Life's like that!

May 20, 2008

Me? Teaching Mandarin? Oh-la-la!

The thought of teaching Mandarin and the Chinese culture at K-12 schools has been drifting in my head for a while. I took Chinese as a second language up to GCE "A" Level, and I genuinely love this subject and subject. Although my family no longer keeps in touch with distant relatives in China, I am proud to be a Chinese and would like my daughter to learn about this half of her heritage (husband will take care of the Cambodian heritage, Allah SWT willing).

Spoke with husband about this last night, and he is supportive of my proposal. Actually when his father heard that husband is marrying a Chinese girl. he was very happy because in Cambodia most of the bankers there are Chinese (Chinese daughter-in-law = smart Chinese girl). Nowadays when I meet someone new, I would introduce myself as a Chinese Singaporean Muslim, because many people (and I mean MANY people) assume that I'm from China. I guess I'm trying to highlight the fact that there are Chinese in Southeast Asia, and Singapore is NOT part of China.

Anyway, going back to the topic of me teaching Mandarin: I want to spread my love of this language around and also wear the hat of a teacher for a while before I decide that I want to abandon my passion for librarianship. I'm definitely not a desk bound person as I love to move around, but working in a library means that I'm desk bound most of the time. Being a freelance teacher allows me to move around places and meet different people. Will enlist my dear sister's help during summer to sort all these issues out, Allah SWT willing.