Léa Bourgoin

After some family problems and some bug with Skype, Vanessa and I can finally talk!

Vanessa was born in Taipei, in Taiwan and her parents are from Taiwan too. She is a first American generation. She can also speak Chinese which is her first language but she is more comfortable with English. She has travelled a lot and she’s going back to China and Taiwan every three years.

Last summer she went to Europe, one of her dreams. She visited France, Switzerland and Italy. Her parents believe that it’s good to travel when we are kids because we can learn things that are not in books.

To her mind, United States is a multicultural country because there are lots of races and it’s a country of immigrants. She thinks that Americans are proud of their culture. They like to help neighboring countries; they think that if they can change their country, they can change the world.

I was curious about Thanksgiving and I asked a few questions about it.

She told me that her friends who are not born here don’t do Thanksgiving but it depends on their family. For example, the step father of Vanessa is white so she does Thanksgiving and eats turkey. She also does it with her Asian family but they eat Chinese food, it’s their own way to celebrate that. And she also does it with the family of her friends.

It is interesting to see how its origins influenced her way of appropriating American culture.