Becoming Coco

  A nd What it Taught me About Teaching and Learning Second Languages   Playing Fruit Ninja in China I am jealous of people who grew up bi-culturally or learned different languages at a young age. I secretly want to be them because in comparison my background is boring and as an adult it is hard to learn a new language. I feel like I am starting late in the game. I grew up in a typical “English” only American home. My parents are the typical mixture of various Anglo cultures and the most interesting thing I can scrounge up about my family’s background is that my grandmother on my father’s side was half Irish. Unfortunately she had schizophrenia and was never a part of my life, so other than the knowledge that I am a quarter Irish, I have no interesting heritage to speak of. In Elementary school I hated those assignments that said to talk about your family’s heritage because no one in our family can give me any specific answer. We are a little Norwegian, German, Swedish, I