It's not that I'm ashamed or anything. I'm just mostly clueless. It reminds me both that I am a foreigner and at the same time that I have not done enough to protect my own heritage, that I have not bothered enough to learn more. It's a strange and awkward place. I can understand why a parent would want to spare their child such a kind situation, but I don't think "Americanizing" them is the right way to go about it. In fact, I think a parent should freely entrust as much culture as they want to their child, as long as the child is willing to learn. In all likelihood, his children will have no direct experience anyway. They only know what they were told. I can truly say that the awkward situations in which I had to try to inform someone else about my origins would have been much more tolerable if I actually had answers to these questions.