I went to volunteer in this place less than a block from my home. They work with children—and from the looks of it, with newly arriving children from China to tutor them and teach them English. I don’t really like working with children, but the whole thing went largely uneventfully. At first, I thought it’d be a problem to be asking to volunteer in some Chinese place since, being as I’m rebelling somewhat against my Chinese culture and that I was raised in Puerto Rico, my Chinese is abysmal at best. I only know the very simplest basic understanding of Cantonese. I don’t know a single word in Mandarin—the dialect that most Chinese speak—except for the well-known “ni hao.” But it was fine. They just told me to give juice and cookies to the kids and help around the classroom. I didn’t have to do any of the actual teaching.
The whole thing went pretty uneventfully, but there was this one thing that happened that I thought I should mention. I gave some apple juice to a girl that seemed to be around 5 years old. Once I gave it to her, she asked me, “Will this make me fat?” I stayed there for a few seconds, perplexed and pondering why would a 5-year-old be worried about their weight. I then answered: No. She then asked: Why? I stare at her again for a few seconds trying to figure out what to tell her. I finally respond with what has to be the most vague answer: Because it’s apple juice.
This is one reason why I don’t like working with kids. They ask too many questions. And those questions are generally pretty easily answered, but I was definitely not expecting that question. I would’ve never thought that a 5-year-old would be worrying about her weight. It’s that a bit too early?
I won’t say that I enjoyed it, but it was better than I was expecting it to be. I didn’t quite like the people I was working with, but that might’ve just been my cynical side at work.
