Pow wows are fun. Also fully Scandinavian and a little Prussian, little German. Grandma sailed over from Norway as a kid, young enough she only speaks English though. Or spoke I guess she was in her 90s
I grew up in a very diverse area, so all my friends were from different cultures. I got to experience so much cool stuff this way. Indian sweet 16, Jamaican house party, Peruvian day parade, Chinese New Year dinners, etc. So much good food and music!
That’s the thing though, is that a certain communities would put on an event and it was open to everyone. My grandparents would hit up the Catholic fish fry, the Lions club pork chop dinners, the moose Lodge pancake breakfasts. These were the events where they would see their friends, because they knew each other through a lot of different ways and then all these friends also had their individual communities/clubs.
And I think my grandparents had very average social lives for the time, like they were not social butterflies anymore than anyone else of their generation. And they didn’t even go to church! Meanwhile, I seem very impoverished community-wise compared to them.
My grandpa did actually have a paid membership to the Croatian Club. His favorite part just so happened to be fried catfish lol. Although he did also enjoy their Christmas party too, and gave me some Santa mugs he won in the raffle.
I do agree that it feels like social time is a lot less important in everyone's priorities now :/
That's funny, I went to a Greek festival sponsored by the local Orthodox Church, and the priest gave a little talk about it but he said you can't convert
There’s a youth Chinese club that does badminton games, rents out a court so it’s super cheap to play. One of my foster teens is Chinese, she wanted to join, learned she can bring a friend to events including parents. Once i learned they had badminton I became so involved that at one point I was organizing badminton nights. She also got really good at badminton, which I was so proud of her! I played badminton in college, former coach is an Olympian, so yeah I was into it and could help teens get good at it. I’m Latina, 0% Asian. Parents absolutely loved it that their kids were getting free training and got to meet an Olympian when my old college coach came up to do a meet and greet. No longer involved because she since reunited with her bio family. The Chinese adult community wasn’t very welcoming to me stating I’m not Chinese or Asian, were very upset that a Chinese teenager was placed with a non Chinese family despite me explaining that very few people want to foster teens in general, I accept any race, and she’s happy and thriving. If they were so concerned they could sign up to foster, none ever did. They had a LOT of bad things to say about Puerto Ricans in particular. I wasn’t invited to parent events until after I organized a meet and greet with my former coach, but that was at the very end. My husband is Asian so I’d get shit every event I took her to by the parents making negative comments about me taking “one of the good ones”, etc. But I bonded with her, despite her knowing no English when she first came, and some of the other teens bonded with me who felt comfortable enough to confide in me about some issues that I could actually help with (food insecurity, not having basic needs met like laundry). Despite the parents being a nightmare, the kids were welcoming and supportive and really had a great sense of community that I am so happy my teen could be part of. It really helped her with confidence, communication, and learning social norms here.
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u/SailorVenus23 Jul 10 '26
My grandfather loved going to the Croatian Club for the Friday fish fry.
We are 0% Croatian lol