Sea-ing My Culture…in Spanglish!
I will never forget my first-ever game fair as a facilitator for Sea My Culture. We were set to have our very first game fair of 2023 at UMD’s Family Weekend, where we expected to introduce our game to potentially dozens of families visiting UMD for the first time.
Since I had joined the team just a few months prior, I was nervous for my first time leading new players through the game. Would people even have fun with me? I haven’t had the same studies in education or experiences with kids that Xinyi did. Was I ready to guide people through Sea My Culture in a way that truly represented the game in all of its potential?
Luckily, my long-time friend Juliette came to support us as a volunteer facilitator. I always feel at ease with her, so having her there made me feel a lot more comfortable in the new setting. Fortunately, we were also paired together to facilitate the game for a new freshman student who brought both of her parents to campus!
We greeted them warmly and sat them down while I started explaining the game’s premise. The father and daughter were open with their questions and it was clear that they were very outgoing. Meanwhile, the mother seemed to take a mental step back from the conversation, fully letting her daughter and husband engage with the game, and offered hesitant smiles when I made eye contact with her. Every now and then, I noticed the father and daughter leaning in to whisper to the mother in Spanish between the pauses in conversation.
We started the game and when the time came for Mom to read the Power Up! card she pulled, I saw that she would have some difficulty reading the words aloud until her daughter stepped in to translate. It pained me to see her having a hard time when I knew I had the skills to break the language barrier.
As the only non-Latine person at the table, I couldn’t live with myself if the only reason our table was still speaking in English was to make me comfortable. Although I was nervous since it had been a while since the last time I practiced speaking, I took a leap of faith and shouted, “Podemos jugar en Spanglish tambien!”
Immediately, the tension in the air dissipated and an enormous sigh of relief filled the room in its stead. “Yes, of course!”, the parents said. Now that everyone could understand each other in a common language, we became so much more open with one another. When the daughter pulled a Cultural Connections card, “Share one object that reminds you of your culture”, she told us about the rival Honduran and Salvadoran soccer jerseys that she has at home, each representing her parents’ different home countries. In a joyful moment of family banter, Juliette and I got to see the parents playfully tease each other about who has the better national team. It felt like an intimate family moment, and I felt so fulfilled knowing that they now felt comfortable enough to include us in it.
One of my favorite things about Sea My Culture is how it encourages us to embrace our own cultural backgrounds and learn from each other’s lived experiences. I didn’t expect that my Spanish skills would be one of those ways I could help us realize this goal and make the gameplay experience a more inclusive one as well. Here’s to more multilingual experiences with Sea My Culture in the future!
By Jessica Nguyen
October 2023