It’s been interesting to watch the evolution of the cultural identity of our eight year old son. When we first moved here three years ago, he was very clear that he was American. It even got to the point where he was cheering for Real Madrid just to be different from the other kids. Lately one of his best friends is from an very Catalan family (the ones that do a gigantic Tio instead of Santa Claus). In the last month now, whenever he talks about his friend, he starts speaking Spanish with an ultra-Catalan accent. He now identifies himself as Catalan if you ask him where he’s from.
We were recently planning his birthday party and we wanted if he wanted to have any kind of theme (in past years, it has been Thomas the Train, Dinosaurs, Cars, etc). Although his favorite thing right now is Pokémon, he didn’t want it to be the theme because he was worried that some kids at school might not know what it is. Instead, he suggested, we should make the theme Barça, since everyone in his class likes Barça (he doesn’t like soccer very much himself). We finally settled on Hotwheels (pronounced in Spanish with a very closed Catalan accent), although he doesn’t play with them, his friend loves them.
3 comments:
Very interesting! So cute that he is getting into the culture...We live in Madrid and my youngest, who is 9, is a big Barca fan...so funny how they have to assert their differences sometimes...Happy Birthday to yours...
Perhaps you should re-title the entry... 'Birth of a Borg' comes to mind.
Thank you! I think it's great that he doesn't feel like an outsider anymore. Of course, we don't want him to lose his international perspective, but there's relatively little danger of that.
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