A fun event for ESL learners over the last few years has been a cookie decorating party at Christmas. Most of these internationals come from Asia or the Middle East and did not grow up with ovens. Thus, they do not know how to bake and Christmas cookies, that essential of American Christmas, are a mystery to them.
We gather at our house on a mid-December evening and turn the kitchen into total chaos. Each of the ESL teachers brings plain cookies and decorating stuff, and the families all gather around the big center island and decorate the cookies to take home. Last night we had 12 adults and 8 children ranging from 10 down to 3. You can imagine the amount of colored sugar and icing that hit the floor!
The kids last about 30 minutes and then spin off to the Lego in the family room or the games in the living/dining room, bouncing back in turns to do another cookie or two. There is much consumption. The husbands, brought along to enjoy the fun, last about as long as the kids. Most are engineers, and they drift off to the dining room for a little more adult conversation. This leaves the women in the kitchen and conversation – the whole goal of the class – ranges far and wide.
Yesterday one of the Chinese women had a minor car accident on the icy roads. A Middle Eastern woman is on her third winter in Michigan and three of the Chinese women listen intently as she describes how to drive on ice and not slide into the ditch. Fascinating to hear this described by someone who has learned winter driving on the fast track. Lots of new vocabulary!
Cooking practices always surface in the conversation, and a lot of parenting discussions. Two of the ESL teachers are moms of younger kids and great mentors to these women struggling to survive, keep house, speak English, and raise children in a totally new world.
The children are a delightful mix of cultures, blond heads alongside dark ones. English is no problem for them, nor is social interaction. They are the next generation of new Americans, and cookies are to be consumed – no matter who made them or decorated them.
By the time the evening ends, I am quite ready for it to end. But as each family walks out the door bearing freshly decorated cookies of their own design, chatting merrily with each other in somewhat fractured English but English none the less, the value of the event takes root. This is not about sugar on the floor or icing on the cupboards – it’s about community.
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