Celine Dion is an interesting lady. Her professional life is all about glamour, grand gestures and lots of fanfare. She just finished a four-year, multi-million-dollar stint performing in Las Vegas, where she had a specially-built performance hall just for her show. Before that, she had one of the most lavish celebrity weddings to date, to longtime manager Rene Angelil, in which the couple transformed a Las Vegas casino into an Arabian mosque and dressed like Arab royalty.

But in the face of all that excess, Celine recently kicked off her world tour in South Africa, meeting with Nelson Mandela and bringing her seven-year-old son, Rene-Charles, on a tour of some of the poorest areas of the region.

Celine, her husband Rene and their seven-year-old son Rene-Charles share the special moments of their trip - including a meeting with former South African president Nelson Mandela.

“I take my son around the world so that he can understand the privileges he has,” she says.

[From Hello! Canada]

It must have been quite a culture shock for Rene-Charles, who has spent most of his life growing up in Las Vegas, surrounded by luxury. Even if you’re not a platinum-selling recording artist, I still think parents can teach their kids that there are other people in the world who have it a lot worse than they do. As much as I think Celine’s music is crap, and her visit with Mandela was mostly a photo opp, I have to give her credit for this. Of course, we’ll all have to wait another 10 years to see how Rene-Charles turns out.

Celine Dion is shown with her son (yes, that’s her son with the long hair) and husband at at her final performance at Ceasers Palace after five years there on 12/15/07, thanks to PRPhotos.