So, we continue to provide the girls with opportunities to use their Chinese for volunteering and performances.  Last Saturday, almost 15 year old DD#1 “Charlotte” volunteered as a check-in person for the “Minced Pork Rice” 滷肉飯 cook off near Atlanta.  A good percentage of the folks spoke Chinese checking in.  Charlotte also got to meet many second generation young professionals 10-15 years her senior.  Her co-volunteer here is a Malaysian American professional.  She had so much fun, but too many cups of milk tea!

As for me, I tasted no fewer than nine to ten styles of minced pork rice and I was stuffed!!

As for our band, my girls received a gig invite to play at a dinner banquet after a local golf tournament event this past Sunday.  In trying to come up with a Chinese band name, DD#2 “Georgia” proclaimed that we are “獨一無二“, as in unique.  Charlotte and I immediately looked at each other and she shouted out “杜ㄧ無二”, replacing the first character of the expression with our last name, which has the fourth tone instead of the second tone.  So, there you have it, the name of our family band!

For our performance, Charlotte played and sang 周華健‘s 「朋友 」again, as that was the song requested by the organizer.  It is simply a classic song suitable for most gathering.  It was very well received.

Then, Georgia performed Malaysian singer 四葉草’s 「好想你」.  However, this was the biggest sound stage that we have performed in so far and, given our band newbie status without any coach, we weren’t ready for the fact that the sound we heard was reverberated, delayed, and distorted reflections bouncing from the rear wall of the venue.  When we were doing our initial sound set-up, we kept telling the AV guy to turn off the echo effect to no effect.  So, that was what was happening.  So, without stage monitor speakers directed toward Georgia, she couldn’t hear the sound correctly and was singing off tune.  After a few tries, we couldn’t get it right.  So, Charlotte and I performed Ben E King’s “Stand By Me” instead and that went very well.

So, here is the video of our performance, with Georgia’s rehearsal video as the replacement for her part.  All the practices that went into it, including Georgia’s intro, are fantastic in consolidating their Chinese, both in terms of their proficiency and psychic.

Lastly, summer is coming up!  I have been invited to speak at a southeast regional Taiwanese American summer gathering on, what else, raising English-Chinese bilingual children in the US!  I will be asking members of my FB group to provide me pictures and videos of what they have been able to accomplish to include in the talk!!  Guess what, I am going to let my girls do part of the presentation, ’cause they are the presentation!