Exchange

Its been a long time since I have written a blog, I am not really sure why I stopped (besides just being ridiculously busy all the time), but I have always found it to be sort of therapeutic for me. I guess there is no time like the present to start again!

This past March our family hosted a Japanese exchange student. For my kids and husband, this was their first experience opening their home to someone from another country for any amount of time.  Everyone was excited, even Justin in his own weirdly quiet way.  I don’t think anyone really knew what to expect, having someone live with us for 8 days and share in our daily lives. Who knew what an impression a person can leave after only 8 days! We tried new foods, learned new words, laughed and played and stumbled through language barriers. We saw pictures of her home, we talked about her school and her family, and we cried when she left. For the kids, suddenly the world became a much more real place. There was someone we cared about living some place that until then might as well have come from a storybook.  Now when we read news stories about Japan, they actually mean something. We know she is so far away, but that distance isn’t just a number or a picture on a map, it’s a feeling now.

For me, this was the reigniting of a fire I had let die out a long time ago. I used to have such a passion for the world! I traveled, spoke foreign languages and I knew that what happened across an ocean really did mean something even if we were separated by such great distances. I had forgotten on some level that the people living on the other side of the world are real people, not just things we talk about on the news or read about online. There are mothers and fathers and children and families with so much to share living just an ocean away and it is important to understand that what happens in one place, can send ripples across the globe. Being me, a person that never does something just a little bit, I signed up with the exchange program to help place students coming to the US and also signed us up to host over the summer as well as during the coming school year. I may not be able to bring my children all around the world, but I will certainly do my best to bring the world to them