Kaia’s school’s parent association organized a moms’ night out event tonight at the local Paint N’Pour just a couple blocks from the school. Although I am terrible at painting, I decided I would go for the parent socializing and of course, the drinks that would be covered. Paint N’Pour is a bit different from other similar venues in that the drinks are fully covered (and unlimited, as dangerous as that can be!), and they exclusively serve top-shelf alcohol. They also try to keep the vibe very fun and festive, borderline like painting while at a night club. Given that we had rented an entire room, there was a bit of a premium per entry (this was a self-pay event, so not covered by the parent association or the school at all), but I will say that for what we paid for our two hours, it was time well spent. Our instructor was really engaging and gave really clear, easy-to-follow instructions. He also injected humor into the class throughout our time together. He was also very hands-on, and anyone who had questions was quickly attended to and taken care of. The drinks were also fun: all the specialty cocktails had fun drinks like Picasso Punch or Mona Lisa Margarita. They were also very well made!

I got to chat with some moms I already knew in Kaia’s kindergarten class, a few other moms who had kids on the Spanish track at the school, plus moms of older children on the Mandarin track. The mom I probably spent the most time talking with is originally from Nancheng, China. She was in China until age 18, when she went to Japan for college and really didn’t like it. She ended up coming to the U.S. for a PhD program in chemistry and has been here ever since. We were talking about what Kaia was currently doing for homework and discussed Chinese stroke practice. She told me she was embarrassed to admit that after all these years of living outside of China, she actually has forgotten to write most characters other than the extremely basic ones. Given she rarely writes in Chinese anymore and most communication is digital, she just types it out when she communicates with her family/Chinese friends, so there’s really not much need. It made me feel a little better that sometimes when I am looking at characters that I recognize, I actually have forgotten the stroke order on some of them. I haven’t really written any Chinese regularly since about 2007, so it’s been almost 20 years for me since I would write Chinese every day for class. It’s just another example of how, if you do not use or practice a skill, it will eventually just disappear. I told her that I used to be quite fluent in Taishanese/Toisanese as a child. But after my grandma died, I completely lost the ability to speak it; it’s just another case in point. I can still recognize it now and understand the basic Chinatown-type conversations I hear when I am down there, but that’s about it.

I am really hoping that one day, when Kaia is no longer at this Chinese immersion school, that there will be a desire and an active way for her to retain her Chinese language abilities; I am clearly not enough. It would make me really sad to think that she could possibly lose all these bilingual skills she is learning. But I suppose only time will tell.