International Playground

I feel like yesterday's entries were a little complain-y so today I am going to write about one of the many things I love about NYC. On a large scale, New York City is an international playground. One can find a sampling of almost every culture and nationality in the world here. With that comes the food, the festivals, the dances, the films, the politics, the clothes, the mores, etc. But on a smaller, say, toddler-sized scale New York is quite literally an international playground. I think our experience is enhanced because we are in an academic community full of people from all over the world, but on any given day at our playground here is a sampling of some of the languages we hear: Spanish, Russian, Hebrew, Chinese, Italian, French, German and Portugese. It's one of the things that I love about raising a child here. As these kids get older and play at each other's houses, we will all learn more about new cultures, customs and traditions. The more we know about one another, the more we understand each other and the more tolerant we are of differences. It makes me happy to know we are raising Theo to be completely open and accepting to things that are new and different because new and different is all he will know.