#visiting CA and seeing the HUGE amounts of mexican culture was INSANE for me

[evelyn-art-05]

I really do hope that someday parents stop thinking their kids should learn English first, or really any local language, instead of their native tongue when living somewhere

My abuelito didn't learn Spanish first when he was young because his parents didn't want him to grow up "troubled", and so he never fully learned Spanish. And when they died, he ended up forgetting how to speak it at all! He couldn't teach it to my mom, and so my mom couldn't teach it to me, and so much of the culture that we would've had is gone because of that

It's so, SO incredibly important to have sole sort of connection to your family's culture, even just through language, especially when you live in an area where it's extremely lacking!! That entire side of my family has been feeling that disconnect for so long, and my mom has been trying to make up for it by learning every traditional dish she can because learning an entire language is so difficult for her at her age

Please don't think that your kids, or that you yourself, should learn the local most spoken language because it will be "easier." It's just going to make you grieve that connection you could've had