Speaking English

This morning I met a friend and had some coffee together. We talked about the importance of immigrants speaking English when they come to this country. After the coffee I went to teach at a company, engineers that come here for a few months and then return to Shanghai. The engineers come here and they work LONG days of 12 - 16 hours. They don't have transportation, so the company puts them in apartments that are walking distance to the office. They walk to the office, work long hours, then walk home and sleep. During the weekends they are often tired and just want to sleep, or don't have transportation to travel and see the area. The survive here, but barely. Then the company wonders why they have such a bad attitude when they allow the engineers to visit the USA. These engineers have good English skills, but they are hesitant to go out into the public. Even in the office they don't really have casual conversations with their English speaking coworkers. Talking with my friend reminded me of when my family returned back from Korea. Lindsey went to Korea when she was 3, and came back when she was in 5th grade. She spoke English before she went to Korea and spoke ok when she came back. Jayne was 1 when she went to Korea and didn't speak much, and came back when she was in 3rd grade, her English as very minimal. Sarah was born in Korea and didn't know more than 10 English words when she came to the US. When we arrived at San Francisco airport and the seat belt lights went off Sarah said something in Korean and the other two girls and their mother laughed. I asked what she said and I was told that Sarah said that now we were in the USA that they could only speak English. The reason it was so funny was because she was the one that didn't speak English, but she was adamant that they should speak ONLY English. When I was in the Army I lived in Huntsville, AL. When I was there I had a Boston Terrier and took the dog to dog shows around Alabama and Tennessee. It was fun and I met some great people. My dog did okay, but wasn't ever going to do very good, just okay. One of the men that I met, and I became good friends with was an old German man. He had a very nice german shepherd that did about as well as my dog in competitions. He and I started going to dog shows together in his old VW. As we drove to dog shows he began telling me about himself and his story was fantastic! He was a scientist in Nazi Germany during the Second World War. After the war he was riding his bike from southern Germany to his home in Hamburg in northern Germany. He stopped at his old friend's house on his way. His friend, Vincent Von Braun, was the "father of the V2 rocket". He was putting a team together and asked my friend if he wanted to go to the USA to help develop a rocket program. My friend said okay, and called his wife that he would be back in six months, since that was how long the contract was for. Von Braun was sitting next to my friend on the plane as it took off and said that it would be the last time they would see Germany. When asked why he said that in six months the families would be brought to the USA and they would end up settling there. The team developed the rockets that sent men to the moon. They ended up taking their families to Huntsville because it reminded the scientists of the mountainous Alps. When the families came to Alabama Von Braun called them all together and told them that they will only speak English from then on, no more German, even at home. So, that was that ...