Day 3

Day 3 - Maxine Hong Kingston and a Visit to the Asia Society

01/09/2025

Elijah Saldaña Kowalchuk

Today, we started the day by learning about Maxine Hong Kingston, a Chinese American novelist famous for her books and short stories, and talking about her experience as an Asian American. We read her story called "No Name Woman." Sadly, we didn't have time to discuss the reading together. Next, Ambika's mom, Dr. Vasanthi Jayaraman, told us about her stories and experiences as an Indian American and her struggles as a woman in India. This talk gave me a whole new perspective on Indian culture, and I learned a lot about the struggles of immigrating to the U.S., which I didn't know about before. 

After lunch, we went to the Asia Society, where we got a guided tour of the exhibits. We learned a little about different Asian countries and their cultures, including Japan, Vietnam, South Korea, China, and India. We then went down to their theatre room and played the drums from the five different cultures we had learned about to play traditional and popular songs in that culture. We then explored their exhibit, Space City: Art in the Age of Artemis, which explores the mysteries and wonders of space and how we perceive it through the work of 31 different artists. This exhibit was my favorite part of the day as some of the artworks were interactive and impressive like this sculpture of the sun made out of gummy bears at the end of the exhibit. We boarded the Asias Society's virtual bullet train, which took us to the five countries we had previously learned about. We visited their famous attractions and beautiful cities and learned more about the country's population, culture, food, art, and history.

    

We then returned to school, where we spent the last hour of our day reading about the Thai language section of our Thailand guidebook. This reading helped us understand the characters used, useful phrases, and cultural norms about respect.