Teaching My Family About Outside Cultures
Every country has a different culture, lifestyle, and economy. My country is a developing country. After a terrible war, everyone started from nothing to develop each family’s standard of living. My parents were very patient and tried hard to create a good family for us. Now everything is changed in my country. A lot of outside cultures have come into my country such as clothes, music, lifestyle, and so on.
My family is considered as a modern family but we still keep some traditional lifestyles. I’m the first person who got an idea to bring some western cultures to my family. Once I prepared a birthday for my mother. Actually, my parents never knew their birthday because my grandparents didn’t care about this. So I decided to choose mother’s day as her birthday. On that day, I went to buy a cake and wrote her name on it. And I asked my sisters to cooperate with me. Four of us learned how to sing a song called “In the World Only Mother is the Best” in Chinese, because my family is Chinese-Cambodian. The party began at night, when my parents were watching TV. We all came down, lighted the candles and sang along until we reached their seats. She was surprised and asked if today was her birthday. We all laughed and I explained to her that today was Mother’s day and we wanted to celebrate it as her birthday. Then we told her to close her eyes, make a wish and blow out the candles. Four of us kissed her one by one. Actually, we rarely give a kiss to our parents since we are grown up. It doesn’t mean we don’t love them but we are kind of shy. My mother was excited until her tear dropped down. My father started to make a joke by asking when his birthday is. Then we all laughed out loud. This memory always reminds me of having a good time with my family. From now on, we started to prepare a birthday for everyone in the family, so every year we could hear six times of birthday song and eat six cakes together.
Birthday is a small activity but it brings us the sound of the laugh, a smile from our face, and a sweet memory in life.