Quickly, before the tears fall

Since the 15th, we've had a 20-year-old Japanese exchange student living with us and I'm honestly amazed at the ease at which she integrated into our family. I'd been a bit worried that it would bother me or frustrate the kids, but it was, instead, a wonderful experience for us all.

Guilt pangs had bothered me, making me feel bad that Yurie had been 'stuck' with us, a poor family living in a small house, but we did our best to show her some fun, as well as a snippet of our American life. The kids were on great behavior for the first four or five days--refraining from the arguing that tends to permeate most interactions, willing to eat whatever I offered for dinner, even cleaning up after themselves if I asked them nicely (and gave them the raised-brow-"do it!"-look). By Wednesday we'd become comfortable enough with each other for the kids to gripe about the evening's lack of plans or balk at brushing their teeth before bed. Back to business as usual.

On Thursday, we went out to dinner at a Viet-Thai restaurant with her; A was reticent but willing to order the food in the language and got an enormous (though labeled small) dish of pho ga [with the appropriate marks that I can't seem to do from here]. Yurie had Thai food, green curry with rice, and attempted to show us how to use chopsticks correctly. A has it down pat, I'm getting there, but S may be resigned to eating with his fingers when we are abroad and fork-less.

My dear friend Keith's former housemate invited us over to use his pool on Friday when temperatures hit 104F (40C). What I had cautioned the kids would only be an hour-long excursion to the pool turned into more than 2 hours, but we still managed to leave before the kids annoyed all the child-free folks that inhabited the shallow end of the pool while my kids and Yurie had taken over the deep end with floaties, tubes and sinking dolphins.

Saturday was spent at my parent's house, an hour outside the city, enticing to a young lady from Tokyo. We passed all sorts of animals she'd only seen in zoos, including (on the way home) a dead skunk. Okay, so she'd only seen live skunks in the zoo, but they are more prevalent around here as road kill. There were goats, horses, cows, sheep and chickens. The country life was foreign to her, so we gave her a nice taste including the church picnic with bbq chicken, twelve varieties of potato and macaroni salads, a rope swing and the requisite bullhorn prayer. Then it was back to my parents' to use the zip line (a perennial favorite), make brownies, ginger snaps and mint brownies (per her request), walk in among the forest searching for deer tracks (found!), playing on the tree fort, etcetera.

Then my dad pulled out the big guns, quite literally. He asked if she was interested in shooting and not quite understanding what he meant, she declined. I explained a bit more that he had a few guns and that if she wanted to try them, he would help her and I would do it with her. All it took was a bit more understanding and she changed her mind, "oh yes, yes! Want to." So we found my dad, who, disappointed, had started back out to his shop to start work again, and told him that yes, she would like to try shooting. Out came the pistol, rifle and shotgun, along with a simplified English version of gun safety, including the fact that the one gun/bullet can travel up to 8 kms, so shooting into a stump was required. This was the result (click to see the movie):

An experience to remember to say the least, and sure beats visiting Washington Park.

We all had a great time hanging out, country-style for the day, having a slumber party at my folks' house for the night. I just wish that we hadn't been required to drop her off already. My nephew cried saying goodbye this morning, A said she felt just terrible about leaving her and I struggled to keep the tears out of my voice. I will miss her around here, but am so grateful for taking the chance in hosting a student. The second chance comes in just a few hours, anyway. Our new friend from China shows up at 10:30pm to start his week with us. We are eager to have him with our family, but already I am not looking forward to the drop-off in 10 days.