The emperor Charlemagne is famously supposed to have said, “To have another language is to possess a second soul”. The sense of this must include the language itself but also an understanding of a second culture that only deep immersion can obtain. A second language truly does seem to endow a child a new kind of understanding and a new way of thinking. From the point of view of a parent, watching a son or daughter acquire a gift this precious is both thrilling and emotional.
My wife and I made our first visit to China to see our son, Nate, during the extended Chinese New Year vacation in the middle of his year with the CIEE Gap-year program. He had already been there for 5 months and by then was functionally fluent in the Mandarin language. He led us on sightseeing trips in Beijing and Shanghai, where were able to meet his host family and some of his new Chinese friends.
We had a wonderful time, and we both felt like Nate was opening up a new world to us, as well as to himself.
After returning from China Nate started college, but in the summer after freshman year returned to China to work as an intern with a company in eastern Shanghai. He had worked hard to get back, wanting to see his old friends and hoping to continue improving his command of the language, particularly reading and writing. He spent the summer hard at work and was able to continue lessons in classical literature with the same tutor he had from the CIEE year.
During that summer I was again able to visit Nate in Shanghai while I was there on business. I was able to get his capable help as a guide and translator for a few days to get to meetings in Shanghai and Suzhou.
It was a great pleasure to see his CIEE host family and some of his friends again during that visit. I recall sitting at the dinner table with my son and his second family, watching him talking with his host father in low tones of the musical Chinese language. I could see that Nate had truly joined the life of this wonderful group of people during his year with them, and a relationship of deep affection, trust and understanding had developed.
It had been very hard to give up our son for a year so far away, but in retrospect the decision was easy. All of us feel a debt of gratitude to CIEE for making it possible.