in Korean," said Katie.

"Go for it, rockstar!"

She sang.

"Mr. Koch, I can sing it Malaysian."

"Do it, man!"

He sang.

"I know Hebrew."

"Sweet! Let's hear it, Ofec."

He sang.

We finished the celebration with a rendition in Finnish, again by Laila.

We've had a lot of birthday talk lately. Parker turned 12 this week,
it was my brother Robbie's birthday on Tuesday, Joanne and Granny have
been thoughtfully planning a trip for some birthday of mine that is
coming up. And I guess it is a sign that we accept China as "home",
that my boys instinctively transition from the first verse in English
into the second verse in Mandarin when we sing the birthday song.

Joanne and the boys and I don't have much of an idea about what lies
in store for us when July roles around and our tour here ends. Maybe
we will go home to Virginia, maybe we will hang on for one more year
here, maybe somewhere else, who knows? In any case, I like the idea
that my boys may be the one to say, "hey, I can sing it to you in
Mandarin!"


Sent from the iPad of
Paul R. Koch
http://dugahole.blogspot.com/